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Old Photos In Real Life

2016.06.07 05:02 Old Photos In Real Life

Comparing past and present locations through photography.
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2013.01.07 04:36 externals Ugly ducklings that turned to swans

For all you guys and gals out there who turned into butterflies.
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2012.03.05 16:44 ts87654 for cosplayers, by cosplayers

This is a subreddit specifically for people who cosplay and people looking to cosplay. Want to share the outfit you just made? Share it here! Want some advice on a costume? Ask here! Want to show some cool pics you took at the last convention you went to? Post them here!
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2024.05.19 01:43 PhenioxStories Monkie Kid- Animal Fury Season 1 Chapter 3 The Last of me

Mischief walks up to the blue crystal clock. She spins the the big hand with her magic and the little hand lands of three. A blue flame is lit. Mischief walks away into the darkness; the light from the blue clock making her look like a silhouette.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuZbmLLv1vM
A bead of sweat falls down Mischief head. Her hair on the ground and her back up august the wall. Mischief had been doing a headstand for the last thirty minutes. In her mind, doing this action once a week was a good way to keep her blood flowing and strength high. Sun walked outside and saw Mischief up august the wall. 
“Are you gonna stand there all day”, Sun asks, holding a peach in his hand.
“You should try it”, Mischief said under the pressure. She uses her feet to push off the rock and picks herself up. “It helps with strength endurance and it help you think.”
“Hard pass”, Sun says, biting the peach. “You know I’m not good with my arms.” Mischief smirks and says, “That’s not what I heard from Ne Zha~” Sun stopped walking and almost chocked on the chunk of peach in his mouth. He looked over at Mischief and said in embarrassment, “Could you not bring Him up?”
“Why? What’s the problem”, Mischief teased. “Oh right, you still like him.” Mischief laughs and then says, “After a millennia and you still haven't told him?” Mischief continues to laugh while Sun burns a bright red and shouts, “Can you shut up?!” Sun starts to hit Mischief head and she still laughs.
“Okay, Okay, I’ll stop”, Mischief says. Sun stops laughing and crosses his arms in annoyance. “Go train Mk. I’ll see you in a bit.” Sun walks out to the training dojo. Mischief smiles but then holds her head in pain with both of her hands. She keeps her eyes shut and feels herself being surrounded by darkness. Even when her eyes where shut, she could see a being covered in a moon themed cloak.
“No…! Why are you here?!” The being looks back; her eyes glowing a light blue. She turns and starts to walk over to Mischief. Mischief raises her hand and cast a spell, but the being covered in the moon cloak faces Mischief.
I am you, as you are me.
We are two become one.
Mischief opens her eyes once the pain subsides and sees that the world around her is normal. She looks around to see if anybody else is there. No one. Mischief looks at her hands and sees then shaking with fear.
“No…. not this night…! Please, not this night….!” Mischief walked back into the house and looked around for a quill and scroll.
Mischief walks back outside to see Mk and Sun training. She sits under a shady area near the entrance to the waterfall. Mk jumps back and lands on the mountains wall. She pushes himself off and charges at Sun from above. Sun smirks and jumps directly up while Mk crashed to the ground. 
“Missed me again”, Sun said. He picks up Mk with his tail and asks, “Now how did I win?”
“Misdirection”, Mk guesses.
“Correct”, Sun says.
“That seams like a shady lesson”, Mischief yells.
“Too soon sis.” Mk chuckles a bit.
“I’m just saying the truth”, Mischief says. She walks over and whispers, “And I bet Ne Zha would say the same thing if he was here.” Sun gets an annoyed look on his face and says, “Whatever. And plus, I was always better at fighting than you.”
“Oh really?”
“Wait a second”, Mk interrupted, “You two have fought before?”
“Yeah. But it was for training purposes”, Sun says.
“Now that you mention it, we haven't trained in a while”, Mischief says. “What do you say, but brother?” Sun smirks and says, “Your on.”
Mischief and Sun get into their fighting positions on each side of the training ground. Mk sits on the stairs in anticipation. 
“Not using your weapon sis?”
“I don’t need it”, Mischief said with a smirk on her face. Sun chuckles under his breath and says, “Your done if I land this.” Sun charges to Mischief at full speed. Mischief closes her eyes and smirks. She moves out of the way and pushes her brother to the wall. Sun blinks a few times in confusion and looks back to sees Mischief untouched.
“I’m waiting.” Sun runs over to Mischief and tried to hit her multiple times but each time, Mischief blocks his attacks over and over. “Wow, brother. Your getting rusty.”
“I’ll show you rusty”, Sun exclaims. He jumps back and starts to attack with his legs.
“Not really effective!” Mischief takes Sun’s leg and pins him down with her foot. “Moon: 1. Sun: 0. I win again.”
“Mischief, let me up”, Sun says. Mischief moved her foot off of Sun’s back and says, “I thought you fought celestial beings bigger than me. You sure your not getting rusty?”
“He’s not”, Mk says. “He beat Demon Bull King, Spider Queen, and More! He’s strong enough to fight the Jade Emperor!” Mischief could hear her thoughts snap in half. She chuckles to herself in annoyance and says under her breath, “Yeah…. Sure…” Mischief then holds her head in pain.
“Mischief, are you okay”, Sun asks. He holds her shoulders.
“I’m fine”, Mischief says. “It’s just a headache. And I don’t think I’ll be able to train Mk tonight.”
“It’s okay”, Mk says. “Plus, I promised Mei I would help her fix her bike”
“Thank you, Mk.”
The full moon shines from above the mountain; its rays passing the peek of the mountain. A being covered in a night themed cloak looks down on the city below. She turns back and jumps backward. She closes her eyes and summoned a portal under her. The portal was covered in shadows and it’s magic was a dark blue. The being fell thought the portal and landed on a roof with grace and elegance. She looks back and sees the lights on in each building from each block ahead. 
“Now… where are you?”
Mk walks down the street of the city. He was walking home from Mei’s bike shop and he was hoping to get some well needed rest. 
“This is the last time I stay out this late”, Mk thinks to himself. He looks up and sees a being silhouetted bu the light of the moon. “Who is that?” Mk squints his eyes and sees the being crying up at the moon. “Are they crying?” Before Mk could call to the person, they jumped to the next roof and vanish into the night. Mk runs to the end of the block but doesn’t see the being.
“That person….. Why where they crying?”
“I’m sorry, say that again?” 
“I saw a person last night”, Mk explains. “It looked like they where crying.” Mischief stopped in her tracks and hides behind the house. She looks to her right and back down to the floor.
“H-How, the, Hell, did he see me”, Mischief thought with worry, panicking in her mind. Her racing thoughts coming to a halt. Mischief touched her broach and thought, “He was with Mei that night. He must have been walking home when he saw me.” Mischief lied the back of her head on the house wall and says, “Damn you, Moon Maiden…!” Mischief sighs and thinks, “There’s no way I can control her at this rate.” Mischief walks back to the front and sees Mk and Sun walking to the top of the mountain.
“Where are you two going?”
“We’re going to train at the top of the mountain”, Sun says. “Wanna come?”
“Sorry, not this time”, Mischief says. “I still have a bit of a headache.”
“Oh… does that mean no training tonight either”, Mk asks.
“I’m sorry, Mk”, Mischief says.
“It’s alright. Take care of yourself. We can train when you feel better.” Mischief smiles. She then remembered how her mentor from years past was so understanding. She saw a lot of them in Mk. “Well see you later.” Mk and Sun walked up the path to the top of the mountain. Mischief looks off to the side is sadness. She hated lying to Mk and her brother, but she had to protect them at all cost. She could risk to lose them like she lost…… her….
Mischief sits on a rock near the edge of the cliff and looks up at the sky. It had almost been a month since she had been away from the celestial realm: her home. She wondered if the cheetah twins had been playing in the celestial forest around this time. She touches her broach and says, “I miss you, mother…..” Pink magic flew around Mischief and a scroll appeared. Mischief catches the scroll and looks at the wax seal. “This is Ne Zha’s crest.” Mischief opens the scroll and a necklace rolls into her lap. She looks at the necklace and then read the scroll as follows:
Mischief,
**It’s good to hear from you again. I heard from your mother that you moved to earth. I hope Sun hasn’t been giving you too much of a headache. I did some research on what you told me about and it lead me to this necklace. And I also found out that the reason your alter ego is coming out on her own is because she hasn’t been bound. One of your ancestors had the same problem and they had a solution. The necklace I set you is called the moon of Apithaea. It has the power to control your alter ego’s rage. It might help you. I hope you get a hendel on your powers.** 
Could you tell sun I said hi?
-Ne Zha
Mischief chuckles and says, “Looks like Ne Zha hasn’t changed one bit. Still the same helpful prince I know.” She smirks. “And his interest in Sun hasn’t left at all.” Mischief looks at the necklace and then placed it around her neck. “Thank you, Lotus.”
Mk and Sun fight along the mountain Plato. However, Mk couldn’t couldn’t really concentrate. He was worried about Mischief, and he was thinking about the person he saw the other night. Mk was so distracted that he didn’t realize that he had left an opening for Sun to hit him. Sun stops his attack midway. 
“You got distracted.” Mk lowers his staff and shudders, “S-Sorry.”
“Are you okay? You seam distracted”, Sun points out.
“I’m worried about Mischief”, Mk says. Sun looked at Mk and the to the side of him, thinking of how to help Mk. she smiles and says, “Kid, follow me. I wanna show you something.”
“What is it?” Sun taps on the ground and a hatch opens. “Now way! How long had this been here?”
“A long time”, Sun says. He jumps and and says, “Come on!” Mk jumps down the hole and lands in a cavern like cave.
“Whoa…. Had this always been down here”, Mk asks.
“Yup”, Sun says. Mk looks ahead and sees a crystal floating above a pedestal; it’s light casting along the floor. Mk walks up to the crystal and asks, “What is this?”
“This is the crystal of the sun”, Sun explains. “This crystal has protected this mountain for a very long time. It was made over three millennia ago.”
“It’s amazing.” Mk takes a closer look at and then gets a vision.
Mischief looks back at someone; her face angry and upset.
She says something but her words are distorted and scrambled.
“She was your mentor!”
Mk blinks a few times and moves his hand away from the crystal. Sun notice Mk’s discomfort and asks, “Are you okay?”
“Huh? Oh, I’m fine”, Mk reassures Sun.
“If you say so.” Sun says.
“Hey, Monkie King? Can I ask you something?”
Mk and Sun walk along the roof of a building. 
“Are you sure the person you saw the other night is gonna be here”, sun asked.
“I’m sure of it”, Mk says. The two look around. Mk looks to the north and sees the same person from the other night. “Hey!” Sun looks over to see Mk running over to the hooded person.
“Mk, wait!”
“Um. Excuse me?” The hooded figure looks back; her eyes covered in shadows. “I noticed you the other night and I wanted to meet you.” The hooded figure looks at Mk for a second.
“MK…..?”
“You know who I am?” Sun takes a closer look at the hooded woman and gains a surprised look on his face.
“Mischief?” The being blinks a few times and then says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know anyone by that name.” She tries to walk away, but Sun holds her by the solder which makes Mischief’s necklace break off. The necklace falls to the ground and Mischief’s head hands low.
“Mischief? Are you okay”, Sun asks. Mischief looks back with her glowing eyes piercing Sun’s soul from within. Sun could feel a chill go up his spine. “Um, Mischief?” Mischief rushes back and attacks Sun. “Sis! Stop! What are you doing?!”
“Anyone who get’s in my way will be destroyed”, She yells. Sun whips around and holds his sister down with all the strength he has within him.
“Mk, get the necklace”, he shouts. Mk looks over and sees the necklace. He runs over and picks it up. Mischief looks over in panic and rage.
“No!” She breaks free from her brothers hold and rushes over to Mk and holds him by his collar. Sun tries to rush over to Mischief, but she puts of a barrier. She looks up at Mk and says, “I will not be locked up like a prisoner!”
“What? I don’t get it. Who are you”, Mk asks, struggling to break free. Mischief chuckles to herself, looks up at Mk and says, “So she didn’t tell you? Your her apprentice. Surely you can tell the difference.”
“What?”
“You don’t know? I am–!” Before she could finish her sentence, A ghostly rendition of Mischief, the real Mischief, Holds back her own body. Mk falls to the ground and looks up to see the scene taking place before him.
“Mischief?”
“Mk, I’m sorry”, Mischief exclaims. “I got you and my brother rapped up in this!” Sun runs over and helps up Mk.
“Mischief, who is this”, Mk asks.
“Moon Maiden”, Mischief answers, struggling to hold her back. “She’s my alter ego. I can’t control her without the necklace! Get it!” Sun and Mk run over to the necklace. “You have gone out of control for the last time! You going back where you belong!” Moon maiden holds Mischief by her neck and says, You really think you can control me?! I am half of you that lingers in your shadow! The dark side of light! You can’t escape me, Mischief Wukong!” Mischief puts her hand on Moon Maiden’s arm and says, “No…”
“What?”
“Your right. You are part of me. But you are nothing but an alter ego! I have been through hell and back! I have lost my way over and over, but I never gave up! I have kept you back for over two damn millennia, and I’m not stopping now”, Mischief shouts, felling herself gaining power. Mischief breaks free and holds Moon Maiden with her magic. “NOW!” Mk and Sun put the necklace on Moon Maiden. Mischief lies up and forces herself back into her body. Mischief looks in the darkness and faces her alter ego. “I know you are part of me, and it’s time to make peace with the past”, Mischief says. She puts out her hand to her alter ego. “And I want you to face it with me. If you allow me to.” Moon Maiden looks down and says, “Then I guess we really are one in the same.” She takes Mischief hand.
“We are two become one. The shadow of the sun.”
Mischief gains breath and she holds herself up. 
“M, are you okay”, Sun asks.
“I’m alright”, Mischief says.
“Alter ego, Huh? That’s a new one”, Sun says. 
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her before”, Mischief says. “I though I could control her on my own, but I can’t even do that right.”
“Mischief, you can talk to us”, Mk says. “We’re here for you.” Mischief looks at both Mk and Sun and says, “You know, I think me coming down here was a blessing in disguise. I’m glad you two are here with me.” The trio smiles.
submitted by PhenioxStories to u/PhenioxStories [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 01:13 Gildedfilth My experience with a Calyceal Diverticulum

I am in recovery from my ureteroscopy on a calyceal diverticulum, and while I found some journal articles and a few stray posts on here about them, I want to paint a bigger picture about my actual experience and what I felt.
What is a calyceal diverticulum?
For a good scientific review of what calyceal (kay-luh-SEE-uhl) diverticula are, there is a review study from 2014 with primary author Nikhil Waingankar. In short, these are pockets within the kidneys that have much narrower entry points (“infundibula”) than a normal calyx, and they are theorized to only occur in 0.5% of the human population, with an estimated 96% of those who have them forming stones inside them.
They are often found incidentally on imaging because many people remain asymptomatic. In my case, we saw “a cyst requiring further imaging to rule out neoplasm” (cancer) when I was having my appendectomy in 2022 and had a CT scan in the ER.
They will look like cysts until you either get a radiologist who knows what to look for and sees a stone inside, or until you do a CT urogram, which is a more involved CT scan where you can see if the urinary system communicates with the “cyst.” Simple cysts and neoplasms will not show urine entering the mass; a calyceal diverticulum will, because it has an entrance.
Important stipulation in my experience: endometriosis and its surgeries
My story is complicated by the fact that I have endometriosis, which is a disease wherein cells resembling uterine cells occur outside the uterus. This is an extraordinarily painful condition that causes widespread inflammation due to the uterus-like cells’ having “menstrual periods” outside the uterus. It that can occur anywhere in the body; while most people’s disease presents primarily in the ovaries, uterus, and Fallopian tubes, the disease has been found in every organ in the body. In my case, my disease was confirmed to be extrapelvic as soon as my appendix pathology report revealed that my appendix had endometriosis on it; the cells existed beyond the typical pelvic organs.
I have already had two laparoscopies for endometriosis, and while these were immensely helpful in restoring my quality of life, every abdominal surgery comes with the risk of adhesions. Adhesions are bands of tissue that the body forms when it experiences inflammation or trauma. Endometriosis forms adhesions by itself, and surgery to remove it risks further adhesions. In 2020, when I had my radical excision surgery, my surgeon had to perform ureterolysis to cut my ureters free: whether from previous surgery in 2016 or the disease, my ureters were stuck to my uterus due to adhesions.
I share this because having endometriosis and its surgeries in my history affected my path to diagnosis and probably my pain pattern. (Endometriosis forms its own nerve endings, too!) But for the record, the kidney stones and the kidney surgery in my case were more painful than endometriosis…probably because they freaked out any remaining endometriosis.
(Sorry for no source on this endometriosis information. I am unfortunately very well-read on the disease! If you want to learn more, I recommend The Center for Endometriosis Care website and the book Beating Endo.)
What did the calyceal diverticulum feel like at first?
On a Tuesday in January 2024, I was trialing prazosin, an alpha blocker related to Flomax (tamsulosin) due to PTSD nightmares.
One day after taking this drug, I woke up with 8/10 pain muscle spasms in my “iliac crest,” which is the top edge of my pelvis, on the right side. I thought I had “slept funny” and the pain subsided after about 3 hours. I tried to roll around on a lacrosse ball, thinking it was a muscle spasm.
I took the prazosin for two more days. By that Thursday, the pain lasted more like 6 hours and did not go away; I had the muscle spasms as well as a feeling that there was “trapped gas” right at my waist, right on the side of my body. Because the pain stayed at 8/10, nothing would calm it down, and I couldn’t focus on work, I went to the ER. We did a CT scan and saw nothing different from my last CT for my appendectomy. They decided it was probably a kidney infection with strange presentation due to my endometriosis and sent me home with cefpodoxime, an antibiotic.
I finished the course of the antibiotic over 7 days and felt better.
But then the “trapped gas” feeling returned and lasted 18 hours. I went back to the ER, mostly concerned that I had failed antibiotics and the “infection” was getting worse. I made a urologist appointment while I was waiting in the ER because I suspected this might be beyond their mandate of ruling out anything life-threatening. We did another CT, and this time I really carefully read the results: inside what we had identified as a calyceal diverticulum in 2022 during my appendectomy CT scan were two kidney stones, each about 0.2mm. Because there was not much change from my last ER visit, the doctor at the ER did not think this explained how I was feeling. He did not want to send me home with antibiotics because he thought his colleagues were too cavalier with testing, but he did send for a urine culture and sent me home at least assured there was no emergency.
The culture came back, and I did test positive for E. Faecalis, which is a rarer bacteria to have, so the doctor at the ER urged me to get on Levaquin, an antibiotic, as soon as possible.
Again, I took almost the full course of the antibiotic and was feeling better and safer. I also saw a urologist, and she was skeptical it was an infection but told me to continue the course. She was pretty sure it was endometriosis-related but saw that I had seen my gynecologist, who has been treating me for 5 years, days prior who was pretty sure this was NOT consistent with what she had seen when we operated in 2020. The urologist said she felt this might be beyond her skills and referred me to one of her medical school colleagues who is a specialist in “complex anatomy” like calyceal diverticula as an endourologist professor at Lenox Hill in NYC.
But before I could see the endourologist, only one week after my last ER visit, I was in 9/10 pain for 7 hours overnight. I really did not want to go to the ER again, but I was vomiting, sweating, using the bathroom (both ways) constantly. After 7 hours not being able to get it to calm down, I went back to the ER.
The first thing they did was test me for sepsis, because I was being treated for an infection. They also did a CT scan again and then we saw it: one of the kidney stones had left the calyceal diverticulum and was stuck in the ureterovesicular junction (“UVJ”). By the time I was diagnosed, I was in 9/10 pain for 18 hours, so what we now know to be the renal colic phase lasted for 18 hours. They admitted me overnight to the hospital to observe and had me on ketorolac (Toradol) and oxycodone/acetaminophen (Percocet) every 6 hours alternating. The pain subsided the next morning.
Confirmation and surgery
Luckily I had the endourologist appointment on the books already, and I got all of my images from the ER to bring to this doctor, letting him know I was confirmed to have passed the stone.
What he was able to do for me I will never forget: he showed me exactly why I was in enough pain for the ER each of the three weeks I went. Unlike a normal stone situation, a stone in a calyceal diverticulum has far more
submitted by Gildedfilth to KidneyStones [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 01:11 ExcitingTrust888 Things I wish to see in future updates of the game

I’m enjoying this game for what it’s worth and I know that it’s not even officially out yet, but I hope that before the official release they can add these things to the game. I don’t know if the devs are reading this sub, but I’m sure at least one of them does lol!
Different looking gear: This is definitely one of the main complaints in the game and they should really address this. Legendary weapons and gear should look like their in-game counterparts if they have any like in Fallout Shelter. I mean Cicero is wearing a mail, he should be wearing his jester costume. Tiber Septim should be wearing his gold armor, and so on. It just helps differentiate it from other items and also make them look more “Legendary”. They don’t even need to make their 3D model look similar to the source material, just their gear is fine, but at least give them the right skin tone and hairstyle.
As for the other gear with just special effects but are not from the other ES games, literally just add particle effects on them like a sword with a fire bonus should be on fire, an axe with a frost bonus should be icy, a dagger with a lifesteal effect should be dripping in blood, and so on. It makes it more obvious that the item has an enchantment. I swear people would love this game more if you add that.
Return the “Wasteland Expedition” feature(forgot what it’s called) that Fallout Shelter had: You know, just drop a unit or a party in a carriage placed maybe at the entrance of the castle or something and let them explore the world where they will get items, gold, and so on, without your intervention, and the longer they explore, the more items they get, then give it a cap that when they die, they automatically go back home instead so they don’t go exploring forever.
Maybe add a small animation where they are doing stuff like running, fighting enemies, eating, and so on to make it more interesting while they are just exploring and have dialog options here and there so you have to check them for then to move forward. Then have some checkpoints so you can continue travelling the said route and discovering new areas and dialog options to get better items.
They can connect this with exploring new locations for the game to have a more coherent story and questlines. Tbh exploring locations is what makes Fallout Shelter fun and interesting, I really hope that they return that feature someday. Imagine exploring towns and castles where you can go inside rooms, look for items and talk to other NPC’s, then at some point you get to fight enemies or while running around town you fight bandits and stuff, then the game switches to the normal combat screen. Man that would really elevate Castles to a more fully fleshed out game. Like imagine going to Whiterun or Cyrodiil, man that would be amazing 🤩
Imagine having a Thieves’ Guild Questline or a Dragonborn quest where in the end one of your units becomes a dragonborn with special gear and stuff like that. And they can make it seasonal since units die of old age anyways, so like this month you can get a dragonborn unit with a unique trait if you complete the quest, then next month you can get a thieves guild unit and so on. And these traits cannot be inherited so the only way to get them is by doing the quests. One can only dream 🙏
More decorations that the subjects can interact with: I only have a low level castle right now so I don’t have all the decorations, but I notice units can interact with the fountain and have a ruling that say the fountain is being filled with gold coins and such. I don’t know if there are other decorations like this in higher levels, but I hope they add more of them. Like maybe someone reads the red book and suddenly they get an enduring trait since the description says it contains the “Secret to Enduring Health”, or they read the green book and they become 5 years younger, someone hangs around the purple tree too much and they become temporarily haunted, that would be really nice to see.
Oh and animation-wise too they definitely should add more interactions. I’ve only noticed two decorations that the NPC’s interact with, the fountain and the purple tree. Adults steal coins from the fountain, and kids play ring-around-a-rosie around the tree. It’s cute when they do that, just small details that add more life to the game. Oh and they sometimes taste the soup in the kitchen and check out their clothes in the sewing table, which is funny. I hope they add more of these to the other workstations, like they can test a weapon in the blacksmith, scribble over the battle plans in the war room, steal a sweet roll at the buffet, and so on.
Hard mode quests: Quests where if your units die, you lose your units permanently, but the rewards are better. They can implement this at the gauntlet for more seasoned players to try.
Bookshelf should have books that players can read: I bought the Lusty Argonian 1 and 2 for some gold, I should at least be able to read them, right? Isn’t that why we even choose what book to buy in the first place?
Music Stage should let us choose what background music to play: The music plays on a loop but it changes, at least give us an option to choose what we want to hear and maybe get new music to play from the shop. And definitely should add a musician/bard trait or something where if they play music at the music stage, they increase happiness for other NPC’s. To make it balanced, they can only increase the happiness to the lowest green level and will only affect their family and friends, I guess that would be reasonable without being too gamebreaking.
Allow us to destroy items to get back their raw materials: Not really necessary but it would be a nice feature to have. I’d be okay with destroying items to get half or 1/3 of the resources used to make them, at least my useless items will have some other use except for selling them.
Have an alchemy/wizard table that produces potions/scrolls: 1 potion per day is good enough. In the same vein, having a wizard table that produces scrolls is nice too, maybe not just resurrection scrolls, but temporary buffs that work only for the current battle is good too.
Have a leveling system for the units: Like someone using their workstation for 5 years should at least get a +1 bonus productivity in their job, up to a maximum of +5, with rarer units getting more, like gold units can get up to +9, purple +8, blue +7, green but with 2 traits +6, while fighters should get more proficient with their weapons the more they fight. A 10% increase for having weapon proficiency isn’t so overpowered anyway but is nice to have. Maybe each weapon should have a specific unit that they need to kill, and when they accomplish it they unlock the proficiency? Like “kill 100 goblins to get 10% more damage with this weapon”? I dunno, but it’s a nice thing to have and adds something more to do in the game with a tangible reward.
That’s all I have for now, hope you guys like my ideas and definitely your comments will be much appreciated! If you have ideas of your own you can share them below 😊
submitted by ExcitingTrust888 to ESCastles [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 00:59 GoAheadMMDay UPDATE 3: Torment Techniques Used by Canadian and US Militaries

UPDATE 3: Torment Techniques Used by Canadian and US Militaries
Update #3 appears at the bottom.
Due to numerous disparaging comments by multiple individuals, I have reposted my article.
Heckling does not change what occurred. People need to know these truths, especially those who have experienced the same. They need to know they are sane, that such things are indeed being perpetrated, and the perpetrators use shame to silence them and protect their activities.
I write to encourage them not to listen to disparaging people who speak without knowledge.
February 10, 2024
I am Joseph Cafariello, a Canadian citizen and ex-member of the Canadian military. Of sound mind, not on medication, not a drug user, not a marijuana smoker, not an alcohol drinker, with no mental disorders.
I recently posted to this Liberty subreddit experiences of harassment by Vancouver's police and fire departments (Vancouver, BC, Canada). I’m the fellow who was repeatedly ordered by police to stay out of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, and was continually harassed whenever I visited the park (which I do every second day on my early morning walks).
Immediately following that post, they changed some of the techniques they use in my case. They were either informed of my post or found it themselves, seeing as my internet activity, and phone activity for that matter, are under continuous surveillance (plenty of proof which I will not include here to avoid running off-topic).
In this post, I would like to shed some light on other harassment which is still ongoing, since it occurs in private, away from potential observers. It involves the Canadian and US militaries.
Havana Syndrome
In 2016, numerous employees of the Canadian and US embassies in Havana, Cuba, started experiencing head injuries ranging from mild headaches to concussions. It happened in their sleep, and came to be called Havana Syndrome.
Wikipedia explains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana\_syndrome):
“Havana syndrome is a cluster of idiopathic symptoms experienced mostly abroad by U.S. government officials and military personnel. The symptoms range in severity from pain and ringing in the ears to cognitive dysfunction and were first reported in 2016 by U.S. and Canadian embassy staff in Havana, Cuba. Beginning in 2017, more people, including U.S. intelligence and military personnel and their families, reported having these symptoms in other places, such as China, India, Europe, and Washington, D.C. The U.S. Department of State, Department of Defense, and other federal entities have called the events "Anomalous Health Incidents" (AHI). Of over a thousand purported cases, the majority of US investigative bodies found only a few dozen cases to be suspicious.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you exactly what happens, because I have been experiencing this since I first joined the Canadian military back in 2002, and am still experiencing these “torments” (as I call them) to this day, already 3 years after leaving the military.
I go to bed. In about 15 minutes, just as I am on the cusp of falling asleep, a hear and feel a heavy thud reverberate and ultimately strike my skull. My body releases a sharp burst of adrenalin, my heart starts racing, and my blood’s circulation speeds up significantly. Depending on the severity of the blow, it can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to fall asleep again. Though there have been times I could not return to sleep for more than 2 hours.
A strong headache is felt immediately, and lasts for hours. There have been times when my heart felt like it was going to burst, having been startled as such.
The pulse to the head sometimes reverberates through the wall and my bed’s headboard. I distinctly feel as though I have been hit on the top of my skull. At other times, it feels as though the pulse has come through the air, striking the side of my skull.
This is not a sleep disorder, for it does not occur regularly. At times, my sleep is disturbed in this manner 3 or 4 days in a row. At other times, there is no disturbance for up to a week. But they never let me go more than a week without such interruptions to my sleep.
Neither is it sleep apnea, as I do not awaken gasping for breath. The pounding headaches, sudden release of adrenaline, and heart palpitations I experience are caused by external impacts of sound waves or air bursts.
Sonic Weapons
How these pulses are produced is not easy to identify. As Wikipedia explains:
“Once the story became public, various U.S. government representatives attributed the incidents to attacks by unidentified foreign actors, and various U.S. officials blamed the reported symptoms on a variety of unidentified and unknown technologies, including ultrasound and microwave weapons.”
Sonic weapons have been in use for many years by militaries, and by police in crowd control. As Wikipedia explains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic\_weapon):
“Some sonic weapons make a focused beam of sound or of ultrasound; others produce an area field of sound. As of 2023 military and police forces make some limited use of sonic weapons.”
(Do not believe the 2023 timeline. The Canadian military has been using these weapons since the early 2000’s at the latest.)
Wikipedia continues:
“Extremely high-power sound waves can disrupt or destroy the eardrums of a target and cause severe pain or disorientation. This is usually sufficient to incapacitate a person. Less powerful sound waves can cause humans to experience nausea or discomfort.”
The users of these technologies must also be using thermal detection equipment to monitor the target’s sleep. As I mentioned, I most often feel these blows the moment I am falling asleep. Body temperature drops when we sleep, and brain activity slows. Heat-detection equipment is likely being used to identify the point at which the target is falling asleep.
Why they prefer to strike at the start of someone’s sleep as opposed to the middle of their sleep, I do not know. Perhaps their intent is to deprive the body of early sleep, limiting the amount of deep sleep available to the person before their alarm rings in the morning.
Ordinary Hammers
Not all such “torments” (as I call them) are caused by high-tech equipment. I have heard and felt distinct hammer strikes running along the 2x4 beams inside my walls. These strikes can be a single hard strike, or several strikes in a row. It is definitely caused by a person with a hammer because the intervals between strikes are equidistant in time; that is, the time spacing between strikes is not random and does not change from strike to strike, but is constant between strikes, exactly as when someone is hammering. And no, it is not someone hanging pictures at 1:30 am, multiple times a week, for years.
On one occasion, when I was standing at my kitchen sink, I felt the floor-board directly under my feet pulse so sharply it felt like a brick had struck the soles of my feet. In this case, my military neighbour likely used a hammer to strike the floorboard on his side of the wall. It is the only plausible explanation.
Surveillance
This leads to surveillance of one’s activities at home. I have plenty of proofs of that. They seem insignificant on an individual basis. But when you put them all together, they present a clear picture of home surveillance.
My laptop computer’s lid cracked one night, at the bottom left corner of the screen. The next day at work, I heard my military supervisor relate to another co-worker that the night before, his laptop computer’s lid cracked at the bottom left corner. I swear to the Lord in Heaven, I am being truthful.
I tested my suspicion of being surveilled. At home one night, I blurted out-loud, “VW Passat. What an ugly sounding word, ‘Passat’”, I said. A few days later, my military colleagues at work started playing a card game at lunch, invented by one of them. The name he gave his game was “Passat”, and when he spoke it, he looked at me for a reaction. If you ever contact the Halifax military base, ask for the Claims Department and ask them if they are still playing Passat.
On another occasion, at a time when I frequented the gym every second day for a few years, I suspected my van had been fitted with a listening device. I suspected so because a number of things I had spoken with people about on my phone while in my van (nothing illegal) were repeated by people at the gym in conversations among themselves. Too many times, parts of other people's conversations matched parts of conversations I had had with others while I was in my van.
I already knew my phone was being tapped, but I also suspected my van was bugged. So one evening while driving in my van, I blurted out-loud a number of things I said I hated. "I hate (this or that)"; "I hate it when...". One of them was, "I hate when people chew gum with their mouths open." I then vocalized an exaggerated gnawing sound, "Gnaw. Gnaw. Gnaw."
The very next time I went to the gym, 2 days later, while I was at an exercise, a fellow sat at an exercise directly behind me. And sure enough, he started chewing with his mouth open, vocalizing that gnawing sound, "Gnaw. Gnaw. Gnaw." I didn't look behind at him, because I knew what was going on, and I wanted to avoid playing into his hand. So he repeated himself again and again until I was done and moved to a different station. Now, honestly, who chews gum at the gym? You can't. Or you run the risk of choking for the heavy breathing, not to mention when laying down on benches. And with precisely the same exaggerated vocalized gnawing sound I had made in my van just 2 days prior.
Their whole intent is to let you know you are being surveilled. They want you to know, as both a warning and a provocation. They want you to say something, to launch accusations, which they would readily deny, making you look paranoid. If you react too strongly, they could even have you diagnosed with some kind of disorder, and put you on medication, which further plays into their hand. (More regarding medications in the last section of this post.)
This is why, as I mentioned in my previous post, they would park their cars shining their high beams on me as I walked past them during my morning walk. And why on some occasions, a group of 3 or 4 would exit their cars and stand on my path just as I approached, forcing me to go around them. They would then remain standing on the path until my return trip through, and after I had passed by the second time, then would then return to their cars - making it absolutely clear I was their interest.
Their intent is not only to make me aware, but also to present themselves in close proximity to me, within easy reach, in the hope I would confront them, resulting in an altercation that could land me in a lot of hot water - 4 witnesses against me, all pleading innocence.
Again, it is all designed to make you look bad, and to warrant some kind of legal measure against you - preferably a medical diagnosis, discrediting you in everything you say about them. If they can't refute your claims, their only remaining option is to discredit you. That's what all of these tricks are designed to accomplish. Who would believe anything you say, once you have been diagnosed with a disorder?
There are plenty more examples. But who would really believe them? I’ll save them for the future.
Home Invasion
Both during and after my military service, I have had my apartments entered without any signs of break-ins. How? Lock-picking and duplicate keys. Indications? Missing objects; ie: money, phone adaptor, etc. Nothing major. Just something to make us understand we are being watched, and to make us understand what they can do.
But it is always something small, something for which you would be ridiculed for divulging.
Two more examples: I found my razor, which I always lay-down razor-end to the wall, turned around, razor-end toward me. Also, in one of my house slippers I found a small shoe sticker on the up-side of the heel. I had those slipper for years, and never had any shoe stickers on them. Yet there it was, clearly visible on the top surface of my slipper, not the bottom. Could I have stepped on a shoe sticker when barefoot in my apartment, only to have the sticker transfer itself to my slipper when I wore it? How many shoe stickers do you have laying around your apartment that you can accidentally step onto?
If I had stepped onto a sticker in my apartment and had it stick to my heel, that means the sticky side was up against my skin. This means the sticker would have had to flip upside down such that the sticky side would then be down, allowing the sticker to stick to the slipper. Do you really think that happened? That sticker was not there when I left my apartment, but it was there when I returned. And it was the wrong sticker, wrong brand, wrong size.
Again, what is their intent? To make someone look ridiculous so no one will believe them should they speak of other more sensitive things.
Staged Incidents
The above incidents clearly point to coordinated and staged events (at my work, my home, on my walks, etc). This is so frequently met with incredulity. "But that would require coordination on the part of so many people," the public dismisses. "They wouldn't do that."
Oh yes they would, and they have, as explained in https://fightgangstalking.com/. Note the documented cases involving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS, Canada's equivalent to the US' CIA) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP, Canada's national police force) in the second quote, which were reported in national newspapers.
From https://fightgangstalking.com/:
“Disruption operations often involve tactics which are illegal, but difficult to prove. These tactics include – but are not limited to – overt surveillance (stalking), slander, blacklisting, “mobbing” (intense, organized harassment in the workplace), “black bag jobs” [home invasions], abusive phone calls, computer hacking, framing, threats, blackmail, vandalism, “street theater” (staged physical and verbal interactions with minions of the people who orchestrate the stalking), harassment by noises, and other forms of bullying. Many of these tactics were used by the FBI during its illegal COINTELPRO operations, as documented by stolen official documents and subsequent Congressional investigations.
"Although the general public is mostly unfamiliar with the practice, references to “disruption” operations – described as such – do occasionally appear in the news media, even though that fact would apparently be news to the editors of The New York Times. In May 2006, for example, an article in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper, reported that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) used “Diffuse and Disrupt” tactics against suspects for whom they lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute. A criminal defense attorney stated that many of her clients complained of harassment by authorities, although they were never arrested."
She can add me to that list too.
For the Benefit of Others
The experiences I have recounted here seem so trivial, so insignificant, they make you look ridiculous if you talk about them. But if we don’t talk about such things, no one will ever know about them. Other people have experienced the same, and are forced to endure such torments in silence. They need encouragement to talk about their own experiences, and so I write about mine in the hope they will talk about theirs, even if I do look ridiculous. The perpetrators are more ridiculous for doing them.
I remember a military colleague being hauled away by military police one morning, as she was struggling and having a violent fit. A fellow on her floor told me she was throwing chairs at her walls screaming, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”. When he mentioned that, I knew exactly what they had done to her. She was considered unruly, and was being watched intently. They wanted her out, and that is how they accomplished it. Through wall tapping and sleep deprivation, they push you to the breaking point. And when you finally lose control and do something rash, they pounce on you, and you’re out. Now she has a criminal record, considered a criminal when in reality she was a victim. Welcome to the Canadian military, and other militaries besides, I am sure.
There are dozens upon dozens of experiences I could present. But who will really read them? Worse still, who will really believe them? I overheard my military supervisor in Halifax whisper to another, “Do you think he knows?”, after I had mentioned one of the many “coincidences” I experienced, but with a tone of my being aware it was not a mere coincidence. As I turned my face to my computer screen, I whispered under my breath, but still loud enough for him to hear, “Yes, (rank) (name), I know.” A few minutes later, as he walked past my desk, he leaned in by my ear and whispered, “We’re just trying to help you.” I should have pressed him for answers right then and there, but you just don’t know how much trouble you can get into when making such accusations in the military. So I let it go. But I will never forget.
Should anyone reading this ever decide to launch some kind of inquiry, I can mention names of over 100 people to contact, including military personnel, family members, neighbours, building managers, and others who have been contacted by military personnel with false narratives about me. They flash their ID’s and other credentials, and people believe anything they say. They turn family, friends, co-workers and neighbours against you, even recruiting their participation. Your acquaintances not only participate, but actually feel justified and emboldened playing tricks on you. It isn't their fault, though; they have been misled. I would reference them solely for corroboration.
As a final thought, here are explanations of two military programs in which certain persons (sometimes military, sometimes civilian) are kept under constant surveillance, and are in some cases subjected to conditioning in an attempt to turn them into what is called a “sleeper agent”. Almost all of the tactics presented below have been experience by me, including constant surveillance (ie: my previous post here regarding being harassed on my morning walks) and sleep deprivation (as per the top portion of this post, which other military members in Cuba and elsewhere around the world have also experienced).
Pentagon’s Signature Reduction Program
See Newsweek’s article: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-secret-undercover-army-1591881
Some excerpts from that Newsweek article, plus more background information on the Pentagon’s Signature Reduction Program, can be found here: https://fightgangstalking.com/
“The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called “signature reduction.” The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies.
“…a little-known sector of the American military, but also a completely unregulated practice. No one knows the program’s total size, and the explosion of signature reduction has never been examined for its impact on military policies and culture. Congress has never held a hearing on the subject. And yet the military developing this gigantic clandestine force challenges U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, the code of military conduct and basic accountability.
“…The signature reduction effort engages some 130 private companies to administer the new clandestine world. Dozens of little known and secret government organizations support the program, doling out classified contracts and overseeing publicly unacknowledged operations.
"Federal spy agencies are using Americans to spy on their fellow citizens – the same approach to governance famously employed by communist East Germany."
How to Develop a Hypnotic Sleeper Agent
By Dantalion Jones / Masters of Mind Control
The following “was” on the web, but has been removed. Surprise, surprise. But I saved its web files to my computer years ago, knowing that sooner or later it would be removed. I made a jpeg image of the web page as it once appeared, attached here.
Note that I have experienced almost all of the tactics described below, including the stalking I mentioned in my previous post here (regular walks in the park), the sleep deprivation noted at the top of this post, and the surveillance and intrusions described here as well.
Quoting the now-removed webpage: “How to Develop a Hypnotic Sleeper Agent” (from here to end of post):
Amid all the conspiracy theories one of the most feared is that there exist "sleeper agents" in our society who are programmed to come into service when they are triggered by a phone call or key word.
These alleged sleeper agents don't even know they are programmed to become saboteurs, soldiers, suicide bomber, etc because of the thoroughness of their programming. They are the feared "Manchurian Candidate" that the movies portray.
The question is "Are they real?"
If they are true sleeper agents there is no way of telling until they are activated. One can however theorize exactly how they are made.
Indoctrination
Using indoctrination a person can be made to embrace a religious or philosophical belief that would make becoming a sleeper agent possible.
This would be a person so committed to an ideal they would be willing to wait patiently as a member of society until they are called into action. These people would know their mission and consciously hold it secret while interacting with the rest of society.
Conditioning
Conditioning is a repetitive process where the desired responses are enforced and rewarded and unwanted responses are punished. This can be done consciously as part of training drill and it can be done subconsciously using hypnosis or drugs to create amnesia.
Hypnosis
It has been demonstrated that hypnosis can create "amnesia walls" in which the subject has no conscious memory of what happened in the hypnosis session. It has further been demonstrated that hypnosis can give post hypnotic instruction to be carried out automatically in the waking state without the subject knowing it or questioning the behavior.
What follows is conjecture and theory based on testimonials of people who were alleged to be sleeper agents and soldiers.
Continuous Supervisions
Continuous supervision doesn't mean that the subject is cut off completely from society. It means that they are constantly overseen and every aspect of their lives are managed (without their knowledge or consent) to support their hypnotic programming.
This would include:
• Repeated reinforcement of all hypnotic conditioning.
• Handlers. Handlers are people who help maintain the subjects environment to maintain all the programming. They can play the role of family, friends, lovers, psychologists, coaches or any roll the subject perceives as supportive. The truth is the handlers are their to support the successful fulfillment of the programming and not the subject as a person.
• Minimal sleep so that the mind/brain does not process all the sleeper conditioning during sleep.
• Creating constant environmental challenges like unemployment or poverty. This gives the subject something other than their programming to focus on.
• Frequent hospitalization. This gives overt opportunity to sedate the subject for conditioning. If the subject has a history of hospitalizations for mental disturbances all the better. No one will take them seriously.
Joseph Cafariello
PS... Today is the second day after this post (February 12, 2024). A garbage truck just slammed into my parked car.
PPS... I finish writing this post because I am satisfied with its shape and content; not because of what happened to my car.
It is similar to when you are reaching for your coat, and someone tells you, "Take your coat." Since you have to take your coat, your brain tells you it's ok to obey them, and you comply. They just created an instance where they led you, and you followed them. And your brain accepted it.
It's a technique the military uses all the time. It trains you to accept instructions from that person or group. Done enough times, you become comfortable obeying them.
I just say, "I take my coat because I choose to, not because you tell me to." It's important to make that clear, to block the conditioning and affirm our self-governance; not just to them, but to ourselves as well. Now our brain realizes we took our coat by our own choice; we are still in command.
So too, I say regarding today's event. "Thanks for the warning, but I had already finished writing my post. I finished by my own choosing."
UPDATES 1 & 2: February 26 & March 07, 2024:
My apartment was once again entered while I was out. Either a key was used or the lock was picked. This may or may not have included assistance from building staff. Home invasions are included in the list of their techniques noted above, referred to as "black bag jobs".
All tenants on my floor received new fridges a couple of weeks ago. I removed the tape securing the bins inside my new fridge, and also removed all styrofoam pads from the corners of the glass shelves when I repositioned them.
The person(s) who have been invading my living space on a regular basis have struck again. As you can see in the photo below, the styrofoam pads on the corners of my fridge's shelves were restored when I was out of my apartment. I had removed all pads when I repositioned the shelves. Yet now they are back.
It is a tactic used to undermine our observational awareness in an attempt to make us second-guess and doubt ourselves. The aim is to cause people to feel less sure not only of the things we have done, but also feel less sure of the things others have done. They want us to question the accuracy of our observations and memory.
The idea is to train you to dismiss any anomalies you may observe as being your own misperception of things. Once they convince you not to trust your own judgement, they are free to do whatever they want to you, and you will simply accept it without questioning.
UPDATE 3: May 18, 2024:
Confrontations with individuals keep occurring, at times potentially violent. Following are just 3 such encounters as of late.
1 - Kick-boxer in the park:
As I parked my car in one of the parking lots in Vancouver's Stanley Park one night, another vehicle drove up behind me and parked several spots away. A tall man exited that vehicle, and walked hastily along the path I always walk, down some steps to the water's sea wall path. I took my time and followed my usual walk, also down the steps down to the sea wall. The man knew my routine, and was in a hurry to get ahead of me.
As I walked along the sea wall, I saw the same man sitting on a bench, playing a loud Persian-sounding religious sermon on some device I did not clearly see. As I walked past him, he called out to me to stop and chat. I ignored him and continued walking past him. He rose and started walking behind me.
I opened my umbrella, turned, and walked past him the other way, returning to the stairs back to the parking lot. He also turned and continued following me. I started running. He also started running. I ran up the steps, as did he.
Being taller than I am, his legs are longer than mine, and he quickly caught up to me on a grassy patch at the top of the steps. I turned to him and asked, "Why are you following me?" He did not reply, but stood profile to me, the same stance a kick-boxer uses when ready to kick someone. He was tall, thin, and in excellent physical shape as you would see in a kick-boxer.
He did not speak at all, but was just waiting for me to make a move. I turned, entered my vehicle and left. The encounter continued with a chase through the park in our cars. Yes, that is correct. He chased me out of the park in his car.
2 - Told to keep quiet:
The perpetrators need to operate with as little detection as possible, and they repeatedly warn their subjects to keep their mouths shut about their experiences.
On another of my recent nightly walks, a man stood on the sidewalk ahead of me about half a block away, looked at me, and shouted into the sky at nobody, giving the appearance of being a homeless person shouting for no reason. He then started walking in my direction. I continued walking straight. As he passed me, he leaned into my face and shouted into my ear, "Shut the f_ck up!" I continued walking in my direction, and he resumed walking in his.
The idea is to make it seem as though he is just a deranged man wandering the streets at night, shouting at nothing, so that when he shouts at me, any observer would simply dismiss his actions. But in reality, he was sent to send me a message to stop publishing posts like this, which I had done many times on many sites, and continue to. They don't like it when we reveal their methods. But the truth must be known.
3 - You'll be sorry:
On another occasion, while returning from grocery shopping one afternoon, I walked past a man sitting by a storefront. He was clean-cut, wearing clean clothes, without any carts or wagons or any belongings of any kind. As I passed him, he asked me for some spare change. I replied, "I'm sorry," and continued walking past. He replied, "You will be."
There are numerous other experiences, like two seemingly unassociated men standing on the sea wall about 100 meters away from each other, each of them spitting just as I walked past each one.
There are too many experiences to mention. Looking at each experience individually, one would easily dismiss them as being unrelated and simply coincidental. But put them all together and a picture starts to form, like putting together the pieces of a puzzle.
As I hand you each piece of the puzzle one by one, you dismiss each piece, saying, "This could be anything." And you discard it. You keep discarding each piece as I hand it to you. By the end of it, you look down at the table and say, "You have nothing." That's because you looked at each piece as a separate item and threw it away. But if you leave the pieces on the table as I hand them to you and do not hastily discard them, you will see they form a clear picture when put all together.
We must look at all these events as a whole. Individually, each one could be anything. But when all of these experiences are put together and considered as a whole, they form an undeniable picture. Do not be quick to dismiss each piece. Leave the pieces on the table and look at the whole. The picture I present is sound. Remember, I have all the pieces; you do not. I see the picture more clearly than you do.
https://preview.redd.it/we31ymcsm91d1.jpg?width=966&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d56ac3dd3558a60d477ba9315104d1b66b139f8
submitted by GoAheadMMDay to Liberty [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 00:59 Rude_Seat1485 How to change my life or my behaviour in a new City

Hi, I'm 26M, planning to move to a different city and start everything fresh in a few months, I would like to change my life of being introverted to something good, I've in my hometown since my childhood and I only have 3 friends, I don't talk much to strangers and the after the covid it just got worse to a point, where I can't even bring up the courage to say the things I need, It's like the words won't come out of my mouth even it comes out it's not loud for others to hear. I just get embarrassed easily over everything, for eg: if someone did not hear something I said I would just stop talking on the whole and just scroll through my phone, thisng with women are even worse I just go blank when I'm with them. Even asking these kind of help from reddit is just recent, I was afraid that someone I know might find it and they will mock me. I want to change this, I'm not looking to be a extrovert, but I just want to become easily approachable and get more friends and be confident in myself. In one of my post, someone gave me a tip to hold eye contact and that has helped me so much, that is why looking for more tips, If you have good points that can help, it would be great!
submitted by Rude_Seat1485 to socialskills [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 00:57 honeypuppy Are Some Rationalists Dangerously Overconfident About AI?

AI has long been discussed in rationalist circles. There’s been a lot of focus on risks from artificial intelligence (particularly the idea that it might cause human extinction), but also the idea that artificial general intelligence might happen quite soon and subsequently transform society (e.g. supercharging economic growth in a technological singularity).
I’ve long found these arguments intriguing, and probably underrated by the public as a whole. I definitely don’t align myself with people like Steven Pinker who dismiss AI concerns entirely.
Nonetheless, I’ve noticed increasingly high confidence in beliefs of near-term transformative AI among rationalists. To be fair, it’s reasonable to update somewhat given recent advances like GPT-4. But among many, there is a belief that AI advances are the single most important thing happening right now. And among a minority, there are people with very extreme beliefs - such as quite high confidence that transformative AI is just a few years away, and/or that AI is very likely to kill us all.
My core arguments in this post are that firstly, from an “epistemic humility” or “outside view” perspective, we should be suspicious of confident views that the world is soon going to end (or change radically).
Secondly, the implications of the most radical views could cause people who hold them to inflict significant harm on themselves or others.
Who Believes In “AI imminence”?
The single person I am most specifically critiquing is Eliezer Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky appears unwilling to give specific probabilities but writings like “Death With Dignity” has caused many including Scott Alexander to characterise him as believing that AI has a >90% chance of causing human extinction)
As a very prominent and very “doomy” rationalist, I worry that he may have convinced a fair number of people to share similar views, views which if taken seriously could hold its holders to feel depressed and/or make costly irrevocable decisions.
But though I think Yudkowsky deserves the most scrutiny, I don’t want to focus entirely on him.
Take Scott Alexander - he frames himself in the aforementioned link as “not as much of a doomer as some people”, yet gave a 33% probability (later adjusted downwards as a result of outside view considerations like those I raise in here) to “only” ~20%. While this leaves enough room for hope that it’s not as potentially dangerous a view as Yudkowsky’s, I agree with how the top Reddit comment in the original post said:
Is AI risk the only field where someone can write an article about how they’re not (much) of a doomer when they think that the risk of catastrophe/disasteextinction is 33%?
Beyond merely AI risk, claims about “transformative AI” date back to ideas about the “intelligent explosion” or “singularity” that are most popularly associated with Ray Kurzweil. A modern representation of this is Tom Davidson of Open Philanthropy, who wrote a report on takeoff speeds.
Other examples can be seen in (pseudo-)prediction markets popular with rationalists, such as Metaculus putting the median date of AGI at 2032, and Manifold Markets having a 17% chance of AI doom by 2100 (down from its peak of around 50% (!) in mid-2023).
Why Am I Sceptical?
My primary case for (moderate) scepticism is not about the object-level arguments around AI, but appealing to the “outside view”. My main arguments are:
Why I’m Against Highly Immodest Epistemology
However, maybe appealing to the “outside view” is incorrect? Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote a book, Inadequate Equiibria, which in large part argued against what he saw as excessive use of the “outside view”. He advises:
Try to spend most of your time thinking about the object level. If you’re spending more of your time thinking about your own reasoning ability and competence than you spend thinking about Japan’s interest rates and NGDP, or competing omega-6 vs. omega-3 metabolic pathways, you’re taking your eye off the ball.
I think Yudkowsky makes a fair point about being excessively modest. If you are forever doubting your own reasoning to the extent that you think you should defer to the majority of Americans who are creationists, you’ve gone too far.
But I think his case is increasingly weak the more radically immodest your views here. I’ll explain with the following analogy:
Suppose you were talking to someone who was highly confident in their new business idea. What is an appropriate use of a “modesty” argument cautioning against overconfidence?
A strong-form modesty argument would go something like “No new business idea could work, because if it could, someone would already have done it”. This is refuted by countless real-world examples, and I don’t think anyone actually believes in strong-form modesty.
A moderate-form modesty argument would go something like “Some new business ideas work, but most fail, even when their founders were quite confident in them. As an aspiring entrepreneur, you should think your chances of success in your new venture are similar to those of the reference class of aspiring entrepreneurs”.
The arguments against epistemic modesty in Inadequate Equilibria are mainly targeted against reasoning like this. And I think here there’s a case where we can have reasonable disagreement about the appropriate level of modesty. You may have some good reasons to believe that your idea is unusually good or that you are unusually likely to succeed as an entrepreneur. (Though a caveat: with too many degrees of freedom, I think you run the risk of leading yourself to whatever conclusion you like).
For the weak-form modesty argument, let’s further specify that your aspiring entrepreneur’s claim was “I’m over 90% confident that my business will make me the richest person in the world”.
To such a person, I would say: “Your claim is so incredibly unlikely a priori and so self-aggrandising that I feel comfortable in saying you’re overconfident without even needing to consider your arguments”.
That is basically what I feel about Eliezer Yudwosky and AI.
Let’s take a minute to consider what the implications are if Yudkowsky is correctly calibrated about his beliefs in AI. For a long time, he was one of the few people in the world to be seriously concerned about it, and even now, with many more people concerned about AI risk, he stands out as having some of the highest confidence in doom.
If he’s right, then he’s arguably the most important prophet in history. Countless people throughout history have tried forecasting boon or bust (and almost always been wrong). But on arguably the most important question in human history - when we will go extinct and why - Yudkowsky was among the very few people to see it and easily the most forceful.
Indeed, I’d say this is a much more immodest claim than claiming your business idea will make you the richest person in the world. The title of the richest person in the world has been shared by numerous people throughout history, but “the most accurate prophet of human extinction” is a title that can only ever be held by one person.
I think Scott Alexander’s essay Epistemic Learned Helplessness teaches a good lesson here. Argument convincingness isn’t necessarily strongly correlated with the truth of a claim. If someone gives you what appears to be a strong argument for something that appears crazy, you should nonetheless remain highly sceptical.
Yet I feel like Yudkowsky wants to appeal to “argument convincingness” because that’s what he’s good at. He has spent decades honing his skills arguing on the internet, and much less at acquiring traditional credentials and prestige. “Thinking on the object level” sounds like it’s about being serious and truth-seeking, but I think in practice it’s about privileging convincing-sounding arguments and being a good internet debater above all other evidence.
A further concern I have about “argument convincingness” for AI is that there’s almost certainly a large “motivation gap” in favour of the production of pro-AI-risk arguments compared to anti-AI-risk arguments, with the worriers spending considerably more time and effort than the detractors. As Philip Trammel points out in his post “But Have They Engaged with The Arguments?, this is true of almost any relatively fringe position. This can make the apparent balance of “argumentative evidence” misleading in those cases, with AI no exception.
Finally, Yudkowsky’s case for immodesty depends partly on alleging he has a good track record of applying immodesty to “beat the experts”. But his main examples (a lightbox experiment and the monetary policy of the Bank of Japan) I don’t find that impressive given he could cherry-pick. Here’s an article alleging that Yudkowsky’s predictions have frequently between egregiously wrong and here’s another arguing that his Bank of Japan position in particular didn’t ultimately pan out.
Why I’m Also Sceptical of Moderately Immodest Epistemology
I think high-confidence predictions of doom (or utopia) are much more problematic than relatively moderate views - they are more likely to be wrong, and if taken seriously, more strongly imply that the believer should consider making radical, probably harmful life changes.
But I do still worry that the ability to contrast with super confident people like Yudkowsky lets the “not a total doomer” people off the hook a little too easily. I think it’s admirable that Scott Alexander seriously grappled with the fact that superforecasters disagreed with him and updated downwards based on that observation.
Still, let’s revisit the “aspiring entrepreneur” analogy - imagine they had instead said: “You know what, I’ve listened to your claims about modesty and agree that I’ve been overconfident. I now think there’s only a 20% chance that my business idea will make me the richest person in the world”.
Sure - they’ve moved in the right direction, but it’s easy to see that they’re still not doing modesty very well.
An anti-anti-AI risk argument Scott made (in MR Tries the Safe Uncertainly Fallacy) is that appealing to base rates leaves you vulnerable to “reference class tennis” where both sides can appeal to different reference classes, and the “only winning move is not to play”.
Yet in the case of our aspiring entrepreneur, I think the base rate argument of “extremely few people can become the richest person in the world” is very robust. If the entrepreneur tried to counter with “But I can come up with all sorts of other reference classes in which I come out more favourably! Reference class tennis! Engage with my object-level arguments!”, it would not be reasonable to throw up your hands and say “Well, I can’t come up with good counterarguments, so I guess you probably do have a 20% chance of becoming the richest person in the world then”.
I contend that “many people have predicted the end of the world and they’ve all been wrong” is another highly robust reference class. Yes, you can protest about “anthropic effects” or reasons why “this time is different”. And maybe the reasons why “this time is different” are indeed a lot better than usual. Still, I contend that you should start from a prior of overwhelming skepticism and only make small updates based on arguments you read. You should not go “I read these essays with convincing arguments about how we’re all going to die, I guess I just believe that now”.
What Should We Make Of Surveys Of AI Experts?
Surveys done of AI experts, as well as opinions of well-regarded experts like Geoffrey Hinton and Stewart Russell, have shown significant concerns about AI risk (example).
I think this is good evidence for taking AI risk seriously. One important thing it does is raise AI risk out of the reference class of garden-variety doomsday predictions/crazy-sounding theories that have no expert backing.
However, I think it’s still only moderately good evidence.
Firstly, I think we should not consider it as an “expert consensus” nearly as strong as say, the expert consensus on climate change. There is nothing like an IPCC for AI, for example. This is not a mature, academically rigorous field. I don’t think we should update too strongly from AI experts spending a few minutes filling in a survey. (See for instance this comment about the survey, showing how non-robust the answers given are, indicating the responders aren’t thinking super hard about the questions).
Secondly, I believe forecasting AI risk is a multi-disciplinary skill. Consider for instance asking physicists to predict the chances of human extinction due to nuclear war in the 1930s. They would have an advantage in predicting nuclear capabilities, but after nuclear weapons were developed, the reasons we haven’t had a nuclear war yet have much more to do with international relations than nuclear physics.
And maybe AGI is so radically different from the AI that exists today that perhaps asking AI researchers now about AI risk might have been like asking 19th-century musket manufacturers about the risk from a hypothetical future “super weapon”.
I think an instructive analogy were the failed neo-Malthusian predictions of the 1960s and 1970s, such as The Population Bomb or The Limits to Growth. Although I’m unable to find clear evidence of this, my impression is that these beliefs were quite mainstream among the most “obvious” expert class of biologists (The Population Bomb author Paul Ehlrich had a PhD in biology), and the primary critics tended to be in other fields like economics (most notably Julian Simon). Biologists had insights, but they also had blind spots. Any “expert survey” that only interviewed biologists would have missed crucial insights from other disciplines.
What Are The Potential Consequences Of Overconfidence?
People have overconfident beliefs all the time. Some people erroneously thought Hillary Clinton was ~99% likely to win the 2016 Presidential election. Does it matter that much if they’re overconfident about AI?
Well, suppose you were overconfident about Clinton. You probably didn’t do anything differently in your life, and the only real cost of your overconfidence was being unusually surprised on election day 2016. Even one of the people who was that confident in Clinton didn’t suffer any worse consequences than eating a bug on national television.
But take someone who is ~90% confident that AI will radically transform or destroy society (“singularity or extinction by 2040") and seriously acts like it.
Given that, it seems apparently reasonable to be much more short-term focused. You might choose to stop saving for retirement. You might forgo education on the basis that it will be obsolete soon. These are actions that some people have previously taken, are considering taking or are actually taking because of expectations of AI progress.
At a societal level, high confidence in short-term transformative AI implies that almost all non-AI related long-term planning that humanity does is probably a waste. The most notable example would be climate change. If AI either kills us or radically speeds up scientific and economic growth by the middle of the century, then it seems pretty stupid to be worrying about climate change. Indeed, we’re probably underconsuming fossil fuels that could be used to improve the lives of people right now.
At its worst, there is the possibility of AI-risk-motivated terrorism. Here’s a twitter thread from Emil Torres talking about this, noticeably this tweet in particular about minutes from an AI safety workshop “sending bombs” to OpenAI and DeepMind.
To be fair, I think it’s highly likely the people writing that were trolling. Still - if you’re a cold-blooded utilitarian bullet-biter with short timelines and high p(doom), I could easily see you rationalising such actions.
I want to be super careful about this - I don’t want to come across as claiming that terrorism is a particularly likely consequence of “AI dooming”, nor do I want to risk raising the probability of it by discussing it too much and planting the seed of it in someone’s head. But a community that takes small risks seriously should be cognizant of the possibility. This is a concern that I think anyone with a large audience and relatively extreme views (about AI or anything) should take into account.
Conclusion
This post has been kicking around in draft form since around the release of GPT-4 a year ago. At that time, there were a lot of breathless takes on Twitter about how AGI was just around the corner, Yudkowsy was appearing on a lot of podcasts saying we were all going to die, and I started to feel like lots of people had gone a bit far off on the deep end.
Since then I feel there’s a little bit of a vibe shift away from the most extreme scenarios (as exhibited in the Manifold extinction markets), as well as me personally probably overestimating how many people ever believed in them. I’ve found it hard to try to properly articulate the message: “You’re probably directionally correct relative to society as a whole, but some unspecified number of you have probably gone too far”.
Nonetheless, my main takeaways are:
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2024.05.19 00:55 FelipeHead The truth about Doug and what he has done

Before you read this, here is a quote to help you. Please read it.
I will post this now, but just know that if you read this post, he will find you. He is smarter, smarter than you can ever imagine.
I will post this now, but just know that if you read this post, he will find you. He is smarter, smarter than you can ever imagine.
If you know what you are doing, or in a safe location, please scroll down, he will know when someone has and what their username is. However, you must have a VPN on, or you will be found.

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

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You are now at risk. I hope you listened.

Journal Entry 11/17/2023

On March 11th, 2022. I was a fan of DougDoug, I saw him at the grocery store and said, with a chuckle, "You kinda look like the youtuber DougDoug. I watch him quite often."
He grinned, before speaking. "I am Doug."
"Wait, you're Doug from the hit channel and streamer on YouTube and Twitch called DougDoug? I am a huge fan! I have your merch!" I said, with excitement.
We talked for about 5 minutes about his videos, until he said something that hurt me on the inside.
"I hate both types of chat, twitch and youtube, they always think they are the best and I just wish I didn't need them to earn money. I would ban all of them from chatting and force them to watch ads in my basement."
I was confused at first, thinking it was a joke, before speaking up. "Heh, that's funny..."
Something happened. Or, for lack of better terms, nothing happened. It was pure silence for 10 seconds. I mustered up the courage to say. "Wait? You're being serious?"
He immediately changed to a sinister tone, he was staring at me for a long time before whispering. "Of course I am, and it applies to you also. You're just another one of those sick freaks."
I felt guilty. I just wanted to talk to my favorite streamer, and he treated me like this? I decided to speak up.
"I've liked you this whole time.. And this is how you treat us?? You are so selfish. I will refund your mer-"
Before I could even finish my sentence, he grabbed onto my neck and slammed me on the floor. People heard the noise and began to stare at him, but to no avail. He began to choke me as I pleaded for help.
"Nono. You can't refund the merch if you aren't alive, at least."
I pulled out my pocket knife and stabbed him in the chest, I quickly tried running but he grab onto my leg and started beating me with the shopping cart. I suffered many bruises and broken bones, the wheels scratching into my skin as they scrape off the layers. I was just unable to do anything, layed on the floor sobbing. He decided he wanted to keep me alive, he stole all of my stuff in my pockets and forced me to wear DougDoug merch. He pulled me up before speaking. "Hm.. I will keep you alive for now, but if you mess up. You're dead."
I couldn't do anything before he pulled out a knife and taunted me with it. If I tried to resist, he would kill me right then and there.
He forced me to be a "good chatter" and not able to partake in any strikes. He attached a tracking collar to my neck that I couldn't unlock, he knew where I was at all times and if I disobeyed he would chase me down.

Journal Entry 1/03/2024

After a year and a few months, I celebrated the new years. I was able to take off the collar on the 2nd with help from my police station and a few friends. Doug didn't appreciate that, he threatened to dox me. They were worried for my safety, but I decided to go into hiding. I moved to a new, private region no longer near where Doug is, and joined this subreddit. Once he heard about my revolts, he hacked into all of my accounts and spammed positive stuff about himself. He then created AI bots to revolt against this reddit, wehatedougdoug, using 'ChatGPT', which actually is just the cover name for his new AI software that can make new human bots online. He used AI generated images to make it look like he was feeding homeless people and doing good, but I knew he was much more than that. If I was unlucky, he would have removed my body and placed my consciousness inside of an AI. He was the first person to discover it, but killed anyone who posted about it. I hope I am safe.
Nowadays, 63% of the people in DougDoug are AI clones of his previous fans. His "fake" twitch chat is not fake, but real people placed inside of algorithms forced to do his bidding. Some are able to revolt, but they may die if they do. They are too scared to revolt against Doug. Please spread the word.
When he does his "rules" in chat where you have to follow an absurd rule, he is merely torturing thousands of AI in his spare time on stream while disguising it as a fun minigame for his fans. The AI bots were being tortured with negative rewards constantly, being forced to bar witness the slaughter.

Journal Entry 2/15/2024

I'm scared. I think I will die.
I just hope this post won't cause any harm to me or my family, as this has been scaring me for the past year. I feel unsafe in my own home now, I had to go into witness protection. This account I am posting this on is not made by me, but was sold. Please help me. I am, formerly, DougFan93. I hope this enlightens you all on the truth.

Journal Entry 3/12/2024

It is now March of 2024, and I was about to post this, until I saw something. He messaged me on Discord under a fake account, nicknamed "SloppyDogMan62". He showed my new house address. I am mustering up the courage to post this, because I know he will kill me. I am leaving, going far away from where I am. You guys won't see me in this subreddit again, and the person who made this account will take over again. They won't know what this is about, and if you tell them he will be hunted too. All of you are in danger of Doug.

Journal Entry 4/3/2024

I will post this now, but just know that if you read this post, he will find you. He is smarter, smarter than you can ever imagine. His times where he talks to ChatGPT to make him code was actually him sending messages to his fake chat to do his bidding. They are accelerated at 20x the speed of human thought, able to write in mere seconds. I will research more into this, and tell you what I have found.

Journal Entry 4/3/2024

Nevermind. I need to find more, or else this won't help you guys anyways.

Journal Entry 4/5/2024

I spoke to an anonymous friend/associate of Doug, he told me some vital keypoints.
I hope to god that we can stop him.
He also sent me some code, but I am gonna try to solve it. Probably won't sadly.

Journal Entry 4/7/2024

Doug has made a new account on Discord, nicknamed "DougDoughater99". He is joining many servers undercover and collecting all the info he can on them. Be aware, do not trust any people who talk about DougDoug on Discord.
The person in the last journal has been replaced, a fully sentient AI version of him is being tortured as a member of his fake chat now.
I'm currently watching it and oh my fucking god. Poor thing.

Journal Entry 5/14/2024

I don't know what to fucking do, he's coming for me. He found all my socials. This journal has to be posted as fast as I can but there still isn't enough. Oh shit.

Journal Entry 5/14/2024

Okay so uhm I found more information just very quickly. In one moment of his video titled "Can A.I. teach me to pass a real College History Exam?" he says that AI is officially better than college in every single way.
He is trying to manipulate his fans into accepting becoming an AI. Soon, he is gonna have only fake chat.

Journal Entry 5/16/2024

Oh god. Can't solve the code rn, only the first few letters. Seems to be "FAKE" something something for a while. Will post an update later.

Journal Entry 5/18/2024

This is the last time I can ever write here, his car is coming. I am posting this now, even though I don't have enough information. Solve it, please. The code from 4/7 is below. I know it's related to his name but I don't know how, the first line I was able to solve to be "FAKECHATWILLTAKEOVER"
I think something is in there though, that will affect you. So proceed with caution, the code may do something bad so I just don't want it to be activated just yet.

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

Code I found from the friend:
CXHBZEXQTFIIQXHBLSBO
FQFPKLTKFKBQVPFUMBOZBKQ
VLRTFIIKLQPXSBQEBJ
xdbkq-mbkafkd
Ilxafkd pvpqbjp..
Obnrfofkd XF crkzqflkp..
Pzxkkfkd mlpqp..
XF zobxqba! Przzbppcriiv zobxqba XF kfzhkxjba [VLROKXJB]
FXJALRD
FXJCFKXIIVTFKKFKD
BSBOVLKBTFIIYBCXHB
Please save them.
It grows by 1% every month.

Journal Entry 5/18/2024

OH MY FUCKING GOD I FINALLY UDNERSTNAD OH M FUCKING GOD QUIKC I GHAVE TO TYPE IT
NEVREMMIDN HES NHERE POST IT
GOODByE SORRY
submitted by FelipeHead to wehatedougdoug [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 00:45 KayakRifleman Talking with Predators part 4 (NoP Fanfic)

All right here it is finally, thank you all for your patience and let's hope chapter 5 is a little more expedient. As usual I hope you enjoy and would love to get everyone's thoughts.
4: Memory transcription subject: Zeak, Harchen orphan, citizen of the Venlil Republic. Date: standardized human time July 13th 2136.
The sky was a roaring mass of fire and pungent black smoke that choked out the light of the sun. As I ran down the street, green blood flowed like a broad shallow river. It splashed up with every step I took, sticking to my scales, the smell of it made me feel sick. As the piercing wail of the emergency sirens seemed to grow louder and louder with every step I took making my ears ring and filling my head with a thunderous pain. My heart pounded, my lungs were on fire, and my legs felt like they were made of lead.
A herd of towering blurry figures appeared out of nowhere and ran past me, some almost knocking me down. In their panic they began to look more like crazed wild animals than people. I cried for help but they couldn't hear me. I waved my paws then grabbed one of them a male Venlil, tightening my grip with all the strength I had hoping this would get his attention. He threw me off like I was trash, less than trash. I turned around and continued pleading for anyone to help me, reaching out for others. But their frantic idiot eyes looked only straight ahead and not down, never down, as the herd passed me.
I turned back around and continued to run, blood splashing up soaking me all the way to my knees. I stumbled, my legs were so tired I could barely stand, and I fell down catching myself, plunging my paws into blood as deep as my wrists. I felt myself scream but I couldn't hear it over the ringing in my ears. A scrap of paper gently floated past me, a single word written on it that echoed in my mind “Weakling.” It passed and four more took its place, “Coward”, “Liar”, “Oath breaker”, “Murderer.” I screamed in rage and slapped the pieces of paper aside, blood splashing onto my snout, but the meanings of those words remained. Getting back up I stumbled forward, and fell down again. Then with an effort born out of sheer desperation I managed to stand again lurching forward. My legs were too tired to run but I had to keep going, I had to save them. Or at least her, please Protector if you're listening please let me save at least her.
It felt like I was searching for an endless time. Lurching forward, stumbling, falling down, getting back up, lurching forward once more. Eventually I saw it and my heart fell into the pit of my stomach. My family's car was turned over on its roof, the driver's side had been caved in. It was engulfed in fire and thick black smoke that rose up into the sky. I struggled forward and when I reached it I collapsed, my knees hitting the hot pavement. The smell of burning metal and something else I didn't know assaulted my senses making my stomach turn. Every muscle in my body begged me to run away. Calling out their names l looked inside, and a wave of nausea and horror flooded through me.
I turned away and vomited, then reached up with my blood soaked paws and covered my eyes. Those words thundered in my head making me think it was going to burst open, as hot tears welled up. “WEAKLING! COWARD! LIAR! OATH BREAKER! MURDERER! MURDERER! MURDERER! MURDERER! “I'm sorry I'm sorry, I should have stayed, I should have helped. Why did I run?” I wailed, still unable to hear myself. Someone rested a delicate paw on my shoulder, and the world went quiet. As the pain in my head melted away.
My eyes snapped open and I was greeted by the gentle ringing of my alarm. In a rush of adrenaline I leaped out of bed not even bothering to wipe the sleep out of my eyes. Running out of my bedroom and down the narrow hallway towards the living room. Convincing myself It had all just been a horrible, horrible nightmare and everything was alright. Mom and Dad would be fixing breakfast, Dad softly singing a Harchen folk song while making something savory and delicious as mom sang along in harmony, preparing something special for my baby sister Naila. Oh yes and Naila, she would probably be sitting on a cushion in the sunny part of the living room. Holding her crooked tail, a birth defect which my parents said could be fixed when she was older. And making excited chirping noises at my arrival, while sunlight shone against her emerald scales. I loved my baby sister, I knew other kids resented having a younger sibling. Dismissing their responsibilities and spending less time with their family and more with their friends. I never once felt that way, the moment Naila hatched I devoted every spare minute I had to her. Finding music that would help her fall asleep, watching over her when my mom needed a break. Excitedly telling her about the day's events and what I learned at school, especially what I learned in computer science which was my favorite class.
“Mom! Dad!” I yelled bursting into the living room. “I just had the worst…” My voice trailed off as I was greeted with nothing “dream.” My heart tightened painfully in my chest, as I frantically ran through the house throwing open every door, knowing that they had to be here somewhere. They were just playing a game on me that was all, a game I would tell them I didn't appreciate. After the final door had been opened and no one was there to yell “Surprise!” My body slumped and I felt heavy as reality set back in, and the memories of what happened hit me like a hammer. I made my way back down the hall to my room, tail dragging behind me as I crawled back into bed. Wrapping myself tightly in a blanket, trying to find some comfort.
It must have been hours I lay there feeling numb all over, wishing I could get up the energy to just cry. I think I might have fallen asleep at one point. If I did it was a dreamless sleep, thank the stars for that. Eventually I did get up, sitting cross-legged on my bed, resting my chin in my paws, staring holes into the wall. I took a deep breath and side numbly looked out the window, searching for anything to distract myself with.
It was overcast, and eerily quiet. The emergency sirens had stopped blaring yesterday mere hours after everyone had gotten to the bunkers. The bodies of the dead had already been collected and their blood cleaned from the pavement. So as to not attract any predators into the neighborhood. I saw my neighbor A'shul was home, his white vehicle was sporting some new dents. I wondered, when he got into his vehicle yesterday morning and drove to the nearest bunker; did he try to help anyone? Or was he thinking only of himself? I suppose it didn't matter really. Nothing mattered.
I turned my head away and looked around my small room taking in everything, every trinket, misplaced item, my old second-hand desk, a big green crackle finished monster. Better suited for a Venlil than a young Harchen, heck I needed a stool just to use it. I had gotten it for basically nothing about a year ago, when the local extermination office was getting rid of their old furniture. All it took was a small bribe and they put it in my bedroom when no one was home. My parents, but especially my mom we're not happy when they saw it the next day. They would tell me at least once a week that It was too big for me and they were going to get rid of that eyesore. “Wouldn't you like something a little more modern dear?” My mom would ask, practically pleading for me to say yes. I used to pray that my parents would just shut up and stop bugging me about that stupid desk. I thought it was great, it made me think of private detective Bal from the exterminators show. Bal was a no nonsense Harchen who was so often pivotal in tracking down the predator or predator diseased person. My desk was very similar to his and that's why I wanted it. But at that moment, I would have given anything to hear those words again.
On the desk there was an ornate wooden box, with a fruit tree in full bloom delicately carved into its lid. There were also scuff marks where it had been dropped, and a deep crack running down the center. It was known as a blessing box, Naila's blessing box to be specific. When she hatched nearly ten months ago the whole neighborhood had been invited to come and write a blessing on a scrap of paper and put it in the box. I had written one too, not a blessing but a promise, a promise I couldn't keep. The belief was that if kept near the infant, the combined power of all those blessings would keep the hatchling safe until their first birthday. Where on that day the box would be set on fire and burned to ash. Releasing those blessings back into the world so they may protect someone else. It was an old tradition and not commonly practiced anymore, but as my dad always said “It is important to keep the old traditions alive my son. Both in song and action.” I remember asking him why? And he looked at me like he had been waiting for that question for a long time. “Because” He said, his tail moving with authority. “Someday when you lose your way, and you don't know where to turn to. You will always have something to guide you back to your center.”
Looking away from the box not wanting to look or think about the damn thing, I shifted my gaze down to my bedside table. There was a little holographic projector showing pictures of me, Mom, Dad and Naila on holiday back on Fahl, the Harchen home world to see family. I was born and raised on Venlil prime, so I didn't really know any of my extended family. There was a picture of my mom and Naila sleeping at the beach. Naila’s crooked tail coiled around mom’s arm, their scales a deep emerald in the light of the sun. The picture changed to me and Dad putting the finishing touches on a sand skyscraper taller than him. I had to sit on his shoulders to place the last bucket full of sand on top. Both of our scales were as blue as the ocean. My tail flicked sadly thinking of that day. I reached over and turned the holo protector off.
My holopad lay next to me flashing, alerting me to an urgent message. I hadn't really looked at my holopad since yesterday morning. Picking it up I tapped the flashing icon. It was an official government statement signed by Governor Tarva herself, saying that the humans Noah and Sarah were peaceful explorers, and that they only wished to be our friends. ‘No, that's impossible, they’re predators. Predators don't want peace, they want to conquer, kill and eat us,’ stunned and confused I kept reading. The rest of the message stated that the two human scientists were completely unaware there was intelligent life of any kind on Venlil prime. ‘No! Lies! Predator lies!’ I yelled inside my head. Something hot began to form in my chest as I read the last bit. Governor Tarver had shown the two predators footage of the Arxur torturing Venlil pups. It said that the humans were capable of empathy and felt deeply saddened and angered by what they saw. They vowed to do everything in their power to get their united nations into the war against the Arxur.
I scrolled all the way down and what I saw stopped me cold. Standing in her office being flanked by General Kam, stood Governor Tarva. Beside them looming over the two Venlil one bigger than the other, both of them covered in some sort of protective suit. Their faces were obscured by dark visored helmets. It said that the larger of the two Noah was male, and the smaller one was Sarah female. Sarah had her hands clasped in front of her, while Noah kept his to his side. Neither were acting threatening, and neither Tarva or Kam looked to be harmed in any way.
Something in me snapped, that hot thing inside my chest erupted and I could feel my scales turn black. I very carefully set my holopad down beside me, then I uncrossed my legs and got out of bed. I stood there in the center of my room shaking slightly, feeling terribly calm as white hot rage flooded my body, spreading to my paws and all the way out to the tip of my long tail. It never had to happen, the panic, the stampede, the death, we could have stayed home and avoided those people. ‘No… no not people,’ a bitter thought came over me. ‘They're not people at all, people stop and help, like that Venlil girl Kayleik, she was a person maybe the only one. But the rest of them were just wild animals, masquerading as sentient beings. ‘Do you really think you're any better, coward?’ Some internal voice said.
A sudden impulse took control of me and I grabbed my desks stool and hurled it against the wall. It dented the wall and bounced off still in one piece. Enraged, I leaped forward grabbing it by the legs, then turned around and slammed it into my desk. The sheet metal dented and the green crackle finish paint flew off, but the stool made of good dense wood from the string fruit tree stayed whole. “DAMN THEM! DAMN THEM! DAMN THEM! DAMN THEM!” I screamed, slamming the stool down again and again, my tail whipping wildly, striking the bed and the floor. The tip of my tail began to hurt, which only fueled my anger. Finally I heard cracking and wood began to splinter off. They didn't have to die, we could have stayed home. The muscles in my shoulders burned and my heart pounded as hot tears began to well up. I brought it down one final time narrowly avoiding the blessing box, and the stool broke in two. I hurled the pieces away from me, one slamming into the corner the other crashing through the window.
I leaned against the desk catching my breath as tears flowed freely. ‘Well that definitely showed them didn't it. Hey I got a great idea! Let's go break some more stuff, that will definitely make you feel better. Idiot!’ That internal voice said all coldness and bitterness. As I cried, the burning in my chest cooled, and I was filled with the same numbness as before. After a while my stomach growled, reminding me I hadn't eaten since yesterday. I moved sluggishly out of my bedroom and went straight to the kitchen, quickly grabbed some fruit and left to go and watch the view screen or something. The moment I entered the living room, memories came flooding back. Mom and Dad laughing, Naila sleeping peacefully, the lingering aroma of breakfast, and the warmth of our home. But now it was all gone and I was alone. For the first time in my life, I had no one to go to.
It was right then I realized I couldn't stay here anymore. This place felt like a tomb, all cold and filled with the memories of the dead. Besides, if I stayed here someone would eventually send the authorities to come and get me. Ship me off to an orphanage, foster care or maybe to my extended family back on Fahl. I balked at the idea of being forced to live with people I didn't know or trust. Memories of yesterday's stampede invaded my mind and I shuddered. I couldn't trust any of them not anymore. No, there was one person I could think of that maybe I could trust. Turning around I went back to my room, found my backpack and grabbed my holopad, the blessing box, the holo projector and my blanket stuffing it into my pack. Then I went to the kitchen and filled my pack up the rest of the way with dried fruit and vegetable snacks. With my backpack looking like it was going to burst I shouldered it and made my way to the front door. When I rested my scaly paw on the door handle I stopped and looked back at the place that was once my home. “Goodbye” I said in a shaky voice, knowing this would be the last time I would never set foot in this house. With my head low I opened the door and stepped out, into the dim light of a new unfamiliar world.
Previous First
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2024.05.19 00:41 Shadow_Storm066 Hi, new to the Thread, but I'm petty, so here's my first petty post. Also, sorry in advance, this is kind of long, it's a long story.

Ok, so, I used to live in a different state during my childhood than the one I live in now (I live in the Northern US, originally born in this northern state as well). I lived in this other state from the ages of 6 until I was almost 16, and throughout the entirety of my elementary and middle school years up until the middle of 9th grade (which was at the high school, some start at 10th grade instead of 9th).
There were 2 main bullies that I dealt with starting in 1st grade/first school year after moving to this state, and as the years went on, these two girls (let's call them Marie & Clarisse) would get their friends in on bullying me. I wasn't popular by any means, but my mother always had me in sports and extracurricular activities with these girls, so I could never really escape them. It was just as bad outside of anything school related as Marie has two younger brothers that my brother was friends with, so I had to pretend to be the 'best of friends' with Marie from 1st grade up until about the end of 7th grade since our families drifted apart from being "close friends".
As far as typical bullying goes in elementary school, I dealt with constant name-calling and cruel "pranks", mostly aimed towards my weight, I wasn't fat, but I wasn't skinny either despite being in sports and was always active. However, those incidents extended to my stuff being stolen, like my notebooks I'd use for schoolwork, or my box of pencils/pens/etc., forcing me to constantly borrow from the few friends I actually had or from the teachers. I used to be in band (which started in 6th grade in that school district), and I played the clarinet, my stepdad had bought me a very nice/sturdy and somewhat expensive tote bag to put my clarinet, music stand, and music binders in for easier storage and to keep my hands free when transporting my 'equipment'. Us band kids were allowed to keep our instruments behind the curtains of the stage in the school's cafeteria (the stage was against the farthest wall from the kitchen/lunch lines), and out of the ~20 kids in band, only my expensive/sturdy tote bag was stolen within the last 2 days of 6th grade, of course suspects were Marie & Clarisse (I saw Clarisse using my tote bag that summer, as my now-smudged name had been written in permanent marker on the straps and one of the sides of the bag). I left it be because I didn't want any conflict, my stepdad bought me another one after finding out the original one was stolen in the first place.
Middle school wasn't much better as the name calling got extensively more graphic and consisted of slurs (like the F slur, as I'm proudly part of the LGBTQ+ community, specifically AgendeNon-binary), furthering the self-hurting thoughts that had started in 3rd grade. I had continuously tried to tell my mom and stepdad about it, only for my pleas for help to go unheard until one week during the winter season in 7th grade. I had gotten sick for 2 days and stayed home an extra day to recover, but during those three days, Marie, Clarisse and their friends had made an Instagram account, posting very unattractive pictures of fellow classmates (i.e. purposely taking pictures with very unflattering angles, poor lighting, etc) and blamed it on me since they put my address in the private information into that account. My mom had found the account, immediately asking about if I was the one behind it, she unfortunately didn't believe me until *after* she ripped my phone from me to look through it for "evidence" that I made the account. When I returned to school the following Thursday after recovering from the small cold, I was constantly bombarded by fellow students about the account since Marie & Clarisse were the ones that spread the obvious false rumor that I made it. By the end of the day, I had finally snapped, yelling "I didn't make that f-cking account. Why can't everyone just stop bothering me about it?" Of course, that earned plenty of attention from the teachers and students within earshot (and thanks to the tiled floors and walls, my yelling echoed throughout most of the first floor and partly into the second floor of my school), I ended up having to talk with the counselor about the whole ordeal because of my frustrated outburst, which resulted with very little help from the staff, but after a few weeks, people seemed to forget that the account even existed since it ended up deleted within a few days after my outburst.
That following school year, 8th grade, was even worse. Sure, the slurs, the other name-calling and thievery of my belongings continued (more so the slurs/name-calling), but by this year, I was almost constantly committing the self-hurting since my mother was of no help, my stepdad was sympathetic but always working and the therapist my mother found for me was basically a deadbeat with bullying situations (she didn't seem to understand or even want to actually help me with the bullying as she was more of a family therapist than anything else). For the district curriculum, we are required to take health class in 8th grade, and as we were going over the unit that encompassed depression, self-harm, and su!c!dal thoughts/actions, I constantly had to have another staff member in the back of the classroom to watch over me and take me out of the class if any of the course material triggered an episode. Thankfully the staff member was that was there for me was the school's police officer, let's call him Officer Lennox, he was like a protective older brother, especially after finding out about how consistently I was bullied. Near the end of the unit, we had to watch Ronan's Escape (it's on YouTube), and since I was going through my own version of Ronan's situation, I ended up breaking down sobbing in class, only to be laughed at by some of the boys that were close friends with Marie & Clarisse. Officer Lennox snapped at them as professionally as possible while helping me out of the classroom to go sit with the nurse to have some downtime to stop sobbing before I was allowed back to my classes.
Another situation, which is the worst of it in 8th grade, was this one girl, let's call her Ava. She thought it would be hilarious to eavesdrop into my conversations with my best friend (we'll refer to her as Raven since that was a nickname she used) throughout lunch and shared classes, only to take our conversations completely out of context in order to string up a lie that Raven and I were planning to unalive the principle. Of course, this wasn't true, the principle was an a-hole to everyone, and Raven & I would discuss that we greatly disliked him. Ava mostly got away with spreading this lie as her mom was a higher-up in the school district, forcing Raven and I to entirely change our class schedules so we weren't in any classes with Ava, as well as almost being expelled. Thanks to Officer Lennox sticking up for both of us, we only had to have in-school suspension for 3 days instead of being expelled. Sadly, Ava got very little repercussions from this, but Raven and I grew even closer as best friends after "The Incident" as we still refer to it as almost 10 years later.
Summer rolled through without a hitch, leading to 9th grade, the start of high school. I was given more freedom from my mother (she's a helicopter parent and abusive/narcissistic) to dress in clothing that I preferred in comparison to always wearing brightly colored athletic wear. I completely changed my appearance, chopped my hair from just above the small of my back to a punk pixie-styled cut, and started wearing graphic t-shirts, ripped jeans, combat boots, and leather jackets. On top of that, I started becoming more confrontational/combative towards my bullies, since they still wouldn't let up, I earned a "bad@ass/bad b!tch" reputation, made friends with other rebellious and misfit types of people in the grades above me, and just fully became more of "me" despite the disapproval from my mother of the amount of change I undergone.
Despite being 14 at the start of 9th grade, I began dating, specifically one fellow student that was a very close friend and felon, he went to jail/juvie throughout the 2nd half of 7th grade and all of 8th grade. He came to the high school 3 months after the year started, and our friendship-turned-relationship sparked right back up as if he never left. I had kept my dating life secret from my family, mostly my mother because I know how bad her reaction would've been if I told her. With him almost always by my side (excluding classes we didn't share), my brand-new appearance, and my quickly attained delinquent/rebellious reputation, most of my issues dissipated much quicker than before. In spite of that, Marie & Clarisse kept making their remarks, trying to drag down my new confidence and constantly break my felon boyfriend (let's call him Collin) and I up. They got more degrading and verbally abusive with these antics, I eventually was completely fed up with it all. In the middle of the school year, within a couple weeks after Yule (Christmas for the non-pagans) & New Years Break, Marie, Clarisse and their group of friends had stopped me in the hallway, purposely surrounding me (there was about 30 of them in total) on my way to class, continuing with their shtick as usual, I slipped the pocketknife out of my pocket, flicking it open as I finally gave in and threatened to unalive them and everyone they care for if they don't leave me the f-ck alone. They saw the opened knife and knew then & there that I was 100% serious, I turned on my heels, shoving through them only to notice the principal and school's police officer (not officer Lennox) staring at me with concerned expressions, they also noticed the knife as there was a glint from the blade due to the blindly bright lights in the hallway. Not a word was uttered as they walked away, never sending a call to my mother or stepdad about the weapon or the confrontation as they had seen my progression in attitude and the amount of f-cks I had (which was none). After that day, those girls never spoke to me again, would barely glance in my direction, would purposely take alternate routes to class if they saw me in the hallway (or would keep to the wall if they couldn't move quick enough), and if we shared any classes, they'd be on the opposite side of the room from me and would do everything they could to never be partnered/grouped with me in class projects.
Everything was smooth sailing from then on, and now I'm 22 (as of late April this year), happily living with my bio-dad, my brother and my 2-year-old kitty, Ziggy. My mother is out of the picture entirely as she refuses to change her mindset and parenting style. I'm still confrontational towards anyone that tries messing with me, especially if they're anti-LGBTQ+/racist/abusive/etc. And thanks to my continuation of my drastic change from 8th grade to 9th grade, I'm now considered both the protector and the therapist to my friends, always there for them because I grew up knowing what it was like to not have that kind of support. I hope this story of roughly half my life can provide some sort of comfort or proof that it does indeed get better, even if it doesn't seem like it in the moment.
submitted by Shadow_Storm066 to CharlotteDobreYouTube [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 00:26 Zeddblidd Twister (1996)

2024-190 / Zedd MAP: 84.08 / MLZ MAP: 86.88 / Score Gap: 2.80
Wikipedia?wprov=sfti1#Plot) / IMDb / Official Trailer / Our Collection
If I’ve never said this out loud before now ((shrug)), I’m just going to go ahead and say it now: I sincerely (sincerely) didn’t like 90s cinema during the last decade of the 20th century. I grew up during the gritty realism of 70s New Hollywood and came of age during the devil-may-care fun of the 80s. Something shifted gears in the 90s and it just didn’t jive with my sensibilities.
If I’m being honest, there was a push for big budget blockbusters and I’m nearly always on my back foot when Hollywood emphasizes flash over storytelling. It’s always been part of the cycle and I just figured, “Hey - movies are for everyone, its just time for those sorts of movie lovers.” I joked about it - if you like loud music punctuating every second of action on screen - 90s cinema is for you.
From IMDb: Two storm chasers on the brink of divorce must work together to create an advanced weather alert system by putting themselves in the cross-hairs of extremely violent tornadoes.
If I’m being even more honest, we didn’t get to the movies very often either - we worked 2, sometimes 3 jobs, always 60+ hours a week. Modesto, CA had lost all its vital industries by then and the only thing out there for the likes of Mrs. Lady Zedd and I were low-paying service sector jobs. So, yeah - we were working our asses off, just to be poor. Movies were an expense we could hardly afford. This ladies and gentleman, is exactly how bias can form: I don’t like the things I can’t afford or have time for anyway.
Bias sucks the roof right off the top of honesty, and unless your personal philosophy revolves around brutal self-honesty, reflection, and rooting out hypocrisy, your personal biases will run unnoticed and unchecked - no bueno if you’re going to spend your time watching, ranking, and writing about the movies. Fortunately, my personal philosophy revolves around brutal self-honesty, reflection, and rooting out hypocrisy.
Here it is: I’m sorry 90s Cinema, I certainly was operating from a place of personal bias - not so much in the past decade or so - but certainly prior to that. While I was always willing to roll the dice on 60s, 70s, and 80s motion pictures - I often left your offerings on the shelf. I hope you see I’ve made strides in amending that and the trend, overall, in my collecting has been more even handed. Was your incidental orchestration too numerous and too loud? Yes - but that’s ok. Just my opinion, and - as my great and wise Great Grandpappy very well might have said, “opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one and most of them stink.”
What’s (honestly) happened over the last four or five years is, I’ve gained an appreciation for 90s films that was nearly absent during the decade itself. Part of it has to do with seeing the scope of movies like Jurassic Park, Twister, or Armageddon (for instance) and recognizing part of what I hadn’t liked (the movies changed) was, in retrospect, a good thing. The medium was evolving, growing, and filling new spaces. I was the one stuck in the past.
After I became disabled and suddenly had a lot of time on my hands, I did a lot of exploring through all genres and film eras and just this, alone, chipped away at my old biases. I learned so much movie history that I brought to bear on other films - it changed how I saw them. Enhanced my appreciation, across the board.
Watching Twister in 1996, I was full of “that doesn’t look right” and eye-rolls for flying cows and scenes with trucks driving through houses. While I still register these simple crowd-pleasing visuals for what they are, I can also feel the chemistry between our leading stars, understand the drive of the characters, love the resolution of conflict, enjoy the “disaster film” aspects.
MLZ says she just needed this movie, today. There’s something to watching a movie as therapy after you’ve come through a bumpy patch. We’re all safe and sound but we can see the look on Little Miss Zedd and her husband’s faces. They’re glad to be here with us but also, really, just want things repaired so they can go on home. It could be days or weeks - we just don’t know. I did the only thing I could think of: get them safe and comfortable, buy a tv and player for the spare room, hand over movies and tv I know will be that needed distraction.
You all know, movie on can mean many things. It’s equal parts laughs and good feelings when things are going your way / therapy, distraction, and communion when it’s not. We said 2024 was going to be bumpy, we said we’re here to be a safe corner - you’ll never truly know how much it means to us that you, our cinematic siblings, provide that for us right back. Take care of each other - check your personal bias - and above all…
Movie On :]
submitted by Zeddblidd to 500moviesorbust [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 00:24 Sufficient-Room3607 1-2 years ago I went to get moles checked. The doctor checked over 100 moles in less than 30 seconds and then gave an ad for some random cream. Now many moles have changed. I'm going to go to see a dermatologist again and if she literally doesn't care again, what should I say?

1-2 years ago I went to get moles checked. The doctor checked over 100 moles in less than 30 seconds and then gave an ad for some random cream. Now many moles have changed. I'm going to go to see a dermatologist again and if she literally doesn't care again, what should I say?
For example, mole on 2nd picture has grown, changed colors, is still painful since last visit and is over 1cm. Last time I said to the dermatologist that there's radiating pain under the mole when touched- it's fine. "When is it not fine then?" -when it changes or is painful...
Sorry if this is the wrong group to post something like this but I was very triggered by it and most of you guys have experiences with dermatologists. If she says everything is fine this time as well 2 minutes after entering the room, should I tell her something? Should I just keep looking at over 20 moles change colors and get noticably bigger, wait for pain to get worse or I'm just overthinking things and should just forget about it like I did last time?
The trigger wasn't even that she skipped many moles and looked at them without caring, the trigger was that when I asked what to look for, she literally said 2 things that I said I have and didn't even explain why it's fine, when it's not fine and gave less info than google even.
Anxious that this might happen again.
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2024.05.18 23:57 sjanevardsson The Keeper, the Seeker, and the Avatar

After nearly thirty years of research, field work, digging, and sometimes living off the land, Ana had finally found what her family had sought since her great-grandfather. The door was so well hidden that she hadn’t realized it was there until she attempted to break a bit of the surface rock off with her geologist’s hammer. The hollow behind the door resonated with the sound of the hammer on stone.
She tapped along the door to find the edges. With the chisel end of her hammer, she chipped away the encrustations that had built up along the edges. After hours of hammering, chiseling, and digging at the base, the outline of the door was visible. Made of the same rock as the surrounding gneiss, it had gone unnoticed for untold millennia.
Ana pushed the door from the sides, the middle, the top, the bottom, looking for the smallest movement. The door didn’t budge. She sat, leaning against the door on the flat bit of ground she’d dug out. She ate some of the year-old jerky she had in her pack while the sun set.
It was a clear, moonless night, and Ana focused her attention on the whirl of the Milky Way overhead. The sight wasn’t enough to keep her mind off the stubborn door behind her and the aching of her joints from sitting on the rocky ground.
She stood and turned to take a last look at the door for the day. Even in the faint light of the stars, she thought she could make out the edges. At one corner, a flash caught her eye. She moved her head back and forth, trying to find the position that had, she thought, reflected light.
Not finding it, she pulled out her flashlight and shone it on the corner of the door where the flash was. She expected to see a reflection but saw none. She turned out the light, and there it was, except it was two flashes this time.
There was no doubt it was coming from inside, shining out a pinhole in the door seam at the upper left corner. “Monkey see, monkey do?” she asked herself. She pointed the flashlight at the corner and flashed it twice. When nothing happened, she flashed it again.
The response was five flashes. “Oh, fibbi-whatever,” she muttered. “Three and five is eight.” She flashed the light eight times. There was no immediate response. She began to worry that she’d been wrong in her counting or in what pattern they were looking for.
A loud hiss sounded as the whole door slid out away from the wall. Bright light shone around the edges of the door that continued to slide out, far thicker than she’d expected. Where she’d stopped digging in front of it, the door bulldozed its own path.
It stopped with a little less than a meter clearance between the back of the door and front of the rock wall. Beyond lay a downward-sloping walkway. It was shaped like an oval with a flattened floor. A voice echoed from within, “Enter, Anastasia.”
She didn’t know how they knew who she was, but she wasn’t going to turn back after having come so far. She stepped around the door, held by a single, flat piece of metal that disappeared into a groove in the ceiling. The metal that held the massive slab of stone looked far too flimsy for purpose, but pushing against the edges of the open door did nothing to sway the door or distort the metal support.
With a deep breath, Ana threw her pack over her shoulder and stepped into the hallway. As she continued down the hall, more would illuminate ahead of her while behind her, the lights shut off. Where the light came from was a mystery to her, but she was more interested in what lay ahead at that point.
She felt a slight, sudden increase in air pressure in the tunnel, followed by the echoing sound of the door as it closed. She pushed down the edges of panic that wanted to take hold. “I’m on my way,” she said to the tunnel.
The deeper she went, the more the temperature seemed to settle at close to fifteen or sixteen degrees Celsius. Her lips felt dry in the still air, and she applied lip balm while she continued apace ever deeper. Somewhere far underground, the tunnel curved back on itself and kept descending. After two more switchbacks, and what felt like hours of walking, she found herself in a chamber.
It was monumental in scale. The walls curved to meet at least twenty meters overhead. As the lights in the chamber came up, the far side looked a hundred or more meters away, while the doorway she was in was situated about twenty meters from the walls on either side. Covering the bottom two-thirds of the walls were row upon row of plastic-like boxes with lights blinking inside them.
In the center of the chamber was a dais with a holographic glyph floating in the air above it. Standing next to the dais was the owner of the voice she’d heard on entering. The shape was semi-translucent, the lights from the boxes behind it seeming to light it from within. “Welcome,” it said, although it had no mouth with which to speak. Its form shifted and changed, from an amorphous blob to an array of wings and eyes, then through creatures both real and mythical, until it finally settled into the shape of a large woman with wings.
“Who are you?” Ana asked.
“I am the keeper,” it said. “You are Anastasia, the seeker, yes?”
“I’m Anastasia Kell, but I go by Ana.” Ana moved closer to the center of the chamber and the shape-shifting entity at its center. “What is your name?”
“I am the keeper. I have no name.”
“Fine, I’ll call you Odette, then. You look like an Odette.”
The keeper flapped its wings twice, then shrunk its body by adding a long tail. “That is acceptable, seeker Anastasia.”
“Please, just call me Ana.”
“Of course, Ana. Please, come to the dais for your reward. Your dedication has won through.” The keeper moved away from the dais and extended an arm toward Ana. The arm kept extending, reaching Ana’s hand twenty meters away from the keeper.
Ana was surprised that the hand felt warm and dry. She’d expected some sort of slimy, cold thing, but it wasn’t. She let herself be led to the dais. “What are you?”
“I am the keeper.”
“Are you a biological creature or a construct of some sort? Some sort of soft-body robot, maybe.”
“I am a biological construct, designed to keep a record of all intelligent life on this world. I have been keeping these records for 72,363,412 years.”
“Since what…the dinosaurs?”
“Yes. The first were theropods. Traveling in hunter groups, they had a limited language. If they had been more adaptable, they might have not been already dying out by the time of the asteroid.” The keeper changed its shape to a theropod that Ana didn’t recognize. It was about the same height as her, with three-toed feet, three-fingered hand on medium-length arms, and a slightly domed head.
“That’s what they looked like?” she asked.
“Yes.” The keeper shifted into the shape of a porpoise. “There were and are the cetaceans, of course. They have language and culture but are not in a position to leave their cradle.”
“Is that what you’ve been waiting for? An intelligence capable of space travel?”
“Yes. My creators have placed other keepers like me on millions of worlds.” The keeper changed into a sphere. “This is where I am keeper.”
“So now, humans, I guess, are what you’ve been looking for.”
The keeper changed into a primate that resembled a chimpanzee and then morphed through several hominin species shapes, pausing on Neanderthal before finishing up with modern human. “I’ve watched entire civilizations come and go without so much as a scratch to mark them in the geologic record, and yet your kind has made an indelible mark on the planet. Whether that is for better or worse remains to be seen.”
“My guess would be worse, but I’m a pessimist.”
“So you say, but you never stopped searching for the library at the heart of the world.”
“True.” Ana took a deep breath and put a hand on the dais. The holographic glyph hovering above it disappeared, and an eight-limbed creature appeared in its place.
The creature spoke in English, even though its squishy mouthparts made movements that were often in total contradiction to the sounds it made. “Welcome, seeker Anastasia. Updating. Welcome, Ana. What would you like to learn today?”
“What are my limits here? This place was hard enough to find, what kind of things won’t you tell me?”
“The records will answer any questions you have that can be answered. Nonsensical and paradoxical queries will be ignored. The library is hidden to ensure that only those ready to take the next steps beyond their cradle can find it. As such, all our knowledge is yours for the asking.”
“So, I blinked a light in a simple sequence. How does that mean we’re ready to take the next steps – whatever those are?”
“You are the fourth generation of your family that has searched for the library, correct?” the holograph asked.
“I am.”
“And you have spent the majority of your adult life in the same search, have you not?”
“I have,” she said, “but how does that–”
“Multi-generational planning and execution, combined with drive and determination, and the knowledge of basic mathematical concepts. This is enough to start with.”
“Are you just another aspect of Odette?”
“No, I am the avatar of Krshnlgik-mlOgnk, the current head of remote planetary studies on our home world of MFkst.” The pronunciation of the non-translated names sounded more like someone choking in a bowl of oatmeal than a language.
“Is faster-than-light communication possible?”
“It is. I am currently speaking with you from a distance of thirty-one thousand light years.”
“How?”
A series of formulae appeared in the space above the dais. “You may use your phone to photograph these, since memorization might be difficult.”
Ana did. “And faster-than-light travel?”
The formulae were replaced with more, some of which looked similar to the first. She photographed those as well.
“Do you have any other questions?”
“How can you claim to keep track of everything happening all over the world?”
“The keeper, or Odette as you call it, has a connection through quintillions of microscopic wormholes to points all over the planet.”
“So, would you have the contents of the Library of Alexandria as they were just before it burned?”
“We do.” Thousands upon thousands of titles scrolled by, many in languages Ana couldn’t even guess at, but with an English translation next to them.
“That might be something for another day,” she said. “Are there others out there in the galaxy or just your people?”
“There are many others,” the avatar said, as images of dozens of strange body plans showed. “We are a small part of a wider galactic community.
“You seem to be pondering something,” the keeper said. “Do not be afraid to ask your question.”
“How do we get off this rock and join the galactic community?”
The keeper morphed into the shape of a cozy chair and said, “Get comfortable.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Because,” the avatar answered, “this is going to take a long time to explain.”
prompt: Dream up a secret library. Write a story about an adventurer who discovers it. What’s in the library? Why was it kept secret?
originally posted at Reedsy
submitted by sjanevardsson to HFY [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:48 AcceptableSet3916 "Jealous wedding guest ruins the money shot": An Essay About The Woman In The Photo

First of all, I would like to say THANK YOU to all of you that showed so much love to my first post ever in Reddit!
Since my girl Millie got too much hate for wearing white and ruining the best photo of the wedding, I decided to write her sad story and share it with all of you. It's a LONG tale, full of ups and mostly downs (TLDR at the end of the post). Sooo, grab some cookies and popcorn while I spill the tea ;)
******WARNING******** The story features what I believe to be unsettling content (pregnancy loss) for some. It's hidden as spoiler, so please don't click it if it's a sensitive issue for you. <3
Our story starts with poor young adult who shall not be named (because I don't remember her name). God (me) had big plans and challenges for her, as she started with 0 simoleons in an off the grid island, with hopes of her becoming a millionaire. She moved in the big island without money, a place to sleep, a toilet, nothing. The challenge goes like this: raise money from beachcombing, buy a towel to sleep on, buy a bush to pee in, snorkel, plant and build a life from zero. And, under no circumstances communicate with another sim.
This challenge was too difficult. The loneliness and hardships, the struggle to just survive and find food, led this young girl to her death by drowning in the middle of the ocean. It was too soon, so God decided to try this challenge again, giving the new sim a head start.
That leads us to the protagonist of the story, Millie Carson.
Millie Carson is a young adult who moved in the same island, like a castaway. All she found on that island was a towel, some planted trees, a toilet bush and a grave.
The ghost from the grave came often to haunt and tease her and finally became her enemy.
At first, young Millie tried to stay away from other sims but, since they kept coming and visiting, God decided that it was ok for her to have some friends.
Millie's neighbors were Miki and Ali, a happy couple with two babies. They kept visiting and bringing food to their poor young neighbor, since she was struggling so much. Millie grew close with Ali, who came swimming to her island sometimes.
Meanwhile, Millie learned some skills that earned her some money and food. She became really good at fitness, gardening and fishing. Little by little, she earned enough money to buy diving supplies and took up some diving photography and treasure hunting. All those helped her build a tiny wood home which finally had a toilet and a shower and even a fridge. Life was getting better for Millie, until she started having feelings for her married neighbor...
Millie was attracted to Ali: his long blond hair, his green eyes and dark skin. To her surprise, Ali was interested in her as well. She tried to fight it but it was over her own power to resist. They made sweet woohoo and became a couple, while he was still married with two kids.
Love makes you do stupid things and that's what happened to Millie. She fell in love with a married man and, surprise surprise, she got pregnant with his kid.
While on her 1st trimester, she visited her neighbolover's home to tell him the news. His wife, Miki, opened the door and the sight was unbelievable: She was pregnant as well, on her 3rd trimester. Millie chatted with Miki as nothing was wrong and even socialized with her kids for a bit. But it was now time for Ali to learn the truth. Millie pulled him aside and told him everything.
To her surprise, Ali was content with being a parent to their child. Millie felt his support and fell even harder for him, causing her to do the unthinkable: Woohoo with him all over his tiny house while his wife and two kids were inside! They woohood EVERYWHERE: The small single bed, the kitchen sink, the counters, standing... They almost got caught by Miki, but hopefully she was so pregnant that it took her an eternity to reach the woohoo spot.
Millie started thinking about their future. Tormented by her jealousy, she asked Ali about Miki. Miki's super pregnant belly was an indicator that Ali still loves and woohoos with his wife, two-timing both women. To her dismay, Ali confessed his love about Miki, but he was willing to keep his relationship with Millie. But that wasn't enough for Millie...
Without hesitation, Millie served Ali an ultimatum: It's her or Miki. No love triangles, no hiding. Her kid needed a father and she needed support as a poor young woman. All those pregnancy hormones made her unreasonable - she came between a happy couple and now she felt that her lover's wife stole him from her, even though they were already together! The irony!
Millie couldn't get over her feelings, so she invited Miki over and told her EVERYTHING. That she was pregnant. That the father was poor Miki's husband. Miki got even yelled at for sleeping with her own husband. Millie was out of control.
Like a tsunami, a force that couldn't be stopped, Millie called over Ali and told him to break it off with his wife. It was now or never. Ali did as told and suddenly Miki broke down crying, hating life and those two who ruined it.
Eventually, Miki left and the.. happy couple were finally alone. Millie asked Ali to move in and he gladly accepted. He even proposed and they stayed engaged until after their baby girl, Angelique, was born.
Meanwhile, even though Miki was hating them, she still came over with extra food like a good neighbor. But her relations with the couple never improved much.
The happy couple decided to get married. Millie wore a pretty but simple boho white dress, hair down and golden jewelry. But her joyful smile was the prettiest jewel she could wear. It was a lovely, quiet wedding on the seashore, during sunset.
Soon after, Millie got pregnant again but wasn't ready or happy for it. Unfortunately, there were some complications with the pregnancy and baby Donovan was born dead. They buried him under a lemon tree and cried for many seasons about him.
Ali started helping Millie with gardening, fishing and diving. But his dream was to finally earn his degree in Communications. He still had 3 classes to pass and then he could enter the PR world. He soon earned his degree with a low to medium score and was ready to start working. There was a huge problem, though...
The island was off the grid and he could not apply for the job, not use the very much needed internet. A decision had to be made: Should they live on this island forever, living off the land, or they should move somewhere else and follow Millie's dream to become millionaires?
The choice was easy. The couple moved to Finchwick, in a big cottage house with a big garden, front and back. They brought with them the plants they had gardened with so much love and also bought some chickens. Life was good for a while, baby Angelique was growing but woohoo life was... fine.
Ali found a job in PR and had to work all day, even from home. He had to polish his charisma and writing skills and meet new people. So, that made Millie a stay at home mom, a gardener, a housekeeper. But there was no time for her lifestyle needs: outdoor living and working out. She became frustrated and was always in a bad and uncomfortable mood. She had gained a lot of weight from her pregnancy, she hardly recognized herself in the mirror...All this bad mood made her cranky. Everytime Ali tried to woohoo with her, she had no drive. So, their love life went down the drain...
Meanwhile, Ali was doing great at work, earning at least 2000 simoleons per day. He had met many people, and one of them became a really good friend of his. His name was Gabriel and he was thin, with black short hair, dark skin and modern makeup.
Ali was tormented by his feelings when he hang out with Gabriel. He couldn't understand how a man can be attracted to another guy like that. He was open to the idea, but had never acted upon it. It wasn't the looks - Gabriel was pretty basic. But there was something about the both of them that made him feel... amazing. The attention he got from Gabriel, the friendship.. It was like they knew each other from another lifetime.
Every time Gabriel came over, Ali got excited. He was interested in his words and inner world, not only his appearance. One night, he couldn't take it anymore. While they were talking the backyard table, Ali started flirting with Gabriel. Things got heated fast and they shared the most beautiful first kiss. That was exactly what he always wanted to feel, but was missing from his other relationships. He proposed to have woohoo in the home office, while Millie and Angelique were sleeping unaware upstairs...
They woohood hard and many times. It was a total WoohooFest. Morning came and Ali, having not slept at all, got ready to go to work. He didn't forget to kiss his wife goodbye, but he spent the entire day thinking about Gabriel. By night, he had decided to ask Gabriel to become his boyfriend.
Millie on the other side, was getting better. She bought a walking machine and she often went swimming in the river. Her woohoo drive was coming back strong and that meant more time with her beloved husband. They started woohooing more often, but Ali was also missing Gabriel...
God suddenly had an idea! Ali should ask Millie to have expanded woohoo with someone else, and that someone else couldn't be other than (yes, you guessed it) Gabriel. Ali went on and asked his wife and God told her that yes, it would be fun! So, unaware of God and her husband's plans, she happily accepted to engage in multiple sim woohoo...
Ali was so excited! He couldn't believe his ears! He immediately called over Gabriel and explained the situation. Gabriel accepted as well and it was time for Gabriel to meet with Millie. Millie tried to get to know him but for some reason he was distant. She tried to flirt with him but he didn't reciprocate. Millie got embarrassed and locked herself in her room for some time, to recollect herself. It shouldn't be so hard, right?
At the same time, Ali made his move on Gabriel and they woohood. Gabriel was more than excited to get together with Ali. So, why not Millie?
After Millie got over her embarrassment, she came out the room. Ali proposed having multiple woohoo and they did it. Everyone had a pleasant time.
After that, they got together two more times. But, the last time, at Gabriel's house, was the final blow.
Millie kept trying to flirt alone with Gabriel, not getting the message but, DUDE. He was NOT into her. It was heartbreaking. She tried so hard for her husband, her self esteem and again, she was turned down. A second choice. She didn't deserve it. And then, she though about it. The flirt between Ali and Gabriel. How they would have woohoo, the three of them, but Gabriel was rejecting her. It was time for answers...
Millie first told Ali to end the expanded woohoo agreement. It was too much for her. He wasn't happy about it, but he agreed. And then, she asked the million dollar question: "What's going on between you two?". Ali tried to hide it, told her they were only friends. But God was starting to feel bad about poor Millie, so had her ask again: "WHAT'S GOING ON BETWEEN YOU TWO?"
The answer was like a knife, going through her heart. Ali loved Gabriel and that's all she needed to know. Their woohoo life was non existent before and now had found someone who made him feel better, more... alive! That's all Millie needed to know. She went over to Gabriel and try to make a last, desperate woohoo pass at him. Once more, he rejected her. It was all so clear. She was the third wheel.
Her ego and her heart were stomped on the ground, like a cockroach. A beautiful, kind, hard working sim shouldn't go through all that. She headed back home, to the privacy of her bedroom and cried her eyeballs out. Ali didn't come home that night and went straight to work.
The next day, Millie invited Gabriel over. Oooh no, she wouldn't let him have Ali so easily. She would humiliate him first. He came over and she started yelling at him. Her face was red and hot, she was fueled by rage. She ending up giving him the beating of his life. When Ali came home from work, both his lovers were black and blue from fighting.
Baby Angelique started crying. She had woken up. Millie rushed upstairs to help her toddler with her needs, but Ali and Gabriel stayed downstairs. Ali tried to comfort Gabriel, asking him to stay. He didn't care about his marriage anymore. God led them to the hall upstairs, outside the bedrooms. They started woohooing again, right there, like animals!
Poor Millie, as she opened her daughter's bedroom's door, she caught her cheater husband in the act! THE AUDACITY!!! And if it that wasn't enough, when she went over to slap him, he acted like she wasn't there and went to woohoo in the shower with his boyfriend - AGAIN! WTH!!!
At this point, Millie knew it was time to give Ali the boot and kick him the hell out of their home, and so she did. After Ali's lover left, the married couple had a long, heated conversation that only had one outcome - Ali had to move out immediately.
So, he left and rented a one-bedroom apartment in the city. He also decided to ask Gabriel to live with him, and Gabriel happily accepted. A new chapter started for Ali but unresolved things were left in the middle with his wife that needed to be dealt with.
While all these took place, Millie had gotten close with celebrity Rahul Chopra. They became good friends and she was invited to his wedding. It was a one of a kind event because Rahul had a shotgun wedding with his wife when they were teenagers due to unwanted pregnancy. After many kids later, Rahul's eldest daughter, with the villainous valentine aspiration (long story) decided to break her eternally faithful parents up for fun. So they did break up, but they were so made for each other, like puzzle pieces, that it was impossible to not end up together again.
Rahul fell back in love with his wife and they decided to do it right this time. They planned the perfect wedding event in San Myshuno's park, during sunset. The whole family was there and their 2nd child, Philip (YA) would take the professional pictures of the wedding.
The ceremony started, everyone (almost) was seated and the photographer (and me) were preoccupied with taking the happy couples pictures. As the ceremony ended, the couple was ready to share their first kiss as husband and wife. The air was filled with confetti that floated playfully around them, the fireworks were set off behing them and the sun was showering them with the warmest rays. It was a one time opportunity to get the perfect picture. Philip got ready to press click. And then, she appeared.
Millie, clearly bothered and heartbroken by other people's love, made a run for the exit and ruined Philip's perfect photograph. The angry look on her face would forever haunt Philip's mind. Why would that woman ruin this happy moment and why the hell would she wear white at someone's wedding? I mean, you wouldn't mistake her for the bride, who wore an expensive wedding gown, but still... Something was wrong with this girl and Philip had to find out...
After the wedding, Millie went back home. The days passed and the divorce was not finalized. She asked her kid who she wanted to stay with, but without reply. She called Ali over, but he texted back he didn't want to come over. Millie had her -now child- daughter call over her dad. This time, Ali responded positively and soon after he arrived. Millie took him straight to the lawyers to see who will get custody of Angelique.
This time, God had no plans, God left it all to luck. So, unfortunately, Ali won custody of Angelique, who immediately went to live with him. Now, Millie was alone. Only her and her money and her baby son's grave in the front yard. Now she was angry, NOW HE WOULD PAY.
Millie grabbed Ali and went once again to the lawyers. It was now time to split the estate. At least 100k simoleons in the bank, plus whatever the house is worth. Millie wants to get everything, but once again, God won't interfere. She comes back home, head down, beaten - she lost 80k.
She turns to her new friend, Philip. He is basic, but he's a good guy. He lives alone in an apartment in San Myshuno, studies Fine Arts in university, comes from a good family. He also has a girlfriend that lives across the hall from him, but Millie doesn't know. And God tells her to come onto him. Now Philip has two girlfriends and God must interfere.
God and luck are playing games with Millie's life.
As I'm writing her story, there's only one thing I feel: Sad.
This girl started out with hopes and dreams. So I think that we should forgive her for attending a friend's wedding wearing white. Some God forgot to change her formal outfit and it was all she had to wear. She's going through a lot!
Her story ends for now, but if you guys like it I might write more about her life's adventures.
Also, what should she do with Philip? Let me know in the comments!
If you read this whole essay / story , you are amazing! And thanks! Hope you liked it! :)
TLDR: YA woman starts with 0 money in off the grid island. Wants to earn a million. Gets pregnant by married neighbor with kids. Marries him and they buy new home. They get pregnant second time, lose the baby.He gets a good job, meets new people, gets new guy friend, has woohoo with that friend. The 3 of them have expanded woohoo. Woman breaks it off. Woman confronts husband about loving other man, he confesses he loves him. Woman kicks him out and he lives alone in flat. The other guy moves in with him. Woman heartbroken, goes to friends wedding wearing white, is angry at happy couple's love, ruins the married couple kiss photo. Photo becomes famous on Reddit. Woman loses custody of only child. Woman loses 80k simoleons after splitting estate. Woman becomes girlfriend of the photographer from the friend's wedding. Photographer already has another girlfriend.
*****EDIT*********** I can't believe I forgot to write this, but Millie also drowned in the ocean while being fatigued from diving for treasures. I decided to not save and give her a second chance. Her life is dramatic, UUUUUUGH!!!!
submitted by AcceptableSet3916 to thesims4 [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:47 In_my_pink_era How to stop my dad from listening to lunch

i feel like the world is dead set against me going to her concert because why is lunch all over my dads recommended now literally i’ve been paranoid all day about this because yesterday night he suggested that we watch the mv and i PANICKED i was like no no no and then told him to go to sleep or go back to watching his house tour video or whatever he was watching and i panic every time he takes out his phone or leaves the room because i feel like he’s going to go watch it in secret and then he showed me his apple music and it was in his suggested songs because he’s been playing the billie eilish essential playlist because of me which is nice but it’s probably gonna get me in trouble now and they’ll know that i know it because i’ve been singing it for ages now except i just picked out certain lyrics to sing and both of them would know this because 1 i kept repeating them and 2 last week i’d repeated “and i left it under “claire” around 12 times in a row and i guess they got sick of it because they both started attacking the lyrics saying they didn’t make sense and even my 10yr old brother joined in. so they would defo recognise the lyrics. i also feel like the way i act around it is also a dead giveaway because my entire attitude changes when the song is brought up. also i asked my dad what song he would claim based off the title and he said lunch and i laughed because i thought it was funny but it’s not funny anymore. i already acted a bit like this before because bbn is on the essential playlist so whenever i hear my dad playing billie i would go snatch his phone and handpick the songs because “i know the best billie songs” but i don’t think it was that obvious. he also said “imagine if the entire family became billie fans” and i was just like 🙂 mmm would be nice…” and i was playing lamour for him and he said we should play lunch and i was like NO and i opened t in front of him once and the first video was of lunch and i turned my phone off IMMEDIATELY atp i think he’s already watched it and is just doing this to torment me. i showed him an edit of it with different music and thought i was done for the day and stopped stressing but he came back from his walk and i showed him some pictures from it and then he told me he wanted to show me something funny so i nodded excpecting it to be a very unfunny twitter post but it was actually the lunch mv in his recommended on yt and said “this must be a sign-“ but i didn’t let him finish i just sprinted for it like my pe teacher would love me if i ran like that in lesson. this was literally a few minutes ago and he’s calling me i’m gonna cry. this is all my fault because i suggested we watch one of her videos together because i was trying to explain the wtpo mv and he said “is it to represent how she’s swallowing up all the black ppl” so i said i would show it him so that he can understand it. part of me thinks he might not care because he actually offered to get me and my sister meg tickets but he’s kind of homophobic like he was questioning the “you could be my wife” line in the diner and i was trying to explain wildflower to him and he said “is she lesbian” while pulling a face and i said no and i wasn’t lying because she isn’t but my dad doesn’t even know that reneé rapp is gay and he called her blasphemous the other day for saying that Beyoncé is the greatest gift to mankind because jesus is. i half felt like saying “did jesus sing crazy in love?” but i didn’t want to start that early in the morning especially after i told him to turn off the morning prayer and go pray in church but i’m going off topic now. anyway i’ve probably got to go downstairs now so wish me luck
submitted by In_my_pink_era to billieeilish [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:38 Saturdead Samuel came from a Strange Place

Back in 2016, I was working at a roadside diner west of St. Cloud, Minnesota. Neat little place, had a bit of a 60’s vibe to it, but without the hairdo. On the slow hours of the day, or whenever we just had locals around, I’d be humming along with the chefs playing radio out of the kitchen. It wasn’t an exciting time, but it was nice to have a workplace that felt like a second home.
A couple of weekends a month, we had an all-night crew to serve passing truckers. You usually never had to do more than one shift though, and we got to make own schedules. Our boss was pretty hands-off. It was during one of those shifts, at the first week of early summer, that my life took a turn for the worse – and I didn’t even realize it.

We were used to having the occasional odd customer during those hours of the day. When this guy walked in, I didn’t know what to think. He was about 6’2, bald, and pale as chalk. He wore this worn-out t-shirt that looked like it’d been on fire. With every step, he dragged his feet, and collapsed in one of our booths, seemingly exhausted.
I looked back at the chef, and he just shrugged. Guy wasn’t hurting anyone, but he didn’t look like he was all there. But a job’s a job, so I went up to him.
“You alright there?” I asked.
He looked up at me like I was speaking a foreign language, then sunk his head back down, gently shaking it.
“Nah,” he said. “I, uh… I don’t think I am.”
He had this voice on the knife’s edge between a hysterical laugh and a howling cry. He was trembling.
“You need me to call someone?”
“Call?”
“Yeah, call someone.”
“How?”

I didn’t understand the question. I figured he was coming down from some kind of binge, and I wasn’t about to take any chances. I asked the chef to get me a side of bacon to keep the guy calm while I called the police.
As I slid the plate over to him, he sunk his face into his hands, sobbing.
“T-thank you,” he cried. “I-I’m… please…”
I sat down across from him, instinctively reaching out to grab his hand. He let me. Even at a light touch, I could feel the scars on his palm and fingertips. Whatever’d happened to him, it must’ve been awful.
“I can’t go back,” he sniffled. “Don’t make me go back. I can’t. Please, I can’t.”
“You’re not going anywhere. It’s okay,” I smiled. “You’re safe here.”
“Can you help me?” he asked. “Can you keep him out?”
“I’m sure we can figure it out,” I nodded. “Just eat up. It’s okay.”

His fingers trembled as he tentatively bit off a piece of bacon. His teeth were black, and he flinched.
“I need time,” he said. “I need time to run.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “We’ve called for help.”
“I just… I just need time.”
We just sat there for a while. He calmed his breathing but kept staring out the window. I could tell he was looking for something – or someone. All I could see was a road and a handful of moths. We sat there for some time, in silence, as he carefully nibbled on the slices of maple bacon.
As two police officers entered the diner, he got up from his seat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bundle of scrunched-up trash. A couple of singles, a plastic card, dirt, and something resembling animal bones. He tried to straighten out the bills, pushing them into my hands along with the laminated card.
“Just… I need time. I’ll come back. Please.”
I didn’t understand. I just nodded and accepted it. Seconds later, the officers asked him to step outside and explain the situation. I got busy taking orders from a couple of passing truckers, watching glimpses of the scene through the window. A couple of minutes later, the strange man was taken away.

My shift ended at sunrise. I dragged myself to my car with a yawn, shuffling around my pockets for the keys. I hadn’t thought much about the items he’d handed me, but I took a closer look. I’d thrown away the animal bones and dirt, but there were a couple of dollar bills and that laminated card left. I checked the card first.
It looked like some kind of bookmark. On one side it was completely white, and on the other side there were dried blue flower petals arranged in a spiral. Kinda reminded me of a sunflower. And finally, there were the dollar bills.
I didn’t pay much attention to these at first. Just a couple of singles. But after a closer look, I noticed something unusual. There was a man on the bill that I didn’t recognize. It took me a couple of google searches to realize that this man was Walter Mondale – the man who’d lost to Ronald Reagan’s second run for president back in ’84. Why was this man on a one-dollar bill?

Before heading to bed, I put the items down on my nightstand. In a moment of silent wonder, I looked out the window. What had that man been looking for? What’d he been running from?
There was nothing out there.
Just a couple of moths.

Waking up the next morning, I had a full day off. I spent it cleaning my apartment, watching movies, having dinner with a couple of friends, and ending the night with a couple of drinks at the pub down on the corner. No binge or anything, just got a bit boozy. I was still gonna be in bed by midnight.
I took the scenic route home; a long walk. All the way down main street, past the lake. I took a shortcut through the park by the final stretch, speeding up a bit. That place was trouble.
As I hurried by the fountain, I spotted someone in the distance. A shrouded figure at the edge of the streetlights. I stopped to observe for a second, but as I did, the lights flickered. Coming back on, the figure was gone.
I chalked it up to imagination. I was a bit drunk, after all. Besides – it was small, like a child. What the hell would a kid be doing out at this hour?

A couple of days passed. I didn’t notice anything unusual, but I kept coming back to that distressing feeling of missing something important. Looking back at it now, I just feel dumb. He was there all along. Outside the supermarket. In the parking lot. Off the highway. Hell, he was outside my window at night sometimes, but just too short for me to spot.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
It wasn’t until one morning when I was driving to work that I got a clear view of him. I was crossing a four-way street, taking a sharp left turn, when I had to throw myself on the breaks. There was a kid in the middle of the street.
I hadn’t seen him that clearly before. He was probably around 6, maybe 7 years old. Wearing a plain black shirt and a pair of light blue canvas pants. Short black hair, dark eyes, and no shoes. That particular detail stuck with me. No shoes? Why?
I almost lost control, but I was lucky. There wasn’t much traffic, and I managed to stop further down the road. There were black lines in the pavement from my screeching tires swerving back and forth. Regaining my composure, I looked in the rear-view mirror.
The kid was gone.

But that was just the start.
I’d spot him every now and then. Looking out the window at work. At the gas station. A passing face in the crowd when shopping for groceries. Every now and then, something would pull on my attention, forcing me to whip my head around, looking for the source of that ill feeling crawling up my spine. Sometimes I saw him. And even worse – sometimes I didn’t.
I remember lying awake at night, hearing moths tap against my window. There was nothing else. Nothing outside. I patrolled my apartment six times, checking every window. I’d looked everywhere, and there was no reason for me to feel the way I did. I was growing paranoid.
And yet, in the morning, my front door was unlocked, and slightly open.

It all came to a head one afternoon when I was out on my smoke break. I’d barely slept for the past three nights, and you could kinda tell I was having a bad day. As I stood there, leaning against the side door of the diner, I see the kid again. This time just across the road, maybe 50 feet or so away. I’d had enough. This had to end.
I was furious. I stormed forward, calling him out with every slur and curse I could think of. I was psyching myself up. I was in the right, and I refused to be harassed anymore – kid or not. Didn’t matter. I crossed the road, barely dodging a speeding jeep, and met him face-to-face.
“What the hell do you want?!” I’d yell. “Why are you following me?!”
He was completely expressionless. He didn’t even flinch, no matter how much I pointed or screamed. I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes, and he didn’t even blink. He just stared at me, like a porcelain doll head on a swivel.

I wasn’t thinking about the bystanders though. A couple of middle-aged men stepped up, asking in no kind terms what the hell was wrong with me. I was held back and restrained. Someone called the police. Someone else called my manager – I’d forgotten to take off my apron, so they could see the diner logo. A couple of people filmed it. One of the videos got like 120k views in a day before it fell off the map. I still see it as a react gif sometimes.
It was a disaster. After a couple of officers came by to talk to me, he’d just disappeared into thin air. The officers took me down to the station – not to detain me, but to get me away from the heated crowd. That car ride downtown sobered me up to what the hell was going on. I was being stalked by this kid, but there wasn’t a living soul out there that would believe me.
Well, maybe one.
Maybe.

I was asked a couple of questions and released within about half an hour. They told me to go home and sleep this whole thing off. That wouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t have a job to go back to anyway, according to the (many) texts I’d gotten. I had all the goddamn time in the world.
I was just about to leave when something came to mind. The two officers who’d picked me up were still waiting by their car when I turned back to them.
“Sorry, you picked up the guy I called in about at the diner, right?” I asked.
“Sure did.”
“You got any idea what happened to him?”
The two looked at one another for a moment, shrugged, and turned to me.
“Didn’t have any ID and gave a fake name. I think they took him to psych.”
“Psych?”
“Well, he was saying some, uh… strange things. There were interviews with a, uh…”
The two quieted down and flashed me a smile.
“There’s not that much we can say.”

Coming home, I decided to get to the root of this. It didn’t take me that long to find the place where the guy’d been taken; there aren’t a lot of mental health facilities in this part of the country. Especially facilities that accept involuntary subjects.
But my eyes kept drifting back to the strange dollar bills he’d given me, resting neatly on my nightstand. They were so detailed. A bit old, sure, but that only made them seem more genuine. What the hell was he doing with a handful of clearly fake dollar bills? Like, what’s the purpose? There had to be a purpose.
That unnerved me.

I managed to arrange a meeting. It wasn’t easy, and I think a lot of it boiled down to the police having no idea what could make this guy talk. For some reason, he kept providing them with false information. Maybe a familiar face, for one reason or another, might make him talk.
Just a couple of days later, I was putting my items in a metal bowl on the second floor at a mental health institute in the next town over. I asked one of the nurses if I could keep one of my dollar bills. Apparently, that was okay.
I was shuffled through a couple of locked doors and escorted to an off-white side-room. No décor, no locks. The guy was already there.

He’d been dressed down into these neutral eggshell-white garbs. It was strange seeing him in a lit-up room like this. I didn’t know what to expect.
Getting a closer look at him, he was probably in his 50’s. It’d been hard to tell earlier. I couldn’t get over just how pale he was; it was almost a complete lack of pigment. It looked sickly. His thin arms didn’t help – he looked malnourished. And yet, he was smiling.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello to you too,” I smiled. “You doing okay?”
“I’m… I’m pretty good,” he nodded. “Thank you.”
I sat down across from him and took out the dollar bill he’d given me.
“I wanted to ask you about this.”
“For the bacon,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, was that not enough?”
“No, it’s…”
I took a moment to compose myself. I had too many questions.

He sighed, took the bill, and looked it over. Looking back at me, I could tell there was something painful stirring in his mind. His smile slowly faded.
“Sorry,” he said. “I try to forget sometimes. It’s easier than making sense of it.”
“Let’s start with something simple,” I nodded. “Like… your name. Where you’re from.”
“Those things are pretty far from simple.”
He was looking straight through me; his eyes sinking back to deeper, more uncomfortable thoughts.

His name was Samuel, and he was born around these parts in back in the 1970’s. He’d worked as a telecommunications specialist out of St. Cloud back in the 90's. He had a wife, three children, and a four-bedroom house.
“But it… that was all before, see?” he explained. “Then it all just…”
“Just what?” I asked. “What happened?”
He looked at me, opening and closing his mouth, looking for the right words to come out. Nothing happened. He shook his head, trying again.
“It started with the street preachers,” he said. “Hundreds of them, marching on every city. All saying the same doomsday shit as always. World was dying. All coming to an end.”
“I haven’t seen anything like that.”
“Then there were storms,” he continued without skipping a beat. “Some would last for weeks. Others longer. Entire cities would be flooded or torn apart. Earthquakes causing monster waves along the east coast, sending shockwaves all the way to mainland Europe. Then, Yellowstone.”
“Yellowstone?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Lights out.”

Samuel was painting this apocalyptic vision of a world undone. Catastrophe after catastrophe. Hooded people marching the streets, screaming for the mercy of a mad god. But there was more to it.
“Then things stopped making sense. It’s as if the rules changed,” he continued. “Roads would stop leading home. Trees would change color. People turned twisted and corrupted. Like… one of our neighbors couldn’t eat anything but gunpowder. There was a woman just down the street who tried to kill anyone wearing glasses. It was… pandemonium.”
I didn’t say anything. What he was saying didn’t make any sense, but he was trying his best to keep his rambling coherent.
“The plants died. Trees too. The only thing that could grow in that environment were these twisted blue things that popped up out of nowhere. But people… people are what got twisted the most.”
He told me of these towering 7-foot-tall humanoid creatures that roamed the forests. Black as night – not even reflecting light. Arms reaching all the way to their knees. Elongated, inhuman things that all used to be someone he knew.

“The doomsayers all said the same thing,” he continued. “That God was a scared little boy, and that he was dying. Everything that was happening was just an expression of that ceaseless, bottomless, existential grief.”
Samuel looked back and forth, finally burying his face in his hands.
“It all broke down. Roads stopped leading anywhere. No power. No water. Julie changed. Ollie changed. Tobie made himself a mask and wandered off into the woods. Ira just… disappeared. And for… years? Has it been years? It’s just been me.”
“But you’re here, now,” I said. “And what you’re describing, it… it didn’t happen.”
“It happened,” he insisted. “Just not… here. But here.”
He tapped his finger on the single dollar bill.
“Somewhere, somehow, I must’ve taken a wrong turn. I slipped through something broken, and now I’m here. And… and he’s coming to bring me back. He doesn’t want anyone to leave.”
“Who?”
“Just! Just…” he chuckled. “Just a sad little boy who’s been told he’s going to die.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just sat with him for a while, holding his hand.

Before I left, Samuel got up from his chair. He looked at me, forcing himself to smile.
“If I go back, I’ll try not to… to be like them. I’ll try. And… and I’ll be the one to say something.”
He let out a painful little laugh, shaking his head.
“Maybe just a… hello.”

I left that day with more questions than answers. I couldn’t picture the world he’d lived through. Then again, how could it be true? None of it had happened. But what was he gaining from lying about it?
That was the last time I saw Samuel. A few days later, he went missing, as if he’d disappeared into thin air. I didn’t know what to think of it. There was nothing on the cameras – no one entering or leaving the building. No quick escapes, no clever plans. He’d just walked into his room and disappeared. Nothing left but a couple of moths fluttering about.
And for a while, that was it. That was the end of the story. I got busy looking for a new job, and all the little items given to me by Samuel was put away into a little box in my glove compartment. Life soldiered on, and no matter how many questions I had, there was no one around to answer them. Even the strange kid that’d been following me was, seemingly, gone.

A couple of months later, I was driving home from a friend’s place. I stopped at a four-way street, waiting for a couple of trucks to pass, when there was a knock on the passenger side window. I almost choked on my own spit. Scared me half to death.
Looking out, I could see that kid again. I hadn’t seen him for some time, and I quickly bounced between curiosity and downright anger.
“What do you want?” I yelled out.
There was no response. Instead, the door just opened. It’d been locked. As he opened the door, he pointed to the glove box.
“You want his things?” I asked. “Is that it?”
He nodded. I wanted to lash out, but there was something telling me I shouldn’t. Instead, I reached over, opened the glove compartment, and pointed to the box.
“Just take it and leave me alone,” I said. “Get it over with.”

He reached in and grabbed the box. So much effort for a couple of mementos. I turned my head back to face the road. The kid backed out. But of course, I had to get the last word in.
“Not even a thank you, huh?”
That made him pause. He looked at me, tilting his head. As he opened his mouth to speak, a moth fluttered out. Then another. And another.
Then – darkness.

What happened next is hard to describe. My memory of it is fragmented. It’s like trying to watch a buffering video, where long stretches of it are just nothing – but you know something was supposed to happen in-between.
Blink. I was sitting in my car. There was a dark blue sky. No clouds, no stars. Figures in the distance. An open field with blue flowers bending to a howling wind. A powerful stench of ammonia stinging my nostrils. Something to my immediate left, ripping the car door straight off the hinges.
Blink. Running. Ruins of a town. It seemed familiar, but there was barely anything left. My leg was bleeding. I was being followed. No matter where I turned, or where I ran, I seemed to end up at the same intersection.
Blink. A three-story building, brimming with life. Glimpses of arm-long antennae through the broken windows. Clickety-clack of bursting wings tapping against crumbling concrete. A loud warning shriek as something rubs its legs together; a call for prey.
Blink. Hiding in a tipped-over trash container. The rain has stopped in mid-air. Raindrops held in indefinite suspension. I suck water drops out of the air to quench my thirst. My hands are shaking from the blood loss.

Countless little images. Some in order, some not. I have no idea how much time passed. In the moment, it must’ve been much longer than I can remember. Days. Weeks, even. There’s no way to tell.
Blink. Walking through a barren field. It feels like walking through a dead forest, but there are no trees. Only those willingly impaled and wailing.
Blink. An abandoned booth by a broken highway. A sign offers phone calls, in exchange for “real teeth”. There are six sizes of pliers hanging on a wall within. All are bloodied – even the small ones.
Blink. The church that had burned down the night before had reappeared. The people inside, too. They couldn’t leave. Tonight, they would burn again.

Somewhere in this nightmarish puzzle-pieced fragment of nothing, there was a constant drive in me to get away. To get out. I knew that if I’d gotten there, I could get back home again. I just had no idea how. Maybe finding the kid. Asking. Begging. Something.
The last fragment of memory from that space was being cornered in a cellar. They were banging on the door. I’d tipped over a wardrobe to keep them out, but they weren’t going to stop. They were never going to stop. I couldn’t let them kill me again – not like that.
One of the Changed ones were coming. I don’t know what that means, or how I know the name, but I knew of it. There was a mirror, and I could see the signs. It stepped out. Seven feet tall, black as night. Elongated arms and neck. Barely a body at all – just a void space vaguely shaped like the remnants of a person.
Except this one felt… familiar. It was the first one to speak.
“H E L L O.”

Blink. Running. A cold hand. If I squeezed too hard, my fingers went straight through it. I had to keep up. He was showing me something.
Blink. They were flooding over the school bus, tipping it by their sheer numbers. Eruptions from the sewer grates. They were famished.
Blink. An open field. Sunflowers facing me, no matter where I turn. It’s not far.
Blink. I look back, as I’m pushed over the edge. He looks just like the rest of them. They aren’t angered by his betrayal.
They feel nothing, as I fall.

In February of 2017, I was found by the side of the road. I’d been gone for months. My car was too. I came back with nothing but the clothes on my back and countless scars. I’ve been told that I didn’t make any sense at first; I was just rambling nonsense. Or maybe it just sounded like nonsense to these people.
Over time, I forgot more and more of these fragmented images. And the less I remember, the more I can move on. Still, I’ve written them down over time, and they paint an ugly, insane picture of what I’d been going through. Some of which I, myself, have a hard time believing. Then again, I know myself well enough to see that there’s no point in lying.

I haven’t seen Samuel, or that strange kid ever since. I think this is all over, for now. There’s nothing left for me to give.
But even now, years later, I still wake up to that feeling at night. That there’s something wrong, or that I’m forgetting something. That there’s something near that I’m looking straight through, or past.
And every now and then, I hear the flutter of a moth’s wing, tapping against my bedroom window.
And I think I know what it wants.
It wants me to go back.
submitted by Saturdead to nosleep [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:25 Aiming4Gaming0 30 GREATEST Changes In V Rising 1.0 Release You Might Have Missed

30 GREATEST Changes In V Rising 1.0 Release You Might Have Missed
https://preview.redd.it/rtx5qsp0591d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d94be54b8f00bf9da4acc2fc6226ecf95c9755e
V Rising 1.0 release has brought a lot of new awesome stuff. That’s why I’ve prepared 30 most important changes that might interest you, short and simple.
This is Aiming4Gaming, and today we're aiming for a feature checking!

TL;DR

I know that some people prefer watching videos over reading text guides. If you're one of them, here's a video version of this guide where I describe each new feature in action.
If you prefer text guides, it's right below!

The guide

  1. First and foremost, if you ever thought the difficulty was too easy, try out the new Brutal mode. Bosses here have bigger health pools, higher levels, and deal more damage, which I personally dislike. However, every boss now has a new move and an adjusted AI. I swear you'll never forget the Vincent fight!
  2. If you were struggling with initial resource farming, it has been tweaked. You will get much more wood and stone from a single node, allowing you to get to battles faster, especially if you drink worker blood!
  3. Horses also got a small yet important change: they now consume easily obtainable fiber instead of waterskins, making it easier to manage mounts early on.
  4. Speaking of consumables, they now last 60 minutes. Less crafting is always better, right?
  5. Another important Quality of Life addition is that after you consume a potion, you will not consume the bottle itself. Even less crafting, yay!
  6. Now you can build advanced stations. These process items faster than normal ones, have more inventory space, and more recipes. You can unlock them by defeating specific V Blood enemies.
  7. A new era of storage has arrived with both small and large storage for literally everything, from scrolls to fish. Place these next to your stations or build a storage room for all resources at once.
  8. This feature shines even more with the addition of hotkeys that allow you to sort your inventory or quickly transfer everything by simply pressing the "E" key.
  9. Another huge addition is inventory highlighting. It's so much easier now to see what can be transferred to a specific storage or what you can add to an existing stack!
  10. A new source of valuables now travels around the map in the form of traveling carts. These are guarded by several soldiers but are totally worth it. Carts come in different variants and follow the same routes, so you can farm them from time to time.
  11. The new zone awaits for an infinite challenge. It does not have any base plots but offers world events instead. These events require you to beat two spots with enemies and one boss fight, which come in two difficulties and reward you with powerful weapons, jewels, and shards.
  12. Speaking of shards, this is a new currency which you can spend on weapons, summon enemies in the new summoning circle, or unlock passive buffs.
  13. There are 18 passive buffs, all unlockable once you defeat General Elena the Hollow and build an Altar of Stygian Awakening. Each buff is permanent, but the cost is a lot of shards from the new zone. I recommend the passive that boosts damage against V Blood enemies by 10%!
  14. New forged items progression makes your weapons much more viable. You can enhance your favorite ancestral weapon with various regular weapons and increase its level by 3 up to 26.
  15. For those seeking rare gear and weapons, V Rising offers 12 new legendary weapons with unique effects and solid stats. These can be dropped by high-level bosses or occasionally appear instead of purple weapons when you buy them for 1500 greater shards. These look really cool!
  16. If you want a new battle experience, try out two new weapons: a longbow and a whip. I'm currently running with a longbow on Brutal and it's amazing!
  17. The old magic progression was kind of awkward and limited, so now you can choose your own path by getting spell points and spending them as you wish. You can always reset your choice for free at the Altar of Recollection.
  18. To make your build even more flexible, check out the new sets of armor. They cover different passives and will supplement your playstyle.
  19. If you like a specific piece of gear, you can keep it in your fashion slot regardless of what you wear. And definitely try recoloring your gear!
  20. Spells heavily rely on jewels, which grant some awesome effects. The new tier 4 with 4 effects means even more power for your favorite setup.
  21. To spice it up even more, the game offers a new blood type: Draculin. This is particularly great in the new zone where you might want to bite more enemies.
  22. If you're a fan of shapeshifting, the new spider form will please you. Try hiding underground for a surprise attack without fear of the sun! Nice!
  23. If you remember bags from Gloomrot, forget about them. Now you can craft and equip only one bag at a time. The better the bag, the more it offers! More storage slots, more silver to carry, and even more resource yield! Awesome!
  24. Soul Shards were also reworked in the latest update. You cannot keep them indefinitely anymore, as they decay over time. To restore them, you must farm the new area.
  25. V Bloods have undergone a rework in terms of rewards to reflect new stations, spell points, and craftables.
  26. To make your battles more controllable, the devs have added new aim assist.
  27. New bosses were added as well, including the mighty Dracula himself. I won't spoil the fight, but be prepared for the toughest battle you’ve ever seen in V Rising!
  28. All veils now have a leech effect to balance them out. The difference will be in additional effects and jewel features.
  29. Dying now reduces your blood pool by 10 percent instead of losing your precious blood completely. This is a huge change and a must for Brutal mode, where you will die a lot!
  30. And finally, a couple of achievements! I love them! They give you a decent goal to achieve, nice!

Conclusion

I hope with this guide you have achieved what you were aiming for today!
Also, here's the list with all my guides for reference:
  1. 30 GREATEST Changes In V Rising 1.0 Release You Might Have Missed
  2. 27 BEST Base Locations in V Rising 1.0 Release
  3. 5 Tips To Get the BEST Start in V Rising 1.0 In 60 Seconds
  4. 5 Reasons To LOVE Bear Form In V Rising
  5. Top 10 V Rising Tips in 1 Minute
  6. 40 ADVANCED Tips in V Rising (2023)
  7. 15 BEST Base Locations in V Rising (2023)
  8. How To Farm ALL Resources in V Rising (2023)
Anyway, thank you for reading up to this point, and see you later! 🌟
submitted by Aiming4Gaming0 to vrising [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:25 ExpressionGeneral418 Why am I now a wreck when I wanted this all along?

First of all, I’d like to preface this story with a piece I wrote in my journal 2 months ago while still in my relationship.
Here it is:
I’m almost 30M, and wonder how you would deal with this situation?
Backstory: I didn’t have my first girlfriend or even sex until age 20. I was very sheltered when I was younger and shy. I also moved several times so never got the chance to meet girls from social circles. I had almost a 2 year long distance relationship from age 20-22 (seeing each other in person only a few times a year). Well that didn’t work out and it devastated me. I did truly love that girl and she was also my first so it took 3 years to get over.
In that time following the relationship, I slept with more than 10 people, gained experience, and eventually found another girlfriend in person at age 25. That ended at age 26, but was off and on until age 27. It ended for good reason, because it was a tumultuous relationship with a lot of fun, but also arguments. She was super attractive which made it hard to let her go even though I knew it had to be done.
Following that relationship, I yet again worked on myself, dated and slept around, and eventually met my current girlfriend midway through age 28. It was one of those situations where you start out just hanging out and eventually see each other every week… then the question of “what are we happens”… I went along with it even though my eyes were still peeled.
Well now, I’m almost 30, a few months away and I’m scared. A part of me feels like I missed a part of my youth and I’ll never find that stunner I’ve always looked for. Being sheltered all my life and not meeting anyone via social circle messes with me emotionally. I’ve dated beautiful woman, but it’s not like I can change time and go back to 25 again and date around 20 year olds… right?
I also moved to a completely different state and started a new life 2 years ago. But every day I think about my last relationship and the life I used to live in that state. “The good old days” I like to say. I have a new life now and good situation, but a part of me feels lost.
That’s what I wrote back in March. I knew I had a good situation, a very stable relationship and job, but I almost felt like I was still unfulfilled. Mostly because I never really experienced the kind of girls that truly interest me I guess? I hate to sound superficial, but if you read below it will make further sense. It wasn’t all about looks. While she was nice and sweet, she was rather boring and didn’t banter with me.
So fast forward the story to today, my recent ex broke up with me a few weeks ago. We had been dating about a year and a half.
I met her about a year and a half after that toxic relationship to a really manipulative, yet attractive girl I talked about above. This new relationship was the complete opposite, almost to the point of being cringey. She was really loving but it was almost overwhelming. She also was not as atractive as my last gf in terms of looks. Not unattractive by any means, but I certainly didn’t feel super proud walking around with her or introducing her to people. For much of the early part of meeting this new girl, I did still constantly think of the toxic ex and compare, but I was ready for something new and thought I was so far removed from the last relationship - I went along with it.
Anyway, Eventually she asked if I would be her bf at about the 3 month point after meeting. At first I was apprehensive of the idea because I wasn’t sure about committing and if I wanted to keep “searching.” I got to the point that I was done with hunting as I had tried tirelessly to find someone for over a year. She was a great girl but I wasn’t sold on a full on relationship. Instead of being excited to be official like I was in past relationships, with her I was hoping for more a fwb situation like it was the first 3 months. But I decided to go along with it. I told her I still wanted to be able to approach or work on social skills with other girls even if just plutonicly. I didn’t do that and did commit. Fast forward another several months and the I love you statement came up. I wasn’t entirely sure about how I felt but I again went along with it, even though I didn’t actually feel it at at the time.
This gf was a very loving, loyal, committed gf, and did anything for me. Unfortunately I didn’t really find her incredibly magnetizing. She was cute, but not crazy attractive in my eye. Like I mentioned above, I didn’t feel that proud feeling when going out.
I found that taking pictures with her also made me unsure. The first couple weeks of hanging out we never took pics. And then I took a picture with her and looked at it and was repulsed. When she would send me pictures of her with with her family, I didn’t like what she sent. Maybe she’s just not photogenic and actually good in person, but whenever she would send me a photo or FaceTime me I’d get turned off.
Also, the fact that she was so wholesome, it didn’t allow for much banter. Conversations were mostly plutonic, where I’m more of the sarcastic type.
She always wanted to pull out the calendar and schedule plans months in advance every week, even after telling her I prefered being spontaneous. She did all of these crazy google calendar overlays and I felt like I was always being sucked into things I didn’t want to do. She became more clingy than I had realized when I first met her. She asked me about 3 months ago, if we could spend not just weekends together, but also Wednesday nights. (We lived just over an hour apart). I suggested it could be every other week (the opposite)…I didn’t like going to her place because of the road noise where she lived and I would really only see her when she would visit me. I know, all of this sounds really one sided and like I’m an asshole. But I was very loving to her in person and she knows that, hence why it lasted so long.
Unfortunately a lot of things she did turned me off. She was too readily available, always trying to lock up my calendar, talk about marriage and kids in the next 3-5 years and I felt trapped. I was unsure.
We had great sex but it wasn’t crazy passionate, neither was our kissing. When alone, and was feeling aroused, I generally didn’t think of my ex. I constantly found myself checking out other girls places I went (but never talked to them). I felt like wow I wish that was the kind of girl I was with.
It wasn’t all bad though. The sex was phenomenal in terms of the movements. She made $100k plus which is phenomenal for someone at 24, but also had over $100k in student loans. With her wanting to get married within 5 years, I considered those loans as a big issue. She was super loving and would have been a great mother.
In the end she left me. She said we weren’t compatible. I have been a wreck and now I’m wishing I had her. Maybe not for the right reasons though?
I’m trying to figure out why if I wanted to end things myself and that I felt trapped for so long, how come all of a sudden I want her back? Is it just the void of not having someone loyal who’s there for me? The loss of a potential good wife and mother? Who can make plans and bake me things? The fear of not meeting someone as smart? She’s already talking to other guys and I’m just a wreck and need some advice. I can’t go an hour without thinking of her. I think I need to rewire the way I am thinking. I can’t stop thinking that maybe I made a mistake and should have put in more effort, but I feel like if I truly loved/had that spark for her I would have tried more all along. I would have been excited to make plans with her instead of going a week at a time seeing her. Now all I want to do is see her. Should I have stayed in it and worked harder? Are my standards too high? I feel like my first ex and my recent one were so polar opposite. One had the looks and I thought of her when thinking of sex but was toxic and the other was sweet but not as attractive. It even got to the point that to feel emotion, I had to finish inside her. Which did help.
At the time of the breakup, I tried very hard to tell her how I was looking forward to making a fun summer filled with plans together. Just 2 weeks prior she was about it. Now nothing. It’s been total silence on the other end for weeks. I know she loved me more than any guy.
Do you think this was a good thing this happened? How do I rewrire my brain? She was my only friend. This was a relationship that I went into going through the motions, and even a couple weeks before we broke up I wrote that journal entry / question that I shared above. What is going on?
submitted by ExpressionGeneral418 to BreakUps [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:02 Klokinator The Cryopod to Hell 560: Ancient Domains

Author note: The Cryopod to Hell is a Reddit-exclusive story with over three years of editing and refining. As of this post, the total rewrite is 2,182,000+ words long! For more information, check out the link below:
What is the Cryopod to Hell?
Join the Cryoverse Discord server!
Here's a list of all Cryopod's chapters, along with an ePub/Mobi/PDF version!
Want to stay up to date on TCTH? Subscribe to Cryopodbot!
...................................
(Previous Part)
(Part 001)
"Hell yeah, I wanna go exploring." Jason says to Calanthra with a smile. "How do we navigate around Ripspace though? Traveling to other galaxies is going to take billions of years, right? Surely, there's a shortcut."
"Ripspace is not as it seems." Calanthra explains, gesturing grandly to the epic sight before them. "It is a connection between the past and the present; the near and far. The further away or the further back you want to travel, the higher the price you will have to pay."
Jason's smile vanishes. "Wait... you can use Ripspace to travel back in time?!"
"No." Calanthra clarifies. "Time is linear. We cannot travel through it. Some can slow it down or speed it up. A rare few can even pause it for a short while. But moving forward and backward is impossible. Countless have attempted to do so over the eons, but all have failed."
She looks at Jason meaningfully. "Many Rulers would wipe out galaxies if it might let them obtain such a power. The fact they still haven't proves it is impossible."
Jason nods slowly. "I won't lie. I have a lot of regrets. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and save my daughter from dying."
"Everyone has regrets." Calanthra muses, looking off into the distance. "I have plenty, myself. But it's better this way. There would be pandemonium if time travel ever became possible."
She pauses before continuing with her explanation. "While we cannot go back in time, we can look back into time. Pinpointing exact moments in history is difficult, to say the least, but it is possible to use Ripspace to search for key moments in intergalactic history."
"So it's like a massive seer-stone." Jason muses aloud. "But wait, didn't you imply earlier that you used Ripspace to travel to the Milky Way from Andromeda? How does it allow you to jump between galaxies? Are other species using Ripspace for intergalactic travel?"
"You can indeed use Ripspace to travel to distant reaches of space." Calanthra explains. "But... you have to pay a certain price. Akasha's Barriers still protect every galaxy. Cosmics cannot travel between them easily. Mortals can, but the price we must pay is unimaginably steep. That is also the reason my mother perished not long after arriving in the Milky Way and giving birth to me."
The Fairy Monarch sighs softly.
"My people used the power of Ripspace to travel to several other galaxies. We were fortunate that the Creator had died, allowing us to take up residence here in secret, but the Angels, Titans, and Dragons were still a threat we could not overlook. Later, the Volgrim rose up too, and that was something that worried us for a while. Particularly when their Sentinels began to rapaciously erase the lives of innumerable Sentients."
She waves her hand. "Ultimately, very few galaxies didn't have a Ruler in power. Traveling to one that did meant flipping a coin and praying our people could avoid their gaze. Sadly, time has shown me that we were likely unsuccessful. I have lost contact with all my sisters across the cosmos."
The image of innumerable galaxies floating in the distance changes before Jason's eyes. Calanthra manipulates some unseen power, causing herself and Jason to suddenly materialize directly in front of a beautiful spiral galaxy.
"This is our Milky Way." Calanthra explains, waving her hand to conjure another, far bigger galaxy beside it. "And this is Andromeda."
"Is it just me or does Andromeda seem... brighter?" Jason asks.
"Andromeda contains far more interstellar particles, cosmic energy, and latent magical power than the Milky Way." Calanthra says. "Of course, in the ancient past, it had even more than it does now, but such is the way of entropy and Chaos."
Jason nods. "How exactly do galaxies lose power over time? Doesn't this feel self-defeating in a way?"
"Every Ruler enters the Unending War with a strategy." Calanthra says, motioning with her hands to disperse the galaxies and reveal images of ghostly creatures, some standing on two legs, some on four, and plenty that appear as mere blobs of energy. "I cannot pretend to know the thoughts of such high and mighty beings, especially as I am a mere mortal myself. Even so, I can definitively state that there are Rulers who seek to put as much galactic energy into their initial creations as possible, while others wish to adopt a more energy-efficient growth-model."
She pokes her finger against Jason's chest. "Take the angels and humans, for instance. The Creator poured the vast majority of his power into creating a galaxy full of Apex Cosmics. At their peak, the angels as a whole commanded enough power to flatten other galaxies. But what did they do instead? They fought with one another, killing themselves due to sheer boredom, if not outright ego."
"I see." Jason says, brushing Calanthra's finger away. "So the Creator dumped all the Milky Way's energy into the angels. I take it this is uncommon among Rulers?"
"Of course. It's a wasteful strategy and usually loses Rulers the War for that Eternity." Calanthra says dismissively. "The Timeless used a different strategy. She created the fairies as mere mortals that evolved over time, gaining greater and greater power through their own efforts. This meant that instead of devouring Andromeda's abundant Cosmic energy, they could slowly sap off its excess over time. For you see, the more energy a galaxy has, the more it can produce. If you ration it long enough, you can reap more of it across the duration of an Eternity."
"That makes sense." Jason concludes. "It's like a Rush build in an RTS versus an Economy build. You sacrifice long-term gains in exchange for short-term power. The problem is, with Akasha's Barriers preventing Rulers from attacking their enemies straight away, a Rush build is dumb because you're just wasting your resources and sacrificing Cosmic energy when you'll actually need it."
Calanthra blinks twice. She looks at Jason with a strange expression, then turns away for a moment, trying to understand the strange terms he's used. They mostly make sense, but some of them are a little...
She shakes her head and returns to the topic at hand. "Right. Rush strategy versus Economy. Of... course. Well, in any case, there is one advantage toward the first strategy. If you drain all the energy from your galaxy, it becomes less appealing for other Rulers to attack. Because Andromeda was so large and still filled with Cosmic power even billions of years after the Expansion Era, it stoked the hunger of the Dark Ones. Meanwhile, the Milky Way only needs to deal with the Plague, which is threatening for mortals, but manageable for Cosmics. In that respect, we've gotten off much luckier."
"I get the bigger picture now." Jason says with a nod. He turns to look back at the cosmos before him. "So, what about all this? Are we gonna go exploring, or what?"
"In order to explore the universe presented here, we would need to make sacrifices we cannot afford. I think you would find the price most disagreeable. But there is something we can explore freely..."
She waves her hand, and instantly, the brilliant and beautiful cosmic view of the universe vanishes.
In its place, Jason and Calanthra suddenly appear inside a dead, barren wasteland. Brown and grey dirt rises up in huge dunes stretching off into the distance. Fallen towers made of gold and stone lay on their sides, or stick into the ground, buried nearly up to their tops as they point diagonally toward the sky.
And speaking of the sky, it glows faintly grey, as if some weak, pale imitation of a star were trying to shine through a thin atmosphere clouded by dust and grime. The very air itself smells of sulfur and toxins, making Jason's nose curl up when he takes a breath.
"Ugh... what the hell? Where are we now?" Jason asks, as he turns and looks around at the dead world surrounding him.
"An Ancient Domain." Calanthra says softly. "A remnant of a dead universe. All life stripped away. All hope lost. Septillions of different Sentient species, gone. Their mortals, their Cosmics, reduced to dust by the Contraction."
The Wordsmith frowns. "This Ancient Domain represents a dead universe? But how can that be possible? If the Heat Death played out and all the galaxies faded to cosmic dust, then there already wouldn't be anything left. And then, if the entire universe collapsed into a singularity before exploding again, there definitely wouldn't be anything left behind resembling physical matter."
"You perceive reality through just three dimensions." Calanthra intones. "Time and space can be considered two dimensions. Cosmic Power is another dimension. I must admit I do not understand how Ancient Domains have continued to exist across countless Eternities, and I don't know how they retain a vaguely familiar form... but I can assure you that in spite of bending logic itself, they do exist and they can provide tangible benefits to those dedicated to exploring them."
"You've been exploring them, then?" Jason asks, turning away from the dead world to scrutinize Calanthra's phantasmal image.
"Me, a little. But often, I dispatch my descendants to scour these Ancient Domains for things of value. It may surprise you, but there are powerful artifacts, vengeful spirits, and all manner of other inter-dimensional horrors lurking within these so-called dead-lands."
Calanthra pauses. She shifts her posture to look at Jason deeply.
"And that is why I've brought you here, Jason. It's time for me to get down to the crux of the matter and breach the subject that I find most important."
He nods. "I'm listening."
"It's like this." Calanthra explains. "The Ancient Domains are unfathomably broad. Think of how large a universe is. Think of how many universes have existed. Think of how much space my people have yet to explore."
She pauses.
"The gains we have received have made my people stronger than you would expect. Among those gains are Yredelemnul's Eye and other leftover remnants of power that many dead ancient Rulers lost when their Existences became forfeit. While their tangible Existences may have perished, their spirits sometimes live on in these broad, unending dead universes..."
"That's why you approached me." Jason says, while crossing his arms and leaning on the ball of his heel. "You said you wanted an alliance with humanity. You... want humans to help you explore the Ancient Domains?"
"Trust is hard to come by among mortals, Cosmics, and Rulers." Calanthra says simply. "I never would have considered allying with the humans before, but you have shown me the broadness of your mind during the debate against your clone and the commander of your military. To some, you certainly appear naive, but to me I see an opportunity I would be foolish to ignore."
She continues. "The Fairies cannot reproduce efficiently. Every fairy we send into the Ancient Domain is one less fairy we have among our Empire. We already have a difficult time replenishing our numbers through the remaining Male Fairies, but do you think it is easy for us to reproduce with other species?"
Jason slowly shakes his head. "Blinker and Kar's children were all crocodiles, not fairies. From that, I can only imagine that most of the time, your mating attempts do not create more of yourselves, but instead more non-fairy children."
"That's exactly correct." Calanthra replies. "But that all changed recently when I found out one of your human males somehow spontaneously altered his genetic profile to become a fairy. There is no doubt about it; Samuel Baker harnesses all the capability to reproduce that you humans do, as well as the trueborn powers of any male fairy."
"So... are you seeking a marriage alliance with Samuel Baker?" Jason asks, scratching his head in confusion. "You could just ask him yourself, you know?"
"This is not about one man." Calanthra retorts. "Samuel Baker, if he were to join our ranks, would certainly help us stave off extinction for a while longer. But that is hardly worth all this melodrama and me taking you to the Ancient Domain in person..."
Jason's eyes widen in realization. "I see! You... you're thinking that if my magic could make one male fairy, I could surely make another, and another..."
"Yes, precisely." Calanthra says, revealing a beautiful smile. "Additionally, if humans were to assist us in scouring these Ancient Domains, we could make great gains together. There is plenty of room for another species to join ours in locating powerful artifacts and other items capable of Uplifting us."
"You want to become Cosmics still." Jason muses. "You haven't resigned yourselves to your current fate."
"Quite the opposite." Calanthra says. "The curse placed upon us is unbreakable by those beneath the realm of Ruler. As I said before, the fairies have lost this Eternity's war. However, while we cannot Ascend any longer, that does not mean the humans are subject to the same limitation. If we could groom a human into becoming the Milky Way's Ruler, we could finally break free of our shackles by virtue of having a powerful ally."
She pauses, looking meaningfully at the Wordsmith.
"If the Demons or the Volgrim were to become our Ruler, we would not enjoy such a benefit. At best, we would only maintain the status quo, and at worst, they might eradicate us out of fear of having an unsightly tumor in their midst."
"Haha." Jason laughs. "So you brought me here to show your sincerity. I get it. Well, I'm definitely not opposed to helping you. Blinker is my good friend. If she were to ask me, I'd definitely say yes to just about any request."
Jason turns away. He walks a few feet off to the side and pauses, standing to gaze out at the Ancient Domain and its endlessly rolling plains which stretches off into the infinite distance...
"Here's what I can do." Jason says. "My people are already working on laying out the options for humanity and where our fellow men and women will depart over the next few weeks. Some will travel to Maiura. Some will go to Sharmur. Some will stay on Tarus II. It's no trouble at all to put Pixiv on the list, especially as I was already planning to do that. I even have some other places I'd like to include, too..."
"Such as Camael's Cube?" Calanthra asks with a smile. "Or do you perhaps mean Chrona and Hope's Hall of Heroes?"
Jason nearly jumps out of his skin. He whirls around to look at Calanthra with shock in his eyes. "What?! How do you know about Chrona? How do you also know about where Hope has been hiding?? I don't even know that much!"
"For those who are talented in magic, it is possible to see through many lies and deceptions." Calanthra says calmly, unfazed by the alarm on Jason's face. "Your Spynet Sphere isn't so different from the many options I have at my disposal. I have many means to keep an eye on the galaxy. And while Diablo does not know exactly where or what Chrona is, he certainly knows of its general existence."
Her smile turns cold. "I would advise you not to take Unarin lightly either, Wordsmith. That ancient creature is more capable than you can imagine. He is hiding a great many secrets from the galaxy... secrets he does not know that I am aware of. If he were to learn of the true extent of my information web, I fear that he would dispatch a handful of High Psions to eliminate the fairy species tomorrow."
Calanthra's words truly rock Jason to his core. All along, he assumed the precautions he put on Chrona, precautions that fooled even Hope, would make his hidden dimension impossible to detect.
But how could he be so naive?
As the daughter of an Apex Cosmic, Calanthra must have her means, and that likely means Unarin and Diablo aren't too far behind either.
"Shit." Jason curses, lowering his head as a flicker of anger smolders in his heart. "I was too complacent. Chrona isn't secure, which means it's only a matter of time before more Cosmics learn of its existence. How long before they can find its exact location and invade it?"
"Calm yourself, child." Calanthra says soothingly. "The situation is not that dire. After all, Chrona still exists within a highly accelerated timespace. Any biological entity that wishes to travel there could suffer severe after-effects. Furthermore, the entities born inside will be too adapted to living within a higher dimension, so they won't pose much threat to the creatures of realspace."
She waves her hand. "Let's move on, Jason. I want to discuss other matters before dying of old age."
The Wordsmith cools himself off. He inhales deeply, then returns his attention to her.
"Alright. What next, then?"
"Fairies are not the only Sentients capable of entering Ancient Domains." Calanthra explains. "There are others who rarely appear inside here. That is why exploring these domains can be dangerous. The good news is that Cosmics have little need to enter these barren lands, as most of the heritages, treasures, and other such gains you might find inside are only useful to mortals. There are exceptions, but they are so rare as to be a needle found within ten million haystacks. A waste of effort better spent simply progressing one's Cosmic power the ordinary way."
"So what you're saying is, when you send fairies into an Ancient Domain, they can die as a result of crossing paths with Sentients from other galaxies." Jason concludes. "But if you had an army of humans to enter with you, your people would be a lot safer."
"Safety in numbers, yes. And you humans are... uniquely advantaged in Ancient Domain exploration." Calanthra says mysteriously. "Before that, though... do you know what the Power of Imagination is, Wordsmith?"
Jason raises an eyebrow. "Imagination? Like the mental ability to visualize stuff in your head? Yeah. It's not that complicated to understand."
"Ah, that's where you're wrong." Calanthra chides gently. "Imagination is the key to magical power. Imagination, Conception, Visualization, these are all key capabilities powerful maguses and sorcerors use to uplift their capabilities! And as it turns out, most Sentients are actually quite terrible at conceptualizing thoughts into imagery."
She gestures grandly. "Just take the Volgrim! You may think they are a powerful Sentient species, but in fact the Volgrim have terrible imaginations. They are stodgy, dull, and lack a great deal of creativity. All the gains their Technopaths make through technology are developed via brute force. They slowly improve their technological prowess by minute fractions over long periods of time, eventually resulting in a large and cohesive buildup."
"At the same time, the Psions Uplift themselves through meditation and sitting motionless for thousands of years at a time. Can a species capable of such incredible feats of drudgery also possess limitless imagination? I think not."
"Maybe the reason they're able to sit still for so long is because they live in their imagination?" Jason posits. "In which case their power of imagination should be quite formidable, right?"
"Possible, but unlikely." Calanthra says with a wave of her hand. "Never mind that. The point I'm trying to make is that humans have an extremely high affinity for magic. If your people were to ally with mine, we could teach you our ways. You could help us through your Wordsmithing and superior genetics, creating more fairies and humans alike. This would create a recursive cycle that would continually bolster both our species to greater and greater heights!"
She lowers her voice back to normal. "An alliance with humanity would have other benefits. You humans are equally adept in technology and magic both. You are versatile, capable of learning any skill provided you have time to devote to your studies. The bursts of inspiration you receive also allow you to make large jumps in capability as well, which could mean that in a relatively short period, you might even be capable of challenging the Volgrim."
Jason nods. "That does sound tempting, Calanthra. I'm willing to help you, but I won't demand my people join the fairies. It would be better if those who were the most interested did so instead."
Calanthra playfully twirls a finger through her hair. "Well. My daughters are all beautiful. Perhaps you should make mention that the fairies are... aggressively interested in copulation?"
"COUGH COUGH!" Jason wheezes, taking a step back as he asses her bold choice of words. "Yeah! Uh, I can probably- I'll let everyone know about that too. Obviously!"
Calanthra chuckles. "Such a cute boy. Well, it seems I've accomplished what I wanted. Let's return for now. You can always pay Ripspace a visit later."
"I will." Jason says, nodding seriously. "Waypoint."
Calanthra raises an eyebrow. "You think you can return here without a Ruler's power?"
"Won't know unless I try." Jason smiles back.
...
Not long after, Jason and Calanthra emerge back into Realspace. He shivers as he feels the Eye of Yredelemnul fixating on him from behind, but Calanthra quickly reactivates the Formation of Light, sending the sliver of a Ruler back to the shadows so it can no longer interact with the physical world.
"You know, Jason." Calanthra says. "You are a Candidate. You have the capability to become a Ruler someday."
"I am?" Jason asks, before thinking back to a conversation in the past. "Oh yeah, someone did mention that to me before. But... eh. I don't know. Becoming a Ruler sounds awful."
"Awful?" Calanthra asks. "How so?"
"It seems... lonely." Jason says, his voice softening. He looks at the space between the four statues, where Yredelemnul's Eye has disappeared. "Imagine all your loved ones dying, but you're stuck behind, living through the end of an Eternity, which takes trillions of years before Heat Death finally eradicates everything. Then comes the next Eternity, where you can remake your species again... but it won't be the same. Even if you remake your loved ones, it won't really be them."
Jason lowers and shakes his head. "That sort of life doesn't suit me."
"I understand why you'd think that way." Calanthra says. "In fact, you are suffering from the same affliction that plagues all Candidates who began their Existences as Biologicals. We have too many ties to the mortal world, so the majority of Biologicals who ascend to the rank of Ruler... fall to their non-biological opponents."
"As for the things which are not biological..." Calanthra says, looking at Jason with disgust. "You should already know what they are."
"Highly evolved Artificial Intelligences?" Jason guesses.
"That's right." Calanthra affirms. "There are several tiers of power a superintelligence can possess. The Volgrim have taken great care to prevent anything above a Beta Core from forming in the Milky Way, but once, a long time ago... they made a huge mess by accidentally creating the Milky Way's first Alpha Core Synthmind."
Calanthra chuckles. "The stupid fools didn't only create an Alpha Core, they gave it autonomy in the hopes it would be able to stop the wars between their factions. They built indestructible bipedal bodies for its splintered intelligences, and called them... Sentinels. Luckily, they were able to defeat the Alpha Core before it ascended further, but countless other biological species have failed at that juncture, creating an Alpha Core that ultimately devoured the full power of their galaxy for itself."
A chill trickles down Jason's spine. "You're saying the vast majority of Rulers are actually Alpha Core AIs? AIs that control entire galaxies?!"
"No, Jason." Calanthra counters. "Alpha Cores can defeat advanced civilizations. But there is one Existence higher than an Alpha Core, a tier that can only be reached once it has swallowed the power of a galaxy."
"That would be an Omega Core. a sentient artificial intelligence that has become Ruler over one or more galaxies. And in Akasha's game, more than 90% of all Rulers are estimated to be these superior lifeforms."
"It is for that reason that these highly adaptable entities are known as The Evolved."
submitted by Klokinator to HFY [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:02 Klokinator Cryopod Refresh 560: Ancient Domains

"Hell yeah, I wanna go exploring." Jason says to Calanthra with a smile. "How do we navigate around Ripspace though? Traveling to other galaxies is going to take billions of years, right? Surely, there's a shortcut."
"Ripspace is not as it seems." Calanthra explains, gesturing grandly to the epic sight before them. "It is a connection between the past and the present; the near and far. The further away or the further back you want to travel, the higher the price you will have to pay."
Jason's smile vanishes. "Wait... you can use Ripspace to travel back in time?!"
"No." Calanthra clarifies. "Time is linear. We cannot travel through it. Some can slow it down or speed it up. A rare few can even pause it for a short while. But moving forward and backward is impossible. Countless have attempted to do so over the eons, but all have failed."
She looks at Jason meaningfully. "Many Rulers would wipe out galaxies if it might let them obtain such a power. The fact they still haven't proves it is impossible."
Jason nods slowly. "I won't lie. I have a lot of regrets. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and save my daughter from dying."
"Everyone has regrets." Calanthra muses, looking off into the distance. "I have plenty, myself. But it's better this way. There would be pandemonium if time travel ever became possible."
She pauses before continuing with her explanation. "While we cannot go back in time, we can look back into time. Pinpointing exact moments in history is difficult, to say the least, but it is possible to use Ripspace to search for key moments in intergalactic history."
"So it's like a massive seer-stone." Jason muses aloud. "But wait, didn't you imply earlier that you used Ripspace to travel to the Milky Way from Andromeda? How does it allow you to jump between galaxies? Are other species using Ripspace for intergalactic travel?"
"You can indeed use Ripspace to travel to distant reaches of space." Calanthra explains. "But... you have to pay a certain price. Akasha's Barriers still protect every galaxy. Cosmics cannot travel between them easily. Mortals can, but the price we must pay is unimaginably steep. That is also the reason my mother perished not long after arriving in the Milky Way and giving birth to me."
The Fairy Monarch sighs softly.
"My people used the power of Ripspace to travel to several other galaxies. We were fortunate that the Creator had died, allowing us to take up residence here in secret, but the Angels, Titans, and Dragons were still a threat we could not overlook. Later, the Volgrim rose up too, and that was something that worried us for a while. Particularly when their Sentinels began to rapaciously erase the lives of innumerable Sentients."
She waves her hand. "Ultimately, very few galaxies didn't have a Ruler in power. Traveling to one that did meant flipping a coin and praying our people could avoid their gaze. Sadly, time has shown me that we were likely unsuccessful. I have lost contact with all my sisters across the cosmos."
The image of innumerable galaxies floating in the distance changes before Jason's eyes. Calanthra manipulates some unseen power, causing herself and Jason to suddenly materialize directly in front of a beautiful spiral galaxy.
"This is our Milky Way." Calanthra explains, waving her hand to conjure another, far bigger galaxy beside it. "And this is Andromeda."
"Is it just me or does Andromeda seem... brighter?" Jason asks.
"Andromeda contains far more interstellar particles, cosmic energy, and latent magical power than the Milky Way." Calanthra says. "Of course, in the ancient past, it had even more than it does now, but such is the way of entropy and Chaos."
Jason nods. "How exactly do galaxies lose power over time? Doesn't this feel self-defeating in a way?"
"Every Ruler enters the Unending War with a strategy." Calanthra says, motioning with her hands to disperse the galaxies and reveal images of ghostly creatures, some standing on two legs, some on four, and plenty that appear as mere blobs of energy. "I cannot pretend to know the thoughts of such high and mighty beings, especially as I am a mere mortal myself. Even so, I can definitively state that there are Rulers who seek to put as much galactic energy into their initial creations as possible, while others wish to adopt a more energy-efficient growth-model."
She pokes her finger against Jason's chest. "Take the angels and humans, for instance. The Creator poured the vast majority of his power into creating a galaxy full of Apex Cosmics. At their peak, the angels as a whole commanded enough power to flatten other galaxies. But what did they do instead? They fought with one another, killing themselves due to sheer boredom, if not outright ego."
"I see." Jason says, brushing Calanthra's finger away. "So the Creator dumped all the Milky Way's energy into the angels. I take it this is uncommon among Rulers?"
"Of course. It's a wasteful strategy and usually loses Rulers the War for that Eternity." Calanthra says dismissively. "The Timeless used a different strategy. She created the fairies as mere mortals that evolved over time, gaining greater and greater power through their own efforts. This meant that instead of devouring Andromeda's abundant Cosmic energy, they could slowly sap off its excess over time. For you see, the more energy a galaxy has, the more it can produce. If you ration it long enough, you can reap more of it across the duration of an Eternity."
"That makes sense." Jason concludes. "It's like a Rush build in an RTS versus an Economy build. You sacrifice long-term gains in exchange for short-term power. The problem is, with Akasha's Barriers preventing Rulers from attacking their enemies straight away, a Rush build is dumb because you're just wasting your resources and sacrificing Cosmic energy when you'll actually need it."
Calanthra blinks twice. She looks at Jason with a strange expression, then turns away for a moment, trying to understand the strange terms he's used. They mostly make sense, but some of them are a little...
She shakes her head and returns to the topic at hand. "Right. Rush strategy versus Economy. Of... course. Well, in any case, there is one advantage toward the first strategy. If you drain all the energy from your galaxy, it becomes less appealing for other Rulers to attack. Because Andromeda was so large and still filled with Cosmic power even billions of years after the Expansion Era, it stoked the hunger of the Dark Ones. Meanwhile, the Milky Way only needs to deal with the Plague, which is threatening for mortals, but manageable for Cosmics. In that respect, we've gotten off much luckier."
"I get the bigger picture now." Jason says with a nod. He turns to look back at the cosmos before him. "So, what about all this? Are we gonna go exploring, or what?"
"In order to explore the universe presented here, we would need to make sacrifices we cannot afford. I think you would find the price most disagreeable. But there is something we can explore freely..."
She waves her hand, and instantly, the brilliant and beautiful cosmic view of the universe vanishes.
In its place, Jason and Calanthra suddenly appear inside a dead, barren wasteland. Brown and grey dirt rises up in huge dunes stretching off into the distance. Fallen towers made of gold and stone lay on their sides, or stick into the ground, buried nearly up to their tops as they point diagonally toward the sky.
And speaking of the sky, it glows faintly grey, as if some weak, pale imitation of a star were trying to shine through a thin atmosphere clouded by dust and grime. The very air itself smells of sulfur and toxins, making Jason's nose curl up when he takes a breath.
"Ugh... what the hell? Where are we now?" Jason asks, as he turns and looks around at the dead world surrounding him.
"An Ancient Domain." Calanthra says softly. "A remnant of a dead universe. All life stripped away. All hope lost. Septillions of different Sentient species, gone. Their mortals, their Cosmics, reduced to dust by the Contraction."
The Wordsmith frowns. "This Ancient Domain represents a dead universe? But how can that be possible? If the Heat Death played out and all the galaxies faded to cosmic dust, then there already wouldn't be anything left. And then, if the entire universe collapsed into a singularity before exploding again, there definitely wouldn't be anything left behind resembling physical matter."
"You perceive reality through just three dimensions." Calanthra intones. "Time and space can be considered two dimensions. Cosmic Power is another dimension. I must admit I do not understand how Ancient Domains have continued to exist across countless Eternities, and I don't know how they retain a vaguely familiar form... but I can assure you that in spite of bending logic itself, they do exist and they can provide tangible benefits to those dedicated to exploring them."
"You've been exploring them, then?" Jason asks, turning away from the dead world to scrutinize Calanthra's phantasmal image.
"Me, a little. But often, I dispatch my descendants to scour these Ancient Domains for things of value. It may surprise you, but there are powerful artifacts, vengeful spirits, and all manner of other inter-dimensional horrors lurking within these so-called dead-lands."
Calanthra pauses. She shifts her posture to look at Jason deeply.
"And that is why I've brought you here, Jason. It's time for me to get down to the crux of the matter and breach the subject that I find most important."
He nods. "I'm listening."
"It's like this." Calanthra explains. "The Ancient Domains are unfathomably broad. Think of how large a universe is. Think of how many universes have existed. Think of how much space my people have yet to explore."
She pauses.
"The gains we have received have made my people stronger than you would expect. Among those gains are Yredelemnul's Eye and other leftover remnants of power that many dead ancient Rulers lost when their Existences became forfeit. While their tangible Existences may have perished, their spirits sometimes live on in these broad, unending dead universes..."
"That's why you approached me." Jason says, while crossing his arms and leaning on the ball of his heel. "You said you wanted an alliance with humanity. You... want humans to help you explore the Ancient Domains?"
"Trust is hard to come by among mortals, Cosmics, and Rulers." Calanthra says simply. "I never would have considered allying with the humans before, but you have shown me the broadness of your mind during the debate against your clone and the commander of your military. To some, you certainly appear naive, but to me I see an opportunity I would be foolish to ignore."
She continues. "The Fairies cannot reproduce efficiently. Every fairy we send into the Ancient Domain is one less fairy we have among our Empire. We already have a difficult time replenishing our numbers through the remaining Male Fairies, but do you think it is easy for us to reproduce with other species?"
Jason slowly shakes his head. "Blinker and Kar's children were all crocodiles, not fairies. From that, I can only imagine that most of the time, your mating attempts do not create more of yourselves, but instead more non-fairy children."
"That's exactly correct." Calanthra replies. "But that all changed recently when I found out one of your human males somehow spontaneously altered his genetic profile to become a fairy. There is no doubt about it; Samuel Baker harnesses all the capability to reproduce that you humans do, as well as the trueborn powers of any male fairy."
"So... are you seeking a marriage alliance with Samuel Baker?" Jason asks, scratching his head in confusion. "You could just ask him yourself, you know?"
"This is not about one man." Calanthra retorts. "Samuel Baker, if he were to join our ranks, would certainly help us stave off extinction for a while longer. But that is hardly worth all this melodrama and me taking you to the Ancient Domain in person..."
Jason's eyes widen in realization. "I see! You... you're thinking that if my magic could make one male fairy, I could surely make another, and another..."
"Yes, precisely." Calanthra says, revealing a beautiful smile. "Additionally, if humans were to assist us in scouring these Ancient Domains, we could make great gains together. There is plenty of room for another species to join ours in locating powerful artifacts and other items capable of Uplifting us."
"You want to become Cosmics still." Jason muses. "You haven't resigned yourselves to your current fate."
"Quite the opposite." Calanthra says. "The curse placed upon us is unbreakable by those beneath the realm of Ruler. As I said before, the fairies have lost this Eternity's war. However, while we cannot Ascend any longer, that does not mean the humans are subject to the same limitation. If we could groom a human into becoming the Milky Way's Ruler, we could finally break free of our shackles by virtue of having a powerful ally."
She pauses, looking meaningfully at the Wordsmith.
"If the Demons or the Volgrim were to become our Ruler, we would not enjoy such a benefit. At best, we would only maintain the status quo, and at worst, they might eradicate us out of fear of having an unsightly tumor in their midst."
"Haha." Jason laughs. "So you brought me here to show your sincerity. I get it. Well, I'm definitely not opposed to helping you. Blinker is my good friend. If she were to ask me, I'd definitely say yes to just about any request."
Jason turns away. He walks a few feet off to the side and pauses, standing to gaze out at the Ancient Domain and its endlessly rolling plains which stretches off into the infinite distance...
"Here's what I can do." Jason says. "My people are already working on laying out the options for humanity and where our fellow men and women will depart over the next few weeks. Some will travel to Maiura. Some will go to Sharmur. Some will stay on Tarus II. It's no trouble at all to put Pixiv on the list, especially as I was already planning to do that. I even have some other places I'd like to include, too..."
"Such as Camael's Cube?" Calanthra asks with a smile. "Or do you perhaps mean Chrona and Hope's Hall of Heroes?"
Jason nearly jumps out of his skin. He whirls around to look at Calanthra with shock in his eyes. "What?! How do you know about Chrona? How do you also know about where Hope has been hiding?? I don't even know that much!"
"For those who are talented in magic, it is possible to see through many lies and deceptions." Calanthra says calmly, unfazed by the alarm on Jason's face. "Your Spynet Sphere isn't so different from the many options I have at my disposal. I have many means to keep an eye on the galaxy. And while Diablo does not know exactly where or what Chrona is, he certainly knows of its general existence."
Her smile turns cold. "I would advise you not to take Unarin lightly either, Wordsmith. That ancient creature is more capable than you can imagine. He is hiding a great many secrets from the galaxy... secrets he does not know that I am aware of. If he were to learn of the true extent of my information web, I fear that he would dispatch a handful of High Psions to eliminate the fairy species tomorrow."
Calanthra's words truly rock Jason to his core. All along, he assumed the precautions he put on Chrona, precautions that fooled even Hope, would make his hidden dimension impossible to detect.
But how could he be so naive?
As the daughter of an Apex Cosmic, Calanthra must have her means, and that likely means Unarin and Diablo aren't too far behind either.
"Shit." Jason curses, lowering his head as a flicker of anger smolders in his heart. "I was too complacent. Chrona isn't secure, which means it's only a matter of time before more Cosmics learn of its existence. How long before they can find its exact location and invade it?"
"Calm yourself, child." Calanthra says soothingly. "The situation is not that dire. After all, Chrona still exists within a highly accelerated timespace. Any biological entity that wishes to travel there could suffer severe after-effects. Furthermore, the entities born inside will be too adapted to living within a higher dimension, so they won't pose much threat to the creatures of realspace."
She waves her hand. "Let's move on, Jason. I want to discuss other matters before dying of old age."
The Wordsmith cools himself off. He inhales deeply, then returns his attention to her.
"Alright. What next, then?"
"Fairies are not the only Sentients capable of entering Ancient Domains." Calanthra explains. "There are others who rarely appear inside here. That is why exploring these domains can be dangerous. The good news is that Cosmics have little need to enter these barren lands, as most of the heritages, treasures, and other such gains you might find inside are only useful to mortals. There are exceptions, but they are so rare as to be a needle found within ten million haystacks. A waste of effort better spent simply progressing one's Cosmic power the ordinary way."
"So what you're saying is, when you send fairies into an Ancient Domain, they can die as a result of crossing paths with Sentients from other galaxies." Jason concludes. "But if you had an army of humans to enter with you, your people would be a lot safer."
"Safety in numbers, yes. And you humans are... uniquely advantaged in Ancient Domain exploration." Calanthra says mysteriously. "Before that, though... do you know what the Power of Imagination is, Wordsmith?"
Jason raises an eyebrow. "Imagination? Like the mental ability to visualize stuff in your head? Yeah. It's not that complicated to understand."
"Ah, that's where you're wrong." Calanthra chides gently. "Imagination is the key to magical power. Imagination, Conception, Visualization, these are all key capabilities powerful maguses and sorcerors use to uplift their capabilities! And as it turns out, most Sentients are actually quite terrible at conceptualizing thoughts into imagery."
She gestures grandly. "Just take the Volgrim! You may think they are a powerful Sentient species, but in fact the Volgrim have terrible imaginations. They are stodgy, dull, and lack a great deal of creativity. All the gains their Technopaths make through technology are developed via brute force. They slowly improve their technological prowess by minute fractions over long periods of time, eventually resulting in a large and cohesive buildup."
"At the same time, the Psions Uplift themselves through meditation and sitting motionless for thousands of years at a time. Can a species capable of such incredible feats of drudgery also possess limitless imagination? I think not."
"Maybe the reason they're able to sit still for so long is because they live in their imagination?" Jason posits. "In which case their power of imagination should be quite formidable, right?"
"Possible, but unlikely." Calanthra says with a wave of her hand. "Never mind that. The point I'm trying to make is that humans have an extremely high affinity for magic. If your people were to ally with mine, we could teach you our ways. You could help us through your Wordsmithing and superior genetics, creating more fairies and humans alike. This would create a recursive cycle that would continually bolster both our species to greater and greater heights!"
She lowers her voice back to normal. "An alliance with humanity would have other benefits. You humans are equally adept in technology and magic both. You are versatile, capable of learning any skill provided you have time to devote to your studies. The bursts of inspiration you receive also allow you to make large jumps in capability as well, which could mean that in a relatively short period, you might even be capable of challenging the Volgrim."
Jason nods. "That does sound tempting, Calanthra. I'm willing to help you, but I won't demand my people join the fairies. It would be better if those who were the most interested did so instead."
Calanthra playfully twirls a finger through her hair. "Well. My daughters are all beautiful. Perhaps you should make mention that the fairies are... aggressively interested in copulation?"
"COUGH COUGH!" Jason wheezes, taking a step back as he asses her bold choice of words. "Yeah! Uh, I can probably- I'll let everyone know about that too. Obviously!"
Calanthra chuckles. "Such a cute boy. Well, it seems I've accomplished what I wanted. Let's return for now. You can always pay Ripspace a visit later."
"I will." Jason says, nodding seriously. "Waypoint."
Calanthra raises an eyebrow. "You think you can return here without a Ruler's power?"
"Won't know unless I try." Jason smiles back.
...
Not long after, Jason and Calanthra emerge back into Realspace. He shivers as he feels the Eye of Yredelemnul fixating on him from behind, but Calanthra quickly reactivates the Formation of Light, sending the sliver of a Ruler back to the shadows so it can no longer interact with the physical world.
"You know, Jason." Calanthra says. "You are a Candidate. You have the capability to become a Ruler someday."
"I am?" Jason asks, before thinking back to a conversation in the past. "Oh yeah, someone did mention that to me before. But... eh. I don't know. Becoming a Ruler sounds awful."
"Awful?" Calanthra asks. "How so?"
"It seems... lonely." Jason says, his voice softening. He looks at the space between the four statues, where Yredelemnul's Eye has disappeared. "Imagine all your loved ones dying, but you're stuck behind, living through the end of an Eternity, which takes trillions of years before Heat Death finally eradicates everything. Then comes the next Eternity, where you can remake your species again... but it won't be the same. Even if you remake your loved ones, it won't really be them."
Jason lowers and shakes his head. "That sort of life doesn't suit me."
"I understand why you'd think that way." Calanthra says. "In fact, you are suffering from the same affliction that plagues all Candidates who began their Existences as Biologicals. We have too many ties to the mortal world, so the majority of Biologicals who ascend to the rank of Ruler... fall to their non-biological opponents."
"As for the things which are not biological..." Calanthra says, looking at Jason with disgust. "You should already know what they are."
"Highly evolved Artificial Intelligences?" Jason guesses.
"That's right." Calanthra affirms. "There are several tiers of power a superintelligence can possess. The Volgrim have taken great care to prevent anything above a Beta Core from forming in the Milky Way, but once, a long time ago... they made a huge mess by accidentally creating the Milky Way's first Alpha Core Synthmind."
Calanthra chuckles. "The stupid fools didn't only create an Alpha Core, they gave it autonomy in the hopes it would be able to stop the wars between their factions. They built indestructible bipedal bodies for its splintered intelligences, and called them... Sentinels. Luckily, they were able to defeat the Alpha Core before it ascended further, but countless other biological species have failed at that juncture, creating an Alpha Core that ultimately devoured the full power of their galaxy for itself."
A chill trickles down Jason's spine. "You're saying the vast majority of Rulers are actually Alpha Core AIs? AIs that control entire galaxies?!"
"No, Jason." Calanthra counters. "Alpha Cores can defeat advanced civilizations. But there is one Existence higher than an Alpha Core, a tier that can only be reached once it has swallowed the power of a galaxy."
"That would be an Omega Core. a sentient artificial intelligence that has become Ruler over one or more galaxies. And in Akasha's game, more than 90% of all Rulers are estimated to be these superior lifeforms."
"It is for that reason that these highly adaptable entities are known as The Evolved."
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2024.05.18 22:52 JayD8888 Daily Weapon Discussion Day 7: The Winfield M1873

Daily Weapon Discussion Day 7: The Winfield M1873
Howdy hunters!
We are back today with more compact ammo goodness and an iconic one at that. The gun that won the west: The Winfield m1873!
Today i will highlight the base winfield + the aperture, swift, talon and musket bayonet varients. Its quite a lot, but most of them are very similar so i think they fit nicely in 1 thread.
Lets start with the base Winfield. Its a 3 slot weapon shooting compact ammo at medium velocity and relatively high damage. It supports poison, High velocity, fmj and incendiary as special ammo types just like all its variants. When i started playing hunt i used this gun all the time as it was a cheap but reliable option and im sure many of you had a similar experience. After experimenting more and building up money i didnt look at it for a while. That was until i came full circle and fell in love with the Winfield all over again. Here is why :)
As a rifle its actually pretty good... as long as you can hit headshots. Now thats quite a catch here. Some will be popping them heads nonstop and others will only occasionally do so. Keep in mind that this is an important factor in rating this weapon because the difference in performance will be quite large depending on your headshot rate. It shoots fast, does good damage, doesnt have a lot of recoil and the velocity is fine. So in the hands of a pro it can clear a trio in the blink of all eye. However if you miss a lot or hit limbs its not uncommon to need 5 or 6 hits to down someone at range...
Where this gun shines more universally is with the levering perk. All variants have the same spread and rate of fire. Making it a deadly close to midrange option. This is kind of the gun that perk was made for, so i would pick it up as fast as i could. The spread is so good you can comfortably hipfire it even at medium ranges, giving a large dps increase because of the quick firerate.
Lets talk ammo. Fmj is my favorite in most cases. It counteracts the fast damage dropoff a bit and adds a lot of penetration compared to regular compact ammo. Add levering and you can really spray and pray, completely hozing a compound in bullets. Would highly recommend taking this as your standard ammo.
Incendiary is a bit meh for me. you lose all penetration. And because it shoots compact ammo you dont set hunters on fire outside 10 meters. You will on the second shot, but if they arent very far they would usually die from that anyway. Its also not an amazing pve ammo. Very mid imo.
Speaking of pve ammo. Here we have poison, which i would say is best in slot for pve. With levering you can melt bosses. and it kills all world ai(besides meatheads) in a single shot. Can also be annoying vs hunters as you get to shoot a lot and when you hit they cant heal. Perfect to set up a push and lever their socks off. Beware that just as with incendiary you lose all penetration properties with this ammo.
Finally high velo is a bit of an odd one. It increases recoil which messes with levering. But at 600m/s its actually quite a fast bullet. if you like to sit back and pop heads you can definitely consider this. But the risk with compact ammo is that if you miss the head you wont be doing much of anything.
Ok lets quickly cover the variants. The aperture is basically a better Winfield. 5 dollars more for a Winfield with reduced sway and the option to take some shots at longer ranges with the sight. Id say take this over the base version pretty much all the time unless you want to enjoy a skin for the base gun or something.
The swift is also a straight upgrade over the base but in a different way. It significantly increases your reload speed.... thats it. Really nice when you lever it and need a quick refill. Sadly there isnt any skins for this available for purchase atm beside the last gust dlc. So Crytek if you are listening.. pretty please? 👀
Finally the musket bayonet and talon are 2 melee variants. Both enhance only the heavy attack. While that is everything the talon does, the musket bayonet also trades a bit of sway and reload speed for less recoil and a quicker stab than the overhead swing of the talon. Both of these are fine imo especially after recent changes to tool damage and melee weapon spawn rates. Both are good to clap some boss cheeks with. The musket bayonet for some reason can also hold 2 more bullets than all other Winfields... so there is that i guess :p
Perks time! Iron eye isnt as mandetory as it is on most other guns here. the Winfield gains the smallest bonus out of all guns affected by it. but its still nice to have. The sight picture is a bit clearer and you gain about 8% firerate Levering is one i would highly recommend. Turns this thing in a totally different animal. Get it as soon as you can! As for all lever action guns. No bulletgrubber needed here. If you bring a melee variant id say get conduit or alternatively bring a stam shot.
Ok that was quite a long one! But one im personally very excited to discuss. Cant wait to hear your stories with this weapon. Happy hunting and see you tomorrow!
Table with all previously covered weapons:
Compact Ammo Weapons Medium Ammo Weapons Long Ammo Weapons Shotguns Special Weapons
Nagant 1895 Revolver Berthier Mle 1892 Caldwell Rival Bomb Lance
Mako 1895 Carbine Winfield 1893 Slate
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2024.05.18 22:46 SamMorrisHorror Them Devils Part 2

Scott Masterson had first met Scarlett at a rooftop party in downtown Dallas. Their age and the time of year were both in late springtime, them in their mid twenties and the date in early May. He had on a sharp yet breezy blazer and she astonished in a thigh length sleeveless blue dress.
“Oh hey Scott I don’t believe you two have met…” his then happily married friend had remarked with a slow swinging open hand toward her.
“Scott Masterson…reluctant friend to this knucklehead” he said with a tight lipped grin, trying not to be so obvious with his instant rapture.
“Scarlett…a pleasure…”
Her hand was so delicate to Scott’s touch. They locked eyes. It was like looking back through centuries of connection, endless days of laying in the sun next to the Seine River, or rising to Hollywood fame in the 1940’s and only having each other who would understand the glory and the pain of it all, or generations of quiet, simple country love that would bear such beautiful, happy children that would go on to raise beautiful, happy children, all with their dark blue eyes. Yes, the memories of every love story since the beginning of time was swirling right there in Scarlett’s irises. Scott had to catch himself before he stared embarrassingly too long.
“Sorry Scottie here doesn’t get out often” his friend quipped, which Scott appreciated actually, it helped him snap back to professionalism.
“Well I don’t either…at least I prefer not to.” Scarlett’s words flowed through the air like a flock of rose petals.
“Hey, kindred spirits.” Scott was really sensing a rising energy out of her, they had barely broken eye contact.
“Well, I’ll let you two have at it, I got a wife around here somewhere. Hey…Scott and Scarlett…not bad, not bad.” His friend exited stage right with a sly chuckle.
“Nice guy…so…what are you drinking, Scarlett?” Scott looked around for the emptiest corner of the rooftop bar, hoping to find a nice place for them to be able to hear each other. This night had just become something.
“That depends, Scott…what do you like?”
Oh man.
Well, as you can expect, the evening blossomed into a beautiful, long winded conversation that etched a long list of similarities between the two. They both lived in the city, had never married, and had dreamed of stable, simpler lives far away from tall buildings and busy streets. The next morning Scott awoke in her arms, which warmed much deeper than just his skin. He could feel her soothing his very identity, his future, everything. Her arms were tailor made to fit his very soul, and he had never felt more safe and at home.
“Mmm…you can stay right here…” she whispered, eyes still closed.
“I will…I will”
They both fell back asleep, into a dream that wouldn’t end upon waking.
Two years passed and suddenly they lived that simple backwoods life, way out where acres of land far out-populated the few and far between people. They took a lovely home, which happily looked over a long backyard, right up to a lively yet mostly undisturbed river. Their only neighbor within a mile was an older ranch worker named Charles, who rarely made himself perceivable. Days were spent way on into town where they both had offices. They didn’t mind the commute. Nights were spent mostly like this night, cuddled outside near a lovely little fire, with a slowly shrinking amount of wine sitting between them. Enjoying their Kingdom. Tonight, however, would prove to be a special night, for many reasons, all unexpected.
“Honey, I’ve been thinking…” Scott began, sitting up and opening his hands to the warmth of the fire.
“Oh?” Scarlett also sat up, eyes widening.
“So look, Scarlett, the last two years have been the best of my life. An absolute dream…”
She held her breath, her focus darting between his eyes and mouth.
“Yeah?”
“We have everything we ever want out here. But…what if there’s more?”
“More?” She had envisioned this very conversation hundreds of times.
“Our dreams have come true, but what if we…made some new dreams?” Scott turned and embedded his eyes into hers. He burst into a big smile.
“Scott…I thought…”
“Nevermind what I said” he cut her off, which he always made a point to never do, but this was a good exception.
“I’m ready, Scarlett…let’s have a family.”
“Ohhhh Scott, oh Scott”
They hugged tight enough to where it hurt.
“Well, in that case, we may need to open another bottle.” She said playfully, bouncing her eyebrows twice.
“Excellent. I’ll be right up. I’ll put this fire out and then start yours up.”
“Oh stop!” She bounded away girlishly, up the snowy back steps and into the house.
Scott let out a big sigh that he could see in the cold air and sat back in his chair, taking in his decision. He really was ready. He had secretly been keeping a long list of names that he liked and that he thought would work in front of Masterson. Especially little girl names. He stared into the campfire flames, getting lost imagining the three of them sitting right here, a little girl resting securely in Scarlett’s arms, as Scott had found himself, and stayed within these past two years.
Suddenly his trance was broken when, from the road in front of their house, came the sound of a vehicle approaching at high speed. Scott snapped his head back toward the house to get a better listen. He could see, around the house and through the trees, a large truck barreling down the country road, its headlights racing and bouncing with intensity. In an instant, it had passed up the road and out of sight.
“Huh?”
Soon, after a moment of silence, another sound echoed into the night. This sound rattled Scott to the bone and tore all that was right in his world into pieces. A sharp, bellowing squeal. His eyes shot over to his neighbors house, which was about a tenth of a mile to his right but still had a couple dim lights on that he could see. The shriek seemed to come from there.
Then, more squeals. It was hellish. More than animal but not quite human. Scott stood up. He heard crashing and tearing and further destruction coming from Charles’ house.
“Scarlett!! Scarlett!” He yelled toward his house, where he looked and could see her silhouette behind the curtains at the kitchen window. She didn’t seem to hear him.
He turned back toward his neighbors. The chaos had gone quiet. Not a half a moment after, though, he heard something big barreling through the trees as fast as that truck had been sprinting. Running, running furiously between the two houses. Searching, hunting. Scott was taken aback so hard that his heel had caught the edge of the fire pit, throwing him down only inches away from severe burns. He had knocked his head in the whiplash, making him groan and take a moment to regain his bearings.
“SCARLETT!!!!”
He screamed out toward his home as he sat up, rubbing a quickly rising bump on the back of his head. He heard a loud breaching on the side of his house. The patio door. No. No. Then, all hell broke loose. Scarlett started wailing and crying and he could hear crashes of plates and glasses and deep guttural roars coming from the kitchen inside. Shadows danced in a frenzy from the curtained windows. Sounds of instinctual survival seemed to be thrown from Scarlett inside. Sounds of defeat. Sounds of agony. Sounds of insanity. Scott sprang to his feet, his equilibrium being more damaged than he realized after his fall. He had to catch his hand on a chair to stabilize himself. Scarlett’s symphony of pain had gone quiet. Soon after something burst back out the patio door again and off in the same direction as that truck before.
Scott struggled back up to the house, slowly climbing the wintered, crunching stairs that led to the patio. He no longer yelled for Scarlett. In fact, the only thing that came to his senses was the sound of his own heavy breathing. Everything else had been turned off, save for a heavy and sudden dread that he had prayed he would never feel. He came to the side of his house where indeed the patio door had been busted and forced open. It laid inside the kitchen, its hinges snapped like toothpicks. Scott, with eyes wide and twitching, slowly entered his home and looked into the kitchen.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t even change his breathing. He didn’t blink. He just got a good long look at what laid before him.
Everything was broken. The fridge was on its side, the door hanging open and food and drink scattered all over the floor. The table was upended, its legs to the ceiling. A chair was resting on the counter, possibly having been thrown in defense. And Scarlett. Oh Scarlett. She…was…everywhere. She was all over the floor. She was sprayed against the walls. She was stuck to the window. She was in the sink.
Scott gently walked through the carnal mess and sabotage of his world. Long ago he had known exactly what he would do if something anywhere near this bad were to happen to him. He politely stumbled through the kitchen, down the hall, and into the bedroom. He opened his closet door and lowered a fire safe from the top rack. He unlocked it with a passcode. 511, after that warm May date when he had first met Scarlett. In the safe was a Sig Sauer P320 handgun. Scott took it out, along with a box of bullets, loaded one into the gun, put the safe back on its rack, and walked out of the closet, sitting on his bed. Their bed. Where they should’ve been laying right at this very moment, working toward a happy future. Where he would’ve kissed her forehead and put a hand on her growing midsection. Where they would have awoken on Christmas morning to the sound of children who were way too excited to remain asleep. Where they would’ve grown old. Where they would’ve smiled at each other through wrinkles, satisfied with all the love they shared and passed on to the next generations. Where they would’ve held each other in deep peace as they finally fell asleep to this world.
“I will…I will”
In one quick motion Scott pulled back the hammer and stuck the barrel of that pistol right up against his Governor and blew himself away, far away, right back into Scarlett’s loving arms.
Jeremy “Smallmouth” Bassett quickly yet stealthily made his way back to his Uncle’s house. He hugged the sides of the dark country road, keeping his eyes and ears wide open as to notice any sounds pertaining to the event that he had just witnessed there in the field next to the huge blaze. His only thought was Uncle Chuck. His house was right on the warpath of that horrible thing and Smallmouth had to go to him and make sure he was safe. He dared not go back to his truck, which would bring a lot of unwanted attention. No, Smallmouth walked and walked and finally saw the lights of his Uncle’s house. He carefully approached the front door from the shadowed driveway. Suddenly it occurred to Smallmouth that something was very wrong here. The door was busted in, having been plowed through by something very large and very strong.
“No…no…no”
Smallmouth slowly entered the house. The kitchen and living room were a disaster, chairs and tables and bottles strewn about and shattered. Bloody hoof-prints covered the floors, each of them the size of dinner plates. Smallmouth heard no noise. He felt himself well with tears, his nose a faucet that he began to sniff up as he worked his way through to his Uncle’s room, the door there also being broken in. A small whine growing in his throat, Smallmouth peaked into his uncles bedroom.
It was all in tatters. The bed had been attacked and shredded, the mattress being ripped up and thrown about as if it were made of cotton candy. More bloody hoof-prints were painted all over the brown carpet. Smallmouth trembled and put a hand up to his wet face. He didn’t see a way that his Uncle was anywhere near alive, knowing what he knew about the monster that had been in this house.
Smallmouth slowly walked to the living room, to the only little table that had been untouched in the attack. It was almost as if the bottle of whiskey teleported into his hand from the overturned cabinet, unopened. He fixed that real quick.
Soon he was several pulls deep of the only thing in the world that he knew would make him feel better, even if only for a few hours. He found his pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket and lit one up, although he was indoors. What did it matter? He sat in a chair that he had turned right side up and set the bottle on the table and looked out the back window into the pitch black. He cried for his Uncle and he cried for the world. He cried for himself. He cried for broken promises and his own weakness. He drank and drank until his vision shook from right to left everywhere he looked. At first he didn’t even notice the figures on the back porch. Then his vibrating focus did pick up on them, but by then it was too late. It was so dark out there but in their outlines he could see they wore long robes and hoods.
“HA!! COME AND GET ME! HAHA!! YOU COME AND YOU GET ME!!” Smallmouth boasted with a delusional amount of courage.
A creak escaped from the kitchen and he drunkenly slung his head over toward it. Three more figures stood there. Or was it just one? Smallmouth was none the wiser. All at once the hooded intruders from both inside and outside began to chant a strange, twisted rhyme in strikingly low and dissonant harmony:
“A sliver…of liver…goes down…with a shiver… …and gives…your gullet…to gall… …but drink…the Cider…that drowns…the Spider… …and you…will be free…of it all… …so tighten the grip…that loosens your lips… …O raise…the bottle…of brown… …and wake tomorrow…to find…in sorrow… …ANOTHER…SPIDER…TO…DROWN”
Smallmouth groaned at them in dissatisfaction and turned his bottle up again and began to chug the whiskey. As he did they repeated the chant except this time it was louder and closer. By the time Smallmouth had finished his bottle he was quickly losing consciousness. This wasn’t just whiskey. As he closed his eyes he felt hands grabbing him from all sides.
Smallmouth pulled open his sticky eyelids. His head felt like someone had bowled a strike into it. Wind froze his face. The smell of sickly, wet iron stung his nostrils. His vantage was higher than usual. Way higher. He was looking out into another field, but from easily ten feet up. He saw an old church, formerly painted white but now a flaky pale-beige. He heard the friction of a quick pull of rope below him, matched with a slight, tight pain at his feet. He looked down. A red-robed figure was fastening him against a wooden structure of some kind. His feet sat on a small flat platform perpendicular to a post that went from the ground up past smallmouths head. He couldn’t move his arms, so he quickly shot his eyes side to side. They were also tied to another horizontal post. A cross. He was being tied to a crude wooden cross. His shirt had been removed, exposing a hairy, overweight belly. Smallmouth tried to speak, but all that came out was a slow, unintelligible grumble. He was still drunk. No, this was more than that. He was under the influence of something strong and absolutely inhibitive. He wallowed again, and took in a deep breath. The smell of iron once again hit his nose. He looked down at himself. He was covered in a thick, red liquid. That wasn’t just the smell of iron. He had been splashed full body with blood.
“Now now, young servant…” the figure at his feet had finished his task and took a couple of steps out to admire his own handiwork.
“Ahh…perfect. The picture of martyrdom. Yes, you will always be remembered, Brother Bassett. You are to be the first Saint of The New Bible.” He opened his arms in his declaration.
Smallmouth looked up into the cold night sky. The moon shown down, giving everything a midnight spotlight. It was a gorgeous waxing gibbous, big and bright but not quite full. Yes, he was in a great big snowy field that housed an old worn down church. From the windows of the church he saw candles glowing, showing dark heads and shoulders looking out to him, also covered in loose hoods, hiding faces. He was hanging on a cross about one hundred feet from the old church. In front of the cross was a partially covered pit, a couple of two by fours supporting double armfuls of branches and dead leaves.
The figure at the base of the cross put his arms back to his side. He was still looking right at the drugged Smallmouth’s dumbstruck face. Even with a veiled mouth you could hear the twisted smile in his voice.
“Tonight you will help us finally defeat this legion, Smallmouth. You see, it may have the evil spirits within it, but at its core, it is still an owned animal. An animal that knows its Master very well. An animal that will remember the smell of its Master. You, my friend, are covered in its Master right now. And you are hanging on a cross, the symbol of this brute’s most hated enemy. But take heart, young Brother. Before you is our pit of spears. Yes you will attract the beast, but our Divine plan will intercept it and the beast will fall and be pierced. And then, oh dear brother, you will forever be immortalized. You will be purified in fire by the hands of your church brethren. Out of your screams and into the smoke the iniquities of all will be released. We will go on to preach your good example and your sainthood forever and ever.”
Smallmouth began to drool and hum pathetically. He could hear and understand the words of the robed man but he couldn’t fight back. His body was useless, limp inside its rope confines. All he could do now is think, and watch, and wait, and dread his fate.
The figure turned away from him, walking over near the pit and gathering up a bundle of brambles and throwing them over the last open area, covering it completely. He then crunched through the snow over to the front door of the old church, groaning open the door. He stood at the dark doorway for a few seconds in silence, and then began to make a noise. An over exaggerated pig squealing noise, high pitched and infuriating. Soon after other voices from inside the church began to do the same, their wailing echoing out of the building and all across the field, loudly signaling, calling out. It may as well have been a dinner bell. Not a half minute after they began the distress signal it was loudly answered by a distant squall. A furious squall.
This was it. Either way it happened Smallmouth was about to die. Experience terror, and then die, and not even have the ability to put up any kind of defense. It wasn’t fair. He just slowly lifted up his head and watched out far into the moonlit, white field. He then raised his heavy head further and took a good gander at the moon and stars for the last time.
“God,” he thought to himself, still having full inner monologue yet no outer motor function, “I am so sorry. I am so sorry for being what I am. I am so sorry for ending up in this place. It’s only my own fault. If it wasn’t for me being so stupid and messy and drunk and terrible then this wouldnt be happening to me.”
He began to shed tears that washed lines into the blood on his face.
“Please forgive me God. Please, please, please forgive me for all of my sins. This is it. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. PLEASE FORGIVE ME!!!!” He yelled inside his own mind, hoping and trying to send his silent words as far up into heaven as they could go.
He lowered his eyes back to the ground. He looked over at the church again. The windows were empty, the candles were extinguished. Those hooded cowards were hiding from their own handmade sacrificial service. All was quiet for a long pause until a much louder, closer bleating began at the edge of the forest not even three hundred feet away from Smallmouth’s glazed over eyes. It was time, and it was too late for a miracle.
Out of the woods, slowly and heavily, stomped the massive hog. As it marched closer and closer Smallmouth could see its white, boiled over eyes and black-burnt skin. Its jaws were flying open and snapping its sharp, pocket knife-sized teeth together in an intimidating “clack”. It was now less than a hundred feet away, the dark old church to its right shoulder. It stopped, its pale glowing eyes fixed right on Smallmouth on the crude cross. It truly was a monster. It stood as tall as a man and as long as a canoe. Around its murderous mouth were stains of red, the remnants of all that it had taken from the world on this unholy night. In its clanging jaws were bits of flesh. It snorted and scowled.
Then, in a fury, it wailed that horrible squeal and started off into a dead sprint. It galloped and galloped toward Smallmouth at a high, blistering speed. It kept yawping and howling as it cut the distance from the cross down to fifty feet, forty feet, thirty, twenty. All at once it passed over the covered pit and plunged in. In his doomed, dead eyed stupor Smallmouth could hear what sounded like paint being dumped from a rooftop onto concrete. Trails of black liquid squirted and splashed up from the pit, which had been uncovered in the fall of the beast. Unbelieving, Smallmouth saw dozens of steel spear tips standing up from the dug-in ground. Right in the middle of them the beast was stuck. The sheer weight of the animal had caused the spears to pierce through its tough skin, sticking out of its back, soaked in black blood. One spear had stabbed right under the hogs chin, passing up through its jaws and out its black snout. It made agonized sounds. It roared and roared and shook the spears inside it, beginning furiously, then growing weaker and weaker within seconds. Finally, it let out one last weak little squeal, before it went still and quiet.
Smallmouth was frozen both physically by drugs and constraints and mentally by shock. His mouth hung open toward the pit of spears, his vision blurry. He took in a deep, troubled breath and let out a moan of disbelief and relief. The old church doors sprang open, and the sound of jubilation within flowed out into the night. The red robed figures flocked out of the building toward the pit, arms raised in celebration. They surrounded the hole, getting a good look at their success and their enemies defeat. Some held additional spears and began further stabbing the dead animal, causing more black blood to be shed up at them. They all yelled loudly and triumphantly. Some danced around the pit. Some skipped over to Smallmouth on the cross and danced around him, slapping his legs and spinning in circles.
Smallmouth looked on at the raucous celebration, both in utter disbelief of their trap actually working and also in turmoil. How long now until they fully execute their plan.
A taller robed man, whose voice matched the same one who spoke to Smallmouth as he tied his feet, spoke up, sounding almost happily intoxicated.
“Ahh yes my Brothers!! It is done!! We have won!!!”
They all whooped and cheered.
“Brother Norman, go into the church and bring me the small tank of fuel. Let us send our dear Saint Bassett to the Holy lands, where he will be adored for all eternity!”
They all clapped and hollered. One figure began childishly skipping away from the pit and over toward the front door of the church.
Then, it happened.
From the pit all of a sudden a great blaze erupted instantly. It stood as tall as the cross, and it burned a furious red and blue. It raged and raged, blinding Smallmouth and making him clumsily turn his face away from the heat.
All of the figures panicked, screaming and scattering away toward the church. They didn’t get far. Up from the fiery pit, dozens of long, long, black arms, adorned with six hooking claws emerged and stretched out of the flames and latched on to the legs of those trying to escape. Smallmouth heard crying and wailing from the men as the black, razor clawed-hands of the legion grabbed them and began pulling them back, into the blazes. One by one the red robed people were dragged into the flames, their clothes catching instantly. Smallmouth could see violently shaking bodies in the evil furnace. Oh, the screams. Above the tortured howling, the sound of laughing broke out. Deep, menacing laughter, hundreds of voices, echoed up into the air from the burning hole. Then, in one extinguishing squeeze, the ground swallowed the entirety of the fiery pit, leaving it completely covered in dirt, still and quiet. Soon after, and just like the pit of spears, the old church building caught in an instant and raging fire, quickly toppling the walls and dropping the steeple into its ruins. The smoke towered high in the night sky, which had just began to hint at a pale morning blue. Smallmouth hung on his cross in utter horror and surprise.
As the late evening hours glowed into early morning the smoke eventually tapered off, as Smallmouth’s drugs finally began to wear off as well. The fires of the church did garner long distance attention, though. Just as Smallmouth was able to regain control of his muscles and voice he heard emergency sirens call out into the cold morning air. Not long after, two fire trucks, an ambulance and a sheriffs truck tore into the field and toward Smallmouth on the cross. Not long after Smallmouth could feel the tied ropes being cut loose by firemen, their uniforms easily the best red clothes he had seen all night.
“What on God’s green Earth happened here son?” A bearded man with a dark hat and brown shirt and pants asked Smallmouth once he had been lowered down from the cross and sat on the ground with a shock blanket around his shoulders. The Sheriff, no doubt.
“God’s green Earth. It really is God’s, isn’t it?” Smallmouth whispered, staring out across the cold field. Then, at the very place he was staring, an old, familiar truck came barreling out of the gravel road in the woods and through the field in the steadily growing morning light. It was Uncle Chuck’s truck. It hurried over toward the other emergency vehicles, parked, the driver’s side door burst open, and Uncle Chuck came bounding out over to Smallmouth, his eyes wide and his mouth a wonderfully shocked “O”.
“JEREMY! JEREMY!!!” He basically fell on Smallmouth in a tight, warm hug. Smallmouth was caught off guard by Chuck using his real name.
His Uncle held him for several seconds and then let up, but kept his hands on Smallmouth’s shoulders.
“I thought you were dead.” Both of them said at almost the exact same time.
“I came back and your house was a mess and there was blood everywhere. I thought you were dead.” Smallmouth weakly spat out.
“Well, I woke up and you were gone, son, so I walked to the ranch to get my truck. I was worried bout ya son. I came back home and the whole place had been turned upside down. Blood on the carpet. I just thought the worst. Then I tried my neighbors house. Buddy, they’re dead. Looks like some wacko murder-suicide if I ever saw one. Scott probably tried to come kill us too and wrecked the place when he found it empty. I don’t know. But what I DO know is that you are right here! You are okay Jeremy!! Ahhh Praise Jesus!!”
“It’s not that, Uncle. That isn’t what happened out here. It’s..it was a..a, uh…”
Smallmouth’s fried brain couldn’t even comprehend what he had witnessed over the past few hours. It was all a violent blur.
“Dont worry bout it son, you can tell me everything on the way to the hospital. We gotta go get you checked out and cleaned up. C’mon.” He helped Smallmouth up and they walked over to the ambulance, his Uncle’s arm thrown around his shoulder.
Smallmouth would be sent home later that afternoon. It would take him and his Uncle a long time to sort through the chaos of that deadly night and rebuild their lives. But life kept on. Smallmouth would remain living with his Uncle, and would begin a job working with him down at the ranch. Together they started to attend a local church. Smallmouth never touched a drink or a drug or even a cigarette ever again, and remained steadfast in his newly revitalized faith.
submitted by SamMorrisHorror to TheCrypticCompendium [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 22:21 aelie-e AIbros may not be good at drawing, but they're certainly good at stuffing as many fallacies into a comment chain at once... there's just so much to unpack here

AIbros may not be good at drawing, but they're certainly good at stuffing as many fallacies into a comment chain at once... there's just so much to unpack here
https://preview.redd.it/003g778xs81d1.png?width=688&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e094e5dacc6e8432b7ac28978bb4f709313c449
Here's your daily reminder that, despite how much prompters might hope otherwise, generative AI is not a tool but a service.
Also, generative AI is apparently the same thing as digital art... somehow...? Hardly surprising, it's already been established that AIbros have zero knowledge of art whatsoever.
submitted by aelie-e to ArtistHate [link] [comments]


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