How to write in graffiti

HowToInTech

2022.10.23 18:00 How_To_In_Tech HowToInTech

A community that seeks to inform tech lovers and curious minds about everything technology.
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2008.05.08 04:15 Graffiti

Graffiti for graffiti culture. No ‘street art’ No drawings
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2019.07.02 04:51 Addy_Snow How To Write...

This is a subreddit dedicated to writers who want to know how to write things that they haven't experienced. This is open for writers of all ages and experiences. From basic to advanced, silly and serious, we can try to do our best to help!
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2024.05.18 05:41 Otashi4Nii Permanent Pleasure Review!!

Swimming in the Glow - 9.5/10
787 Dreamliner - 9/10
Splendor - 9/10
Hate to be a Bother - 9/10
Scared - 8.5/10
He’s Back! - 7/10
Please Welcome…Joywave - 7/10
Brain Damage - 7/10
Graffiti Planet - 7/10
Sleepytime Fantasy - 5/10
Avg. Rating: 7.8/10
Album Score: B
This album felt like a sort of return to form for Joywave, returning to their more comedic social commentary side of lyrical writing. I wish they had done more things like Graffiti Planet and Please Welcome…Joywave, which showed their quirky and unserious side, but I also really enjoyed He’s Back!, it was so stupid!! Swimming in the Glow def my favorite of the album. My biggest gripe with the album is how short it is, but with only one song that I really found as a skip, and quite a few heavy hitters, this ended up becoming another super solid album from our best Rochester boys!!
submitted by Otashi4Nii to joywave [link] [comments]

2024.05.17 19:39 fidelityportland A retrospective of the 2014 paper "Density At Any Cost" by PSU's Dr. Gerard Mildner, a paper predicting and explaining the housing crisis we're in today.

I suppose it's really frustrating for people new to Portland to look around and see this city in such an ongoing crisis all the time, with bad news after bad news. Homelessness, cops, schools, the governor, now even PSU students! Whatever direction this city goes it manages to hit a crisis. Worse still, any glimmer of hope produced by the political machine and their media cronies end up resulting in virtually nothing changing.
Bleak outlook, crisis, no solution, bleak outlook.
Why is this? The city, county, and state government are run by a bunch of corrupt fuckwits with really dumb ideas, and there hasn't been a genuine change in political power for coming on 40 years.
Why does nothing change for the better? Well, in part it's because a crisis means there is money to be made by a small few. The worse the crisis gets the more money that becomes available. When roads get worse somehow PBOT gets more money, when homelessness gets worse the homeless advocates get more money, when schools get worse the schools get more money, when graffiti gets bad the graffiti clean-up crews get more money. This creates a financial incentive to make everything worse, and if your job is to "fix it" you get a promotion, more staff & money if you don't actually fix it.
But honestly, I don't want to give our regional bureaucrats too much credit, most are simply too incompetent to see this bad feedback loop for what it is. They're not working hard to make things worse, they're just sitting back on their asses and getting promoted.
Could there be an alternatives? Yes: your fire the people who didn't fix it with the resources given, rather than giving them more money, but that's uncouth in Portland, because so many political appointments and people running the show have little fiefdoms of political favors.
It's fair to look around and see that it all seems completely helpless across the city and we're out of good ideas on how to fix it.
One has to wonder: is there anyone who knows what caused all of these problems or how to fix it?
Yes, there are plenty of very smart people, a ignored and hated class of intellectuals, journalists, and academics, who are completely aware of the problems we're experiencing now, forecasted these problems before they happened, and have ample ways to resolve the issues ahead of us. Mostly be repealing the dumb fucking policies that got us here.
I'd like to label this group of rejected people the Cassandra Class. In Greek mythology Cassandra was a princess who was given the ability to see the future by the god Apollo, and yet also cursed that no one would ever believe her prophecies.
As an example of this Cassandra Class is Dr. Gerard Mildner. He's from PSU's Center for Real Estate and has dutifully recorded the policies related to our disaster of a housing policy, cutting out the noxious horseshit from the lunatics, and has been very accurate and insightful for long past a decade. You see, where the city is at with housing policy (where everything is fucked) is not by mere accident, but through really bad ideas enacted as policy by worthless government bureaucrats at Metro, the Counties, City of Portland, and the State. Many of these policies were intentionally enacted by dumb people wrapped up in a dumb ideology, thinking these were immaculate big brain plans from the smartest people.
I can't say I agree with Dr. Mildner on absolutely everything he's ever written, but let us consider his 2014 paper:

"Density At Any Cost"

This paper was a prophecy so shocking and vile that Metro took the time to repudiate it, Portland Commissioners denounced it, fellows at PSU disparaged him.
Imagine you write a paper and the government labels it "misinformation." "The report, titled "Density at Any Cost," said that the region's current land use planning policies will make it unaffordable to live in the Portland region." When government vehemently opposes an opinion from an accredited professional it's probably worth understanding that opinion because the opinion is likely just embarrassing to the government's own interest, they wouldn't deny something if there was no sense of truth to it.
What did Dr. Mildner warn us about 10 years ago? That Metro was going to create the situation we're in today. You see, Metro's core job is to manage the Urban Growth Boundary. The UGB is a relatively simple policy where urban growth is meant to be constrained to prevent sprawl, but by artificially constraining buildable land it could create a price bubble - so this policy evenly balances out the artificial constraint on land with a requirement that Metro must keep a 20-year supply of buildable land. The lynch pin of success for the Urban Growth Boundary is not about constraining development, but instead forecasting it's inevitable expansion.
This last point is particularly salient. It's simple and predictable economics that if we jack up the price to live in Blue States, working class and middle class people will opt to live elsewhere. And no doubt, South Carolina, Florida, Texas (all places with a population boom) - red states not enacting climate change policies. If you want to win this climate change battle you have to make places that enact better climate change policies more attractive. If you could live in a place with affordable homes, great schools, safe communities, clean streets, friendly people - then taxes on the middle class to service "climate change" are a secondary consideration.
To really illustrate this: very few people would care about Portland's Clean Energy Fund if the business community was booming. Yet we let the tweakers and the violent mentally ill convicts run amok, we refuse to build infrastructure people want to use, we refuse to build houses that people want to buy - so bye bye businesses, bye bye clean energy funding, bye bye to the dream of a climate change utopia. If Climate Change is really the number one issue, convincing people to live in places with climate change friendly policies (and milder climates) ought to be high on the priority list - but it's about as high on the list as getting elected members of Congress and Taylor Swift to stop using private jets. Climate doomers clearly have fuckall idea what they're doing or why - very much illustrated by the same college kids today thinking that taking over a college library helps someone in Palestine. That level of cognitive reasoning. If activists today had actual legitimacy and urgency underlying their motivations they would have more effort into measured outcomes - instead their lack of effectiveness is very telling about the legitimacy of their motivation.

Here we are today 10 years later.

It takes $160,000/yr in annual salary to buy a median home in Portland. More than the $140k/yr that the new City Commissioners will make, more than the County Commissioners make.
All of this could have been avoided by merely listening to people who aren't political hacks with jobs in Urban Planning departments.
And while it wasn't covered in 2014 paper there's many the subsequent prophecies of housing prices that weren't detailed in this paper but were well understood: higher housing prices means higher rent, higher rent means more homeless. Higher housing prices means people will move further away from the urban core and this will cause traffic congestion because the workers can't access mass transit even if they wanted to. Most people have long forgotten that prior to 2019 one of the biggest concerns for residents was traffic problems, the root of the traffic problem is our Urban Growth Boundary. The UGB also created enormous amounts of sprawl, it was just hidden outside the eyes of hapless Urban Planning dingbats at PSU - for example, North Plains is doubling it's size - that's sprawl - to accommodate people that would happily buy a home in North Bethany if they could afford one. Benton County, Oregon has roughly 50,000 workers, and 15% of them were commuting 85 miles to Portland on a regular basis. If you figure that's approximately 7,000 vehicles - that alone is enough to fill out a 3-lane highway for 1 hour - and that's how you get I-5 to be a clusterfuck. If you don't want traffic problems, it's got to make economic sense to have people live and work closer to the city, but because Metro broke housing prices, at least 15% of Corvallis's workforce can't afford to live in Portland but has to work here.
All of the problems and follies we're experiencing are thanks to hapless fools in government. A broken bankrupt ideology has captivated this city, and it's been unchecked in political growth thanks to the dominance of a single political party. Like a pathogen, these terrible ideas coming out of Urban Studies departments, all of them creating self-referencing circles of success for their Big Brain ideas, like San Francisco points to Portland for success, Portland points to Boston for success, Boston points to San Francisco - a big circle jerk of city planners pretending their ideas were successful. Local media goes to these "experts" in Metro to hear fake statistics based upon bad plans, and the media then informs the public how wonderful our political leaders are.
The public looks around, sees the crisis in their own eyes, and forms a bleak outlook.
submitted by fidelityportland to PortlandOR [link] [comments]

2024.05.16 19:12 mikozodav A couple questions, I'm new

Hi, I wanted to ask a few things as I've been thinking on and off about wanting to get a little into graffiti for a while now, just haven't really got to it yet.
Are there some resources about like the 'theory', like all the diffirent ways to write a letter and ways to stylize it. Or just a deep dive into all of it on like a 'theoretic' side
(if there is like a 'theoretic' and then the actual 'execution'/ the mechanical skill of holding a pen and writing, if that makes any sense. I imagine studying fonts from some website and calligraphy and learning to write in a decently readible handwriting would be useful?)
Also, how much does the 'name' or different words written mean? Is it just random stuff/ a word that looks cool/ does it actually mean something?
Thanks and sorry if these are dumb guestions.
submitted by mikozodav to graffhelp [link] [comments]

2024.05.16 16:26 ChannelAb3 How I Wonder What You Are by Al Bruno III

How I Wonder What You Are by Al Bruno III

I’ll know the time is right when the howling begins. It will be after sundown of course, the Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen only scream after sundown, and only on the clearest of nights.
There is no town of Jebsen listed on any map, even in its heyday of the 1940’s it was too small to be worthy of notice. It’s nothing more than a collection of buildings at the end of a dead end road. On one side it is bordered by long untended corn fields, on the other the swampy remains of Lake Campbell. The most noticeable of the town’s buildings is a red brick edifice with a wide domed roof of fractured glass. The rest is just barns and single story homes. Along the border of the swamp is row after row of barbed wire and bear traps.
I’ll let them scream for an hour or so, let them become tired. Even now it amazes me how I had learned to pick out the individual voices in the cacophony. The Widow Toth tires easily but the Garrets will be at it until dawn.
And what will I be doing while every able-bodied adult is on the rooftops? I’ll be slipping these pages into this mason jar and sealing it lid in place with the wax from a melted crayon. The Children of Jebsen won’t miss just one, especially not purple.
Twenty-five years ago a calamity befell the town of Jebsen. The authorities blamed it all on the after effects of an experimental insecticide but the Old Book the town elders read from every Sunday said otherwise. It told the citizens of Jebsen that a curse was carried by those twinkling dots in the sky. A malevolence traveling at 186,000 miles per second that would twist their Children into nightmares should a glint of it ever touch their skin.
That is why they scream at the starlight; hating it, cursing it, raging at it.
You can’t see what their Children have become and not feel the same way. The changes are heartbreaking and horrifying all at once but after you spend time with them you feel differently. There is mockery in the mis-set eyes that peer from those mollified skulls.
They know secrets. On quiet, cloudy nights I would put my ear to one families’ basement door or another and hear them murmuring and giggling as they writhe in their basement styes.
I think of their weeping mouths and soft teeth and remember that day half a decade ago the ill-advised shortcut and along the neglected county route 99. I remember approaching the train bridge and seriously considering turning around, it looked decades out of repair and I half suspected it would collapse as I passed under it.
But I didn’t turn back, my ego wouldn’t let me. I was right and the road was wrong so I drove under the train bridge, momentarily marveling at the strange and elaborate graffiti that covered it.
I was just past the structure when a small, bent figure ran out from the long grass.
The sounds are what I really remember; the squeal of the brakes, the thud of the body on the hood of my car, the thick crack of laminated glass.
I would later learn the name of the child I had hit was Julius McCarty but all I knew then was that there was an emaciated, bloodied shape lying halfway through my windshield.
Human instinct made me reach out, to see if the little boy was alive. When my fingers brushed his skin he twisted around to face me. His mouth lashed out proboscis-like and nuzzled into the flesh of my arm.
Pain bristled out from where the boy had latched on to me. I screamed, thrashed. I shoved the car door open and tumbled out onto the asphalt. The boy coughed once and died.
At first the wound held all my attention. How could it not? I had expected to see torn flesh and blood but instead the boy’s distended mouth had left behind a cluster of thick, festering ulcerations.
But then I became aware of the men making their way out of the tall grass. These were the Fathers of Jebsen understood immediately what had happened.
They had brought everything they might need to bring one of their Children back home to its basement; rope, bandages and cudgels. It was also everything they needed to make a captive of me.
They, dragged me away from the accident site, through the tall grass and over the collapsed remains of a chain link fence to leave me in the care of the Mothers of Jebsen. Those gaunt women had cudgels of their own and I was a mass of bruises and welts by the time the hole in the Earth had been made to their standards.
The menfolk returned carrying the child wrapped in a linen shroud. They dropped it roughly into the ground. There were no ceremonies, tears or headstone. It was well after dark by the time I had filled the grave back in.
Now here it is years later and I’ve had to dig a dozen more graves, one by one the Mothers and Fathers are dying out, it’s always a surprise when it happens. Every mother and father of Jensen is withered and white haired but every year a few more die in their sleep, or at work in the fields or at prayer in their red brick observatory.
The Children are dying too, not a one has ever lived past seventeen. One by one they waste away, except of course for the occasional accident like the one that trapped me here.
Despite these curse that has befallen them the people of Jebsen continue to reproduce, each mother convinced that this time she will give birth to the Great Redeemer as was foretold in the Old Book. Each time they fail and each time the result is locked away in it’s family’s basement.
You can’t imagine those basements, the smell of rotten meat, the ankle deep fecal matter and the perfectly clean toys. They draw equations on the walls, gold and silver crayons are their preferred color. Every Tuesday I have to visit each of those cellars and scrub the theorems and postulations away.
The youngest of the Children is a newborn, still angry from the womb, the oldest is seventeen and nearly rotted away. No matter the age they all taunt me as I work, sometimes with bites, sometimes with maledictions. Both have left unimaginable scars.
So many scars now, I’m marked, I could never walk among the people I’d known before. They’d refuse to recognize me and insist I was a stranger
The Widow Thoth says this is my penance for the death of Julius McCarty, she even went so far as to cite chapter and verse on the subject from Old Book itself. The Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen, base every aspect of their lives on that thick volume of prophecies and homilies.
I wonder if anyone will notice me as leaving. I doubt it, even when they’re not screaming their heads off a long dead suns they barely notice my comings and goings.
As I said before, the Mothers and Father’s of Jebsen have become so sure of me. Some families think I’ve become a true believer, the rest think the cinder block chained to my ankle is enough to keep me in my place.
I don’t know who you are or when you’ll find this message. My only hope is that you will believe me. If you do, please bring this document to the proper authorities. Don’t let my death be for nothing.
I go to the bottom of the swamp with two regrets. One is that I won’t be there when the town of Jebsen is discovered and burned to the ground.
The other is that six months ago I accepted Father Garett’s invitation to join in their celebrations. I went willingly with them to the old brick observatory. I prayed with them. I danced with them. I partook in all of their debasements.
And for a little while, perhaps an hour, I was happy.
They even asked me to give reading from the Old Book. I eagerly stopped up to the podium and began flipping through the thick volume.
Everyone waited for me to choose a passage and speak but all I did was shake and weep at what I beheld. My knees buckled. My mind shut down. I had to be carried out and put to bed.
You see, the Old Book was blank from cover to cover. You’re even holding some of those pages in your hands now.
I used them to write my story.
submitted by ChannelAb3 to libraryofshadows [link] [comments]

2024.05.16 16:23 ChannelAb3 How I Wonder What You Are by Al Bruno III

How I Wonder What You Are by Al Bruno III

I’ll know the time is right when the howling begins. It will be after sundown of course, the Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen only scream after sundown, and only on the clearest of nights.
There is no town of Jebsen listed on any map, even in its heyday of the 1940’s it was too small to be worthy of notice. It’s nothing more than a collection of buildings at the end of a dead end road. On one side it is bordered by long untended corn fields, on the other the swampy remains of Lake Campbell. The most noticeable of the town’s buildings is a red brick edifice with a wide domed roof of fractured glass. The rest is just barns and single story homes. Along the border of the swamp is row after row of barbed wire and bear traps.
I’ll let them scream for an hour or so, let them become tired. Even now it amazes me how I had learned to pick out the individual voices in the cacophony. The Widow Toth tires easily but the Garrets will be at it until dawn.
And what will I be doing while every able-bodied adult is on the rooftops? I’ll be slipping these pages into this mason jar and sealing it lid in place with the wax from a melted crayon. The Children of Jebsen won’t miss just one, especially not purple.
Twenty-five years ago a calamity befell the town of Jebsen. The authorities blamed it all on the after effects of an experimental insecticide but the Old Book the town elders read from every Sunday said otherwise. It told the citizens of Jebsen that a curse was carried by those twinkling dots in the sky. A malevolence traveling at 186,000 miles per second that would twist their Children into nightmares should a glint of it ever touch their skin.
That is why they scream at the starlight; hating it, cursing it, raging at it.
You can’t see what their Children have become and not feel the same way. The changes are heartbreaking and horrifying all at once but after you spend time with them you feel differently. There is mockery in the mis-set eyes that peer from those mollified skulls.
They know secrets. On quiet, cloudy nights I would put my ear to one families’ basement door or another and hear them murmuring and giggling as they writhe in their basement styes.
I think of their weeping mouths and soft teeth and remember that day half a decade ago the ill-advised shortcut and along the neglected county route 99. I remember approaching the train bridge and seriously considering turning around, it looked decades out of repair and I half suspected it would collapse as I passed under it.
But I didn’t turn back, my ego wouldn’t let me. I was right and the road was wrong so I drove under the train bridge, momentarily marveling at the strange and elaborate graffiti that covered it.
I was just past the structure when a small, bent figure ran out from the long grass.
The sounds are what I really remember; the squeal of the brakes, the thud of the body on the hood of my car, the thick crack of laminated glass.
I would later learn the name of the child I had hit was Julius McCarty but all I knew then was that there was an emaciated, bloodied shape lying halfway through my windshield.
Human instinct made me reach out, to see if the little boy was alive. When my fingers brushed his skin he twisted around to face me. His mouth lashed out proboscis-like and nuzzled into the flesh of my arm.
Pain bristled out from where the boy had latched on to me. I screamed, thrashed. I shoved the car door open and tumbled out onto the asphalt. The boy coughed once and died.
At first the wound held all my attention. How could it not? I had expected to see torn flesh and blood but instead the boy’s distended mouth had left behind a cluster of thick, festering ulcerations.
But then I became aware of the men making their way out of the tall grass. These were the Fathers of Jebsen understood immediately what had happened.
They had brought everything they might need to bring one of their Children back home to its basement; rope, bandages and cudgels. It was also everything they needed to make a captive of me.
They, dragged me away from the accident site, through the tall grass and over the collapsed remains of a chain link fence to leave me in the care of the Mothers of Jebsen. Those gaunt women had cudgels of their own and I was a mass of bruises and welts by the time the hole in the Earth had been made to their standards.
The menfolk returned carrying the child wrapped in a linen shroud. They dropped it roughly into the ground. There were no ceremonies, tears or headstone. It was well after dark by the time I had filled the grave back in.
Now here it is years later and I’ve had to dig a dozen more graves, one by one the Mothers and Fathers are dying out, it’s always a surprise when it happens. Every mother and father of Jensen is withered and white haired but every year a few more die in their sleep, or at work in the fields or at prayer in their red brick observatory.
The Children are dying too, not a one has ever lived past seventeen. One by one they waste away, except of course for the occasional accident like the one that trapped me here.
Despite these curse that has befallen them the people of Jebsen continue to reproduce, each mother convinced that this time she will give birth to the Great Redeemer as was foretold in the Old Book. Each time they fail and each time the result is locked away in it’s family’s basement.
You can’t imagine those basements, the smell of rotten meat, the ankle deep fecal matter and the perfectly clean toys. They draw equations on the walls, gold and silver crayons are their preferred color. Every Tuesday I have to visit each of those cellars and scrub the theorems and postulations away.
The youngest of the Children is a newborn, still angry from the womb, the oldest is seventeen and nearly rotted away. No matter the age they all taunt me as I work, sometimes with bites, sometimes with maledictions. Both have left unimaginable scars.
So many scars now, I’m marked, I could never walk among the people I’d known before. They’d refuse to recognize me and insist I was a stranger
The Widow Thoth says this is my penance for the death of Julius McCarty, she even went so far as to cite chapter and verse on the subject from Old Book itself. The Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen, base every aspect of their lives on that thick volume of prophecies and homilies.
I wonder if anyone will notice me as leaving. I doubt it, even when they’re not screaming their heads off a long dead suns they barely notice my comings and goings.
As I said before, the Mothers and Father’s of Jebsen have become so sure of me. Some families think I’ve become a true believer, the rest think the cinder block chained to my ankle is enough to keep me in my place.
I don’t know who you are or when you’ll find this message. My only hope is that you will believe me. If you do, please bring this document to the proper authorities. Don’t let my death be for nothing.
I go to the bottom of the swamp with two regrets. One is that I won’t be there when the town of Jebsen is discovered and burned to the ground.
The other is that six months ago I accepted Father Garett’s invitation to join in their celebrations. I went willingly with them to the old brick observatory. I prayed with them. I danced with them. I partook in all of their debasements.
And for a little while, perhaps an hour, I was happy.
They even asked me to give reading from the Old Book. I eagerly stopped up to the podium and began flipping through the thick volume.
Everyone waited for me to choose a passage and speak but all I did was shake and weep at what I beheld. My knees buckled. My mind shut down. I had to be carried out and put to bed.
You see, the Old Book was blank from cover to cover. You’re even holding some of those pages in your hands now.
I used them to write my story.
submitted by ChannelAb3 to Horror_stories [link] [comments]

2024.05.16 16:21 ChannelAb3 How I Wonder What You Are

How I Wonder What You Are by Al Bruno III

I’ll know the time is right when the howling begins. It will be after sundown of course, the Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen only scream after sundown, and only on the clearest of nights.
There is no town of Jebsen listed on any map, even in its heyday of the 1940’s it was too small to be worthy of notice. It’s nothing more than a collection of buildings at the end of a dead end road. On one side it is bordered by long untended corn fields, on the other the swampy remains of Lake Campbell. The most noticeable of the town’s buildings is a red brick edifice with a wide domed roof of fractured glass. The rest is just barns and single story homes. Along the border of the swamp is row after row of barbed wire and bear traps.
I’ll let them scream for an hour or so, let them become tired. Even now it amazes me how I had learned to pick out the individual voices in the cacophony. The Widow Toth tires easily but the Garrets will be at it until dawn.
And what will I be doing while every able-bodied adult is on the rooftops? I’ll be slipping these pages into this mason jar and sealing it lid in place with the wax from a melted crayon. The Children of Jebsen won’t miss just one, especially not purple.
Twenty-five years ago a calamity befell the town of Jebsen. The authorities blamed it all on the after effects of an experimental insecticide but the Old Book the town elders read from every Sunday said otherwise. It told the citizens of Jebsen that a curse was carried by those twinkling dots in the sky. A malevolence traveling at 186,000 miles per second that would twist their Children into nightmares should a glint of it ever touch their skin.
That is why they scream at the starlight; hating it, cursing it, raging at it.
You can’t see what their Children have become and not feel the same way. The changes are heartbreaking and horrifying all at once but after you spend time with them you feel differently. There is mockery in the mis-set eyes that peer from those mollified skulls.
They know secrets. On quiet, cloudy nights I would put my ear to one families’ basement door or another and hear them murmuring and giggling as they writhe in their basement styes.
I think of their weeping mouths and soft teeth and remember that day half a decade ago the ill-advised shortcut and along the neglected county route 99. I remember approaching the train bridge and seriously considering turning around, it looked decades out of repair and I half suspected it would collapse as I passed under it.
But I didn’t turn back, my ego wouldn’t let me. I was right and the road was wrong so I drove under the train bridge, momentarily marveling at the strange and elaborate graffiti that covered it.
I was just past the structure when a small, bent figure ran out from the long grass.
The sounds are what I really remember; the squeal of the brakes, the thud of the body on the hood of my car, the thick crack of laminated glass.
I would later learn the name of the child I had hit was Julius McCarty but all I knew then was that there was an emaciated, bloodied shape lying halfway through my windshield.
Human instinct made me reach out, to see if the little boy was alive. When my fingers brushed his skin he twisted around to face me. His mouth lashed out proboscis-like and nuzzled into the flesh of my arm.
Pain bristled out from where the boy had latched on to me. I screamed, thrashed. I shoved the car door open and tumbled out onto the asphalt. The boy coughed once and died.
At first the wound held all my attention. How could it not? I had expected to see torn flesh and blood but instead the boy’s distended mouth had left behind a cluster of thick, festering ulcerations.
But then I became aware of the men making their way out of the tall grass. These were the Fathers of Jebsen understood immediately what had happened.
They had brought everything they might need to bring one of their Children back home to its basement; rope, bandages and cudgels. It was also everything they needed to make a captive of me.
They, dragged me away from the accident site, through the tall grass and over the collapsed remains of a chain link fence to leave me in the care of the Mothers of Jebsen. Those gaunt women had cudgels of their own and I was a mass of bruises and welts by the time the hole in the Earth had been made to their standards.
The menfolk returned carrying the child wrapped in a linen shroud. They dropped it roughly into the ground. There were no ceremonies, tears or headstone. It was well after dark by the time I had filled the grave back in.
Now here it is years later and I’ve had to dig a dozen more graves, one by one the Mothers and Fathers are dying out, it’s always a surprise when it happens. Every mother and father of Jensen is withered and white haired but every year a few more die in their sleep, or at work in the fields or at prayer in their red brick observatory.
The Children are dying too, not a one has ever lived past seventeen. One by one they waste away, except of course for the occasional accident like the one that trapped me here.
Despite these curse that has befallen them the people of Jebsen continue to reproduce, each mother convinced that this time she will give birth to the Great Redeemer as was foretold in the Old Book. Each time they fail and each time the result is locked away in it’s family’s basement.
You can’t imagine those basements, the smell of rotten meat, the ankle deep fecal matter and the perfectly clean toys. They draw equations on the walls, gold and silver crayons are their preferred color. Every Tuesday I have to visit each of those cellars and scrub the theorems and postulations away.
The youngest of the Children is a newborn, still angry from the womb, the oldest is seventeen and nearly rotted away. No matter the age they all taunt me as I work, sometimes with bites, sometimes with maledictions. Both have left unimaginable scars.
So many scars now, I’m marked, I could never walk among the people I’d known before. They’d refuse to recognize me and insist I was a stranger
The Widow Thoth says this is my penance for the death of Julius McCarty, she even went so far as to cite chapter and verse on the subject from Old Book itself. The Mothers and Fathers of Jebsen, base every aspect of their lives on that thick volume of prophecies and homilies.
I wonder if anyone will notice me as leaving. I doubt it, even when they’re not screaming their heads off a long dead suns they barely notice my comings and goings.
As I said before, the Mothers and Father’s of Jebsen have become so sure of me. Some families think I’ve become a true believer, the rest think the cinder block chained to my ankle is enough to keep me in my place.
I don’t know who you are or when you’ll find this message. My only hope is that you will believe me. If you do, please bring this document to the proper authorities. Don’t let my death be for nothing.
I go to the bottom of the swamp with two regrets. One is that I won’t be there when the town of Jebsen is discovered and burned to the ground.
The other is that six months ago I accepted Father Garett’s invitation to join in their celebrations. I went willingly with them to the old brick observatory. I prayed with them. I danced with them. I partook in all of their debasements.
And for a little while, perhaps an hour, I was happy.
They even asked me to give reading from the Old Book. I eagerly stopped up to the podium and began flipping through the thick volume.
Everyone waited for me to choose a passage and speak but all I did was shake and weep at what I beheld. My knees buckled. My mind shut down. I had to be carried out and put to bed.
You see, the Old Book was blank from cover to cover. You’re even holding some of those pages in your hands now.
I used them to write my story.
submitted by ChannelAb3 to joinmeatthecampfire [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 23:51 lightscamerasnaction Delta in-flight movies [March 2024]

I tried to write down every single movie available on my flights in March 2024. I handwrote some of my notes to pass the 13 hours which is why there are ??? when I couldn't read my own writing/abbreviations. Note that not all titles were available on all flights, and my list is missing a chunk of them (especially titles beginning with "S" for some reason). Hope someone finds it useful! Maybe someone will get to creating a Letterboxd list of them all before me! [Posted this in movies and thought delta users might find it useful too]
10 Things I Hate About You
101 Dalmatians
12 Angry Men
13 Going on 30
17 Again
2001: A Space Odyssey
27 Dresses
500 Days of Summer
80 for Brady
A Beautiful Mind
A Bug's Life
A Cinderella Story
A Compassionate Spy
A Fantastic Woman
A Few Good Men
A Good Year
A Haunting in Venice
A League of Their Own
A Room with a View
A Separation
A Simple Plan
A Simple Wish
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Abominable
Adam's Rib
Airheads
Akeelah and the Bee
Aladdin
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
American Graffiti
American Street Kid
Amores Perros
An Inconvenient Truth
Anatomy of a Fall
Angels in the Outfield
Aquaman
Assassin Club
Asteroid City
Avatar: Way of Water
Avengers: Infinity War
Back to the Future
Bad Company
Barb and Star: Vista del Mar
Barbie
Batman
Batman Begins
Batman Returns
Batman vs. Superman Dawn
Battle of the Sexes
Beauty and the Beast
Beetlejuice
Being Mary Tyler Moore
Bend it Like Beckham
Better Luck Tomorrow
Big
Big George Foreman
Billy Elliott
Birds of Prey: Harley Quinn
Birthright Outlaw
Blackberry
Blade
Blade II
Blade Runner 2049
Blade Trinity
Blended
Blinded by the Light
Blue Beetle
Bolt
Bottoms
Brave
Brazil
Bridesmaids
Bridget Jones' Diary
Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason
Bring It On
Brown Sugar
Buoyancy
But I'm a Cheerleader
Call Me by Your Name
Carmen Jones
Central Intelligence
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cheaper by the Dozen
Chevalier
Chicken Run
Child's Play
Children of a Lesser God
Chinatown
Cinderella
Clifford the Big Red Dog
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Clueless
Colossal
Condor's Nest
Cool Hand Luke
Coraline
Couples Retreat
Crazy Rich Asians
Crazy Stupid Love
Creed
Creed II
Crooklyn
Cruella
Chr. G
Dark Waters
Darkest Hour
Dawnland
Dazed and Confused
DC: League of Super Pets
Dear White People
Dee. Boys
Delivery Man
Desperately Seeking Susan
Despicable Me
Despicable Me 2
Despicable Me 3
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Dret ard
Dr. Doolittle
Down with Love
Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who
Dr. Seuss The Grinch
Dr. Grinch The Lorax
Dreamgirls
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Drumline
Due Date
Dumb and Dumber
Dumb Money
Dune
Dunkirk
E.T.
Edge of Tomorrow
Eggs Over Easy
Elemental
Enter the Dragon
E????
Erin Brockovich
Eternals
Evan Almighty
Everest
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Evil Dead Rises
Expendables 4
F9: Fast Saga
Fallen
Fantastic Beasts
Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindewald
Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore
Fargo
F&F: Hobbes and Shaw
Fast X
Father of the Bride
Feramana???
Ferner????
Field of Dreams
Finding Dory
Finding Nemo
First Man
Focus
Following
Fools Rush In
Forrest Gump
Freaky
Freaky Friday
Freelance
Frida
Friday
Frozen 2
Frozen River
Game Night
Gangster Squad
Garfield
Garfield: Tail of 2 Kitties
Get Smart
Ghostbusters
Glass
Glory
Godzilla vs Kong
Going in Style
Good Morning Vietnam
Gosford Park
Grand Torino
Gran Turismo
Gravity
Grease
Grease 2
Gremlins
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3
Guy Richie's The Covenant
Hacksaw Ridge
Half Nelson
Hanna
Happy Death Day
Happy Feet 2
Harlan County USA
Harold and Kumar: White Castle
Harry Potter 1-8
Haunted Mansion
He's Just Not That Into You
Her
Hereafter
Hocus Pocus
Honor Society
Horrible Bosses
Hotel Transylvania
House Party
How to Be Single
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
How to Train your Dragon
Hypnotic
I Am Legend
I Didn't See You There
I, Tonya
Ice Age: Collision Course
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Meltdown
Ice on Fire
If Beale Street Could Talk
In the Heart of the Sea
In the Heights
In the Name of the Father
Inception
Incredibles 2
Indiana Jones: Dial of Destiny
Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom
Insidious: The Red Door
Insomnia
Instructions not INcluded
It
Jerry & Marge Go Large
Jersey Boys
John Wick
John Wick 2
John Wick 3
Joker
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Judas and the Black Messiah
Jules
Jumanji
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Jurassic Park
Jurassic World
Just Married
Just my Luck
Kazaam
Kit Kittredge
Kramer vs Kramer
Kubo and the Two Strings
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda 2
Kung Fu??????
La La Land
Labyrinth
Lady in the Water
Lakota Nation vs United States
Legally Blonde
Liar Liar
Life of the Party
Lightyear
Lilo and Stitch
Lion
Little Women
Living
Lo------
Lone Survivor
Love and Basketball
Love Again
Love Jones
Ma-d_____ ?
Madagascar
Madagascar Escape
Made of Honor
Mafia Mamma
Magic Mike's Last Dance
Malt------
Momma's Boy
Mamma Mia
Mamma Mia Here We Go Again
March of the Penguins
Mat------
Mean Girls
Meet the Parents?
Memento
Michael Clayton
Milk
Minions
Minions: Rise of Gru
Misery
Miss Congeniality
Missing Link
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning
Mississippi Masala
Moana
Monster In Law
Monsters Inc
Monsters University
Moonlight
Mortal Enemies
Mr. Malcolm's List
Mulan
Mummies
Murder by Numbers
Murder on the Orient Express
Muriel's Wedding
My Animal
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Family
My Girl
National Lampoon's Vacation
Neighbors 2
Neruda
New Year's Eve
News of the World
Nights in Rodanthe
Nine Queens
No
No Country for Old Men
No Murches Frida??
Nomadland
Notting Hill
Ocean's 8
Ocean's 13
October Sky
Of tn age??
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Onward
Oppenheimer
Origin
Over the Hedge
Pacific Rim
Pandas
Pan's Labyrinth
ParaNorman
Paris is Burning
Past Lives
Paw Patrol: Mighty
Paw Patrol: More
Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Perfect Strangers
Persepolis
Phantom Thread
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
Pitch Perfect
Pitch Perfect 3
Planes
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
Practical Magic
Pride and Prejudice
Primal Fear
Priscilla
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Puppy Love
Puss in Boots
Queen and Slim
Radical
RRadi--- Wwi?/
Raging Bull
Ra the Breata?
Rat Race?
Ratatouille
Ready Player One
Real Women Have Curves
Red Tails
Reforge
Renfield
Repo Man
Rocky
Ruby Gillman
Rumor Has It
Rush Hour 2
RV
Róise & Frank
Sacfint??
Saving Face
Saving Private Ryan
School Daze
Scoob!
Scooby Doo
Scrapper
Scream VI
Searching
Selena
Selma
Semi Pro
Seven
Shaft
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Significant Other
?
?
Skyfall
Smallfoot
Smoke?
Snowpiercer
?
Something's Gotta Give
?
?
Soul Surfer
Space Jam
Space Oddity
Sp Ra ????
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse
Split
Spy Game?
Spy Kids
Stone and D????
Ste W s5t?
Stomp the Yard
Storks
Sweet Home Alabama
Tag
Talk to Me
Tangled
Tee as Go!??
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Tenet
The Adia Prse?
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
The Baby-Sitters Club
The Best Man
The Big Lebowski
The Big Short
The Biggest Little Farm
The Bird Cage
The Blind Side
The Blues Brothers
The Bodyguard
The Boogeyman
The Book of Life
The Boss Baby: Family Business
The Bourne Identity
The Boxer
The Breakfast Club
The Bucket List
The Caine Mutiny
The Campaign
The Castle
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia 2
The Chronicles of Narnia 3
The Creator
The Croods New Age
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Side
The Dead Don't Die
The Dry?
The Equalizer
The Exorcist: Believer
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
The Fast and Furious (#1)
The S Heartbeats?
The Has???
The Gentlemen
The Good Nurse
The Goonies
The Great Wall
The Guard
The Harvest (La Cosecha)
The H????
The Hobbit
The Hobbit 2
The Hobbit 3
The Holdovers
The Hunger Games: Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games 2
The Hunger Games 3
The Hunger Games 4
The Hunt for Red October
The Huntsman: Winter’s War
The Incredibles
The Intern
The Invention of Lying
The Iron Giant
The Island
The Jungle Book
The Karate Kid
The Kids are Alright
The Lake House
The Land Before Time
The Last Out
The Last Samurai
The Lego Batman Movie
The Lego Movie
The Lesson
The Lion King
The Lion King
The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship
The Losers
The Man from UNCLE
The Marsh King’s Doughter
The Marvels
The Matrix: Resurrections
The Mitchells vs The Machines
The Mummy
The Neverending Story
The Nice Guys
The Nun II
The Odd Life of Timothy Green
The Other Zoey
The Outsiders
The Peanuts Movie
The Persian Version
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
The Place Beyond the Pines
The Popes Exorcist
The Pre--?
The Purge: Election Year
The Replacements
The Ring
The Secret Garden
The Secret Life of Pets
The Silence of the Lambs
The S --------
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The Take
The Time Traveler's Wife
The True Cost
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Un---- Country
The Usual Suspects
The ???
The ????
The ?????
The Wedding Singer
The Wizard of Oz
The Wood
The Zookeeper's Wife
Theater Camp
Them---?
There Will Be Blood
Thurs?
Titanic
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tooooo?
Tom ??
Tommy Boy
Top Gun
Top Gun: Maverick
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 4
Train to Busan
Training Day
Transformers Rise
Trolls
Trolls World Tour
Troy
Tully
Turning Red
Umami
Us
??
V for Vendetta
V????
VeggieTales: Abe and the Amazing Promise
VeggieTales: Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas
Vindicta
Vivo
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
War Dogs
We Were Soldiers
We're the Millers
Wedding Crashers
West Side Story
Wet Hot American Summer
Where the Wild Things Are
Wildhood
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Winters Bone
Wonder
Wonder Woman 1984
Wonka
Wreck It Ralph
Yes, Man
Yesterday
Young Punx: A Punk Parable
Zombieland

submitted by lightscamerasnaction to delta [link] [comments]

2024.05.15 23:48 lightscamerasnaction Delta in-flight movies list

I tried to write down every single movie available on my Delta flights in March 2024. I handwrote some of my notes to pass the 13 hours which is why there are ??? when I couldn't read my own writing/abbreviations. Note that not all titles were available on all flights, and my list is missing a chunk of them (especially titles beginning with "S" for some reason). Hope someone finds it useful! Maybe someone will get to creating a Letterboxd list of them all before me!
10 Things I Hate About You
101 Dalmatians
12 Angry Men
13 Going on 30
17 Again
2001: A Space Odyssey
27 Dresses
500 Days of Summer
80 for Brady
A Beautiful Mind
A Bug's Life
A Cinderella Story
A Compassionate Spy
A Fantastic Woman
A Few Good Men
A Good Year
A Haunting in Venice
A League of Their Own
A Room with a View
A Separation
A Simple Plan
A Simple Wish
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Abominable
Adam's Rib
Airheads
Akeelah and the Bee
Aladdin
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
American Graffiti
American Street Kid
Amores Perros
An Inconvenient Truth
Anatomy of a Fall
Angels in the Outfield
Aquaman
Assassin Club
Asteroid City
Avatar: Way of Water
Avengers: Infinity War
Back to the Future
Bad Company
Barb and Star: Vista del Mar
Barbie
Batman
Batman Begins
Batman Returns
Batman vs. Superman Dawn
Battle of the Sexes
Beauty and the Beast
Beetlejuice
Being Mary Tyler Moore
Bend it Like Beckham
Better Luck Tomorrow
Big
Big George Foreman
Billy Elliott
Birds of Prey: Harley Quinn
Birthright Outlaw
Blackberry
Blade
Blade II
Blade Runner 2049
Blade Trinity
Blended
Blinded by the Light
Blue Beetle
Bolt
Bottoms
Brave
Brazil
Bridesmaids
Bridget Jones' Diary
Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason
Bring It On
Brown Sugar
Buoyancy
But I'm a Cheerleader
Call Me by Your Name
Carmen Jones
Central Intelligence
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cheaper by the Dozen
Chevalier
Chicken Run
Child's Play
Children of a Lesser God
Chinatown
Cinderella
Clifford the Big Red Dog
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Clueless
Colossal
Condor's Nest
Cool Hand Luke
Coraline
Couples Retreat
Crazy Rich Asians
Crazy Stupid Love
Creed
Creed II
Crooklyn
Cruella
Chr. G
Dark Waters
Darkest Hour
Dawnland
Dazed and Confused
DC: League of Super Pets
Dear White People
Dee. Boys
Delivery Man
Desperately Seeking Susan
Despicable Me
Despicable Me 2
Despicable Me 3
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Dret ard
Dr. Doolittle
Down with Love
Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who
Dr. Seuss The Grinch
Dr. Grinch The Lorax
Dreamgirls
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Drumline
Due Date
Dumb and Dumber
Dumb Money
Dune
Dunkirk
E.T.
Edge of Tomorrow
Eggs Over Easy
Elemental
Enter the Dragon
E????
Erin Brockovich
Eternals
Evan Almighty
Everest
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Evil Dead Rises
Expendables 4
F9: Fast Saga
Fallen
Fantastic Beasts
Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindewald
Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore
Fargo
F&F: Hobbes and Shaw
Fast X
Father of the Bride
Feramana???
Ferner????
Field of Dreams
Finding Dory
Finding Nemo
First Man
Focus
Following
Fools Rush In
Forrest Gump
Freaky
Freaky Friday
Freelance
Frida
Friday
Frozen 2
Frozen River
Game Night
Gangster Squad
Garfield
Garfield: Tail of 2 Kitties
Get Smart
Ghostbusters
Glass
Glory
Godzilla vs Kong
Going in Style
Good Morning Vietnam
Gosford Park
Grand Torino
Gran Turismo
Gravity
Grease
Grease 2
Gremlins
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3
Guy Richie's The Covenant
Hacksaw Ridge
Half Nelson
Hanna
Happy Death Day
Happy Feet 2
Harlan County USA
Harold and Kumar: White Castle
Harry Potter 1-8
Haunted Mansion
He's Just Not That Into You
Her
Hereafter
Hocus Pocus
Honor Society
Horrible Bosses
Hotel Transylvania
House Party
How to Be Single
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
How to Train your Dragon
Hypnotic
I Am Legend
I Didn't See You There
I, Tonya
Ice Age: Collision Course
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Meltdown
Ice on Fire
If Beale Street Could Talk
In the Heart of the Sea
In the Heights
In the Name of the Father
Inception
Incredibles 2
Indiana Jones: Dial of Destiny
Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom
Insidious: The Red Door
Insomnia
Instructions not INcluded
It
Jerry & Marge Go Large
Jersey Boys
John Wick
John Wick 2
John Wick 3
Joker
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Judas and the Black Messiah
Jules
Jumanji
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Jurassic Park
Jurassic World
Just Married
Just my Luck
Kazaam
Kit Kittredge
Kramer vs Kramer
Kubo and the Two Strings
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda 2
Kung Fu??????
La La Land
Labyrinth
Lady in the Water
Lakota Nation vs United States
Legally Blonde
Liar Liar
Life of the Party
Lightyear
Lilo and Stitch
Lion
Little Women
Living
Lo------
Lone Survivor
Love and Basketball
Love Again
Love Jones
Ma-d_____ ?
Madagascar
Madagascar Escape
Made of Honor
Mafia Mamma
Magic Mike's Last Dance
Malt------
Momma's Boy
Mamma Mia
Mamma Mia Here We Go Again
March of the Penguins
Mat------
Mean Girls
Meet the Parents?
Memento
Michael Clayton
Milk
Minions
Minions: Rise of Gru
Misery
Miss Congeniality
Missing Link
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning
Mississippi Masala
Moana
Monster In Law
Monsters Inc
Monsters University
Moonlight
Mortal Enemies
Mr. Malcolm's List
Mulan
Mummies
Murder by Numbers
Murder on the Orient Express
Muriel's Wedding
My Animal
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Family
My Girl
National Lampoon's Vacation
Neighbors 2
Neruda
New Year's Eve
News of the World
Nights in Rodanthe
Nine Queens
No
No Country for Old Men
No Murches Frida??
Nomadland
Notting Hill
Ocean's 8
Ocean's 13
October Sky
Of tn age??
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Onward
Oppenheimer
Origin
Over the Hedge
Pacific Rim
Pandas
Pan's Labyrinth
ParaNorman
Paris is Burning
Past Lives
Paw Patrol: Mighty
Paw Patrol: More
Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Perfect Strangers
Persepolis
Phantom Thread
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
Pitch Perfect
Pitch Perfect 3
Planes
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
Practical Magic
Pride and Prejudice
Primal Fear
Priscilla
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Puppy Love
Puss in Boots
Queen and Slim
Radical
RRadi--- Wwi?/
Raging Bull
Ra the Breata?
Rat Race?
Ratatouille
Ready Player One
Real Women Have Curves
Red Tails
Reforge
Renfield
Repo Man
Rocky
Ruby Gillman
Rumor Has It
Rush Hour 2
RV
Róise & Frank
Sacfint??
Saving Face
Saving Private Ryan
School Daze
Scoob!
Scooby Doo
Scrapper
Scream VI
Searching
Selena
Selma
Semi Pro
Seven
Shaft
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Significant Other
?
?
Skyfall
Smallfoot
Smoke?
Snowpiercer
?
Something's Gotta Give
?
?
Soul Surfer
Space Jam
Space Oddity
Sp Ra ????
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse
Split
Spy Game?
Spy Kids
Stone and D????
Ste W s5t?
Stomp the Yard
Storks
Sweet Home Alabama
Tag
Talk to Me
Tangled
Tee as Go!??
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Tenet
The Adia Prse?
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
The Baby-Sitters Club
The Best Man
The Big Lebowski
The Big Short
The Biggest Little Farm
The Bird Cage
The Blind Side
The Blues Brothers
The Bodyguard
The Boogeyman
The Book of Life
The Boss Baby: Family Business
The Bourne Identity
The Boxer
The Breakfast Club
The Bucket List
The Caine Mutiny
The Campaign
The Castle
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia 2
The Chronicles of Narnia 3
The Creator
The Croods New Age
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Side
The Dead Don't Die
The Dry?
The Equalizer
The Exorcist: Believer
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
The Fast and Furious (#1)
The S Heartbeats?
The Has???
The Gentlemen
The Good Nurse
The Goonies
The Great Wall
The Guard
The Harvest (La Cosecha)
The H????
The Hobbit
The Hobbit 2
The Hobbit 3
The Holdovers
The Hunger Games: Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games 2
The Hunger Games 3
The Hunger Games 4
The Hunt for Red October
The Huntsman: Winter’s War
The Incredibles
The Intern
The Invention of Lying
The Iron Giant
The Island
The Jungle Book
The Karate Kid
The Kids are Alright
The Lake House
The Land Before Time
The Last Out
The Last Samurai
The Lego Batman Movie
The Lego Movie
The Lesson
The Lion King
The Lion King
The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship
The Losers
The Man from UNCLE
The Marsh King’s Doughter
The Marvels
The Matrix: Resurrections
The Mitchells vs The Machines
The Mummy
The Neverending Story
The Nice Guys
The Nun II
The Odd Life of Timothy Green
The Other Zoey
The Outsiders
The Peanuts Movie
The Persian Version
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
The Place Beyond the Pines
The Popes Exorcist
The Pre--?
The Purge: Election Year
The Replacements
The Ring
The Secret Garden
The Secret Life of Pets
The Silence of the Lambs
The S --------
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The ?
The Take
The Time Traveler's Wife
The True Cost
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Un---- Country
The Usual Suspects
The ???
The ????
The ?????
The Wedding Singer
The Wizard of Oz
The Wood
The Zookeeper's Wife
Theater Camp
Them---?
There Will Be Blood
Thurs?
Titanic
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tooooo?
Tom ??
Tommy Boy
Top Gun
Top Gun: Maverick
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 4
Train to Busan
Training Day
Transformers Rise
Trolls
Trolls World Tour
Troy
Tully
Turning Red
Umami
Us
??
V for Vendetta
V????
VeggieTales: Abe and the Amazing Promise
VeggieTales: Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas
Vindicta
Vivo
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
War Dogs
We Were Soldiers
We're the Millers
Wedding Crashers
West Side Story
Wet Hot American Summer
Where the Wild Things Are
Wildhood
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Winters Bone
Wonder
Wonder Woman 1984
Wonka
Wreck It Ralph
Yes, Man
Yesterday
Young Punx: A Punk Parable
Zombieland
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2024.05.15 18:12 adulting4kids Flash Fiction Prompts

This is taken from and is copyright protected by globalsoup.net, a website that promotes flash Fiction with annual writing contests.
I am reprinting these Flash Fiction Prompts because they are outstanding ways to freewrite and offer plenty to work with for those who want to learn how to write Flash Fiction.
So check out these prompts and the article and work some of them into your journal! Post the best responses!
100 Awesome Flash Fiction Prompts - Plus Bonus Prompts!
We’ve put together 100 flash fiction prompts, each one designed for a very short story. These prompts will probably be best suited to a story of between 300-1,000 words. If you want to write a longer story using these prompts, you can easily expand these ideas to fit a story of any length.
What is flash fiction?
Flash Fiction is defined as a very short story that can be anywhere from just a couple of words to about a thousand in length. The beauty (and difficulty) of writing flash fiction lies in trying to tell a complete story in so few words. Great flash fiction is succinct, emotive, thought-provoking, and impactful.
What’s the difference between flash fiction and a short story?
The only difference between flash fiction and a typical short story is the word count. However, this scarcity of words means that writing flash fiction can feel like a completely new skill. Just like the short story is a different animal to the novel or novella; flash fiction is kind of unique.
When writing flash, you’ll need to use fewer characters, a simpler plot, and you’ll have to make each word count. This is why editing is so important. You have to be brutal. Cut out everything superfluous and really make sure each and every word is performing an important function in the story. If you’re interested in writing very short fiction, why not check out drabbles? Drabbles are stories of exactly 100 words in length, and they can be a great way to practice keeping your stories very, very short.
How to plot a flash fiction story
When you sit down to write flash fiction, you must begin by choosing an appropriate plot. You cannot simply use a short story plot and tell it using fewer words. A typical flash fiction plot is like looking at one part of a story under a microscope.
For example, let’s look at prompt #21 in our list of 100 Flash Fiction Prompts:
  1. Two people on a sinking ship must decide who should take the last seat in the last lifeboat. If you were writing a novel about a sinking ship, you’d probably want the actual sinking to be the climax of the story. Of course, there are infinite ways to write a novel about a sinking ship, but this would structurally be the most obvious. You’d use the first part of the novel to introduce your characters and describe the voyage leading up to the sinking and the sinking of the ship would be the dramatic climax, leaving the last part of the book as the resolution.
The golden rule of writing short stories is to begin as close to end as you can. So, to turn the same story from novel to short story, you’d probably want to begin with the ship sinking. You haven’t got time to introduce the characters before the action begins, so you’d need to feed in exposition and backstory here and there during the events.
All stories need a good climax. So, you would find the most dramatic moment in the story and build up to it. Perhaps your climax would be the two main characters having to decide who will take the remaining seat on the last lifeboat.
Finally, you need a resolution. In a longer short story you do have time to bring in some kind of satisfying resolution at the end.
But, if you’re writing flash fiction and your story is only a few hundred words, you really need to zoom in on one tiny moment in that story.
You don’t have time to tell the entire story of a sinking ship, but you can turn one moment into a story.
We’ve chosen the lifeboat situation as the key moment in this hypothetical story. Two characters must decide which one of them will take the last seat on the last lifeboat. This is an appropriate plot for flash fiction because it’s simple, high-stakes, dramatic, and thought provoking.
Not all flash fiction will have a plot quite this dramatic, but all great flash fiction will have a plot that can be expressed in just one or two sentences.
If you have a plot in mind, but it seems more suitable for a longer story, you can sometimes find several flash fiction plots hidden within it. Just look for little stories within the story, like the lifeboat moment in our hypothetical tale of the sinking ship.
This brings us to our top tip for coming up with ideas for flash fiction stories:
if you’re ever stuck for ideas, you can find little stories within the story in books, movies, and TV shows. A full length feature film might have as many as 20 little incidents in it that could easily be flash fiction.
Don’t directly write a story based on the film, though. Just carefully pick out those little moments, write down what’s happening as a one or two sentence plot, and then use it to inspire your own, completely original flash fiction story.
One of our 100 Flash Fiction Prompts was actually taken from the movie Pulp Fiction!
How to write very short flash fiction
There are several reasons writers might start writing flash fiction. Of course, it could be that they just love and enjoy the form, but sometimes they’ll be a more strategic and practical reason at play.
Perhaps they want to practise the process of writing stories within the confines of a certain word limit. Maybe they are trying to develop a daily writing routine and they don’t have a lot of free time. It could be that they’re trying to break a habit of not finishing writing projects, or perhaps they are entering a flash fiction competition.
Whatever the reason, very often when we sit down to write flash, we must work under an imposed or self-imposed word restraint. We’ve set ourselves (or been set) the task of keeping the story under a particular number of words.
So, how do you plot a flash fiction story when you have to keep your story very, very short.
We’re not going to discuss stories of 100 words or fewer here. Technically, those stories are still flash, however, we prefer to categorise 100 word stories as drabbles and anything under 100 words as micro fiction.
But what if you have to keep your flash fiction story under, let’s say, 300 words? How do you write a flash fiction story that short?
The answer is: get your microscope out again. Remember earlier when we said writing flash fiction is like looking at part of a story under a microscope? If you have to write very short flash fiction, you’ll need to zoom in even further.
Let’s look at a couple of examples from our 100 Flash Fiction Prompts:
  1. During a match, a young boxer must decide whether to throw the fight.
If you had 1,000 words to devote to the story, you could have time to tell the story of the entire fight. With only 300 words, it might be better to zoom in on the very moment when the boxer must choose whether or not to go down.
In a longer flash fiction story you might have time to go into detail about why he’s in this situation and why he’s so conflicted. In a 300 word story, you might only devote one or two sentences to his gambling debt and the large sum of money waiting for him if he goes down in the third round, as instructed.
  1. A family must decide what to take and what to leave behind as a wildfire approaches their home.
If you had 1,000 words to devote to this story, you might be able to write about the whole process of choosing what to take and what to leave behind. You might be able to mention many different choices and have the whole family participate in the story. You’d be able to go into some details about certain choices and the stories behind individual objects or mementos, as well as the implications of choosing certain things over others.
With only 300 words, it would be advisable to zoom in on one member of the family and to focus on one profound and important choice.
How to write a flash fiction story
Now you have your mini plot, you still need to make sure your flash fiction feels like a complete story. It should still have a beginning, middle, and an end.
Just like a short story, you may need to bring in a little exposition here and there to give texture, context, backstory, and to bring some depth to the characters. But, unlike a short story, you won’t necessarily need to end with a full, detailed resolution. It’s quite common for a flash fiction story to end with a quick twist or plenty of ambiguity.
Flash Fiction is much more about eliciting emotions and provoking thought, than setting up and resolving a complex story.
100 Awesome Flash Fiction Prompts
A young ballet dancer chooses not to tell the other dancers in her troop about a loose paving stone outside their dance studio.
Two sisters realise they’ve both been on a perfect first date … with the same man.
On the car journey home, two parents realise they’ve left their child’s favourite teddy on a park bench several hours away.
A writer suffering from writers’ block looks for inspiration in a strange place.
Set 200 years in the future, a young man realises he’s too emotionally dependent on his robot assistant.
A young woman discovers she’s taken the wrong suitcase home from the airport. The contents of the case make her question her own life choices.
A murderer realises he has only 10 minutes to dispose of a body.
A child decides to walk home by themselves after their parent forgets to pick them up from school … again.
Your protagonist manages to talk the grim reaper out of collecting their soul.
Your protagonist suddenly realises they’ve been living in a simulation.
A young couple has chosen to spend the night in a haunted house to fix their marriage. Your story starts just as things get very weird.
Your protagonist finds a letter they wrote to themselves when they were a teenager.
Your protagonist must decide whether or not to drink from a fountain that erases all painful memories from the mind.
Your protagonist comes across a street called ‘Memory Lane’. They quickly realise the name is eerily apt.
A bride finds out something startling about her future husband an hour before the wedding.
Your protagonist finds an advertisement for a company that promises everlasting youth.
A youngest sibling shows up at a family reunion they weren’t actually invited to.
Your protagonist finds a piece of paper with a spell on it. If they say the words out loud they aren't sure if something terrible or wonderful will happen.
Your protagonist is watching a jazz band play when they realise they know the drummer from somewhere — but where? It takes a whole song for them to figure it out.
Your protagonist must meet their ex for lunch to tell them they’re now engaged. It’s been just a few weeks since they split up.
Two people on a sinking ship must decide who should take the last seat in the last lifeboat.
During a match, a young boxer must decide whether to throw the fight.
Your protagonist must pack their belongings before moving to a new colony on mars.
A pilot realises they have lost control of their aircraft.
Your protagonist doesn’t want to attend their 100th birthday party — and for good reason!
Your protagonist gets stuck in a lift with their ex … 5 minutes after breaking up with them.
A child says goodbye to the fairies in his garden before moving to a new home.
Your protagonist saves someone’s life … and then wishes they hadn’t.
Your protagonist arrives at a blind date. They’ve been set up with someone they actually know a little too well.
Set in a dystopian future in which public displays of affection are banned, your protagonist faces an agonising choice.
An agoraphobic must face their fear in order to save something important.
Your protagonist must make her partner fall out of love with them. Both their lives depend on it.
Your protagonist is hiking with her small children, they come face to face with a grizzly bear and her cubs.
Cinderella and Prince Charming realise they got married too quickly.
A message written in graffiti on a bathroom wall has serious implications for your protagonist.
Your protagonist finds a bag, looks inside, and realises the owner might just be their soulmate.
Your protagonist has been seeing the same stranger everywhere they go for months. They finally decide to confront them.
A couple realise their relationship is over during the trip of a lifetime. They’ve been saving up for the trip for years.
A public debate sees two previously married people letting their private grievances come into their arguments.
Your protagonist plans their escape from a retirement home.
A couple realise their fundamental beliefs are at odds with each other.
An artist develops an obsession with drawing a next-door neighbour.
Your protagonist finds themselves trapped in a cabin with a group of hikers during a heavy snowfall.
An ice skater must face going back on the ice after a dangerous fall.
A couple must decide their plan for New Year’ Eve. They both have secret reasons for their choice.
A family must decide what to take and what to leave behind as a wildfire approaches their home.
Your protagonist is waiting for someone important at the airport. They begin to think that person isn’t going to show up … and then they realise why.
Your protagonist must find their way through a maze. What they find in the middle of the maze is the last thing they were expecting.
An actor waiting in the wings has forgotten his first line.
Your protagonist is wrongly identified as a hero. Do they come clean?
Your protagonist realises their past is catching up with them.
Your protagonist overhears something that has serious implications for them while trying on clothes in a changing room.
Your protagonist is in a costume shop trying to decide what to dress up as for Halloween.
Your protagonist realises they’ve slipped into an alternate dimension.
A surgeon must make an impossible choice on the operating table.
A pregnant journalist interviews the mother of a missing child.
Your protagonist must ask his girlfriend’s father for his blessing, only to discover the father knows his deepest secret.
Your protagonist sees something on social media that will change their life forever.
Two work colleagues realise they’ve been dreaming the same dreams for weeks.
A reluctant daughter comes to terms with having to carry on the family business.
Your protagonist realises she must go on the run.
Two bank robbers disagree on their plan to rob a bank. This leads to a disastrous consequence.
A strange case of deja vous leaves your protagonist convinced of supernatural interference.
A sceptic begins to question their beliefs during a psychic reading.
Your protagonist uncovers a scandal at their workplace.
A hapless cook tries to recreate her late father’s favourite recipes in an effort to feel connected to him.
Your protagonist has a premonition that makes them certain they can’t visit their mother-in-law for Christmas. Now he must convince his husband.
A young backpacker discovers something unexpected in a cave.
An impulsive character and an indecisive character are brought together by chance. They must make an important choice.
Two characters cleaning up after a party discover an object that sheds light on something strange that happened earlier.
Two strangers are trapped together during a blackout.
Your protagonist must take a leap of faith in order to save something important to them.
Your protagonist discovers a huge part of their life has been a lie.
Your protagonist has set up an elaborate way to propose. Inexplicably, everything goes wrong.
Your protagonist must buy a dress for her mother’s funeral.
Your protagonist goes back to her favourite city in the world, only to find it has completely changed.
While stargazing, your protagonist realises the stars are forming secret messages in the sky.
Your protagonist hears a news story on the radio that will mean the world changes forever. However, she seems to be the only person who heard it.
Your protagonist is crossing a frozen lake. They see something under the ice that definitely shouldn’t be there.
A workaholic must come to terms with retirement.
An Olympic athlete must decide whether or not to report their teammate for doping.
A young mother feels isolated from her childless friends.
Your protagonist is about to realise their greatest ambition. Will it be everything they were hoping for?
Onboard a spaceship, a couple prepare to go into stasis for hundreds of years.
Your protagonist has an obsession with thinking about the past.
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, your protagonist meets an unlikely love interest.
Your protagonist visits a place from their childhood and realises their memories of that time might not be accurate at all.
A small child has decided to run away from home. Her parents watch on with amusement as she decides what to put in her backpack.
On a whim, a bus driver decides to radically change his route, much to the chagrin of his passengers.
Dystopian. A couple in love are only allowed to spend time with each other one day a year.
A shapeshifter begins to realise their powers are fading. They must decide what form will be the last one they take before they cannot change again.
The devil visits your protagonist with an offer on her soul.
Your protagonist suddenly has the ability to read minds. There’s only one place they want to go now!
Your very wealthy protagonist has designed a simple test to see who will inherit her estate.
An archaeologist discovers something that will change how we see the history of the world. It could be dangerous. Does he keep it to himself?
Your protagonist must clear out their late mother’s house. She discovers an incredible family secret.
Your protagonist is meeting his brother. They haven’t seen each other for 20 years.
Your protagonist develops the ability to see the world literally through someone else’s eyes.
Your protagonist starts to believe their partner might be a spy.
Your protagonist discovers a hidden camera in their living room.
Looking for a flash fiction competition? Check out our ‘Big List of International Writing Competitions!’ Looking for inspiration? Why not check out our list of the 20 Greatest Short Story Writers of All Time! Just received another short story rejection? Here’s our post about ‘How to Deal With Story Rejections’ Bonus Prompts! Two characters waiting by the side of the road realise they are both meeting the same person.
A woman loses her young niece in a busy shopping mall.
Three strangers must solve a riddle in order to gain entry to a secret club.
A poor woman must borrow ingredients from her neighbours to bake her husband a birthday cake.
A waiter finally finds out why an old man has been coming to the restaurant where he works every day at exactly the same time.
Two work colleagues must decide which of them is to take the blame for a terrible mistake at work.
Your disgruntled protagonist goes to confront the couple next door about the strange noises they’ve been hearing at night.
A family dinner party sees three characters make three very surprising announcements.
Two women argue over who should get to buy the last dress available in a store. How do they decide who should get it?
A young couple find out they knew (and disliked) each other vehemently as children.
Love writing stories? Register now for our free 7 Day Story Writing Challenges. Write a short story in a week, get extensive feedback on your entry, and compete for a prize of £500 in each round of the challenge. Register today!
Mastered the art of flash fiction? Now you can try submitting your stories to literary magazines! We’ve compiled a list of the best literary magazines that don’t charge a reading fee! Check out our Big List of No-Fee Literary Magazines.
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2024.05.14 20:59 Flagg1991 Children of the Night (Part 1)

What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.
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2024.05.14 05:16 Dunkbuscuss Question? If they ever decided to revive Smallville which would you rather? A reboot or a sequel and what would you have them do/change?

Personally I have ideas for both if they decided to do a reboot I'd have the first 2 seasons combined into 1 as Season 1 was just finding its footing and its only in season 2 we start seeing the starting if a linear plotline like with the key the caves etc...
So I'd have season 1 end where season 2 ends combine a few essential plotlines into episodes and whatnot have the twister situation/ending for season 1 be the mid-season finale.
I'd also introduce Lois a lot earlier I'd have her be introduced maybe not episode 1 let them build up the essential characters like Clark, Jonathan, Martha, Chloe, Pete, Lex and Lionel and anyone else.
Then start an episode set in Metropolis woth Lois being the rebellious teenage daughter doing a petty crime like Graffiti or Shop lifting then running from the cops only to get caught and her father is called in and as punishment sends her to live with her Cousin this episode could be episode 5 or maybe even 6 or if you really pushed it maybe episode 14 after the resolution of the mid-season finale.
We could have episodes of Lois resisting falling into the comfort of the Small Town vibe but eventually after hanging out with Clark, Chloe, and Pete at the torch she gets roped into writing for the Torch and starts her on her journey from rebellious daughter to Ace Reporter.
She amd Clark are Chloe's feet on the ground, Pete acts as her in with the football players on something amd she acts as the info gatherer and hacker.
I think it would also set up Chloe's "Death" really well in season 4 so Lois can have been investigating since her supposed death and despite the general getting in her way she keeps digging and suddenly Clark shows up again and strange things start happening again and together after he regains his memory he helps her.
I would also have Lana and Clark get together a lot sooner or if not I'd wrap up their relationship sooner like have her leave that video like she does in the original series or actually kill her off eother one so that Clark and Lois can build their relationship it almost felt like thr Clark and Lana show by how long they dragged their relationship on for.
One other addition to this hyperthetical reboot I'd do is have Clark wear his Superman Suit a lot sooner and get him the ability to fly I probably would've had that ability after his rebirth like in the original series when he goes searching for the stones in Season 4 Episode 1 as Kal-El even after he regains his true self I'd have Clark gain the ability to fly.
That's all I can think that I'd change of the reboot maybe have more people find out his secret sooner as the amount of times he tip toes around goes to tell people butbthen changes his mind was really annoying so maybe tell Pete in Season 1 instead of Season 2.
Have Clark tell Chloe and Lois instead of then figuring it out. I'd also have while he hides the truth about his abilities from Lex I'd have that he does give certain truths like the fact he can read the symbols and whatnot he could even come up with lies like how he spent the time between season 3 and 4 studying the writinfs and discovered a pattern and now he can read the symbols.
Or something like that but now for my idea if they ever revived the series ckntinueing where they left off.
Depending ifnthey decided to do another season or make it a movie depends first off I'd have them make the comics canon for those who don't know they did a season 11 comic series a lot of shows did this back in the day as a way to keep the series going without the budget or slot for another season Charmed is another who did this.
But in the Season 11 Comics they also brought in some of the more iconic characters like Batman so ifnit was a sequel season I'd have them turn the comics into episodes maybe expanding them a bit to make them full episodes but I'd have the main antagonist be Darkside and have the final episodes be like a Smallville Version of the movie Justice League War.
I'd also have the actual character appear not be like a weird smoke cloud and have him looking for the Anti-Life Equation like he does in most versions if the character.
If it was a sequel movie I'd probably do the same thing only skim past unimportant plotpoints to build the new Justice League team with Oliver obviously but then bring Barry Allen and we learn that when Bart ran away from home he didn't realise he travelled back in time.
But yeah these are just some of my ideas how would you do things if you were given the power to revive Smallville and hownwould you go about it Reboot or Sequel?
submitted by Dunkbuscuss to Smallville [link] [comments]

2024.05.13 21:16 Flagg1991 Children of the Night (Part 1)

What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.
submitted by Flagg1991 to MrCreepyPasta [link] [comments]

2024.05.13 21:13 Flagg1991 Children of the Night (Part 1)

What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.
submitted by Flagg1991 to mrcreeps [link] [comments]

2024.05.13 21:12 Flagg1991 Children of the Night (Part 1)

What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.
submitted by Flagg1991 to LighthouseHorror [link] [comments]

2024.05.13 20:33 genZcommentary I watched NATLA before watching the cartoon and now I'm watching the cartoon. Here are my thoughts on Book 2, Episodes 12-13

Hello! Here we are again, back for another ATLA commentary.
Before we get started I do want to point out that I’m numbering and labeling episodes according to how they appear on Netflix. Episode 12, as I understand it, is actually two episodes. However, since they’re presented as one thing here, that’s how I’m watching it.
Brief update on other projects: I thought I’d try watching the first Harry Potter movie, but realized it’s two and a half hours long. That’s, at the bare minimum, five hours of commentary writing. So… yeah, we’re gonna hold off on that lol I’m also considering watching a superhero/comic book show called The Boys, because I accidentally caught part of a trailer for it that my girlfriend was watching and it looks very interesting. I’ll be doing the new Game of Thrones commentary next, not sure when exactly.
Okay, let’s go!
Episode 12- The Secret of the Fire Nation
  1. Well that’s a heck of a title! I hope we learn something juicy!
It’s nice to see Aang and Katara bending for fun, thought I’m surprised Aang is so willing to encase himself in a block of ice. You’d think he’d have some trauma from that lol But also, I love Katara’s hair when she lets it down.
Yeah… I’m kind of surprised Aang is taking Appa’s loss as well as he is, considering how he reacted last episode. Since Sokka is talking about walking to Ba Sing Se, I take it they’re not going to be spending time looking for him? But then, didn’t the sandbenders say they sold him to a merchant from Ba Sing Se? Maybe he’s there, and Aang’s banking on that hope.
  1. I know I keep applying real-world logic to a cartoon show, but wouldn’t Ba Sing Se get awfully crowded if they’re constantly taking in refugees from the rest of the Earth Kingdom? Iroh put the city under siege for almost two years. What if the Fire Nation does that again? More mouths to feed makes starvation quicker!
Iroh and Zuko are refugees. I still can’t get over that irony lol Hey, it’s Jet! My goodness, he’s onscreen for less than ten seconds and he’s already planning a robbery. He and Zuko are going to get along just fine, aren’t they?
The cabbage merchant! Always a delight to see him and his cabbages! Also hilarious that a bunch of people are impersonating Aang (thought it probably would be less hilarious if any of them met Azula). If passports are necessary, how did Zuko and Iroh get tickets? Also, good on Toph for taking advantage of her privilege lol
Hey! I think that’s Suki! Her eyes are drawn really distinctively and her voice sounds familiar! Two seconds after pressing play: it is Suki! Don’t you just love my long winning streak of figuring things out right before they let us know? Lol
  1. Glad to see ATLA Suki appreciates Sokka’s muscles just as much as NATLA Suki lol
Someone took the pregnant family’s tickets and belongings. Is that how Zuko and Iroh got their tickets? Zuko’s robbed families before, so I wouldn’t put it past him.
Well damn, Suki got her armor and makeup on real quick, didn’t she? Hm… Sokka’s worried about her. I think Suki’s going to interpret that as him being sexist again but he’s probably traumatized from losing Yue. He’s been through way too much to still be sexist. If he still had a misogynistic bone in his body, Toph would have beaten it out of him by now.
  1. Well the Serpent’s Pass looks terrifying. Also, this pregnant lady took one look at some scratched graffiti saying “Abandon Hope” and immediately started crying, saying “How can we abandon hope? It’s all we have!” Like… come on, lady lol Just because you see graffiti telling you to do something doesn’t mean you have to, otherwise I would have called quite a few people for a good time by now.
Hope is a distraction, huh? I guess I can see the logic of that from a practical application perspective. But it’s kind of a depressing philosophy for a monk to have.
Holy shit! Nope, I would not be walking along a cliff path that narrow! I will build a rowboat and paddle my way to Ba Sing Se.
Toph is really carrying the team (and some refugees too) this episode.
  1. There’s a fine line between being protective and being smothering and Sokka has hopped, jumped, and skipped right over it.
Zuko’s not wearing his blue spirit mask. Not that he needs it, he and Jet work together like cogs in a machine. Ironic lol
Ow! Geez, that rejected hug hurt me lol Katara’s right though. Bottling up emotions just makes them worse in the long run. You have to allow yourself to feel bad sometimes. Granted, you can’t fly off the handle like he did last episode, but that’s a reaction. You can control your reactions, but you can’t control your feelings.
“It’s a beautiful moon.” “Yeah, it really is.” Okay, I know Sokka said last episode that Yue is the moon, but he was tripping on peyote. Does he actually believe that Yue is the moon now? Is Yue the moon now? I interpreted her death as he sacrificing herself to bring the moon spirit back to life, not to become the new moon spirit.
“Who is this guy? Is he taller than me?” Dude, we were having a moment. Damn it, just kiss her! Well actually, the moon’s right there so if Yue really did turn into the new moon spirit, it might be a tad awkward to kiss in front of her. But what’s he gonna do, only ever show intimacy during the day?
  1. Um… I’m probably reading too much into this Smellerbee scene with Iroh and Longshot and I’m almost hesitant to say what I’m thinking because I can just imagine the backlash I could get for voicing it. And it’s not like ATLA has had great LGBTQ representation up to this point, so… Yeah, I’m probably just seeing things that aren’t there.
You know, I’ve never really cared a lot about Jet as a character (in fact, I’m kind of surprised to see him again. I figured he’d be a one-off character) but I am really enjoying his scenes with Zuko and Iroh. They have so much in common, which is probably the point of this whole juxtaposition. If he only knew who they really were lol
Of course Iroh believes in second chances. He’s the best. And also, he’s living proof that some people deserve a second chance.
  1. Uh… Katara parting the sea while leading refugees to safety invokes a certain comparison, doesn’t it? But can I just say that I love how her solution to crossing the gap is to literally walk through the ocean instead of making a raft out of ice and floating across. She just never misses an opportunity to flex on everyone, does she? Lol
Momo continuing his pattern of trying to kill every small animal he sees is something I’ve come to treasure.
Is that the unagi?! I think that’s what it’s called/spelled but I haven’t seen that episode in a while. It would be fitting if Suki and the sea serpent both share the same episodes lol No that’s not the unagi. It’s a different color. Um… what exactly was Sokka planning to do if the sea serpent actually accepted his offer and ate Momo? Considering how he reacted to losing Appa, I don’t think Aang would be too happy with him.
Oh, now she’s making an ice bridge. Not as much of a flex as maintaining an air bubble so they plumb the depths but it is faster. Oh, Toph can’t see on ice. And she can’t swim? An earthbender not being able to swim feels like a stereotype for some reason, even though I have absolutely no reason to think that lol
“You can go ahead and let me drown now.” That’s gonna be a favorite joke of mine, I just know it lol And I’m pretty sure this is probably a jumping point for a Sokka/Toph ship. What does the community call that? Soph? Tokka? (How old is Toph, anyway? Probably Aang’s age, right? That’s… probably not an appropriate ship then)
  1. Why does Ba Sing Se’s wall remind me of The Wall from Game of Thrones? Obviously not made of ice though lol
Okay, time for ATLA’s viewers to experience the miracle of childbirth!
  1. Like I said earlier, ATLA isn’t heavy on the LGBTQ representation, but I swear I’m picking up on some tension and chemistry between Jet and Zuko (Juko? Jeko? Zet?). And now half of Jet’s little group is an LGBTQ allegory for me lol Even the dialogue between Jet and Zuko in this scene is slightly suggestive.
So… can Katara waterbend the baby out or…
Baby Hope, eh? Probably not a super common name in this world.
Oh? Was that Aang’s way of telling Katara he loves her without actually saying it? Aww. And hey, he’s heading off on his own to search for Appa. Which… honestly kind of feels like he should have been doing that this whole time lol
Yes! Get some, Sokka! Wait, nevermind. I fucking hate that line. Ugh No! I’m not gonna be a bitter old lady on this watch-through! They’re kissing and it’s very sweet and I love that for them!
Um… there’s a giant metal dildo on the way to penetrate Ba Sing Se! Lol but seriously, how technologically advanced is the Fire Nation? A giant mobile drill of that scale would be a marvel of engineering even by our modern standards.
  1. Well hey, there’s the title card letting me know when the next episode starts.
Woah, the way the drill moves is so cool! I’m legitimately wondering if such a thing would actually be possible in our world with our physics. I don’t know why we would want to, but still. And of course Azula’s leading this attack. She gets all the best opportunities. And she’s smart too! The war minister guy is dismissive of the earthbenders, believing his drill to be impervious to earthbending attacks. You can practically smell the hubris. But Azula leaves nothing to chance and she sends her girls out to neutralize any potential threat.
And this is why we love Azula. She’s not just a scary villain, she’s a competent villain.
  1. And the Earth Kingdom general shares the War Minister’s hubris. Why are the people in charge always the worst people to be in charge? Also, I love that Toph is the one to point out that Iroh broke through the wall.
So the Earth Kingdom’s elite Terra Team force were taken out by two teenage nonbenders from the Fire Nation in about twenty seconds. How have they lasted this long? Lol (I say two, but let’s be honest. Ty Lee’s doing the heavy lifting here)
Yes! I love that they acknowledge Sokka as the “Idea Guy”!
Iroh has got rizz for days lol I’m kind of surprised he only ever had one son. Jet wants to recruit Zuko. I’m totally down for that! They’re such an interesting pair!
  1. I really love that Katara, whose probably the best waterbender in the world at this point, respects Ty Lee enough to recognize how dangerous she is. And Sokka had an idea! They’re going to take down the drill from the inside. Because how the hell else are they going to stop something that big?
Again with the underestimation! I swear Azula’s the only competent person in the entire Fire Nation military since Iroh retired.
Okay, engineer Sokka figured it out. It’s all a little too easy, isn’t it?
  1. Ah shit, Jet just realized the truth, because Iroh used firebending to heat up his tea lol I think he’s getting a little too relaxed.
Okay, just the fact that they slice through metal with water at all is pretty impressive. And the drill has reached the wall, and Azula still doesn’t look impressed.
Oh yeah, I guess this is a pretty high stakes battle for them, huh? If they lose Ba Sing Se, they basically lose the entire Earth Kingdom, right? Omashu’s already fallen, the smaller villages and whatnot have no real defense. Ba Sing Se is the last big puzzle piece to world domination (aside from the water tribes, but they’re so isolated they’re not really a threat).
I love that Toph’s nickname for Aang is Twinkle Toes. Also I laughed at the War Minister’s face when he was side-eyeing Azula just then. +That’s the face of a man who’s about to be punished!
  1. lol Sokka’s the only one with more rizz than Iroh! Maybe a legitimate battle strategy here would be to woo Ty Lee into switching sides? Aside from Azula she seems to be the most dangerous one. No offense to Mai, but she is kind of the odd woman out here.
Oh please let me get Aang and Azula 1v1! I really badly want to see how he fares against her without everyone else helping him. He’ll probably have to use the Avatar State to defeat her.
Ty Lee dives into the slurry after Katara and Sokka while Mai refuses. Yeah, Mai is the weak link here in Ozai’s Angels (I love that name, by the way).
  1. Did Aang seriously think the general was going to hear him from that high up? Lol Toph’s helping Katara bend the slurry (how convenient that it’s both water and earth!). Ty Lee’s still trapped in it and the drill is about to blow. If I hadn’t learned my lesson on the last post, I’d probably be worried she might die in the explosion. But this is a kid’s show, she’ll be fine.
Here we go! Aang vs Azula! Her fighting style is so elegant. Every move she makes feels on purpose, if that makes sense. Like, whenever Aang fought Zuko, Zhao, or NPC firebenders their style is a little more chaotic and fearsome and rawr, you know? But Azula’s totally calm. Everything she’s doing feels calculated, and it’s working! If she hadn’t had to dodge that boulder after blasting Aang back she might have been able to deliver a finishing blow!
She beat him! He’s unconscious! Okay, well not anymore lol See… that right there was hubris (actually, it was kid’s show writing but whatever)! He was out for like fifteen seconds. She should have roasted him where he lay instead of picking him up and gloating.
Another fight with Azula ends in a draw with neither one beating the other! I’m starting to get a little peeved with all this edging lol but that was great! Azula is an absolute beast!
  1. Okay, the way Aang hammered that rock spike into the drill was pretty epic. Mai’s “We lost” (and thank you for your contribution to the fight, Mai lol) is interesting. It’s true, they did lose. Not in the combat sense, Aang couldn’t beat Azula, but he didn’t have to. He just had to hold her off. Maybe that’s kind of a metaphor for the Fire Nation military in general. It’s very powerful, but it’s also marred by incompetence and weaknesses. Many of its generals are prideful and blind to their own weaknesses, or just outright incompetent. Look at this fight: even Mai just kind of gave up halfway through. If Ty Lee wasn’t trapped in the slurry, she might very well have been able to beat Katara, Sokka, and Toph, especially since they don’t Appa this time to bail them out. And if Mai had been with her, she might have been to break Katara’s concentration with a thrown weapon, thus freeing Ty Lee from the slurry.
I wondered how the Earth Kingdom lasted so long and maybe that’s just it. They can’t beat the Fire Nation, but they don’t have to. They just have to hold them off and the Fire Nation’s own shortcomings will end up beating themselves. It’s a hundred year stalemate.
  1. Looks like Jet’s going to be causing a problem for Iroh and Zuko. I wonder if his relationship with them is what’s going to finally let him realize that not all Fire Nation people are inherently evil?
Hey, that’s Baby Hope! And Iroh gets to fawn over her too and I love that for him. You know, if Aang defeats the Fire Nation in a timely manner, Hope might actually get to grow up in a world at peace. Well, kind of. I’m sure there’s going to be massive issues with racism from generations of propaganda painting the other side as inhuman, huge demands for reparations, not to mention the territories the Fire Nation currently occupies. It’s been so long that there must be at least two generations of Fire Nation citizens who were born in and grew up in the Earth Kingdom, and I’m sure there’s been interbreeding with the Earth Kingdom people, because that’s what always happens with colonizers. Once they become established, genocide is pretty much the only way to get rid of them, and I doubt the Avatar is going to allow that.
So Hope’s probably going to grow up in pretty interesting times!
Um… is Ba Sing Se a city or is it a little walled country? Cuz all I see are farms and plains!
Katara, I love you, but you’re wrong. Team Avatar is going to catch on because it’s awesome, and that’s that.
Episode 13- City of Walls and Secrets
  1. Oh, there’s an inner wall. So Ba Sing Se is kind of like the country in Attack on Titan! Oh yeah, in all of the excitement I almost forgot about Appa. Seriously, how many episodes has he been missing now? Damn, now that’s a city!
Yeah… something’s up with Joo Dee.
Walls inside that help maintain order? You mean walls that protect the rich and elite from the dirty poors? Lol Oh, Katara just confirmed it. They pen up all the poor people into a walled ghetto.
  1. lol when Iroh’s talking about someone bringing home a lady friend, does he mean himself? Or Zuko? It is really interesting how their views of Ba Sing Se differ though. Iroh’s talking about getting a home, socializing, building a life, and he’s even found them jobs! Zuko sees the same situation as a prison.
Well, I’m glad Jet’s turning over a new leaf by letting the authorities handle things. Too bad I don’t trust the authorities to be any better.
Toph knows what’s up. Joo Dee is purposefully brushing Sokka off and distracting the group. I’m not sure why at the moment, but something is clearly up.
  1. Of course they’re going to work in a tea shop! Lol Zuko’s right btw, all tea is hot leaf juice. Well, except for the teas that are hot root juice.
The cultural authority of Ba Sing Se, who guard their traditions and are called the Dai Li. Yeah… maybe it’s my conservative religious upbringing but when I hear about people “guarding their traditions” I immediately think of abuse, propaganda, and oppression. Generally people who are obsessed with traditions tend to be conservatives, who by their very nature cannot allow progress or improvement.
Someone important is trying to keep them under constant surveillance and prevent them from seeing the Earth King. In NATLA, there were spies in Omashu. Since Ba Sing Se is much bigger and more important, I imagine it’s riddled with Fire Nation spies as well, and somebody high ranking might be a traitor.
  1. Joo Dee is kind of scary lol and clearly the citizens are terrified of her. But what’s interesting to me is that she’s preventing them from giving information about Appa, which suggests that whoever is stopping them from seeing the Earth King also has Appa. But why? What would be the point of keeping Aang away from Appa? Is it to restrict his mobility and make him easier to capture?
So people aren’t allowed to talk about the war, and the Dai Li seem to be responsible. But why? If everyone knows there’s a war going on anyway, why keep people from talking about it?
It’s lucky that Iroh borrowed his neighbor’s spark rocks, but why would he refrain from firebending in what he assumes is privacy? Unless he knows he’s being watched.
  1. Huh, is the king’s pet bear the first normal animal on the show? Lol I am digging this undercover plan though.
I love that this show lets its characters try on different looks from time to time, even if they are mostly the same outfits. Katara and Toph’s high society get-ups are gorgeous!
The lost boys- I mean, freedom fighters are turning on Peter Pa- I mean, Jet. The weird thing is… he’s right! They are firebenders! But his behavior still isn’t healthy!
  1. Okay, let’s go! Jet’s hurling accusations and attacking them in public! And now Zuko’s fighting back with swords. It’s the duel of the dual-wielders! Honestly, this is probably good for Zuko. He needs to blow off some steam after everything he’s been through.
Well how about that? Security at the palace is actually competent and Toph can’t bluff her way in.
This Long Feng guy is cultural minister to the king, which means he’s probably the bad guy! And also we haven’t met any other high ranking government officials with names, so he’s currently the only option lol
  1. Geez, Zuko straight up intended to decapitate Jet right there. If Jet were a little slower, he would have! Man, I hope they do this fight scene in NATLA.
Uh-oh, scary lady Joo Dee is the scared one now. But can I just say how much I like her facial expressions?
Yeah… can’t blame them for arresting Jet. He did look like a crazy person.
The Dai Li’s specific brand of earthbending is very cool! It almost doesn’t seem like bending at all, if that makes sense. The stones they use are like a part of their own body. And of course Long Feng is their leader.
Okay I get the king is just a puppet and Long Feng is the real rule of the country, but I still don’t understand why he doesn’t allow mention of the war in the city. I mean, it’s common knowledge! A significant portion of their population are literally refugees fleeing war! Who doesn’t know
Oh… is it the king? Does the king just not know there’s a war happening and Long Feng keeps it from him so he can stay in charge? I mean, that’s still a stretch but it would explain why he doesn’t want Team Avatar talking to the king.
  1. Jet is being hypnotized. Also, I do want to point out that I have seen “There is no (whatever) in Ba Sing Se” many times in the wild lol it’s nice to see where it comes from!
Ah… Long Feng is holding Appa as leverage over Aang.
I didn’t think Joo Dee could be any scarier but here we are! This episode almost has horror movie vibes.
Concluding thoughts: This was a fantastic couple/throuple of episodes! I loved seeing Suki again, and I really enjoyed how the refugee subplot ties so perfectly in with Iroh and Zuko. The whole drill sequence was probably the best “action” the show has had thus far and that’s saying something. It’s also nice to have my suspicions that the Earth Kingdom has its own corruption problems and bad guys confirmed.
I have a new theory to replace my “Iroh’s going to die theory”. They’ve been showing us all season how Zuko isn’t really cut out for life on the run, whereas Iroh embraces it. I think they’re driving to a separation between Zuko and Iroh. He may not have died, but narratively speaking Zuko and Iroh have to part ways permanently or semi-permanently for his character to grow. Iroh has been propping him up and supporting him this whole time, now it’s time for Zuko to leave the nest and become his own person.
My new theory is that Iroh will enjoy his new life in Ba Sing Se so much that he elects to stay there permanently, whereas Zuko is too restless to do so. He can’t go back to the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom will not accept him, so his only choice is to join Team Avatar, where he will likely end up teaching Aang firebending.
And to expand further on a previous theory of mine, which was: Azula will kill or depose Ozai. I’ve accepted at this point that death is off the table. Kid’s show and all that. But I noticed something… lots of people were quick to say that Azula would never kill Ozai. But not one person has said she wouldn’t depose him in those refutations (unless I’m misremembering but I don’t think I am). Since you all know not to hint at things or spoil them, I think your eagerness to point out that she won’t kill Ozai is an attempt to mislead me into thinking the whole theory is wrong so I’ll be surprised when she ends up deposing (not killing) him. I mean, I could be wrong but I have a strong feeling that the final villain is going to be Fire Lord Azula, with Ozai in exile somewhere (that would be fitting! The man who banishes his own son ends up being banished himself!).
Maybe that will even be the conclusion of Zuko’s arc! While Aang goes off to save the world from Azula, Zuko splits up to confront Ozai himself! Where we are in the show right now, it really does feel like Azula is Aang’s primary antagonist whereas Ozai is Zuko’s primary antagonist.
By the way, from here on out, no confirming or denying my theories either way, okay? Let it unfold naturally, and let me figure things out on my own. I mean, where’s the fun in just giving me the answers?
And also, some of you could be a little nicer with your criticisms. I had to block someone last time I posted and I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s fine to disagree with me, it’s fine to explain why you disagree with me. Hell, most of you do! I don’t mind that, I like that we all have different views of things even if I don’t agree. It makes things interesting! But don’t talk down to me, don’t use belittling language, don’t be disrespectful. Whenever I don’t like something about ATLA (or like something about NATLA) some of you seem to take it as a personal insult or something.
Just be polite, that’s all I ask.
Okay, I’ll see you same time next week probably!
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2024.05.13 20:32 genZcommentary I watched NATLA before the cartoon and now I'm watching the cartoon. Here are my thoughts on Book 2 Episodes 12-13

Hello! Here we are again, back for another ATLA commentary.
Before we get started I do want to point out that I’m numbering and labeling episodes according to how they appear on Netflix. Episode 12, as I understand it, is actually two episodes. However, since they’re presented as one thing here, that’s how I’m watching it.
Brief update on other projects: I thought I’d try watching the first Harry Potter movie, but realized it’s two and a half hours long. That’s, at the bare minimum, five hours of commentary writing. So… yeah, we’re gonna hold off on that lol I’m also considering watching a superhero/comic book show called The Boys, because I accidentally caught part of a trailer for it that my girlfriend was watching and it looks very interesting. I’ll be doing the new Game of Thrones commentary next, not sure when exactly.
Okay, let’s go!
Episode 12- The Secret of the Fire Nation
  1. Well that’s a heck of a title! I hope we learn something juicy!
It’s nice to see Aang and Katara bending for fun, thought I’m surprised Aang is so willing to encase himself in a block of ice. You’d think he’d have some trauma from that lol But also, I love Katara’s hair when she lets it down.
Yeah… I’m kind of surprised Aang is taking Appa’s loss as well as he is, considering how he reacted last episode. Since Sokka is talking about walking to Ba Sing Se, I take it they’re not going to be spending time looking for him? But then, didn’t the sandbenders say they sold him to a merchant from Ba Sing Se? Maybe he’s there, and Aang’s banking on that hope.
  1. I know I keep applying real-world logic to a cartoon show, but wouldn’t Ba Sing Se get awfully crowded if they’re constantly taking in refugees from the rest of the Earth Kingdom? Iroh put the city under siege for almost two years. What if the Fire Nation does that again? More mouths to feed makes starvation quicker!
Iroh and Zuko are refugees. I still can’t get over that irony lol Hey, it’s Jet! My goodness, he’s onscreen for less than ten seconds and he’s already planning a robbery. He and Zuko are going to get along just fine, aren’t they?
The cabbage merchant! Always a delight to see him and his cabbages! Also hilarious that a bunch of people are impersonating Aang (thought it probably would be less hilarious if any of them met Azula). If passports are necessary, how did Zuko and Iroh get tickets? Also, good on Toph for taking advantage of her privilege lol
Hey! I think that’s Suki! Her eyes are drawn really distinctively and her voice sounds familiar! Two seconds after pressing play: it is Suki! Don’t you just love my long winning streak of figuring things out right before they let us know? Lol
  1. Glad to see ATLA Suki appreciates Sokka’s muscles just as much as NATLA Suki lol
Someone took the pregnant family’s tickets and belongings. Is that how Zuko and Iroh got their tickets? Zuko’s robbed families before, so I wouldn’t put it past him.
Well damn, Suki got her armor and makeup on real quick, didn’t she? Hm… Sokka’s worried about her. I think Suki’s going to interpret that as him being sexist again but he’s probably traumatized from losing Yue. He’s been through way too much to still be sexist. If he still had a misogynistic bone in his body, Toph would have beaten it out of him by now.
  1. Well the Serpent’s Pass looks terrifying. Also, this pregnant lady took one look at some scratched graffiti saying “Abandon Hope” and immediately started crying, saying “How can we abandon hope? It’s all we have!” Like… come on, lady lol Just because you see graffiti telling you to do something doesn’t mean you have to, otherwise I would have called quite a few people for a good time by now.
Hope is a distraction, huh? I guess I can see the logic of that from a practical application perspective. But it’s kind of a depressing philosophy for a monk to have.
Holy shit! Nope, I would not be walking along a cliff path that narrow! I will build a rowboat and paddle my way to Ba Sing Se.
Toph is really carrying the team (and some refugees too) this episode.
  1. There’s a fine line between being protective and being smothering and Sokka has hopped, jumped, and skipped right over it.
Zuko’s not wearing his blue spirit mask. Not that he needs it, he and Jet work together like cogs in a machine. Ironic lol
Ow! Geez, that rejected hug hurt me lol Katara’s right though. Bottling up emotions just makes them worse in the long run. You have to allow yourself to feel bad sometimes. Granted, you can’t fly off the handle like he did last episode, but that’s a reaction. You can control your reactions, but you can’t control your feelings.
“It’s a beautiful moon.” “Yeah, it really is.” Okay, I know Sokka said last episode that Yue is the moon, but he was tripping on peyote. Does he actually believe that Yue is the moon now? Is Yue the moon now? I interpreted her death as he sacrificing herself to bring the moon spirit back to life, not to become the new moon spirit.
“Who is this guy? Is he taller than me?” Dude, we were having a moment. Damn it, just kiss her! Well actually, the moon’s right there so if Yue really did turn into the new moon spirit, it might be a tad awkward to kiss in front of her. But what’s he gonna do, only ever show intimacy during the day?
  1. Um… I’m probably reading too much into this Smellerbee scene with Iroh and Longshot and I’m almost hesitant to say what I’m thinking because I can just imagine the backlash I could get for voicing it. And it’s not like ATLA has had great LGBTQ representation up to this point, so… Yeah, I’m probably just seeing things that aren’t there.
You know, I’ve never really cared a lot about Jet as a character (in fact, I’m kind of surprised to see him again. I figured he’d be a one-off character) but I am really enjoying his scenes with Zuko and Iroh. They have so much in common, which is probably the point of this whole juxtaposition. If he only knew who they really were lol
Of course Iroh believes in second chances. He’s the best. And also, he’s living proof that some people deserve a second chance.
  1. Uh… Katara parting the sea while leading refugees to safety invokes a certain comparison, doesn’t it? But can I just say that I love how her solution to crossing the gap is to literally walk through the ocean instead of making a raft out of ice and floating across. She just never misses an opportunity to flex on everyone, does she? Lol
Momo continuing his pattern of trying to kill every small animal he sees is something I’ve come to treasure.
Is that the unagi?! I think that’s what it’s called/spelled but I haven’t seen that episode in a while. It would be fitting if Suki and the sea serpent both share the same episodes lol No that’s not the unagi. It’s a different color. Um… what exactly was Sokka planning to do if the sea serpent actually accepted his offer and ate Momo? Considering how he reacted to losing Appa, I don’t think Aang would be too happy with him.
Oh, now she’s making an ice bridge. Not as much of a flex as maintaining an air bubble so they plumb the depths but it is faster. Oh, Toph can’t see on ice. And she can’t swim? An earthbender not being able to swim feels like a stereotype for some reason, even though I have absolutely no reason to think that lol
“You can go ahead and let me drown now.” That’s gonna be a favorite joke of mine, I just know it lol And I’m pretty sure this is probably a jumping point for a Sokka/Toph ship. What does the community call that? Soph? Tokka? (How old is Toph, anyway? Probably Aang’s age, right? That’s… probably not an appropriate ship then)
  1. Why does Ba Sing Se’s wall remind me of The Wall from Game of Thrones? Obviously not made of ice though lol
Okay, time for ATLA’s viewers to experience the miracle of childbirth!
  1. Like I said earlier, ATLA isn’t heavy on the LGBTQ representation, but I swear I’m picking up on some tension and chemistry between Jet and Zuko (Juko? Jeko? Zet?). And now half of Jet’s little group is an LGBTQ allegory for me lol Even the dialogue between Jet and Zuko in this scene is slightly suggestive.
So… can Katara waterbend the baby out or…
Baby Hope, eh? Probably not a super common name in this world.
Oh? Was that Aang’s way of telling Katara he loves her without actually saying it? Aww. And hey, he’s heading off on his own to search for Appa. Which… honestly kind of feels like he should have been doing that this whole time lol
Yes! Get some, Sokka! Wait, nevermind. I fucking hate that line. Ugh No! I’m not gonna be a bitter old lady on this watch-through! They’re kissing and it’s very sweet and I love that for them!
Um… there’s a giant metal dildo on the way to penetrate Ba Sing Se! Lol but seriously, how technologically advanced is the Fire Nation? A giant mobile drill of that scale would be a marvel of engineering even by our modern standards.
  1. Well hey, there’s the title card letting me know when the next episode starts.
Woah, the way the drill moves is so cool! I’m legitimately wondering if such a thing would actually be possible in our world with our physics. I don’t know why we would want to, but still. And of course Azula’s leading this attack. She gets all the best opportunities. And she’s smart too! The war minister guy is dismissive of the earthbenders, believing his drill to be impervious to earthbending attacks. You can practically smell the hubris. But Azula leaves nothing to chance and she sends her girls out to neutralize any potential threat.
And this is why we love Azula. She’s not just a scary villain, she’s a competent villain.
  1. And the Earth Kingdom general shares the War Minister’s hubris. Why are the people in charge always the worst people to be in charge? Also, I love that Toph is the one to point out that Iroh broke through the wall.
So the Earth Kingdom’s elite Terra Team force were taken out by two teenage nonbenders from the Fire Nation in about twenty seconds. How have they lasted this long? Lol (I say two, but let’s be honest. Ty Lee’s doing the heavy lifting here)
Yes! I love that they acknowledge Sokka as the “Idea Guy”!
Iroh has got rizz for days lol I’m kind of surprised he only ever had one son. Jet wants to recruit Zuko. I’m totally down for that! They’re such an interesting pair!
  1. I really love that Katara, whose probably the best waterbender in the world at this point, respects Ty Lee enough to recognize how dangerous she is. And Sokka had an idea! They’re going to take down the drill from the inside. Because how the hell else are they going to stop something that big?
Again with the underestimation! I swear Azula’s the only competent person in the entire Fire Nation military since Iroh retired.
Okay, engineer Sokka figured it out. It’s all a little too easy, isn’t it?
  1. Ah shit, Jet just realized the truth, because Iroh used firebending to heat up his tea lol I think he’s getting a little too relaxed.
Okay, just the fact that they slice through metal with water at all is pretty impressive. And the drill has reached the wall, and Azula still doesn’t look impressed.
Oh yeah, I guess this is a pretty high stakes battle for them, huh? If they lose Ba Sing Se, they basically lose the entire Earth Kingdom, right? Omashu’s already fallen, the smaller villages and whatnot have no real defense. Ba Sing Se is the last big puzzle piece to world domination (aside from the water tribes, but they’re so isolated they’re not really a threat).
I love that Toph’s nickname for Aang is Twinkle Toes. Also I laughed at the War Minister’s face when he was side-eyeing Azula just then. +That’s the face of a man who’s about to be punished!
  1. lol Sokka’s the only one with more rizz than Iroh! Maybe a legitimate battle strategy here would be to woo Ty Lee into switching sides? Aside from Azula she seems to be the most dangerous one. No offense to Mai, but she is kind of the odd woman out here.
Oh please let me get Aang and Azula 1v1! I really badly want to see how he fares against her without everyone else helping him. He’ll probably have to use the Avatar State to defeat her.
Ty Lee dives into the slurry after Katara and Sokka while Mai refuses. Yeah, Mai is the weak link here in Ozai’s Angels (I love that name, by the way).
  1. Did Aang seriously think the general was going to hear him from that high up? Lol Toph’s helping Katara bend the slurry (how convenient that it’s both water and earth!). Ty Lee’s still trapped in it and the drill is about to blow. If I hadn’t learned my lesson on the last post, I’d probably be worried she might die in the explosion. But this is a kid’s show, she’ll be fine.
Here we go! Aang vs Azula! Her fighting style is so elegant. Every move she makes feels on purpose, if that makes sense. Like, whenever Aang fought Zuko, Zhao, or NPC firebenders their style is a little more chaotic and fearsome and rawr, you know? But Azula’s totally calm. Everything she’s doing feels calculated, and it’s working! If she hadn’t had to dodge that boulder after blasting Aang back she might have been able to deliver a finishing blow!
She beat him! He’s unconscious! Okay, well not anymore lol See… that right there was hubris (actually, it was kid’s show writing but whatever)! He was out for like fifteen seconds. She should have roasted him where he lay instead of picking him up and gloating.
Another fight with Azula ends in a draw with neither one beating the other! I’m starting to get a little peeved with all this edging lol but that was great! Azula is an absolute beast!
  1. Okay, the way Aang hammered that rock spike into the drill was pretty epic. Mai’s “We lost” (and thank you for your contribution to the fight, Mai lol) is interesting. It’s true, they did lose. Not in the combat sense, Aang couldn’t beat Azula, but he didn’t have to. He just had to hold her off. Maybe that’s kind of a metaphor for the Fire Nation military in general. It’s very powerful, but it’s also marred by incompetence and weaknesses. Many of its generals are prideful and blind to their own weaknesses, or just outright incompetent. Look at this fight: even Mai just kind of gave up halfway through. If Ty Lee wasn’t trapped in the slurry, she might very well have been able to beat Katara, Sokka, and Toph, especially since they don’t Appa this time to bail them out. And if Mai had been with her, she might have been to break Katara’s concentration with a thrown weapon, thus freeing Ty Lee from the slurry.
I wondered how the Earth Kingdom lasted so long and maybe that’s just it. They can’t beat the Fire Nation, but they don’t have to. They just have to hold them off and the Fire Nation’s own shortcomings will end up beating themselves. It’s a hundred year stalemate.
  1. Looks like Jet’s going to be causing a problem for Iroh and Zuko. I wonder if his relationship with them is what’s going to finally let him realize that not all Fire Nation people are inherently evil?
Hey, that’s Baby Hope! And Iroh gets to fawn over her too and I love that for him. You know, if Aang defeats the Fire Nation in a timely manner, Hope might actually get to grow up in a world at peace. Well, kind of. I’m sure there’s going to be massive issues with racism from generations of propaganda painting the other side as inhuman, huge demands for reparations, not to mention the territories the Fire Nation currently occupies. It’s been so long that there must be at least two generations of Fire Nation citizens who were born in and grew up in the Earth Kingdom, and I’m sure there’s been interbreeding with the Earth Kingdom people, because that’s what always happens with colonizers. Once they become established, genocide is pretty much the only way to get rid of them, and I doubt the Avatar is going to allow that.
So Hope’s probably going to grow up in pretty interesting times!
Um… is Ba Sing Se a city or is it a little walled country? Cuz all I see are farms and plains!
Katara, I love you, but you’re wrong. Team Avatar is going to catch on because it’s awesome, and that’s that.
Episode 13- City of Walls and Secrets
  1. Oh, there’s an inner wall. So Ba Sing Se is kind of like the country in Attack on Titan! Oh yeah, in all of the excitement I almost forgot about Appa. Seriously, how many episodes has he been missing now? Damn, now that’s a city!
Yeah… something’s up with Joo Dee.
Walls inside that help maintain order? You mean walls that protect the rich and elite from the dirty poors? Lol Oh, Katara just confirmed it. They pen up all the poor people into a walled ghetto.
  1. lol when Iroh’s talking about someone bringing home a lady friend, does he mean himself? Or Zuko? It is really interesting how their views of Ba Sing Se differ though. Iroh’s talking about getting a home, socializing, building a life, and he’s even found them jobs! Zuko sees the same situation as a prison.
Well, I’m glad Jet’s turning over a new leaf by letting the authorities handle things. Too bad I don’t trust the authorities to be any better.
Toph knows what’s up. Joo Dee is purposefully brushing Sokka off and distracting the group. I’m not sure why at the moment, but something is clearly up.
  1. Of course they’re going to work in a tea shop! Lol Zuko’s right btw, all tea is hot leaf juice. Well, except for the teas that are hot root juice.
The cultural authority of Ba Sing Se, who guard their traditions and are called the Dai Li. Yeah… maybe it’s my conservative religious upbringing but when I hear about people “guarding their traditions” I immediately think of abuse, propaganda, and oppression. Generally people who are obsessed with traditions tend to be conservatives, who by their very nature cannot allow progress or improvement.
Someone important is trying to keep them under constant surveillance and prevent them from seeing the Earth King. In NATLA, there were spies in Omashu. Since Ba Sing Se is much bigger and more important, I imagine it’s riddled with Fire Nation spies as well, and somebody high ranking might be a traitor.
  1. Joo Dee is kind of scary lol and clearly the citizens are terrified of her. But what’s interesting to me is that she’s preventing them from giving information about Appa, which suggests that whoever is stopping them from seeing the Earth King also has Appa. But why? What would be the point of keeping Aang away from Appa? Is it to restrict his mobility and make him easier to capture?
So people aren’t allowed to talk about the war, and the Dai Li seem to be responsible. But why? If everyone knows there’s a war going on anyway, why keep people from talking about it?
It’s lucky that Iroh borrowed his neighbor’s spark rocks, but why would he refrain from firebending in what he assumes is privacy? Unless he knows he’s being watched.
  1. Huh, is the king’s pet bear the first normal animal on the show? Lol I am digging this undercover plan though.
I love that this show lets its characters try on different looks from time to time, even if they are mostly the same outfits. Katara and Toph’s high society get-ups are gorgeous!
The lost boys- I mean, freedom fighters are turning on Peter Pa- I mean, Jet. The weird thing is… he’s right! They are firebenders! But his behavior still isn’t healthy!
  1. Okay, let’s go! Jet’s hurling accusations and attacking them in public! And now Zuko’s fighting back with swords. It’s the duel of the dual-wielders! Honestly, this is probably good for Zuko. He needs to blow off some steam after everything he’s been through.
Well how about that? Security at the palace is actually competent and Toph can’t bluff her way in.
This Long Feng guy is cultural minister to the king, which means he’s probably the bad guy! And also we haven’t met any other high ranking government officials with names, so he’s currently the only option lol
  1. Geez, Zuko straight up intended to decapitate Jet right there. If Jet were a little slower, he would have! Man, I hope they do this fight scene in NATLA.
Uh-oh, scary lady Joo Dee is the scared one now. But can I just say how much I like her facial expressions?
Yeah… can’t blame them for arresting Jet. He did look like a crazy person.
The Dai Li’s specific brand of earthbending is very cool! It almost doesn’t seem like bending at all, if that makes sense. The stones they use are like a part of their own body. And of course Long Feng is their leader.
Okay I get the king is just a puppet and Long Feng is the real rule of the country, but I still don’t understand why he doesn’t allow mention of the war in the city. I mean, it’s common knowledge! A significant portion of their population are literally refugees fleeing war! Who doesn’t know
Oh… is it the king? Does the king just not know there’s a war happening and Long Feng keeps it from him so he can stay in charge? I mean, that’s still a stretch but it would explain why he doesn’t want Team Avatar talking to the king.
  1. Jet is being hypnotized. Also, I do want to point out that I have seen “There is no (whatever) in Ba Sing Se” many times in the wild lol it’s nice to see where it comes from!
Ah… Long Feng is holding Appa as leverage over Aang.
I didn’t think Joo Dee could be any scarier but here we are! This episode almost has horror movie vibes.
Concluding thoughts: This was a fantastic couple/throuple of episodes! I loved seeing Suki again, and I really enjoyed how the refugee subplot ties so perfectly in with Iroh and Zuko. The whole drill sequence was probably the best “action” the show has had thus far and that’s saying something. It’s also nice to have my suspicions that the Earth Kingdom has its own corruption problems and bad guys confirmed.
I have a new theory to replace my “Iroh’s going to die theory”. They’ve been showing us all season how Zuko isn’t really cut out for life on the run, whereas Iroh embraces it. I think they’re driving to a separation between Zuko and Iroh. He may not have died, but narratively speaking Zuko and Iroh have to part ways permanently or semi-permanently for his character to grow. Iroh has been propping him up and supporting him this whole time, now it’s time for Zuko to leave the nest and become his own person.
My new theory is that Iroh will enjoy his new life in Ba Sing Se so much that he elects to stay there permanently, whereas Zuko is too restless to do so. He can’t go back to the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom will not accept him, so his only choice is to join Team Avatar, where he will likely end up teaching Aang firebending.
And to expand further on a previous theory of mine, which was: Azula will kill or depose Ozai. I’ve accepted at this point that death is off the table. Kid’s show and all that. But I noticed something… lots of people were quick to say that Azula would never kill Ozai. But not one person has said she wouldn’t depose him in those refutations (unless I’m misremembering but I don’t think I am). Since you all know not to hint at things or spoil them, I think your eagerness to point out that she won’t kill Ozai is an attempt to mislead me into thinking the whole theory is wrong so I’ll be surprised when she ends up deposing (not killing) him. I mean, I could be wrong but I have a strong feeling that the final villain is going to be Fire Lord Azula, with Ozai in exile somewhere (that would be fitting! The man who banishes his own son ends up being banished himself!).
Maybe that will even be the conclusion of Zuko’s arc! While Aang goes off to save the world from Azula, Zuko splits up to confront Ozai himself! Where we are in the show right now, it really does feel like Azula is Aang’s primary antagonist whereas Ozai is Zuko’s primary antagonist.
By the way, from here on out, no confirming or denying my theories either way, okay? Let it unfold naturally, and let me figure things out on my own. I mean, where’s the fun in just giving me the answers?
And also, some of you could be a little nicer with your criticisms. I had to block someone last time I posted and I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s fine to disagree with me, it’s fine to explain why you disagree with me. Hell, most of you do! I don’t mind that, I like that we all have different views of things even if I don’t agree. It makes things interesting! But don’t talk down to me, don’t use belittling language, don’t be disrespectful. Whenever I don’t like something about ATLA (or like something about NATLA) some of you seem to take it as a personal insult or something.
Just be polite, that’s all I ask.
Okay, I’ll see you same time next week probably!
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2024.05.13 13:53 maximusaemilius Empyrean Iris: 2-181 Confession and conflict (by Charlie Star)

FYI, this is a story COLLECTION. Lots of standalones technically. So, you can basically start to read at any chapter, no pre-read of the other chapters needed technically (other than maybe getting better descriptions of characters than: Adam Vir=human, Krill=antlike alien, Sunny=tall alien, Conn=telepathic alien). The numbers are (mostly) only for organization of posts and continuity.
OC Written by Charlie Stastarrfallknightrise,
Typed up and then posted here by me.
Proofreading and language check for some chapters by u/Finbar9800 u/BakeGullible9975 u/Didnotseemecomein and u/medium_jock
Future Lore and fact check done by me.
The plot thickens!
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The Rundi pilot maneuvered his ship around a chunk of space debris, cutting low as he watched the slow and leisurely path of the rocket as it began on its trajectory towards the moon. Radar was almost impossible to use in the deadly debris field these humans called an orbit, so it was up to his eyes to make out any incoming hostiles.
They circled low and then wide around the slow-moving rocket, keeping their distance while also keeping an eye out. It was easy enough, as the drone was covered in cameras and sensors, which allowed them to see from almost every angle. A human might have been better at this, but right now they were the only ones they could trust.
[…]
A green folder rested atop the lectern as the President of the UN gave her halting, and to the chairwoman it seemed, unenthusiastic speech. The humans down below didn't seem to notice, making her wonder if she was simply imagining things, though a part of her said that was not the case.
She had been suspicious of the UN president from the very beginning, the very beginning when she was given power after the first launch of the enterprise, and they had been forced to deal with her during treaty negotiations. At every step there seemed to be some sort of obstacle, something wrong, some reason that the humans could just not accept. It went on behind closed doors and in quiet whispered conversations. But luckily for them, people like Adam Vir and Admiral Kelly had been there to smooth things over between the two factions.
The chairwoman knew better than most, that there were only a few humans in the galaxy holding everything together.
And the last thing she wanted was bad relations, or to go to war with this species. It would be a nightmare.
She shifted in her seat as she listened to the speech. The valley below her still had traces of smoke let off by burning so much fossil fuel at once. She imagined that such a stunt wasn't entirely great for the atmosphere of the planet, though as far as she knew humans tended to run on sustainable clean energy these days.
The Chairwoman stepped down from the little podium and into the back where she could not be seen, leaning in so she could hear the words whispered from her assistant,
"The drones are deployed, and so far we have not met any resistance.”
She nodded slowly,
"Good work, keep an eye out."
[…]
The UN president felt her fingers digging into the soft paper of the green folder. The red one was lying discarded under the lectern, and she was having trouble concentrating, forcing herself to remember that this wasn't over. She glanced into the crowd, expecting to see that strange white face staring up at her from the throng of people, but there was nothing.
Had she seen it as in her imagination, or did she really see an alien face staring back at her?
She glanced upwards, towards where the rocket had vanished, only half paying attention to the practiced words that dribbled from her mouth. She finished her speech and the people below clapped and cheered heartily, though she didn't much feel like clapping with them.
She turned on her heel and walked down to the back of the stage to where her entourage was waiting for her. Admiral Massie was sitting on one end and Admiral Kelly was sitting at the other, the two of them doing their damndest to ignore each other at all costs.
She sat down next to Admiral Massie, arms crossed over her chest as he leaned in to speak with her.
"That didn't exactly go as planned."
He muttered softly.
"It will if your men are ready."
She snapped back, her palms cold and sweaty.
Admiral Massie nodded,
"Of course, they should come out when they reach the densest part of the debris field, that way we can make it look like some unexpected collision."
He glanced towards the lectern,
"So I would keep a hold of that red folder of yours."
On the other set of chairs, Admiral Kelly was giving them a sidelong glance. Everyone knew that she was in Admiral Vir's camp, licking his boots at every opportunity. It would be within their best interest to keep silent when she was around.
The UN president leaned back in her seat,
"You should be on your way, Admiral. We will have time to talk later."
He stood and nodded slowly,
"Of course madame president."
He turned to walk away, catching the eye of Admiral Kelly as he stepped past. The two of them didn't much like each other, though as the head of the OGI (Office of Galactic intelligence) Admiral Massie had enough pull to keep Kelly in her place.
The UN president turned her head away. Not wanting to draw attention to herself.
[…]
Admiral Kelly glanced over at the UN president as Admiral Massie passed by. There was something about those two spending time together that she didn't like. Granted it was more than likely the two of them were having some sweaty, wrinkly liaisons out of hours which she didn't really want to think about, but if that was the case then he could easily be pressing his planetary isolationist views off on her.
Kelly did not think highly of the UN presidency. Right now, it seemed mostly concerned with power and political favors with the people, rather than doing the right thing. Plus, she found the president herself to be superficially charming, but easily manipulated by the wrong people. Fear mongering worked the best on her, which is why she worried about Massie and his effect on her to begin with.
She found herself digging her nails into her palms as she thought about it.
”Please help us.”
Admiral Kelly shot up in her seat looking around as she tried to find the source of the noise, or the voice. She turned in her seat expecting to find someone whispering in her ear, but there was nothing. She pressed at the implant along the side of her neck wondering if someone had called her and she just hadn't noticed?
”Look up.”
Jolted again, lifting her eyes towards the sky and the burning sun. She threw up a hand to block her vision, and as she did, she thought she saw a shape floating there against the backdrop of the sun.
She squinted hard trying to make it out but was having trouble.
”Now look into the crowd.”
She turned her head down, still not sure where the sound could be coming from, but as she looked into the crowd, she saw a strange sight. One of the people was wearing a dark hoodie, and was turned away from the direction which the rest of the crowd was facing. Their hood was pulled low, but ever so subtly, they lifted their head to reveal a porcelain white face, with large dark eyes.
Admiral Kelly went very still as she stared at the starborn.
“Not a starborn, a halfbreed. My name is Eris, I am Admiral Vir's... daughter”
Oh... oh, yes she had heard about the starborn hybrid from one of his reports.
"What do you want."
She mouthed quietly.
“We need your help, the UN president is planning to have Admiral Vir Killed, and Admiral Massie is on his way to make the order, please, you have to do something."
Admiral Kelly jolted to her feet, very quickly glancing at the UN president in shock and horror before she was able to capture her emotions. The UN president looked up to her sudden movement, and Admiral Kelly had to fight to keep her face neutral as the woman looked up at her.
"Are you feeling well Admiral?”
She could feel the sweat dripping down her face and the nape of her neck, but she remained as calm as possible as she took a deep breath,
"I... Am suddenly very dizzy. I think it's the heat."
"You should sit down, have someone bring you some water."
The woman said, her voice calm and clear as if she hadn't just ordered the murder of Adam Vir.
"No I... I think I need to walk for a minute and find some shade. You will excuse me?"
The UN president shrugged and turned back to staring at the sky, giving Admiral Kelly time to step forward and hurry after General Massi's retreating figure.
[…]
General Massie stepped into mission control and walked down the blank empty corridors. No one was here, they were all either in the control room or out celebrating the successful launch. It had been a sight to see, two-thousand-year-old technology working for one more time, but personally General Massie saw it as completely obsolete and a useless waste of government capital.
That was something they could have been using to help fortify earth's defense nexus. Out of all the useless things Admiral Vir had supported, at least he had agreed that they needed SOME form of defense against extraterrestrial attack.
General Massie made a face…
Though he wouldn't doubt Admiral Vir would have been totally fine leaving their planet with its pants down in order to let those Xenos fuck them over.
Everyone and their dog knew that Admiral Vir preferred alien cock over his own kind.
The thought made Admiral Massie cringe.
It was a well-kept secret among the UNSC, but the man wasn't nearly as secretive as he liked to think he was. Rumors of his infatuation with the stupid blue beetle alien had reached command almost as soon as it began. The only reason they didn't allow it to leak was that it would make the UNSC look bad to the rest of earth.
And Jupiter how he hated that man.
Stupid, juvenile egotistical xeno fucker!
Today was the day all of that came to an end!
He cut right, just before the doors to mission control and walked down two more hallways, finally opening a small side door into, what might have looked from the outside, like an equipment closet. He stepped over a mop and bucket and sat down at an old console, which he fired up with the flick of a button.
"Flight 1 this is Earth 1 over."
"Roger earth one this if slight one, in position over."
He turned on the screen, giving himself time to look the radar over, as twenty dots appeared on screen. Those were twenty Thunderhawks they had slowly appropriated over the intervening year.
With a place as big as the universe to cover, it was pretty easy to lose a few jets in the shuffle. He could see them now, illuminated as little green dots on his screen, hiding in the debris.
"Flight one this is Earth one, Operation “After Apollo” is go. Now remember boys and girls, make it look like an accident. Over."
*"Roger that Earth one. Over and out."
[…]
"You TRAITOR!"
Admiral Massie spun in his seat, eyes wide and wild as Admiral Kelly stood in the doorway. She could feel her skin growing hot with absolute rage as she stalked forward over the open floor. In one hand she held up the small recording device Conn had handed to her outside the building, and on it held proof of this man's order. On the screen behind him twenty little dots burst to life.
She was too late.
The man slowly got to his feet as Kelly aimed her handgun at him, her grip steady, her aim true.
"Call off your dogs."
She snarled,
Admiral Massie slowly lifted his hands, before slowly leaning forward in his seat towards the intercom button. She stepped forward, watching him intently as he leaned over the console pressing down on the button.
"Flight one this is earth one..."
Her eyes flickered up to the screen waiting to see them pause.
But before she knew what was happening an elbow came up striking her on the hand and causing the gun to spin out of her grip. Admiral Massie turned and tackled her to the floor, his nearly 300 lb body crushing her to the floor.
The wind was knocked out of her and she gasped as he struggled to pin her to the ground.
Her hat had flown off and her bun became undone as he drew back a fist to punch her. She was able to block it with her forearms as he raged and went for her face. The blows rained down on her from above with an onslaught of power she wasn't expecting but should have.
She took another gasping breath, and then with a surge of adrenaline she bucked, throwing him forward where she grabbed one of his arms and bucked again, forcing him to his side and onto his back. Still gripping his arm, she threw herself sideways, throwing her legs over his chest and struggling with his arm to pull it flat.
He kicked and grabbed at her legs with his other hand painfully gripping her calves as his nails dug into her skin and drew blood. The pain was incredible, but she finally got his arm down tucked tight to her chest, her legs across his chest, and then she jerked her hips sharply upward.
Admiral Massie screamed as his elbow snapped backwards.
She let go of him and scrambled towards the console, but at the last moment he grabbed her by the foot and hauled her back to the ground, one arm hanging limp and useless at his side. He clawed at her with one hand, and she rolled onto her back, kicking up at his face with her boot catching him square in the chin.
He staggered back as she crawled to the console and reached to adjust the frequency, ready to call in lunar support.
There was a sharp click behind her, and she froze, turning in her seat to find Admiral Massie standing behind her gun held in his good hand.
Blood leaked from his nose and down onto the front of his uniform, staining the grey fabric red,
"Nice try, Kelly."
[…]
Donovan Red waited, spinning slowly as he watched the progress of the distant rocket. Inside his helmet his breathing was cold and calm as, ranging all around him, his other men and women waited as well. Their ships had been outfitted with proper weapons as they had ridden here in the cargo hold of the Omen. The group of them weren't soldiers or trained fighter pilots, so he didn't imagine this would be easy, but it was going to have to do.
"Red, this is Apollo 11 do you copy?”
"Yeah Cinderella, I copy."
"See anything?"
"Nope not a..."
He paused,
"Wait..."
There was something, something he thought he saw detach itself from another piece of space junk,
"Hold that thought Apollo."
He detached from his own bit of space junk and inched forward.
A thunderhawk? What would one of those be doing here?
It began to accelerate.
He accelerated after it.
Up ahead the rocket was growing larger and larger in his view.
“Thunderhawk has made lock.”
The cool female voice said from his console.
"Oh shit, Admiral r-“
He didn't have time to finish his sentence as a small ball-like-silver ship came pelting down from nowhere, blasting the Thunderhawk in the wing with a sharp burst of laser fire. It's wing exploded and it went careening in the opposite direction as the silver ball whizzed past.
"What the fuck!?"
He turned to fly after it, but was stopped.
"Red, this is Wendy, stand down that's a Rundi UAV."
"Rundi? I thought it was the Rundi we were worried about!?”
He called in confusion.
"Yeah, but that thunderhawk had locked in on Apollo 11. It looks like the Rundi are helping."
He grunted and cursed under his breath,
"Boys and girls, if you see a silver ball stand down, those are on our side."
Just then another Thunderhawk shot over his head. He cursed again and pulled himself into a sharp upward turn cutting after the Thunderhawk and locking on. His lock cut off their attempts to shoot down the rocket, and they were forced to dive under as he followed after. He followed, spinning right and left around debris as the Thunderhawk attempted to escape.
It cut upward, just in time for a bright pink jet with graffiti words on the side to shoot out of nowhere.
The Thunderhawk exploded in a cloud of debris as Wendy roared by.
"Good shot, girl!”
He said over his radio.
"Thanks boss. Now let’s give them hell!"
[…]
Admiral Vir floated before the console, knuckles white and unable to do anything. A silent explosion flashed in his vision to the right as quickly as it had begun. Richards and Chavez started with wide eyes and dropped mouths.
"Admiral what the hell is going on!?”
Adam took a deep breath,
"It seems as if we are under attack."
The two of them exchanged glances,
"From who? What the fuck!?!"
Adam turned where he stood to look at the two of them,
"I am sorry I got you two into this mess, but the isolationists have been gunning for me for a few months now, and it seems as if now things have come to a head.”
"What are we going to do!"
"Radio Houston."
Chavez hurried to do as ordered, but when she did, they heard only static,
"Shit... Something is jamming our coms."
Adam took a deep breath,
"Well I guess all we have is Donovan to protect us. Lets' hope they do it right."
[…]
Admiral Massie laughed,
"You're as dumb as you look Kelly."
She stood, slowly wiping blood from her cheek as she turned to look down the barrel of the gun. Her own gun.
She didn't generally tend to agree with Massie, but this time he did have a point. Surprisingly though she was very calm,
"You aren't going to get away with this."
She glanced over to where the little silver recording device lay in the shadows under one of the chairs.
Massie was too amped to notice.
"Doesn't matter. I will have done my duty to my planet and my people, saving them from alien lovers like you and that bastard Vir."
"Whose Idea was this, the President or yours?"
She held her hands out to the side.
"Do you think that dipshit was smart enough to come up with a plan like mine?"
Kelly raised an eyebrow,
"Is it wise to incriminate your friends along with you?"
"That bitch? Heh, I could care less. And if I am going down, she is going down with me. The president may think it was all her idea, but it was mine all along, she was following my orders, whether she believes it or not, and once Adam Vir and YOU are dead, then it doesn't matter what we did, because diplomatic relations will dissolve, and it will be all over."
He lifted the gun to her face,
"Goodbye Kelly."
She remained very still as the shadow fell over him from behind,
"May I say one last thing?”
He paused.
"Turn around."
"Very funny!”
He lifted the gun again and pulled the trigger.
There was a sharp crack and thud as metal hit metal. Kelly flinched and held up her hands, but opened her eye after a moment as no pain came.
Admiral Massie lay on the floor face down.
Kelly reached down quickly to grab her gun, looking up to where Sunny was standing in the doorway holding her pearlescent white spear. Behind her floated the starborn Conn and the hybrid.
She took a deep breath,
"Great timing you three.”
Sunny nodded,
"Anytime."
Admiral Kelly turned and lunged for the comms, switching the frequency to the lunar station only to find she couldn't get through,
"Damn it."
She cursed, turning to look at Sunny and the others,
"I was too late, the ships have already been deployed."
She paused and looked down, grabbing the recording device from off the floor tossing it to the hybrid who caught it with some difficulty,
"Run that to one of the media outlets, convince them it is important and leak it as soon as you can. We don't want her to have time to cover her own ass."
Eris nodded and shot off in the other direction.
Sunny knelt down to help her restrain Admiral Massie.
Just then the sound of feet came thundering up the hall and they looked up to see the Chairwoman of the GA and her assistants skid around a corner. Sunny's eyes narrowed as she crouched low leveling her spear.
"Did you catch him?"
The Chairwoman asked,
"No thanks to you."
Sunny snarled, but the chairwoman waved her off,
"I lost contact with my drones, but they should be out helping to protect Admiral Vir. I am sorry I couldn't do more, but it was all I could do not to show my hand too early."
Admiral Kelly stood slowly,
"You knew about this?"
The charwoman shook her head,
"Not this specifically, but I have been trying to find the source of the assassination attempts on Admiral Vir's life. I've had discreet escorts on him for the past few months while I tried getting in contact with my people in the criminal underworld and I called the hit on him with those pirates, knowing who Captain Kell was, hoping that he could get more information out of the pirates that I could."
Sunny stared at her rage flickering across her face,
"You called a hit on him!"
The charwoman did not seem perturbed,
"Those pirates couldn't have... How do the humans say... Hit their way out of a paper bag. I have been attempting to come in contact with the leader of the anti-alliance for the past few months. I have been trying to convince them I am on their side, and that was part of my ruse, as well as knowing Admiral Vir was captain Kell. During my investigation it became clear that someone within the UN was involved though I couldn't have said who."
"And why should we believe you aren't just covering your own ass?”
The chairwoman hissed,
”Do you really think I want to make an enemy out of the strongest species in the galaxy!? Not on your life! I am not stupid. Besides, I owe Admiral Vir my life. I admit I have done some irreparable things in order to keep the alliance going, but those moves were calculated, and Vir was always protected.”
[…]
One of the silver UAV's exploded and Red had to dodge to the side to avoid the flying debris. He cut right and then left keeping as fast as he could possibly go as he cut up through the chunks of metal and locked onto the back of a Thunderhawk. There was a sharp click and then a silent explosion which he rolled out of the way to avoid. He had sent one of his men off to make contact with earths forces for backup.
They were good, but these men and women were made for combat, and despite their best work only four out of twenty of them had been destroyed, and their numbers were dwindling fast. He cut right before one of the Thunderhawk’s, forcing it to turn away from the rocket and cut down in another direction. He could only imagine the fear of those inside the rocket as they watched helplessly at the fight raging on around them.
He spun down and under, cutting off another Thunderhawk coming in the opposite direction.
There was no way they were going to keep up with this for long.
Their only chance was earths forces reacting quickly.
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Want to find a specific one, see the whole list or check fanart?
Here is the link to the master-post.
Intro post by me
OC-whole collection
Patreon of the author
Thanks for reading! As you saw in the title, this is a cross posted story written by starrfallknightrise and I'll just upload some of it here for you guys, if you are interested and want to read ahead, the original story-collection can be found on tumblr or wattpad to read for free. (link above this text under "OC:..." ) It is the Empyrean Iris story collection by starfallknightrise. Also, if you want to know more about the story collection i made an intro post about it, so feel free to check that out to see what other great characters to look forward to! (Link also above this text). I have no affiliations to the author; just thought I’d share some of the great stories you might enjoy a lot!
Obviously, I have Charlie’s permission to post this and for the people already knowing the stories, or starting to read them: If you follow the link and check out the story you will see some differences. I made some small (non-artistic) changes, mainly correcting writing mistakes, pronoun correction and some small additional info here and there of things which were not thought of/forgotten or even were added/changed in later stories (like the “USS->UNSC” prefix of Stabby, Chalar=/->Sunny etc). As well as some "biggemajor" changes in descriptions and info’s for the same stringency/continuity reason. That can be explained by the story collection being, well a story collection at the start with many standalone-stories just starring the same people, but later on it gets more to a stringent storyline with backstories and throwbacks. (For example Adam Vir has some HEAVY scars over his body, following his bones, which were not really talked about up till half the collection, where it says it covers his whole body and you find out via backflash that he had them the whole time and how he got them, they just weren't mentioned before. However, I would think a doctor would at least see these scars before that, especially since he gets analyzed, treated and goes shirtless/in T-shirts in some stories). So TLDR: Writing and some descriptions are slightly changed, with full OK from the author, since he himself did not bother to correct these things before.
submitted by maximusaemilius to HFY [link] [comments]

2024.05.13 01:45 Beneficial_Owl_9509 The good bad and ugly. tell me it gets easier. ( Discovering myself )

I was born in 1996. to a very unstable mother who had all sorts of childhood trauma and borderline personality disorder as a result. what a ride.
I have an older sister from a different father only 2 years older than me. My mom and her father got divorced. A very messy one.
my father an Irish catholic man who doesn't think emotions exist. he left mom when I was 2. He already had 3 daughters and wife before my mom.
I went into foster care age 2. my sister went to live with her father, who is a wonderful man. my mom was sectioned and my dad disappeared. my mom says it's the worst thing to ever happen to her and she feels guilty about it everyday.
she got me back when I was 4 but my attachments are shattered. my mom met my step dad and things I thought were normal. I was diagnosed with ADHD and always knew something didn't feel quite right. my step dad would often shout at me even burned me with a cigarette on my hand while walking next to me one time, and claims it was an accident and I shouldn't of walked to close to him.
I was gaslit by my mom for years her telling me my childhood wasn't that bad and I was naughty.
My mom was so emotionally absent from me, I think she resents me for causing her so much grief. we never spent any time together, I often was caught in her cycles of abuse and then apologising and trying to over compensate. we fought almost every day. I have two younger brothers from my step dad and they can do no wrong.
I didn't know who my dad was my mom told briefly about him when I started asking questions. I had no idea who I was. Then out of blue my mom magically found my dad again when I was 12 and thought this might magically save our relationship she kept destroying. she started sleeping with him before I could get to know him properly.
I started petulant attempts a suicide.
my dad would punish me and shout at me and one time even psychically abused me. one time I was in hospital for an episode and told me I was just playing games.
I tried to go and live with my aunt once in this abuse cycle. I became off the rails and rebelled against everyone and everything I was pushed around from pillar to post. and eventually went back into foster care. This destroyed me. my worst fear happened. I became mean and angry, in all honesty. but I ave such a good heart.
I became distant from everyone I hated my parents and the whole world. I didn't want to be here. my mom would often call me drunk asking if I wanted to go home, I would baby sit for her trying to get some appreciation and validation and she would just use me and tell me she was going out to AA meetings and shed be meeting different men.
she would often have episodes of being drunk and calling everyone and when I was 23 my sister even told me my mom threatened her with a knife to her neck. which I struggle to come to terms with today.
I started drinking at a young age and partying, getting myself involved with all kids of people that took advantage of me.
after leaving foster care I lived in a half way house for homeless people after one of my friends moms sublet me a place and soon gave up on me for my behaviour and weed smoking with my flat mate in the house.
I met my first proper boyfriend at 19. he kind of clung on to me and some how I fell in love with him. he stuck by me and was my rock through navigating life after foster care. I think it was a place for him to get away from his parents and smoke weed and do graffiti. which I ask him to help me get into.
things go very abusive after we started living together. I had my own flat from the council and let him move in (stupid I know). We were verbally and psychically aggressive towards each other, I was depressed and he told me I made him feel like less of a man.
he saw me self harm. I hate myself for this.
we broke up. and I had a break down. I admitted myself to hospital multiple times. I knew I couldn't keep living like this after being on benefits and having dead end jobs. I trained as a hairdressing something I said id never do as my mom did it for a while but I was convinced id be more of a woman that she ever was.
I was a good hairdresser. I still am. I really tuned my life around. I moved out my council flat. bounced around a little bit. trying too find my feet still.
had a few rocky unstable relationships, many anti depressants and failed attempts at finding therapy.
I moved to London after covid to pursue a better hair career than in my home city. however I got bored and dated too many coworkers. ah yes the self destructive patterns persist.
I didn't speak to my mom for 7 years and even longer with my dad after I walked out of his wedding. cause I had a panic attack. my three older sisters were there that ive never met.
I did something extraordinary, I went to uni. I now study fashion. im now in my first year.and im finally financially table enough that ive now been in therapy for 6 months. I write this im now discovering who I am. and I may in fact have BPD myself now, I show many traits as you might of picked up. and struggle with relationships, substances and identity disturbance.
im on journey of self discovery and trying to shake this sense of entitlement and victimhood my childhood has given me. I speak to my mom again however she won't do therapy with me and Im now learning to set some boundaries with her. My dad could be on another planet. good news I guess.
me and my sister have always been close although at times our relationship is very strained due to my bpd traits. and her feeling like she needs to overcompensate because of my mom. I even often resented her for having her father support her unconditionally. she often resents me cause she feels like she has had to mother me :(
Im currently thinking to go to an AA meeting because the shame I feel after drinking is huge even if I didn't do anything that bad. just get blackout every time. in therapy im learning to handle my emotions better. and let go of old trauma. Im realising all my resentments and working through them! if it wasn't for therapy I don't think I could even write this.
I can see myself becoming just like my mother if things don't change. I will end the cycle. im just learning to sit with all the ugly truths about myself that are my defence mechanisms from trauma.
its okay to not be okay. people will still love me even if I have emotions. not everything will result in abandonment.
thank you for taking the time to read my story.
submitted by Beneficial_Owl_9509 to BPD [link] [comments]

2024.05.12 17:52 Y3ah_Ididthat Help with the basics and fundamentals

Hello everyone, so I've been interested in graffiti for about a month or so now and I've been mainly focusing on the history / cultural side of things instead of learning to write. However, I just don't really understand what I'm doing. I've been looking at tutorials online and watching a lot of videos, but I just don't really understand the sort of "path" to learn, if there is even one. So I just wanted to ask, how do I actually learn what to do? I've been trying to find a roadmap or something like that, and have been trying to learn the basics, but does it just narrow down to experiment? Because I feel kinda lost in what I need to do to learn and for some reason can't find anything to fully help me. Alright cheers.
submitted by Y3ah_Ididthat to graffhelp [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 19:27 parkerpops Why I think the OS is Rory's AYITL book

To be upfront, I'm not from the US, so maybe there really are people and places like in Gilmore Girls, and maybe I'm totally wrong! But at least in the UK, I can't imagine anything even close to the universe of GG. Also, I've not been on this subreddit long, so I'm sorry if this is rehashing points that other people have made already.
Ok...
I'm on my first rewatch as an adult, and I so firmly believe that the original series is how Rory wrote her book from AYITL. It's a combination of "starry eyed naïve childhood memories" and "glossing over the bad life stuff". Every character and setting is a complete caricature and fictionalised version of real people/places, and it just seems it all belongs on paper and make believe!
....
Rory - it's not enough to be a decent, hardworking kid, you have to be the town's darling and be the best and most intelligent kid EVER.
Lorelai - it's not enough to be a decent young/single parent, you have to be the coolest and most understanding and perfect parent.
Lane - you can't just like music, you have to love music and be all about music.
Paris - you can't just be ambitious, you have to be the ambitious to the point that you do nothing else and enjoy nothing else and work towards nothing else.
Sookie - you can't just be a chef, but you have to be over the top and extremely fussy about your ingredients and menus, and you make ridiculous dishes at the drop of a hat.
Every student - absolutely lives for education and is extremely intense about learning and extra curriculars.
Every Stars Hollow resident - loves the town more than anything else, is a perfect neighbour, cares extremely deeply about town matters.
Kirk - I don't even need to go into Kirk 😅 I feel like he's just an combination of every background person in town who doesn't become a main character in the book.
Chilton - no school is that intense, and children do not enjoy studying that hard or that long. (To be fair, I was not privately educated, so I'm taking a guess. But 16 year olds are probably not that enthusiastic to this extent.)
Stars Hollow - an entire town that knows eachother, has constant seasonal town events, never has any real problems (destructive graffiti, violence, teen pregnancy, abuse), and is just too quaint....?
....
In terms of "glossing over the bad stuff"... (Although, all props to a character who got pregnant as a teen and raised a daughter all by herself - I don't hate her, although writing all this out makes it sound like I do 😅)
They used to live in a potting shed. In the show, it's very cute and quaint, but in real life - they were probably right on the poverty line and suffered quite a lot.
Lorelai doesn't cook or prioritise good nutrition, and opts to order in or go out. It's not a stretch to see how a young girl would romanticise this as fun and exciting, and how great it is that they get to eat pizza every night.
Times where Rory was "so excited" to do her own laundry, or Lorelai hadn't done any of the washing/shopping - in the show, it's funny and endearing, and "isn't Rory such a good girl). In real life, it's not a positive point - Rory probably had to grow up very young and "learned" to enjoy doing chores. And also manages to never blame her mother for leaving this things to her. (Lorelai is still young in the OS, and it's not bonkers that she wants to go out and have fun and be carefree, since she couldn't do it when Rory was a baby.)
Rory cheats on pretty much every boyfriend she has, but in the OS show(/book) she never really comes across as the bad guy. Only in AYITL does she come across as kind of a dick for it, and finally meets some consequences.
Lane gets a pretty crap ending in the OS (Justice for Lane), but never seems to mind that she gave up on her long time dreams/aspirations. But it would make sense that Rory writes her as not seeming to mind, and seems happy on the outside.
....
Having the OS be a fiction and based on Rory's book would also account for inconsistencies in the timeline, and makes up for changes in people's characters. It's all about how Rory sees it, and how Rory sees people - and considering how entitled and spoiled she is in AYITL, it's not crazy to think that she never really pays attention to other people lives.
....
Ok, this was a really long post.
submitted by parkerpops to GilmoreGirls [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 17:34 Beneficial_Owl_9509 coping with self awareness in therapy. my story.

I was born in 1996. to a very unstable mother who had all sorts of childhood trauma and borderline personality disorder as a result. what a ride.
I have an older sister from a different father only 2 years older than me. MY mom and her father got divorced. A very messy one.
my father an Irish catholic man who doesn't think emotions exist. he left mom when I was 2. He already had 3 daughters and wife before my mom.
I went into foster care age 2. my sister went to live with her father, who is a wonderful man. my mom was sectioned and my dad disappeared. my mom says it's the worst thing to ever happen to her and she feels guilty about it everyday.
she got me back when I was 4 but my attachments are shattered. my mom met my step dad and things I thought were normal. I was diagnosed with ADHD and always knew something didn't feel quite right. my step dad would often shout at me even burned me with a cigarette on my hand while walking next to me one time, and claims it was an accident and I shouldn't of walked to close to him.
I was gaslit by my mom for years her telling me my childhood wasn't that bad and I was naughty.
My mom was so emotionally absent from me, I think she resents me for causing her so much grief. we never spent any time together, I often was caught in her cycles of abuse and then apologising and trying to over compensate. we fought almost every day. I have two younger brothers from my step dad and they can do no wrong.
I didn't know who my dad was my mom told briefly about him when I started asking questions. I had no idea who I was. Then out of blue my mom magically found my dad again when I was 12 and thought this might magically save our relationship she kept destroying. she started sleeping with him before I could get to know him properly.
I started petulant attempts a suicide.
my dad would punish me and shout at me and one time even psychically abused me. one time I was in hospital for an episode and told me I was just playing games.
I tried to go and live with my aunt once in this abuse cycle. I became off the rails and rebelled against everyone and everything I was pushed around from pillar to post. and eventually went back into foster care. This destroyed me. my worst fear happened. I became mean and angry, in all honesty. but I ave such a good heart.
I became distant from everyone I hated my parents and the whole world. I didn't want to be here. my mom would often call me drunk asking if I wanted to go home, I would baby sit for her trying to get some appreciation and validation and she would just use me and tell me she was going out to AA meetings and shed be meeting different men.
she would often have episodes of being drunk and calling everyone and when I was 23 my sister even told me my mom threatened her with a knife to her neck. which I struggle to come to terms with today.
I started drinking at a young age and partying, getting myself involved with all kids of people that took advantage of me.
after leaving foster care I lived in a half way house for homeless people after one of my friends moms sublet me a place and soon gave up on me for my behaviour and weed smoking with my flat mate in the house.
I met my first proper boyfriend at 19. he kind of clung on to me and some how I fell in love with him. he stuck by me and was my rock through navigating life after foster care. I think it was a place for him to get away from his parents and smoke weed and do graffiti. which I ask him to help me get into.
things go very abusive after we started living together. I had my own flat from the council and let him move in (stupid I know). We were verbally and psychically aggressive towards each other, I was depressed and he told me I made him feel like less of a man.
he saw me self harm. I hate myself for this.
we broke up. and I had a break down. I admitted myself to hospital multiple times. I knew I couldn't keep living like this after being on benefits and having dead end jobs. I trained as a hairdressing something I said id never do as my mom did it for a while but I was convinced id be more of a woman that she ever was.
I was a good hairdresser. I still am. I really tuned my life around. I moved out my council flat. bounced around a little bit. trying too find my feet still.
had a few rocky unstable relationships, many anti depressants and failed attempts at finding therapy.
I moved to London after covid to pursue a better hair career than in my home city. however I got bored and dated too many coworkers. ah yes the self destructive patterns persist.
I didn't speak to my mom for 7 years and even longer with my dad after I walked out of his wedding. cause I had a panic attack. my three older sisters were there that ive never met.
I did something extraordinary, I went to uni. I now study fashion. im now in my first year.and im finally financially table enough that ive now been in therapy for 6 months. I write this im now discovering who I am. and I may in fact have BPD myself now, I show many traits as you might of picked up. and struggle with relationships, substances and identity disturbance.
im on journey of self discovery and trying to shake this sense of entitlement and victimhood my childhood has given me. I speak to my mom again however she won't do therapy with me and Im now learning to set some boundaries with her. My dad could be on another planet. good news I guess.
me and my sister have always been close although at times our relationship is very strained due to my bpd traits. and her feeling like she needs to overcompensate because of my mom. I even often resented her for having her father support her unconditionally. she often resents me cause she feels like she has had to mother me :(
Im currently thinking to go to an AA meeting because the shame I feel after drinking is huge even if I didn't do anything that bad. just get blackout every time. in therapy im learning to handle my emotions better. and let go of old trauma. Im realising all my resentments and working through them! if it wasn't for therapy I don't think I could even write this.
I can see myself becoming just like my mother if things don't change. I will end the cycle. im just learning to sit with all the ugly truths about myself that are my defence mechanisms from trauma.
its okay to not be okay. people will still love me even if I have emotions. not everything will result in abandonment.
thank you for taking the time to read my story.
submitted by Beneficial_Owl_9509 to mentalhealth [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 17:31 Beneficial_Owl_9509 The good bad the ugly of discovering myself.

I was born in 1996. to a very unstable mother who had all sorts of childhood trauma and borderline personality disorder as a result. what a ride.
I have an older sister from a different father only 2 years older than me. My mom and her father got divorced. A very messy one.
my father an Irish catholic man who doesn't think emotions exist. he left mom when I was 2. He already had 3 daughters and wife before my mom.
I went into foster care age 2. my sister went to live with her father, who is a wonderful man. my mom was sectioned and my dad disappeared. my mom says it's the worst thing to ever happen to her and she feels guilty about it everyday.
she got me back when I was 4 but my attachments are shattered. my mom met my step dad and things I thought were normal. I was diagnosed with ADHD and always knew something didn't feel quite right. my step dad would often shout at me even burned me with a cigarette on my hand while walking next to me one time, and claims it was an accident and I shouldn't of walked to close to him.
I was gaslit by my mom for years her telling me my childhood wasn't that bad and I was naughty.
My mom was so emotionally absent from me, I think she resents me for causing her so much grief. we never spent any time together, I often was caught in her cycles of abuse and then apologising and trying to over compensate. we fought almost every day. I have two younger brothers from my step dad and they can do no wrong.
I didn't know who my dad was my mom told briefly about him when I started asking questions. I had no idea who I was. Then out of blue my mom magically found my dad again when I was 12 and thought this might magically save our relationship she kept destroying. she started sleeping with him before I could get to know him properly.
I started petulant attempts a suicide.
my dad would punish me and shout at me and one time even psychically abused me. one time I was in hospital for an episode and told me I was just playing games.
I tried to go and live with my aunt once in this abuse cycle. I became off the rails and rebelled against everyone and everything I was pushed around from pillar to post. and eventually went back into foster care. This destroyed me. my worst fear happened. I became mean and angry, in all honesty. but I ave such a good heart.
I became distant from everyone I hated my parents and the whole world. I didn't want to be here. my mom would often call me drunk asking if I wanted to go home, I would baby sit for her trying to get some appreciation and validation and she would just use me and tell me she was going out to AA meetings and shed be meeting different men.
she would often have episodes of being drunk and calling everyone and when I was 23 my sister even told me my mom threatened her with a knife to her neck. which I struggle to come to terms with today.
I started drinking at a young age and partying, getting myself involved with all kids of people that took advantage of me.
after leaving foster care I lived in a half way house for homeless people after one of my friends moms sublet me a place and soon gave up on me for my behaviour and weed smoking with my flat mate in the house.
I met my first proper boyfriend at 19. he kind of clung on to me and some how I fell in love with him. he stuck by me and was my rock through navigating life after foster care. I think it was a place for him to get away from his parents and smoke weed and do graffiti. which I ask him to help me get into.
things go very abusive after we started living together. I had my own flat from the council and let him move in (stupid I know). We were verbally and psychically aggressive towards each other, I was depressed and he told me I made him feel like less of a man.
he saw me self harm. I hate myself for this.
we broke up. and I had a break down. I admitted myself to hospital multiple times. I knew I couldn't keep living like this after being on benefits and having dead end jobs. I trained as a hairdressing something I said id never do as my mom did it for a while but I was convinced id be more of a woman that she ever was.
I was a good hairdresser. I still am. I really tuned my life around. I moved out my council flat. bounced around a little bit. trying too find my feet still.
had a few rocky unstable relationships, many anti depressants and failed attempts at finding therapy.
I moved to London after covid to pursue a better hair career than in my home city. however I got bored and dated too many coworkers. ah yes the self destructive patterns persist.
I didn't speak to my mom for 7 years and even longer with my dad after I walked out of his wedding. cause I had a panic attack. my three older sisters were there that ive never met.
I did something extraordinary, I went to uni. I now study fashion. im now in my first year.and im finally financially table enough that ive now been in therapy for 6 months. I write this im now discovering who I am. and I may in fact have BPD myself now, I show many traits as you might of picked up. and struggle with relationships, substances and identity disturbance.
im on journey of self discovery and trying to shake this sense of entitlement and victimhood my childhood has given me. I speak to my mom again however she won't do therapy with me and Im now learning to set some boundaries with her. My dad could be on another planet. good news I guess.
me and my sister have always been close although at times our relationship is very strained due to my bpd traits. and her feeling like she needs to overcompensate because of my mom. I even often resented her for having her father support her unconditionally. she often resents me cause she feels like she has had to mother me :(
Im currently thinking to go to an AA meeting because the shame I feel after drinking is huge even if I didn't do anything that bad. just get blackout every time. in therapy im learning to handle my emotions better. and let go of old trauma. Im realising all my resentments and working through them! if it wasn't for therapy I don't think I could even write this.
I can see myself becoming just like my mother if things don't change. I will end the cycle. im just learning to sit with all the ugly truths about myself that are my defence mechanisms from trauma.
its okay to not be okay. people will still love me even if I have emotions. not everything will result in abandonment.
thank you for taking the time to read my story.
submitted by Beneficial_Owl_9509 to toxicparents [link] [comments]

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