How to draw snoopys house
HowToDraw: Post step by step guides, your drawing and sketches.
2011.09.10 09:24 patrickaaron HowToDraw: Post step by step guides, your drawing and sketches.
2019.04.11 03:41 howtodrawcomics How To Draw Comics
The HTDC subreddit is a place for aspiring comic book, manga and concept artists to improve their dynamic drawing abilities. We welcome artists of all skill levels - from emerging artists to working professionals to comic art veterans.
2013.02.14 00:40 Fuzzy_Pickles How To Draw Really Good.
Youtube Celebrity giving advice and pro tips on how to draw things to a very professional level.
2024.05.19 17:04 Fabulous-Fox-8303 Looking for Some Understanding/Support During a Really Hard Situation
Trigger warning, mental health topics like suicide. Thanks for reading this. I filed for divorce back in Nov because my husband’s mental health was not improving and he was getting more abusive towards me and his disabled 10 year old son (whom I adopted). We had spent Oct apart to see how a split would be and I felt my like was more peaceful. His mental health continued to decline and this culminated in a bad episode where he screamed and cursed at me then threatened to kill himself in front of our son. I got us out and called the police and they took him to the hospital. After getting out, he was not allowed to see my son other than at supervised visitation locations or to come to the house.
He went out of state to stay with family, then found an inpatient treatment center in Cali. We agreed that I would hold off with the divorce to allow him to use the health ins and focus on treatment full time while I took care of our son and worked full time. During this time, he would still try to flirt with me and say he still loves me, etc. I turned him down and eventually his advances stopped and I hoped he was focusing on recovery. The first treatment center was not good (understaffed, false advertising, etc.) so he then moved to an intensive outpatient center that he had found nearby.
He started saying that he wanted to move to Cali because of state programs and lifestyle. I was annoyed that he would be so far from our son, leaving me with full time care, but he had never been very reliable or responsible. He said he was depressed and his calls grew less frequent. However, I foolishly started harboring a small hope that he would actually get better and come back to our family.
He told me about a month ago that he was being released. He mentioned randomly wanting to move to the same town where the treatment center was located. This bothered me, why there? On the day he was released, I figured it out…there must be a woman. I confronted him and he said he had a gf but they broke up. I was immediately DEVASTATED. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t understand how he could be so immature and selfish to do this while he was supposed to be focusing full time on treatment. He acted like I was over-reacting and I spent hours texting him and explaining my concerns, such as, what if she ends up pregnant? He continued to act like I was overreacting, that his treatment was not affected, that trauma bonding between patients is common, etc. I pivoted in our divorce to continue requiring supervised visits as I could not trust his recovery. I also started having intrusive thoughts about the woman, who I found out was another patient. I grew extremely jealous. I spent time trying to convince him not to abandon our son and move across the country. We ended up spending countless hours talking and going over our communication issues, he finally apologized profusely, took accountability for fucking up, and was somewhat friendly. He said the relationship with the other patient was toxic and completely over. He said I had made it pretty clear after Oct and by filing divorce that our relationship was completely over, if he had known that there was still some hope, or how much this would have hurt me, that he would have made different decisions.
He arrived back in town on Wed. I spent the evening talking to him, and the is point my desire to rekindle something was embarrassingly full tilt, he was soo much calmer and collected but also very distant. We spent more time together and I grew more confused. I finally confessed to him yesterday that I wanted to try and see if anything was left of our relationship before filing the final papers. The extra draw to it for him would be the financial stability and support I am capable of providing. We talked on the phone and he said it was all too fresh and too much, as I have the house he is basically on the verge of being homeless and is jobless. But he said he was open to discussing it further.
Fast forward to last night, he exercised a supervised visitation with my son and we talked briefly after. He told me he needed to tell me something, that his ex-gf from the facility was indeed pregnant. I almost threw up. I am 38 and wanted kids with him, but our relationship was never stable enough emotionally or financially to try. I asked if she was going to keep it and he said at first no but now she was changing her mind. She is still a patient at the treatment center and is there bc of a recent suicide attempt. The whole thing makes me feel so ill.
The icing on the cake was last night, when he indicated that he had stipulations for getting back together with her. When I wanted to get back with him he was unsure (he already knew she was pregnant), but potentially wanted to go back to her. That was the final straw for me, I really lost it on him. He was already thinking about abandoning his living son to go live with this woman, now they will have a baby. But now I can’t sleep or eat or do anything. My life feels like a Jerry Springer episode, but I am a responsible, kind, hardworking person who did so much for my husband for years, including saving his son from his abusive, drug-addicted, ex-wife and raising him as my own. I know I made choices here too that led to this mess, but I have never felt this hurt and lost before. I am trying to seek out more therapy, etc, but nothing seems to be helping yet.
submitted by Fabulous-Fox-8303 to Divorce [link] [comments]
He went out of state to stay with family, then found an inpatient treatment center in Cali. We agreed that I would hold off with the divorce to allow him to use the health ins and focus on treatment full time while I took care of our son and worked full time. During this time, he would still try to flirt with me and say he still loves me, etc. I turned him down and eventually his advances stopped and I hoped he was focusing on recovery. The first treatment center was not good (understaffed, false advertising, etc.) so he then moved to an intensive outpatient center that he had found nearby.
He started saying that he wanted to move to Cali because of state programs and lifestyle. I was annoyed that he would be so far from our son, leaving me with full time care, but he had never been very reliable or responsible. He said he was depressed and his calls grew less frequent. However, I foolishly started harboring a small hope that he would actually get better and come back to our family.
He told me about a month ago that he was being released. He mentioned randomly wanting to move to the same town where the treatment center was located. This bothered me, why there? On the day he was released, I figured it out…there must be a woman. I confronted him and he said he had a gf but they broke up. I was immediately DEVASTATED. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t understand how he could be so immature and selfish to do this while he was supposed to be focusing full time on treatment. He acted like I was over-reacting and I spent hours texting him and explaining my concerns, such as, what if she ends up pregnant? He continued to act like I was overreacting, that his treatment was not affected, that trauma bonding between patients is common, etc. I pivoted in our divorce to continue requiring supervised visits as I could not trust his recovery. I also started having intrusive thoughts about the woman, who I found out was another patient. I grew extremely jealous. I spent time trying to convince him not to abandon our son and move across the country. We ended up spending countless hours talking and going over our communication issues, he finally apologized profusely, took accountability for fucking up, and was somewhat friendly. He said the relationship with the other patient was toxic and completely over. He said I had made it pretty clear after Oct and by filing divorce that our relationship was completely over, if he had known that there was still some hope, or how much this would have hurt me, that he would have made different decisions.
He arrived back in town on Wed. I spent the evening talking to him, and the is point my desire to rekindle something was embarrassingly full tilt, he was soo much calmer and collected but also very distant. We spent more time together and I grew more confused. I finally confessed to him yesterday that I wanted to try and see if anything was left of our relationship before filing the final papers. The extra draw to it for him would be the financial stability and support I am capable of providing. We talked on the phone and he said it was all too fresh and too much, as I have the house he is basically on the verge of being homeless and is jobless. But he said he was open to discussing it further.
Fast forward to last night, he exercised a supervised visitation with my son and we talked briefly after. He told me he needed to tell me something, that his ex-gf from the facility was indeed pregnant. I almost threw up. I am 38 and wanted kids with him, but our relationship was never stable enough emotionally or financially to try. I asked if she was going to keep it and he said at first no but now she was changing her mind. She is still a patient at the treatment center and is there bc of a recent suicide attempt. The whole thing makes me feel so ill.
The icing on the cake was last night, when he indicated that he had stipulations for getting back together with her. When I wanted to get back with him he was unsure (he already knew she was pregnant), but potentially wanted to go back to her. That was the final straw for me, I really lost it on him. He was already thinking about abandoning his living son to go live with this woman, now they will have a baby. But now I can’t sleep or eat or do anything. My life feels like a Jerry Springer episode, but I am a responsible, kind, hardworking person who did so much for my husband for years, including saving his son from his abusive, drug-addicted, ex-wife and raising him as my own. I know I made choices here too that led to this mess, but I have never felt this hurt and lost before. I am trying to seek out more therapy, etc, but nothing seems to be helping yet.
2024.05.19 16:50 Infinite_Scallion_24 Observability and repeatability, as well as other YEC misrepresentations of science
I think one of the worst things that you see a lot of the big YEC speakers do is the misrepresentation of science and the scientific method. It's one thing to argue with the evidence, this I accept as it is at least an attempt to engage in actual scientific discourse (excluding those who just baselessly decry the science). Even Tomkins with his apparent inability to do genomics is at the very least attempting to perform scientific experiments. However, these attempts to re-define science in a way that is beneficial to a creationist agenda is insanely frustrating, since it totally ruins all form of good-faith debate, and heavily misinforms people without a scientific education, and who don't really know how scientific process takes place.
To bring this point to light - I'm going to discuss this article from AIG: https://answersingenesis.org/what-is-science/what-is-science/. It displays basically all of these claims, and I consider it to contain some of the worst of AIG's mental gymnastics.
The article opens with a spiel about how science originated in Christian Europe, and refer to how Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei were all Christians who believed in a young Earth. Funnily enough, However - they fail to mention that Galileo was arrested by Christians due to his ideas contradicting a literal interpretation of the Bible - that being geostaticism (the idea that the Earth is stationary). I wonder why they excluded this piece of information?
They also state that "If the universe is a product of random chance or a group of gods that interfere in the universe, there is really no reason to expect order in nature". I could probably write an entire post on why this statement is false, so I won't go into this here. Maybe I'll do a follow up to this one just about this idea.
Now comes one of AIG's points that annoys me to no end - the ideas of 'Operational Science' and 'Historical Science'. AIG frames these terms as such:
Operational: "deals with testing and verifying ideas in the present and leads to the production of useful products like computers, cars, and satellites."
Historical: "involves interpreting evidence from the past and includes the models of evolution and special creation."
These terms do not exist in actual academia. They only exist within AIG's fantasy science land where they decide the rules, so that they can lend a fraction of legitimacy to their outdated ideas. The main reason they do this is to boil the argument down to one of faith. 'Evolutionism' vs Creationism is just a debate between two religions - same as Muslims and Christians arguing over which god is the real one. They present this in a slightly different way, but the meaning is the same: "The argument is not over the evidence—the evidence is the same—it is over the way the evidence should be interpreted." Essentially, 'we have different interpretations of the same stuff, so it's a matter of faith'.
What AIG are doing here is creating an unnecessary distinction. The worst bit is the reference to 'evidence from the past'. What they really mean here are things like the fossil record, radiometric dating, the geologic column - all the things that completely and utterly gut their belief in a 6000 year old created Earth. Instead of addressing them, they claim that it's a matter of interpretation.
Actual science doesn't create this distinction. Its purpose is to provide us with a method that lets us explain things we cannot observe directly, by looking at the things we can observe. No human has ever seen an atom with their own eyes - they are too small. Instead, we used observable evidence to figure out their structure, such as Rutherford's alpha particle scattering experiment - showing how most of the gold foil he was shooting the particles at allowed them to pass through, implying atoms being mostly empty space. Now Rutherford never saw an atom, but he inferred this about them through observation, as well as repetition of an experiment to minimise error. This is how science works. Of course, AIG would call Rutherford's work 'Operational Science', so we'll have to go somewhere else.
Let's use murder as an analogy (jolly, I know) - a person was killed 3 days ago, and their body was just discovered: we never saw them die, and we can never repeat their murder - because they are dead (truly groundbreaking stuff here). However, there is a gash across their neck, and a bloodied knife sat next to them. Moreover, this knife is covered with a person's fingerprints. We can then go to the house of the person who these fingerprints match, and ask them if they know anything - which they deny, despite lacking any alibi and having a definite motive. Do we have enough evidence to determine how the person died, as well as who killed them? Absolutely we do - there's a gash, and a knife covered in blood that matches the victim's: conclusion, they were killed with that knife. The knife is covered with fingerprints that lead to a person with no alibi at all, and a good motive: conclusion, they're the murderer. Now all of these data are from the past - the blood was put on the knife in the past, the wound was made in the past, the fingerprints were put on the knife in the past - by all metrics, this murder case falls into AIG's 'Historical Science'. As such, convicting this person is simply a matter of interpretation. We can only interpret that the fingerprints perfectly match those of the suspect. Who are we to say that they didn't somehow change over time? See how nonsensical this distinction is?
AIG then go on to the subject of theories - and again, they separated 'operational theories' from 'historical theories'. The idea is pretty much the same as discussed above, though there are a few points that I want to address. Firstly, they don't do the thing that I see many creationists (and other science deniers) state - that being the 'it's just a theory' thing, and draw a distinction between the colloquial and scientific definitions, though not without the prerequisite 'Evolutionists claim' line. This point has been beaten into the ground already, so I'll just leave it at that.
They go on to discuss how biological evolution is not an 'operational theory' as it contains 'interpretations of past events' and is 'not as well founded as testable scientific theories like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity or Newton’s Theory of Gravity'. It seems that AIG don't know that while Newton's law of universal gravitation remains as a very well-substantiated piece of science, his actual mechanism for how gravity works was in fact supplanted by Einstein's theory. Good scientific knowledge from AIG, as always. The big part of this section is how they refer to predictability as a method of validating a scientific theory: "These theories offer predictable models and the ability to conduct experiments to determine their validity in different circumstances." Once again, they conveniently omit the immense predictive power of evolutionary theory, instead choosing to claim that it lacks such a property - even going as far to directly claim "Molecules-to-man evolution does not offer this opportunity because these events happened in the past", once again ignoring that one of the key tenets of evolutionary theory is that it both has happened, and is currently happening - considering that we've observed speciation events occurring in the wild: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0911761106; https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)01925-301925-3); https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evo-news/speciation-in-real-time/. The predictive power of evolution is immense, and we are only getting better at making evolutionary predictions as science progresses:
https://ncse.ngo/predictive-power-evolutionary-biology-and-discovery-eusociality-naked-mole-rat,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9850016/#:~:text=Evolutionary%20predictions%20are%20often%20based,will%20adapt%20to%20their%20environment.
There's also the brief bit where they conflate evolution and abiogenesis "molecules to man evolution". They're two different ideas - and YECs reading this post, stop conflating scientific theories, they are distinct ideas. Evolution deals with how life adapts and develops, it has nothing to do with how life on Earth began - that's abiogenesis. It's the same thing as the Big Bang: it only deals with how the universe formed, not what came before it.
There's a short aside about naturalism, but in order to stop this post turning into a thesis, I'm going to gloss over it and move onto the next bit. Here, AIG describe how "Evolution also relies heavily on the assumption of uniformitarianism— a belief that the present is the key to the past. According to uniformitarians, the processes in the universe have been occurring at a relatively constant rate.". Of course, they fail to consider that, as is the case with all other science, we have evidence to infer that processes do occur at a constant rate. They proceed to discuss rock formation erosion as one of these thing which we assume to have a constant rate - even though I'm pretty sure this is not the case - and that the rate at which these processes takes place is highly variable. To me, this feels like them taking the worst example - and borders on a straw man. Correct me if I'm wrong though - I'm not a geologist, so my understanding is limited here.
I have no doubt that the actual aim of this paragraph is also to sow doubt about other systems reliant upon constant rates of change - such as radiometric dating. Yes, if decay rates were not constant, the values given by radiometric dating would be highly inaccurate, and it would be a useless dating method. However, this would also require a total rewrite of fundamental physics - as the concept of constant nuclear decay rates is backed up by a literal mountain of maths and physical evidence.
submitted by Infinite_Scallion_24 to DebateEvolution [link] [comments]
To bring this point to light - I'm going to discuss this article from AIG: https://answersingenesis.org/what-is-science/what-is-science/. It displays basically all of these claims, and I consider it to contain some of the worst of AIG's mental gymnastics.
The article opens with a spiel about how science originated in Christian Europe, and refer to how Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei were all Christians who believed in a young Earth. Funnily enough, However - they fail to mention that Galileo was arrested by Christians due to his ideas contradicting a literal interpretation of the Bible - that being geostaticism (the idea that the Earth is stationary). I wonder why they excluded this piece of information?
They also state that "If the universe is a product of random chance or a group of gods that interfere in the universe, there is really no reason to expect order in nature". I could probably write an entire post on why this statement is false, so I won't go into this here. Maybe I'll do a follow up to this one just about this idea.
Now comes one of AIG's points that annoys me to no end - the ideas of 'Operational Science' and 'Historical Science'. AIG frames these terms as such:
Operational: "deals with testing and verifying ideas in the present and leads to the production of useful products like computers, cars, and satellites."
Historical: "involves interpreting evidence from the past and includes the models of evolution and special creation."
These terms do not exist in actual academia. They only exist within AIG's fantasy science land where they decide the rules, so that they can lend a fraction of legitimacy to their outdated ideas. The main reason they do this is to boil the argument down to one of faith. 'Evolutionism' vs Creationism is just a debate between two religions - same as Muslims and Christians arguing over which god is the real one. They present this in a slightly different way, but the meaning is the same: "The argument is not over the evidence—the evidence is the same—it is over the way the evidence should be interpreted." Essentially, 'we have different interpretations of the same stuff, so it's a matter of faith'.
What AIG are doing here is creating an unnecessary distinction. The worst bit is the reference to 'evidence from the past'. What they really mean here are things like the fossil record, radiometric dating, the geologic column - all the things that completely and utterly gut their belief in a 6000 year old created Earth. Instead of addressing them, they claim that it's a matter of interpretation.
Actual science doesn't create this distinction. Its purpose is to provide us with a method that lets us explain things we cannot observe directly, by looking at the things we can observe. No human has ever seen an atom with their own eyes - they are too small. Instead, we used observable evidence to figure out their structure, such as Rutherford's alpha particle scattering experiment - showing how most of the gold foil he was shooting the particles at allowed them to pass through, implying atoms being mostly empty space. Now Rutherford never saw an atom, but he inferred this about them through observation, as well as repetition of an experiment to minimise error. This is how science works. Of course, AIG would call Rutherford's work 'Operational Science', so we'll have to go somewhere else.
Let's use murder as an analogy (jolly, I know) - a person was killed 3 days ago, and their body was just discovered: we never saw them die, and we can never repeat their murder - because they are dead (truly groundbreaking stuff here). However, there is a gash across their neck, and a bloodied knife sat next to them. Moreover, this knife is covered with a person's fingerprints. We can then go to the house of the person who these fingerprints match, and ask them if they know anything - which they deny, despite lacking any alibi and having a definite motive. Do we have enough evidence to determine how the person died, as well as who killed them? Absolutely we do - there's a gash, and a knife covered in blood that matches the victim's: conclusion, they were killed with that knife. The knife is covered with fingerprints that lead to a person with no alibi at all, and a good motive: conclusion, they're the murderer. Now all of these data are from the past - the blood was put on the knife in the past, the wound was made in the past, the fingerprints were put on the knife in the past - by all metrics, this murder case falls into AIG's 'Historical Science'. As such, convicting this person is simply a matter of interpretation. We can only interpret that the fingerprints perfectly match those of the suspect. Who are we to say that they didn't somehow change over time? See how nonsensical this distinction is?
AIG then go on to the subject of theories - and again, they separated 'operational theories' from 'historical theories'. The idea is pretty much the same as discussed above, though there are a few points that I want to address. Firstly, they don't do the thing that I see many creationists (and other science deniers) state - that being the 'it's just a theory' thing, and draw a distinction between the colloquial and scientific definitions, though not without the prerequisite 'Evolutionists claim' line. This point has been beaten into the ground already, so I'll just leave it at that.
They go on to discuss how biological evolution is not an 'operational theory' as it contains 'interpretations of past events' and is 'not as well founded as testable scientific theories like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity or Newton’s Theory of Gravity'. It seems that AIG don't know that while Newton's law of universal gravitation remains as a very well-substantiated piece of science, his actual mechanism for how gravity works was in fact supplanted by Einstein's theory. Good scientific knowledge from AIG, as always. The big part of this section is how they refer to predictability as a method of validating a scientific theory: "These theories offer predictable models and the ability to conduct experiments to determine their validity in different circumstances." Once again, they conveniently omit the immense predictive power of evolutionary theory, instead choosing to claim that it lacks such a property - even going as far to directly claim "Molecules-to-man evolution does not offer this opportunity because these events happened in the past", once again ignoring that one of the key tenets of evolutionary theory is that it both has happened, and is currently happening - considering that we've observed speciation events occurring in the wild: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0911761106; https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)01925-301925-3); https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evo-news/speciation-in-real-time/. The predictive power of evolution is immense, and we are only getting better at making evolutionary predictions as science progresses:
https://ncse.ngo/predictive-power-evolutionary-biology-and-discovery-eusociality-naked-mole-rat,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9850016/#:~:text=Evolutionary%20predictions%20are%20often%20based,will%20adapt%20to%20their%20environment.
There's also the brief bit where they conflate evolution and abiogenesis "molecules to man evolution". They're two different ideas - and YECs reading this post, stop conflating scientific theories, they are distinct ideas. Evolution deals with how life adapts and develops, it has nothing to do with how life on Earth began - that's abiogenesis. It's the same thing as the Big Bang: it only deals with how the universe formed, not what came before it.
There's a short aside about naturalism, but in order to stop this post turning into a thesis, I'm going to gloss over it and move onto the next bit. Here, AIG describe how "Evolution also relies heavily on the assumption of uniformitarianism— a belief that the present is the key to the past. According to uniformitarians, the processes in the universe have been occurring at a relatively constant rate.". Of course, they fail to consider that, as is the case with all other science, we have evidence to infer that processes do occur at a constant rate. They proceed to discuss rock formation erosion as one of these thing which we assume to have a constant rate - even though I'm pretty sure this is not the case - and that the rate at which these processes takes place is highly variable. To me, this feels like them taking the worst example - and borders on a straw man. Correct me if I'm wrong though - I'm not a geologist, so my understanding is limited here.
I have no doubt that the actual aim of this paragraph is also to sow doubt about other systems reliant upon constant rates of change - such as radiometric dating. Yes, if decay rates were not constant, the values given by radiometric dating would be highly inaccurate, and it would be a useless dating method. However, this would also require a total rewrite of fundamental physics - as the concept of constant nuclear decay rates is backed up by a literal mountain of maths and physical evidence.
However, the Bible makes it very clear that some events of the past were radically different from those we commonly observe today. Noah’s Flood, for example, would have devastated the face of the earth and created a landscape of billions of dead things buried in layers of rock, which is exactly what we see.Another claim that would take up a post on its own - so I'll skip this and tackle it later. Honestly though, just watch Gutsick Gibbon's stuff on the Genesis flood - she gives a far better explanation than I ever could.
Just as evolutionists weren’t there to see evolution happen over several billion years, neither were creationists there to see the events of the six days of creation. The difference is that creationists have the Creator’s eyewitness account of the events of creation, while evolutionists must create a story to explain origins without the supernatural.More totally neutral and unbiased claims by AIG, as expected. There is no 'story' being created - scientists observe the (sometimes literal - pun very much intended) mountains of evidence for evolution. The fact that they have to make up a nonsense distinction to split science in two, so that they can put the bits they don't like (Big Bang cosmology, fossils, radiometric dating, geologic column, etc.) in a separate spot to the bits they do like, such as technology and medicine.
Just because many scientists believe the story does not make the story true.Ironic, considering how much Ken Ham loves to show his lists of creationist scientists. Practice what you preach buddy.
2024.05.19 16:48 Autistimom2 Really bizarre/dark thoughts and images
Do other BP 2 (or BP1) people have these? I always see people talking about their thought/images being...idk, more possible if unlikely/untrue. People trying to hurt them or track them, being really gifted at something, etc. I get "normal" stuff like suspicions around my spouse. But mostly really bizarre/impossible stuff.
I'm diagnosed BP2. This happens in mixed episodes, I'm fine atm. I say thoughts and images instead of delusions and hallucinations because they don't quite qualify afaik.* Anyway, it's stuff like feeling really strongly/sensing that there's some specific kind of horrofantasy/folklore monster in my house. Right behind me, behind a door, etc. Knowing those creatures don't exist doesn't take away the nauseating fear or being on guard. For images, similar creatures but outside my glass door, or across a room watching me.
*The bizarre thoughts I'm always able to tell myself can't be real/true even if they feel it. The images aren't...solid? IDK. If I could draw I could draw a picture of them, and describe how they move. But it's like it's an image from my mind overlayed on the real world, not something real itself. And I know it's not real I just can't stop half-seeing it.
submitted by Autistimom2 to bipolar [link] [comments]
I'm diagnosed BP2. This happens in mixed episodes, I'm fine atm. I say thoughts and images instead of delusions and hallucinations because they don't quite qualify afaik.* Anyway, it's stuff like feeling really strongly/sensing that there's some specific kind of horrofantasy/folklore monster in my house. Right behind me, behind a door, etc. Knowing those creatures don't exist doesn't take away the nauseating fear or being on guard. For images, similar creatures but outside my glass door, or across a room watching me.
*The bizarre thoughts I'm always able to tell myself can't be real/true even if they feel it. The images aren't...solid? IDK. If I could draw I could draw a picture of them, and describe how they move. But it's like it's an image from my mind overlayed on the real world, not something real itself. And I know it's not real I just can't stop half-seeing it.
2024.05.19 16:41 Sailingswag123 Architecture school feels outdated and romanticized?
I realized my title could be misread, what I really mean was: Architecture school feels outdated and architecture in it feels romanticized?
I'll just start off by saying I'm pretty young, 20, and I've been in a drafting design firm in Florida for just over 3 years now. I've done residential and very small amounts of commercial now so I'm confident in my ability to design a nice looking house.
I just started my architecture classes in spring and it's the most miserable experience. It feels like everyone in my class, teachers and students combined, have this mysticism and romanticization of architecture. Maybe it's just me or maybe it's because I've been working in the field for a while, but it all just seems so ridiculous. I can design a nice house and I want to learn how to design commercial, but the things they're asking of me feels nonsensical.
Then the models, the models are the bane of my life. I'm not much of an arts and crafts guy, so these models take so long for me to do. There's a laser cutter at the school but it's 50 minutes to an hour away which makes it near impossible to go during the week when I'm working 20 to 40 hours just to have any kind of money. I've been doing and working with AutoCAD my entire time working there, we switched from R14 to 2015 while I was working there. I feel incredibly comfortable designing in it, so to have to switch to physically drawing plans feels so tedious. I know drawing by hand is an important tool to learn, but it feels like their importance on physical and digital drawing/designing should be flipped. It's been years since before I was even born that physically drawing plans was the normal way to do things.
I dunno, I was just wondering if this was the normal experience? The amount of all-nighters I've need to do has jumped lime 800% since I've started this course and it feels like it's draining the life of me. Is this the normal school experience, is this really what architecture is like and my firm is an exception, and any advice you could give to a mentally dying student?
submitted by Sailingswag123 to architecture [link] [comments]
I'll just start off by saying I'm pretty young, 20, and I've been in a drafting design firm in Florida for just over 3 years now. I've done residential and very small amounts of commercial now so I'm confident in my ability to design a nice looking house.
I just started my architecture classes in spring and it's the most miserable experience. It feels like everyone in my class, teachers and students combined, have this mysticism and romanticization of architecture. Maybe it's just me or maybe it's because I've been working in the field for a while, but it all just seems so ridiculous. I can design a nice house and I want to learn how to design commercial, but the things they're asking of me feels nonsensical.
Then the models, the models are the bane of my life. I'm not much of an arts and crafts guy, so these models take so long for me to do. There's a laser cutter at the school but it's 50 minutes to an hour away which makes it near impossible to go during the week when I'm working 20 to 40 hours just to have any kind of money. I've been doing and working with AutoCAD my entire time working there, we switched from R14 to 2015 while I was working there. I feel incredibly comfortable designing in it, so to have to switch to physically drawing plans feels so tedious. I know drawing by hand is an important tool to learn, but it feels like their importance on physical and digital drawing/designing should be flipped. It's been years since before I was even born that physically drawing plans was the normal way to do things.
I dunno, I was just wondering if this was the normal experience? The amount of all-nighters I've need to do has jumped lime 800% since I've started this course and it feels like it's draining the life of me. Is this the normal school experience, is this really what architecture is like and my firm is an exception, and any advice you could give to a mentally dying student?
2024.05.19 16:29 GuetschMan First timers - will a 7s league work with SPP and star players etc?
We have a group of all new players (some PC experience and a few tabletop games in at most) and would like to play a casual league. Given game length and not being ready to implement turn timers or anything, we have settled on starting with 7s. Do you think we can use normal SPP (no 7s draft) and star players in order to get the feel of the game down? Or should we just play normal 7s? I think the standard player advancement and star players are a big draw for us.
Also, for casual leagues, how might we address just being able to play when we can rather than a rigid season that wouldn't work? It will all be at my house. Thanks!
submitted by GuetschMan to bloodbowl [link] [comments]
Also, for casual leagues, how might we address just being able to play when we can rather than a rigid season that wouldn't work? It will all be at my house. Thanks!
2024.05.19 16:11 Manjusri Earthsea Cycle book #4 - Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin - Chapter 11 In-depth Summary
Chapter 11 - Home
The ship arrives in port to songs from the Deed of Morred. A funny exchange occurs where Apple's friend Shinny (Shandy) sees Tenar on board the ship and says, "'Maybe it's his mother,'" only for Apple to say actually it is a mother (well, her's). Tenar and Therru disembark from the ship in rather royal fashion before it leaves again. Apple greets them warmly and is apparently on very familiar terms with Therru (Apple picks her up), however that night Apple is a bit apprehensive toward her mother, apparently she had never given much thought to the songs about her mom. She calls her a "'...king-kisser....'" A couple days later they all leave Apple's home and go to the farm, along the river Kaheda in the late summer. Apple comments on Therru's health and Tenar lets slip she was stronger before the incident, and then tells Apple about it (Apple is familiar with Therru's past). We find out that the one that was likely Therru's father is called Hake. In recalling Handy's motions she oddly can't remember Aspen's name except for the Kargish word for a type of tree. Apple says they haven't seen anyone from that group, and Tenar takes some joy that her daughter is mothering her mother. They consider a dog (again), though humorously Tenar is mostly thinking of a puppy for Therru (she already plays with an animal anyway, right? Well, a weird bone doll, close enough). They arrive at Lark's and it's a warm homecoming, it had apparently been two months since their departure to Ogion's. Tenar is reluctant to tell the story about their adventure but absolutely gushes about the king, says he appeared like a sword (which is actually one of his names, Arren). They talk about the king and the wizard, Shinny arrives and they have quite the supper, even Therru warms except for her keeping an eye on the window as it grew darker out.
Later, while Apple sings Therru to sleep, Tenar finally asks Shandy, who is helping wash up, about Ged (who somehow was never mentioned to Lark and Apple, all of Tenar's remembrances about Re Albi seemed to be muddled, "darkened"). Shandy says there wasn't work for him here, but that he got some on recommendation and so was off in a high pasture, maybe even herding goats, and would be back down the mountain in autumn. Maybe that was for the best, maybe this was home now and all that of Re Albi was behind them. Tenar slept that night, dreamless. Tenar keeps busy homesteading and the like, and eventually finished the red dress she had started for Therru. Therru is expressionless and turns away from it, and Tenar says, "'...People see the scars. But they see you, too, and you aren't the scars. You aren't ugly. You aren't evil. You are Therru, and beautiful....'" Therru calls the dress beautiful (touching Tenar's fingers, not the dress), and Tenar understands something, "She had done right to make the dress, and she had spoken the truth to the child. But it was not enough, the right and the truth. There was a gap, a void, a gulf, on beyond the right and the truth. Love, her love for Therru and Therru’s for her, made a bridge across that gap, a bridge of spider web, but love did not fill or close it. Nothing did that. And the child knew it better than she."
The equinox arrives, and Tenar thinks of the king being coronated, the king who knew fear and pain, and thought that Ged should be there too instead of tending some rich man's herds (and likely doing that into winter). Tenar had started to visit Ivy when she went to the village, as a sort of minor replacement to Aunty Moss, but either Ivy's ingrown detest for her was very real or, maybe just as likely, her own rebukes had left too big a void between them.
The sorcerer Beech arrives one day to treat a rich farmer's gout, and visits Tenar. Beech was a pupil of a pupil of Ogion's, and wanted to hear about his last days, as well as the visit by the archmage, Ged. Beech talks about the king's new rule and about, in particular, the loss of power of a certain lord pirate. He very much praises Tenar's work with Therru but she responds with sadness, she's worried what the fear will draw her to, that a damaged person may do damaging things. Roke seems more open-minded than most but he sees Ogion's "Teach her, not Roke" as just meaning women can't be sorcerers and he instead suggests that she take up healing witchery with Ivy as there may be a reciprocal aspect (and after all, he argues, "...healing befits a women..."). Therru's naming day is referenced, and overall Tenar views him as naive, but she does think about what Beech said.
More changes from the king, the local villages set up a taxed constabulary to combat the thieves and gangs (some rumors the pirate lords are pushing back). Tenar doesn't pay too much mind to this, but through time Therru becomes less withdrawn and is not kept so close to Tenar, she even travels independently (it is much easier with Tenar's family, friends, and acquaintances around to think Therru is safer, plus they shouldn't both just live in constant fear). Tenar is a good learner and prosperous but behind in most things, Tenar thinks of what Ogion meant by "teach her" but nothing special is done, Tenar even starts to think maybe she would be better apprenticed as a witch than a weaver (most people believe if something bad happens to you you deserved it somehow, this wouldn't matter as much to a witch as a weaver). Would all this satisfy Ogion's wishes?
Keeping this in mind, one day Tenar visits Ivy and asks the cost about apprenticing Therru. Ivy says she wouldn't for anything, that she fears her. Tenar is enraged, she even insinuates it's because of what happened to Therru beyond the burning. Ivy instead says it's because she is powerful and likely rageful, like a leashed natural disaster, something capable of darkness, and in fact Ivy draws from Tenar's own time with the Dark Ones as a child to posit that's why Tenar doesn't (or can't see to) fear her. Tenar believes everyone has failed her (Ogion, Moss, Ivy, Beech) even Ged whose "precious shame" had become his own child, Ged who was obsessed with power that that was all he noticed about Therru. Goha has a brief talk with Tenar (not the first time something like this has happened), saying that isn't fair.
Winter arrives, early, suddenly, and portentously, or at least a freeze does. Beside a fire of an apple tree Therru asks Tenar for a story which Tenar calls a "summer story", instead Therru should be learning the songs about the great deeds and the rites of spring (the Long Dance is mentioned). Therru says she can't sing but Tenar chides her: "'The mind sings. The prettiest voice in the world's no good if the mind doesn't know the songs.' She untied the last bit of yarn, which had been the first spun. 'You have strength, Therru, and strength that is ignorant is dangerous.'" Therru asks if it's like the wild ones that refused to learn and so stayed in the west, and it comes about she is referencing the dragons in the song of the Woman of Kemay (in chapter 2). Tenar asks which song Therru wants to learn and instead of the Deeds of Morred (which reminds her of the young king) Therru instead chooses about Segoy and the Making (Ogion's lore books are mentioned).
It goes well and Therru retires for the night. The song and Tenar's mood (because of Ivy) had energized Tenar to stay up by the fire. Suddenly, a noise from outside. Soon after, the sound of an opening being jimmied, but the house itself, thanks to Flint, was well-bolted. Eventually a window is broken and Tenar hears the voices of men. Her door, newly locked, rattles; it is Handy. A thin blade of light at the jamb. They will try the front door and so Tenar locks that one too. Tenar shutters Therru's window and the sound undoubtedly alerts them. She then tries to shutter her own but it is jammed, and they see Tenar through the window. Voices, that they won't hurt her if they let them in, that one of them just wants to see his little girl. Maybe Therru is awake, Tenar will protect her, though she has lost the fire poker in the scramble. One of them finds the kitchen window and Tenar flees to Therru's room, which doesn't have a lock thoughtfully so those in the nursery couldn't accidentally lock themselves in. She thinks about screaming, she think about fleeing, she grabs a butcher's knife. She throws open the door and threatens them.
"A howl and a sucking gasp", confusing communication from the men, some light. A wailing form shambles toward her, and a form with long blades behind it.
"Tenar! Tenar, it's me--Hawk, Sparrowhawk!" Ged, holding a pitchfork, thinks he has killed the man on the ground, the rest have fled. They drag the man inside, bandage him ('"I think I killed him," [Ged] said again.'), and Tenar finally gets Ged to sit by the fire. Ged looks rough. He had ran upon them on the path, avoided them due to the mob feeling off, but Ged had heard mention of the "Oak Farm" and so here he is. During the journey tracking the men Ged heard terrible things, about how Therru was stolen and how she would be punished along with what they'd do to Tenar. The bloody man isn't Handy, but it is the one who recently mentioned Therru was his. Tenar is worried they will come back, but they have the pitchfork at least, and it was only two others. They were traveling on the road (away from... something) and they were listening to the man who was lying there now, as if he'd mentioned this, about Therru and the widow, many times before (Handy apparently goaded him into trying this whole thing tonight). The group had waited in Tenar's barn until night, with Ged waiting outside it in the freezing cold. Shortly after they had spotted the kitchen window, Ged had ambushed them.
They make a sort of bed for the man, but not on the good rug. A realization about Therru. Quickly checking on her, apparently Therru had slept through the whole thing. Would've, should've... eventually Ged turns the tables and tells her to drink the tea, to rest. Ged recounts a tale, from the beginning of the first book, about the Kargish raiders (ed: the last book mentioned since the Ring was mended they don't raid anymore) and Ged/Duny thwarting their raid on Ten Alders, his village, by casting a sea of fog. One of the few not rebounded was run through with a pitchfork, Tenar saying Ged hitting the man's rib (and stopping something like that from happening) was the only thing Ged did wrong. Ged even briefly entertains the idea that the man could be disposed of, but he knows it's wrong (Tenar is less convinced). Instead, he'll use the wheelborrow and cart him to the healer, Ivy.
Tenar is beyond exhausted and watches the fire. A dream slips in, dragon-fire again. The star, Tehanu. Ged move her into the dark cold to get to her room. A dream slips in, each leading, following, both in the Tombs. "'This is the way,' she said."
submitted by Manjusri to u/Manjusri [link] [comments]
The ship arrives in port to songs from the Deed of Morred. A funny exchange occurs where Apple's friend Shinny (Shandy) sees Tenar on board the ship and says, "'Maybe it's his mother,'" only for Apple to say actually it is a mother (well, her's). Tenar and Therru disembark from the ship in rather royal fashion before it leaves again. Apple greets them warmly and is apparently on very familiar terms with Therru (Apple picks her up), however that night Apple is a bit apprehensive toward her mother, apparently she had never given much thought to the songs about her mom. She calls her a "'...king-kisser....'" A couple days later they all leave Apple's home and go to the farm, along the river Kaheda in the late summer. Apple comments on Therru's health and Tenar lets slip she was stronger before the incident, and then tells Apple about it (Apple is familiar with Therru's past). We find out that the one that was likely Therru's father is called Hake. In recalling Handy's motions she oddly can't remember Aspen's name except for the Kargish word for a type of tree. Apple says they haven't seen anyone from that group, and Tenar takes some joy that her daughter is mothering her mother. They consider a dog (again), though humorously Tenar is mostly thinking of a puppy for Therru (she already plays with an animal anyway, right? Well, a weird bone doll, close enough). They arrive at Lark's and it's a warm homecoming, it had apparently been two months since their departure to Ogion's. Tenar is reluctant to tell the story about their adventure but absolutely gushes about the king, says he appeared like a sword (which is actually one of his names, Arren). They talk about the king and the wizard, Shinny arrives and they have quite the supper, even Therru warms except for her keeping an eye on the window as it grew darker out.
Later, while Apple sings Therru to sleep, Tenar finally asks Shandy, who is helping wash up, about Ged (who somehow was never mentioned to Lark and Apple, all of Tenar's remembrances about Re Albi seemed to be muddled, "darkened"). Shandy says there wasn't work for him here, but that he got some on recommendation and so was off in a high pasture, maybe even herding goats, and would be back down the mountain in autumn. Maybe that was for the best, maybe this was home now and all that of Re Albi was behind them. Tenar slept that night, dreamless. Tenar keeps busy homesteading and the like, and eventually finished the red dress she had started for Therru. Therru is expressionless and turns away from it, and Tenar says, "'...People see the scars. But they see you, too, and you aren't the scars. You aren't ugly. You aren't evil. You are Therru, and beautiful....'" Therru calls the dress beautiful (touching Tenar's fingers, not the dress), and Tenar understands something, "She had done right to make the dress, and she had spoken the truth to the child. But it was not enough, the right and the truth. There was a gap, a void, a gulf, on beyond the right and the truth. Love, her love for Therru and Therru’s for her, made a bridge across that gap, a bridge of spider web, but love did not fill or close it. Nothing did that. And the child knew it better than she."
The equinox arrives, and Tenar thinks of the king being coronated, the king who knew fear and pain, and thought that Ged should be there too instead of tending some rich man's herds (and likely doing that into winter). Tenar had started to visit Ivy when she went to the village, as a sort of minor replacement to Aunty Moss, but either Ivy's ingrown detest for her was very real or, maybe just as likely, her own rebukes had left too big a void between them.
The sorcerer Beech arrives one day to treat a rich farmer's gout, and visits Tenar. Beech was a pupil of a pupil of Ogion's, and wanted to hear about his last days, as well as the visit by the archmage, Ged. Beech talks about the king's new rule and about, in particular, the loss of power of a certain lord pirate. He very much praises Tenar's work with Therru but she responds with sadness, she's worried what the fear will draw her to, that a damaged person may do damaging things. Roke seems more open-minded than most but he sees Ogion's "Teach her, not Roke" as just meaning women can't be sorcerers and he instead suggests that she take up healing witchery with Ivy as there may be a reciprocal aspect (and after all, he argues, "...healing befits a women..."). Therru's naming day is referenced, and overall Tenar views him as naive, but she does think about what Beech said.
More changes from the king, the local villages set up a taxed constabulary to combat the thieves and gangs (some rumors the pirate lords are pushing back). Tenar doesn't pay too much mind to this, but through time Therru becomes less withdrawn and is not kept so close to Tenar, she even travels independently (it is much easier with Tenar's family, friends, and acquaintances around to think Therru is safer, plus they shouldn't both just live in constant fear). Tenar is a good learner and prosperous but behind in most things, Tenar thinks of what Ogion meant by "teach her" but nothing special is done, Tenar even starts to think maybe she would be better apprenticed as a witch than a weaver (most people believe if something bad happens to you you deserved it somehow, this wouldn't matter as much to a witch as a weaver). Would all this satisfy Ogion's wishes?
Keeping this in mind, one day Tenar visits Ivy and asks the cost about apprenticing Therru. Ivy says she wouldn't for anything, that she fears her. Tenar is enraged, she even insinuates it's because of what happened to Therru beyond the burning. Ivy instead says it's because she is powerful and likely rageful, like a leashed natural disaster, something capable of darkness, and in fact Ivy draws from Tenar's own time with the Dark Ones as a child to posit that's why Tenar doesn't (or can't see to) fear her. Tenar believes everyone has failed her (Ogion, Moss, Ivy, Beech) even Ged whose "precious shame" had become his own child, Ged who was obsessed with power that that was all he noticed about Therru. Goha has a brief talk with Tenar (not the first time something like this has happened), saying that isn't fair.
Winter arrives, early, suddenly, and portentously, or at least a freeze does. Beside a fire of an apple tree Therru asks Tenar for a story which Tenar calls a "summer story", instead Therru should be learning the songs about the great deeds and the rites of spring (the Long Dance is mentioned). Therru says she can't sing but Tenar chides her: "'The mind sings. The prettiest voice in the world's no good if the mind doesn't know the songs.' She untied the last bit of yarn, which had been the first spun. 'You have strength, Therru, and strength that is ignorant is dangerous.'" Therru asks if it's like the wild ones that refused to learn and so stayed in the west, and it comes about she is referencing the dragons in the song of the Woman of Kemay (in chapter 2). Tenar asks which song Therru wants to learn and instead of the Deeds of Morred (which reminds her of the young king) Therru instead chooses about Segoy and the Making (Ogion's lore books are mentioned).
It goes well and Therru retires for the night. The song and Tenar's mood (because of Ivy) had energized Tenar to stay up by the fire. Suddenly, a noise from outside. Soon after, the sound of an opening being jimmied, but the house itself, thanks to Flint, was well-bolted. Eventually a window is broken and Tenar hears the voices of men. Her door, newly locked, rattles; it is Handy. A thin blade of light at the jamb. They will try the front door and so Tenar locks that one too. Tenar shutters Therru's window and the sound undoubtedly alerts them. She then tries to shutter her own but it is jammed, and they see Tenar through the window. Voices, that they won't hurt her if they let them in, that one of them just wants to see his little girl. Maybe Therru is awake, Tenar will protect her, though she has lost the fire poker in the scramble. One of them finds the kitchen window and Tenar flees to Therru's room, which doesn't have a lock thoughtfully so those in the nursery couldn't accidentally lock themselves in. She thinks about screaming, she think about fleeing, she grabs a butcher's knife. She throws open the door and threatens them.
"A howl and a sucking gasp", confusing communication from the men, some light. A wailing form shambles toward her, and a form with long blades behind it.
"Tenar! Tenar, it's me--Hawk, Sparrowhawk!" Ged, holding a pitchfork, thinks he has killed the man on the ground, the rest have fled. They drag the man inside, bandage him ('"I think I killed him," [Ged] said again.'), and Tenar finally gets Ged to sit by the fire. Ged looks rough. He had ran upon them on the path, avoided them due to the mob feeling off, but Ged had heard mention of the "Oak Farm" and so here he is. During the journey tracking the men Ged heard terrible things, about how Therru was stolen and how she would be punished along with what they'd do to Tenar. The bloody man isn't Handy, but it is the one who recently mentioned Therru was his. Tenar is worried they will come back, but they have the pitchfork at least, and it was only two others. They were traveling on the road (away from... something) and they were listening to the man who was lying there now, as if he'd mentioned this, about Therru and the widow, many times before (Handy apparently goaded him into trying this whole thing tonight). The group had waited in Tenar's barn until night, with Ged waiting outside it in the freezing cold. Shortly after they had spotted the kitchen window, Ged had ambushed them.
They make a sort of bed for the man, but not on the good rug. A realization about Therru. Quickly checking on her, apparently Therru had slept through the whole thing. Would've, should've... eventually Ged turns the tables and tells her to drink the tea, to rest. Ged recounts a tale, from the beginning of the first book, about the Kargish raiders (ed: the last book mentioned since the Ring was mended they don't raid anymore) and Ged/Duny thwarting their raid on Ten Alders, his village, by casting a sea of fog. One of the few not rebounded was run through with a pitchfork, Tenar saying Ged hitting the man's rib (and stopping something like that from happening) was the only thing Ged did wrong. Ged even briefly entertains the idea that the man could be disposed of, but he knows it's wrong (Tenar is less convinced). Instead, he'll use the wheelborrow and cart him to the healer, Ivy.
Tenar is beyond exhausted and watches the fire. A dream slips in, dragon-fire again. The star, Tehanu. Ged move her into the dark cold to get to her room. A dream slips in, each leading, following, both in the Tombs. "'This is the way,' she said."
2024.05.19 16:00 BrodogIsMyName Frontier Fantasy - Chap 39
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Edited by WaveOfWire
- - - - -
Two days… It had been two days that Tracy had gone to sleep while Harrison was working, only to come back in the morning to see him still in the workshop. She knew he was damn productive, sure, but that really couldn’t be healthy. Apparently, it had something to do with the weird bowl of orange… soup… that Cera gave him. No way was it just caffeine; any amount of the stuff would have been filtered out of his system by now. He mentioned a tingling feeling too…
Damn, she did not know enough about drugs to even start assuming what that massive alien had Harrison fucked up on. At least the scanner said he was ‘fine’—if you ignore the other glaring issues the machine brought up. Plus, he said he didn’t mind it. Either way, he managed to complete the weaving component and a few other electrical backbones of the fabricator last night, so the project was practically done, and after seeing the engineer work himself half to death, she was dead-set on finishing it.
She was currently tits-deep into the upper manufacturing portion of the towering machine. It took a tall step-stool—on top of the nearby desk—for her to push her small shoulders through the even smaller access panels high on the everything-printer. It was difficult to fit her torso in, but she managed, holding a flashlight between her teeth as she fiddled with a stubborn series of mechanical ‘hands.’ Nothing new. The situation reminded her of the ‘shop back on Mars; it had the same ever-present scent of copper and industrial sealant. All that was missing was her dad’s ancient tunes blasting through some shitty speakers… Hold on…
The modular component in her grip was successfully attached with a resonating thock. Tracy squirmed out of the dim wire-filled crevice, trying her best to not rip her only tank-top on any bolts or corners, and getting a face-full of the bright flood-lights illuminating the workshop. She scowled and blocked out the searing light with a hand, but she was a bit too late to avoid going half-blind.
“Are the mechanical manipulators in?” Harrison grunted, poking his head out underneath the printer’s floor-adjacent maintenance hatch. She looked down at him as she tried to blink off the spots in her vision. His hair was messy, barely kept in line by his habit of combing through it with his fingers. The areas around his eyes were dark and sunken… Guess that’s what two all-nighters did to a man. He’d be seeing the hat man or start hallucinating if he didn’t get any sleep soon… but then again, the two of them were so close to finishing the fabricator…
“You bet.” She gave him a thumbs up, slamming the panel cover closed. “Feel free to test it.”
He nodded and slid back underneath the machine. “Gotcha”
She gently stepped off the stool and slid off the side of the desk, stretching herself out. If her piss-poor sitting posture or her tank-top puppies hadn’t already fucked her spine up, bending over backward to build this fabricator sure as hell would. She sat down next to the panel where Harrison resided, resting her back against the fabrication tower. Her excited voice broke the muffled noises of the engineer’s work. “So… Harrison?”
“Hmm—”
“—Mind if I play some music?”
The sounds from the hatch stopped, followed by his muffled, shocked tone echoing from beneath the fabricator. “You have music!?”
She smirked at seeing the expression on his face when his head popped out again. “I sure do… Did you seriously not download any to your data pad?”
He slipped out from beneath the fabricator fully, huffing as he took a knee beside her. The scent of melded rubber, wire, and his liquid labor reached her nose not-so-unpleasantly. “You would not believe how much of a pain it is to repair an entire barracks without it… So, yeah, I didn’t.”
“Sooooooooo, whatcha wanna listen to? I’ve got almost everything on here—besides the super niche, of course.” She pulled her data pad out, swiping to the massive music folder
“You wouldn’t like the kinda music I listen to; It’s ancient.”
She gave him a lighthearted, annoyed glare. “Welcome to the club… Now what’ll it be?”
“It’s Old Earth kind of ancient… but alright” He looked up at the ceiling in thought, lips pursed. “Do you have anything from Styx or Sweet?”
She stared at him incredulously, her smirk turning into a fully-fledged smile. “Oh my God. You are an absolute dork! You actually listen to Golden Age music?”
His brows raised, accusatory. “And you somehow know exactly who those bands were and what age of Old Earth music they came from?”
She smugly leaned in closer. “That’s because I’m just as much of a nerd with that kinda music as you apparently are.” She quickly looked upward, addressing the workshop AI. “Sebas, connect nearby speakers to my data pad’s audio.” Tracy elbowed the engineer lightly as the PA system chirped its affirmation. “Now, Mr. Golden Age music, which albums do ya want me to queue up?”
- - - - -
The two of them listened to music for hours, tossing on songs they liked as they came to mind while they worked. Harrison had a ton of recommendations that spanned all over the Golden Ages and some twenty-first century classics. She didn’t even know half of them, but she was vibing either way, adding on her own taste by intermingling some older rock tracks and newer electronic beats. The playlist was steadily built up as the day went on. Thank God her dad showed her a vast array of tunes; she might not have been able to keep up with the engineer if her old man hadn't.
It made the work go by so fast, their conversations blurring as they jumped from topic to topic. They discussed whatever came to mind—old hobbies, old jobs, and old interests. A lot was left behind in Sol… At least she knew that the only other human on the planet was more interesting than a soulless workaholic. It turned out that he was a pretty big history buff, and he apparently read a lot about the colonization of the Sol system and the various wars of independence thereafter. Curious, she asked where the interest stemmed from, and he explained that his grandfather was an admiral in the Slavic-Europan deep-ice submarine fleet, which explained how Harrison’s mother was able to afford to immigrate to Mars from Europa.
He could also play an acoustic guitar, and, unfortunately for Tracy, he wasn’t even the slightest bit interested in printing one out, citing that it was a waste of time and material that would be better used elsewhere. That didn’t stop her from writing a note on her data pad to do so later, though. She hadn’t seen someone play one of those in years—the last time was probably in some old music video from the early twenty-second century. What a shame. She would have liked to hear some of the Europan songs his grandmother taught him.
On the bright side, the man seemed to take an interest in her odd hobbies. He brought up the folder of 3D models that she accidentally uploaded to the inter-module system and asked where she got the inspiration for what was in it. Boy, was he not ready for her ‘WarHalberd40k’ lore dump. Props to the guy for not standing up and leaving the workshop throughout her rambling. He even asked questions about the different factions and their weapons, which she was more than happy to talk about.
She also ended up going over the other franchises and hobbies she was interested in, such as robotics and the like. The only interruptions to their chat were the occasional Akula or Craftsman asking for insight regarding the various tasks he had allotted to them, or Shar coming in to check up on Harrison between guard shifts.
The new dynamic of the group was pretty interesting, to say the least. Tracy hadn’t been out to interact with the whole lot of Malkrin, but she definitely noticed how they treated the engineer. They’d started to look up to him in a way ever since he started showing off technology. In a little over two days, the man had shown them that he could provide the materials for a brick house, fine clothing—especially by the alien’s standards—armor, and delicious food. That wasn’t even mentioning the other benefits the technician heard a few of the ‘banished’ talking about over their meals: heating, electric lights, and other assorted machines.
She’d be feeling pretty happy about herself if she was in his position, having so many look up to him and be grateful at the same time. He seemed to view it a lot more robotically, however, only striving to get the basics done. Luckily for him, his basics were their luxury.
That wasn’t all there was to the topic; the engineer lamented about how the colony was going through food just as quickly as materials. The meals weren’t the direct issue he had, more that he had to start focusing on long-term resource harvesting rather than directly preparing for a literal horde of monsters—which wasn’t exactly ideal. It was a good thing that they just so happened to take on an influx of Malkrin then…
Either way, they finally finished the ‘totally legal modification’ for the fabricator, meaning they could at least partially address the latter half of his worries. The whole process of ripping out an old printer and replacing the parts for a new one felt a lot easier than she imagined… even if it took her at least forty-eight hours to complete it… with help from Harrison. Maybe that was why it felt so easy… She supposed the colony overseers didn’t choose the man for no reason, so his skills made sense.
“So… what do we want to print out first?” Tracy questioned, having finished testing the last major component.
The engineer stretched his arms up into the air and rotated his shoulders, then pulled back the desk’s chair and took a seat. “I’ve had just one thing in mind since the start of this whole project.”
Her brows raised in a mix of excitement and curiosity. She leaned forward, looking at the computer monitor from over his shoulder. “Oh? What’s that, then?”
A smirk formed along his cheek, the computer mouse rapidly clicking through the blueprint folder. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about what kind of firearm we need since I started dabbling in belt-fed weapon systems.” He opened one final file, a short loading bar preceding the exploded assembly view of… “An M2 Browning machine gun. It’s more than powerful enough to kill in one shot, while also being capable of fully-automatic fire, with a capacity of however many rounds we want in a belt-box.”
“Uh…huh…” She gave a skeptical nod and took a step back, not exactly sold on the idea. “It looks ancient. It’s kinetic, right? Why aren’t we using energy-based weapons? Don’t we have a gunpowder shortage coming up?”
He moved his chair off to the side to look back at her. “We just can’t; Simple as. We’ll need who knows how many more AI cores before we can get started on that level of equipment, Trace,” he huffed, returning his gaze to the specifications of the firearm. “This isn’t the most ‘modern’ weapon we can make, but its twenty-first century counterpart helps with an improved design… somewhat. And, as I said before, it should be more than capable of killing a bug in one shot, so Shar can just tap-fire it to save ammunition.”
Her head tilted quizzically. “Shar?”
“Yup,” he returned confidently. “It’s the perfect weapon for her.”
She raised a brow. “How so?”
He held his hand up, counting his reasons on his fingers. “She’s always on the front line with a shield, she can absolutely handle the weight and recoil, her four arms make reloading it simple, plus she’ll need something with range and power that isn’t a spear. So, why not? And, if for some reason, she doesn’t want to use it, we can just convert it into a turret—which is something I was planning on doing anyways with however more M2s we print out later.”
“I doubt she’ll say no to any gun you give her,” Tracy chuckled while shaking her head, inadvertently causing her bangs to cover her eyes.
“Fair enough,” he conceded with a bob of his head. “What do you think, then? What kinda weapons do you have in mind?”
She reapplied her goggles into an impromptu hairband, feeling a smirk cross her face. “Thought you’d never ask. What purpose do we need these guns to fulfill? Hordes I’m guessing?”
“That’s the idea, yeah. That doesn’t mean they all need to be machine guns, though.” He tapped the belt-fed shotgun beside him.
“Well, lemme see what we’re working with first.” She suddenly stepped forward, leaning over Harrison’s seat to access the keyboard and mouse. Her arms briefly rubbed against him, forcing him to roll his chair backward. She suppressed a giggle at seeing his incredulous frown.
Her eyes quickly traced the hundreds of individual files, clicking through all sorts of folders, each arranged from pre-twenty-first century ‘antiques,’ to more modern iterations of kinetics and particle weaponry. There was… a lot on there—almost too much to reasonably comb through. Why? Did the colony overseers just say ‘fuck it’ and put whatever they could find on here? Were they expecting the pioneers to make a museum of everything?
She sighed, standing up straight and facing Harrison. “Y’know, I’m actually impressed you managed to find that M2-whatever in there…”
He shifted in his seat, resting an elbow on the desk. “Yup, there’s a lot. I’m almost tempted to just make several of those machine guns and just call it a day, but I feel like that’d be too much of a strain on resources, no?”
“I don’t really know enough about how you fight those spider-crab things, or how to get more gunpowder, so… maybe?” She shrugged, biting her cheek in contemplation. “You might just wanna make a few smaller caliber weapons… like, uh… those old kinetic service rifles. If your pump-action shotgun works fine, I’m sure some normal guns would work just fine for now, right?”
He hardily gripped his firearm, hauling it up to his lap. “Depends on what you mean by ‘smaller caliber.’ The whole reason why the KS-23 here works—” he pulled out a massive shell from the ammo belt, displaying it on his palm. “—is because the twenty-three-millimeter round has enough energy transfer to mess up any bug's shell and insides. I’d say the smallest rounds we could use would be point-two-forty-three caliber to get any similar results.”
Brief flickers of grungy orange shells and gnashing teeth marred Tracy’s sight. She forcibly suppressed them, distracting herself with dry humor and a strained laugh. “Guess those fuckers can really take a punch, huh?”
He shook his head somberly. “I couldn’t imagine going up against them without a gun… Anyway, I like your idea of a standard rifle for now. Then, when we have some product lines up, we can go a little more in depth into personal weapons.”
“So are you gonna take one?” She hopped up on the desk, letting her legs swing off the side.
“Don’t think so, no. I’ll stick with my shotty.” The internals of the heavily modified weapon rattled as he held it up and inspected it. “Doesn’t mean I’ll keep it as is. I’m thinking of printing a laser aiming module so I can point-fire it accurately, and maybe a melee-oriented muzzle brake or a lighter chassis to reduce weight… Not sure though.”
She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, her cheeks in her palms. “Melee-oriented? Oooooh, like a chain-sword or something?”
His short chuckle coerced a smirk to her face. “No, not like that. More something to use as a bludgeoning tool. Right before the blood-moon, I ended up getting just as much use out of this shotgun as a hammer than as a… well, a shotgun.”
“That’s pretty fuckin’ metal. So are you just gonna make the barrel into a giant bayonet?”
He nodded. “Not exactly a bayonet, but something more like a door-breaching break.”
A short silence settled on their conversation, the faint sounds of the fabricator’s hum and distant woodwork coming to light. Right, there was an outside world… She’d been too caught up talking to Harrison for however many hours it had been. She wondered how successful the fisherwomen were in collecting, and how things had been for the others working on the wood storage shack. Maybe it was already completed? The sun peered through the cargo bay door, proving that it was only about midday. What else would they work on today?
“Hey,” she ventured.
“Hm?” the engineer hummed, his eyes focused on the monitor beside the technician.
She scooted closer to his keyboard. “What’re we doing after this?”
“What do you mean?”
She leaned backward, propping herself up on two hands. “Project wise; what’s the next big thing?”
“Uhmmm…” he muttered, interacting with the computer for a few more seconds before finally meeting her gaze. “Well, I’ve just allocated the fabricator to print out the M2, three FALs—wood furniture, of course—then there’s the magazines and ammunition, so we’ve got a lot of time to kill. The next big thing is definitely going to be metal procurement, and— Oh, right!” Harrison stopped mid-sentence, reaching into his backpack and pulling out several finger-sized metallic cubes, a sudden fire in his eyes. “Okay, so a while ago, during an encounter with three colossi, Shar and Akula found a cave with some ‘surface’ metal deposits. I took a piece off to analyze, but never got the chance to until last night. Anyway, we don’t have any machines to examine the ore, so I made use of the recycler and broke it down to its baser components.”
She nodded along, seeing where he was going with his explanation. “I’m guessing those shiny cubes are the metals from the ore?”
“Sure is. So, as it turns out, we have a pretty damn close supply of not only iron, but also, zinc, sulfur, and a small amount of cadmium. I talked with Sebas about it and did a little research. We believe it’s something akin to sphalerite, given its composition and looks, which implies it’s a sedimentary exhalative deposit. That means there must have been some volcanic…”
Harrison continued talking about underwater deposits and ancient rock formations, bringing up some theories brought forward by the now 4-AI-core-powered Sebas, delving into the current land mass’ history and possible ore output. A lot of it went over the tradewoman’s head, but she still listened intently… Honestly, she could have listened to the man talk about finding metals for hours. It was sort of like the podcasts she used to listen to while completing colonist training, but even more personal and somehow easier to get lost in…
“…find some other minerals further down like silver, but it also might be an active lava zone. Again, these are all theories and this world could just throw the fundamentals of geology away as it does for physics. Anyway, sorry for going on for so long about that, just thought it’d be important for getting some metals in the future.”
“No, no,” Tracy assured, alleviating him of concern with a wave of her hand. “If there’s anything the colony overseers emphasized, it was farming and mineral acquisition. Don’t worry.” She smiled, pointing a thumb to herself. “I just wanna know how I can help.”
“Actually, I’ve a few things only you can do. I’d like to make use of your impressive drone-making expertise for a few applications, if you don’t mind.”
The task of keeping eye contact slipped into an impossible feat in the span of a singular second, planting a pang of embarrassment on her reddened face, forcing her to inspect her fidgeting hands. “I-I wouldn’t say ‘impressive’… b-but what do you have in mind?”
She could see him raise a brow out of the corner of her vision. “Well, after what you’ve shown me with the reconnaissance flyers, I’d like your help in setting up a more permanent ‘net’ of them to scour the meadow and parts of the nearby forest to look out for any approaching hordes. I don’t want to be snuck up on… again…”
‘Again.’
She noted his small frown and sunken eyes, both a little more exaggerated than they already were. It wasn’t like she’d deny his request, but the pangs of empathy over their shared situation all but solidified her resolve. It was the least she could do. She could help him. She would help him.
The technician exhaled slowly, taking on a more serious and understanding tone than before. “I… can do that. For sure. What else?”
“I appreciate it.” He gave a wane smile. “I’ll help you with whatever you need for the project. For the other drones, I’m thinking about a small exploration vehicle to map out caves around us and mark any minerals, as well as a submersible to look for potassium deposits in the ocean.”
“So… search bots?” She crossed her arms, confidence growing; those were her specialty. “Depending on how long the fabricators take and what kind of base drones are in the blueprint folders, I should be able to get those done in no time. All I need to know are the search cues for potassium and how many drones you want.”
He quickly shuffled a few folders on the computer, turning the monitor for her to see some scientific documents with various images and walls upon walls of text. “There’re plenty of resources for that on here for what to look for, and there’s always Sebas, so feel free to ask him since he can just sort through the data for you anyway. If you can, I’d like it if you could focus on the submersible after the reconnaissance drones.”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll be right on it, then.” She gave him a thumbs up, slipping off his desk and toward her own.
“I’ll bring you lunch in a bit. Imma go check on the others,” he called.
Her stomach grumbled at the mention, her head turning to give him an appreciative smile. “Oh! Thanks!”
\= = = = =
Avian creatures chirped from their perches in the trees nearby. The wind softly rustled red leaves as grass gently gave way to calculated footfalls. A warm sun laid its light on Shar’khee’s neck. It was surprisingly pleasant, were one to take the time to notice. The mainland was a confusing place for the paladin, with its disparate representations of nature contrasting so heavily. Some days were filled with blood and ravenous beasts, while others were left within the domain of simplicity and beauty. She was content to have the latter, yet it felt like a facade veiling the former—a soft exterior covering the maliciously spiked interior. Never could she leave herself to carelessness, no matter how welcoming it might be.
Hence why she worked to ensure the safety of the star-sent’s castles and their inhabitants, her days largely spent patrolling for any roaming swarms that may wish to cause them harm. She typically used the routine to think, but today offered little in the way of solitude. This time, she was accompanied by the previously banished guardswoman, and was tasked with instructing the new one, though the specifics of what such lessons should entail were vague. Still, Shar’khee did all that she could so as not to disappoint Harrison, so she could only attempt to meet his expectations of her.
She told the yellow-skinned female of the threats that the settlement faced, how one was to defeat them, and what to expect from the beasts. The guardswoman was directed to practice her form with the spear in both thrusts and throwing for some time afterward, proving herself to be well-built. Such was expected of her profession after all.
It was pleasing to have another capable of patrolling the settlement’s outskirts for swarms, as it would greatly impact how effectively the colony could react to such a threat. If her routine was to suffer for the colony’s well-being, she was happy to show the new one her patrol route and note what to look out for.
The guardswoman was not a perfect student, however. Shar’khee never addressed it directly, but the yellow-skinned female obviously discredited the danger posed by the abhorrent, not-so-subtly shrugging off any warnings.
…That was until they stumbled upon the ‘hyena-boars,’ as Harrison called them.
The beasts resided in a clearing not too far from the castles, carelessly meandering across the sea of tall grass. Shar’khee quickly crouched, dragging the guardswoman down with her. Once she assessed that the creatures were not an imminent danger, she decided it would be an excellent opportunity to show the new one how to properly engage a threat. She was about to propose the idea, yet her speech was silenced just as swiftly.
Orange flashes darted through the trees around the glade. Taloned feet and gnashing teeth tore across the ground toward the unsuspecting beasts at the center. It was much too late for them. They were slow. Surrounded. Unaware. It was as quick as it was vicious, the forest’s reds turning a deeper crimson hue in a moment's notice underneath the abhorrent’s brutality.
Gangly monstrosities gnawed and ripped at the dead creatures, brief glimpses of raw flesh and white bone protruding from the small spaces between the clumped-up beasts. Repulsive wet splatters of blood and gore overlapped the calm noises of the forest, the grisly scene serenaded by the softest of nature’s symphonies. It was a sickening juxtaposition.
Shar’khee bit back the unease and steeled herself. They were within twenty paces—close enough to smell the abhorrent’s vile stench of rot and bile, yet far enough so as not to be noticed. She briefly considered backing away and retreating, her focus bouncing between the different avenues of escape, or how to cover her footst—
Crack.
Several sets of feral, eyeless maws snapped in their direction, the blood dripping off freshly dampened teeth. The guardswoman gasped, Shar’khee’s gaze following to see the mistake: a singular broken branch crinkled as a yellow-colored foot raised off the splintering twig.
The paladin exhaled sharply and smoothly stood up, brandishing two spears and her shield. Her glare settled on the still crouching guardswoman. “You are to stay behind my shield and let them appr—ch. Rem—ber what I have told you. Aim for their maws when you thrust y—r lance.”
The other female nodded, shakily pulling out her own weapons with unsteady placement hampering her grip. There was an obvious nervousness to her gaze. Hesitance. That would not do.
Shar’khee faced the prowling abhorrent her knuckles shifting hue as she prepared for their advance, for there was no chance that they wouldn’t. True to her experience, the stalking turned to a gallop with several clicks of grotesque tongues, the swarm bolting toward her as one. She snarled and slammed her bulwark into the ground, letting the approaching beasts skewer themselves amongst its spikes.
There were only ten—a paltry amount. She had defended against magnitudes more, and yet she still stood. What is more, they were mindless. Uncoordinated. They would be but stains in the cloth she used to clean her armor. Perhaps, if they were fortunate, they might leave a furrow in her shield to remember them by. Her arms tensed as the first leapt.
One by one, the abhorrent fell, their repulsive green blood splattering under her thrusts. Each awaiting corpse tore across the grove’s grass, lunging to their deaths with gaping maws and unfeeling hunger, yet she did not yield. Their shells were crushed by her shield and impaled by her Goddess-blessed spears, becoming but one more smear across their surface. Ten motionless lumps lay before her, seeping their ichor into the soil, none having passed the barrier she became. Dead, just as the Creator intended. She remained vigilant for a few moments longer, watching for any more of the disgusting creatures.
None showed themselves, finally allowing blood to flow to her fingers once again. The shield’s heavy presence weighed down her back, the blood flicked off of her spears before she returned them to their place.
“Are y–u well?” Shar’khee addressed the frozen Malkrin, wiping away the splatter on her bracers. The guardswoman stared at the small pile of deceased creatures, her heavy breaths and widened eyes moving from the spear from her singular kill. The paladin huffed. “We are fort—ate that there were so few.”
“F-Few? God help us…” Her horrified, stunned gaze slowly met the paladin’s. “Y-You said there were hundreds on the crimson nights? H-How do you… They were s-so fast.”*
”As I h–ve warned,” Shar’khee affirmed.
“You are a paladin! You all exaggerate your feats… I thought it was just a facade!”
“I have no r—son to lie,” she returned tersely, shrugging off the insult to her station and shaking her head. “The mainl—d is far more dangerous than ten gnash—g beasts; more so than that of your island hamlet. Pick yourself up. We m—t inform the others of this incursion.”
The yellow-skinned female snarled, furrowing her brows at the ground in frustration. At whom…? Shar’khee? Herself? Regardless, the female promptly gathered her composure, pushing air through clenched jaws. A step forward had her feet splash in the small pool of blood, the Malkrin nodding toward the paladin to continue back to the castles.
“…for the village.”
Shar’khee paused in her stride and faced her, frowning at the determination and anger leaking through the intent. “W—t was that?”
Her question was returned with honesty, a huffed voice marred by vexation. “Paladin, how am I to defend my village-mates as I am now?”
“‘As you are now?’ What do you m—n?”
The guardswoman stared down at her spear, wood creaking under her grip. “I have faltered before what you deem a paltry threat, and the thought of an even greater one sows dread deep within my bones. I wish… I wish to be better prepared to defend those of my village. I cannot help but see their faces on those of the furred creature in the clearing, and yet, even if I am so close, I am just as unable to protect them.”
Shar’khee stared down the yellow female, a long gaze taking in a rare showing of sincerity. “Y—r fears are one we all share, new one. Do not be ashamed of them. All t—t matters is that you do not let them rem—n mere fear, but make them your strength. So tell me, do you wish to impr—e? To ensure they do not fall while you are support—g them?”
The yellow-skinned female released a shuddering breath that bled off the worst of her indecision, a newly invoked flame flaring within her visage. “I do, paladin. I seek to protect and to be of use.”
“Then, if you wish to make y—rself resilient in the face of all that opposes us, it would be my undertak—g to forge you anew. Fortunately, Harrison has ordered such already, and his guidance shall prove ever useful, should you pursue it.”
The guardswoman shuffled in place at the star-sent’s mention, her eyes slipping downwards. “He is of a great many resources, but I would rather receive your teachings than those of a craftsman… or that of a male, deity-sent he might be.”
She placed a palm on the female’s shoulder. “He is far more than you might ever k—w. Regardless of if you ac—pt his guidance, I commend your conviction. However—” Her hand gripped tighter, though not enough to instill hostility. “—understand that you are protecting more than just your vi—age-mates.”
The new one nodded, staring up at the paladin with stallwart resolve. “Of course. I shall be in your tutelage, then.”
Shar’khee smiled. “T—n let us begin.”
\= = = = =
Akula was becoming increasingly certain that she knew how her parents once felt. The green-skinned fisherwoman was currently rotating between the many tasks placed upon her, guiding the newcomers through the minutia of their tasks so they might live up to the potential Harrison saw within them. She was gratified to have her own talents recognized by the Creator, but it also placed a great many responsibilities in her talons. Of course, she handled each new addition with finesse befitting her heritage, never once balking from the increasing demands. If anything, she felt validated; it was required of her as a female anyway, was it not? The more feminine-appropriate labor and management one undertakes, the higher authority they were granted.
It began with a simple assignment to oversee the chef’s introduction to the star-sent’s provided cooking appliances. As fascinating and convenient as utilities were, she held no interest in preparing any more food than she already had, but teaching another to operate the machines would alleviate such requirements of her. She reluctantly accepted the task when it was proposed, especially considering the fact that Harrison was much too busy with his other projects to bother with something as benign as cooking. His work was more valuable elsewhere.
The task itself went well, and the pink-skinned chef was quick to pick up on the use of the various kitchen devices, as well as the smoker. A grin had grown when she considered the possibility of all males understanding such domestic things readily, yet her mirth at removing the masculine job required of her was short-lived. Despite the newly initiated Malkrin’s success, Harrison had Akula frequently return to oversee the numerous cooking operations being conducted. That was in tandem with the back-to-back fishing trips made by both herself and the newly acquired females.
…Which was something else the green-skinned cycle-worshipper was ordered to oversee.
She had left the chef to his devices after producing another batch of partially seasoned meals, returning to the Creator with hopes of a break. He applauded her efforts with a nod and tersely spoken appreciation, then quickly pushed two spearguns into her hand and directed her to the ocean, where the twins were ‘working with jack shit,’ as the busy male said. She was to give the fisherwomen the tools and make sure they were used properly, and offer additional assistance in acquiring ‘enough fish to have us fed for a little bit.’
So, she left to complete the given task, feeling somewhat appreciative that her speargun was of superior quality to those she would be delivering—the newcomers were only afforded the lesser, roped-bolt version. It was only natural that she was in possession of their greatest assets, of course; the star-sent saw her as the only one capable of wielding such fantastic ammunition, showing trust that was rightfully placed in her. That did not mean the gray-skinned females were unsatisfied with their own gifts, however. The twins were swiftly caught up on the ‘manual of arms’ and sent to work, somehow managing to keep up with Akula in spite of their land-based origins. The two were fast enough to outpace the cycle-worshipper in sheer speed, but their lack of numerous winters spent traversing deeper waters meant they required frequent rests, breaking the ocean’s surface after every third captured fish or so.
Still, she had to appreciate their dedication to their task. They never complained about Akula pushing them further to reach the star-sent’s vague objective. Such a task was entrusted to her—and by proxy, the other two—and thus it would be completed, no matter how much her comfortable bed… couch called her tiring muscles.
The group of three hauled net after full net of fresh meat to the chef—and sewist, who later joined him—forcing him to relegate much of the catch to long-term storage as the kitchen simply could not deal with the surplus. At least three-quarters of the fish were put to slow cook in the now Malkrin-sized smoker. The craftsman had upgraded it with a kit provided by Harrison, who had recycled much of the dining room and workshop furniture to accommodate it. The Creator’s showcased urgency to gather materials was clearly not unfounded… It was admirable how he used what little he had left to ensure food would not be scarce. Additionally, the apparatus exuded an excellent scent for all the survivors to enjoy, the earthy aroma drawing in some of the other Malkrin for their breaks or meals.
Those were not the end of the cycle-worshiper’s tasks, however. She was also required to report on Shar’khee’s progress in training the guardswoman—helping to recycle the small swarm of abhorrent they cleared earlier—as well as the wood storage building’s progress. Indeed, she was advising and assisting however and wherever applicable. To say she was seen all around the settlement would be an understatement.
Nevertheless, she was appreciative to see her efforts bearing fruit by sundown. The processing of their meals from sea to plate was quite efficient, and those that Akula taught were now well-practiced in their duties. The twin fisherwomen dove from wave to wave, bringing fish back to the barracks, where the cook and sewist swiftly worked to transfer the meat to pans and smoker hooks alike. Then, the remnants of the Sea Goddess’ aquatic gifts would be subsequently recycled and given purpose anew as biofuel or perhaps future fertilizer.
The endless onslaught of duties and responsibilities had enlightened her, in a way. She could see where Harrison came from now; having a working project go from one point to another without input nor difficulty was a sight to behold, and it made her swell with pride. It was a surmountable feat to teach the barbaric ground-worshippers to do something properly.
…Well, they were not horrible Malkrin, so perhaps simply calling them ‘uninitiated’ was a more apt descriptor…
No matter the tribulations faced, and no matter how draining her new authority might be, her rest at the end of the day would be one that was well-earned, and it would be had with a sense of satisfaction. She deserved it, and perhaps that extended to the rest of the settlement as well.
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Next time on Total Drama Anomaly Island - Mine! Mine! Mine!
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Edited by WaveOfWire
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Two days… It had been two days that Tracy had gone to sleep while Harrison was working, only to come back in the morning to see him still in the workshop. She knew he was damn productive, sure, but that really couldn’t be healthy. Apparently, it had something to do with the weird bowl of orange… soup… that Cera gave him. No way was it just caffeine; any amount of the stuff would have been filtered out of his system by now. He mentioned a tingling feeling too…
Damn, she did not know enough about drugs to even start assuming what that massive alien had Harrison fucked up on. At least the scanner said he was ‘fine’—if you ignore the other glaring issues the machine brought up. Plus, he said he didn’t mind it. Either way, he managed to complete the weaving component and a few other electrical backbones of the fabricator last night, so the project was practically done, and after seeing the engineer work himself half to death, she was dead-set on finishing it.
She was currently tits-deep into the upper manufacturing portion of the towering machine. It took a tall step-stool—on top of the nearby desk—for her to push her small shoulders through the even smaller access panels high on the everything-printer. It was difficult to fit her torso in, but she managed, holding a flashlight between her teeth as she fiddled with a stubborn series of mechanical ‘hands.’ Nothing new. The situation reminded her of the ‘shop back on Mars; it had the same ever-present scent of copper and industrial sealant. All that was missing was her dad’s ancient tunes blasting through some shitty speakers… Hold on…
The modular component in her grip was successfully attached with a resonating thock. Tracy squirmed out of the dim wire-filled crevice, trying her best to not rip her only tank-top on any bolts or corners, and getting a face-full of the bright flood-lights illuminating the workshop. She scowled and blocked out the searing light with a hand, but she was a bit too late to avoid going half-blind.
“Are the mechanical manipulators in?” Harrison grunted, poking his head out underneath the printer’s floor-adjacent maintenance hatch. She looked down at him as she tried to blink off the spots in her vision. His hair was messy, barely kept in line by his habit of combing through it with his fingers. The areas around his eyes were dark and sunken… Guess that’s what two all-nighters did to a man. He’d be seeing the hat man or start hallucinating if he didn’t get any sleep soon… but then again, the two of them were so close to finishing the fabricator…
“You bet.” She gave him a thumbs up, slamming the panel cover closed. “Feel free to test it.”
He nodded and slid back underneath the machine. “Gotcha”
She gently stepped off the stool and slid off the side of the desk, stretching herself out. If her piss-poor sitting posture or her tank-top puppies hadn’t already fucked her spine up, bending over backward to build this fabricator sure as hell would. She sat down next to the panel where Harrison resided, resting her back against the fabrication tower. Her excited voice broke the muffled noises of the engineer’s work. “So… Harrison?”
“Hmm—”
“—Mind if I play some music?”
The sounds from the hatch stopped, followed by his muffled, shocked tone echoing from beneath the fabricator. “You have music!?”
She smirked at seeing the expression on his face when his head popped out again. “I sure do… Did you seriously not download any to your data pad?”
He slipped out from beneath the fabricator fully, huffing as he took a knee beside her. The scent of melded rubber, wire, and his liquid labor reached her nose not-so-unpleasantly. “You would not believe how much of a pain it is to repair an entire barracks without it… So, yeah, I didn’t.”
“Sooooooooo, whatcha wanna listen to? I’ve got almost everything on here—besides the super niche, of course.” She pulled her data pad out, swiping to the massive music folder
“You wouldn’t like the kinda music I listen to; It’s ancient.”
She gave him a lighthearted, annoyed glare. “Welcome to the club… Now what’ll it be?”
“It’s Old Earth kind of ancient… but alright” He looked up at the ceiling in thought, lips pursed. “Do you have anything from Styx or Sweet?”
She stared at him incredulously, her smirk turning into a fully-fledged smile. “Oh my God. You are an absolute dork! You actually listen to Golden Age music?”
His brows raised, accusatory. “And you somehow know exactly who those bands were and what age of Old Earth music they came from?”
She smugly leaned in closer. “That’s because I’m just as much of a nerd with that kinda music as you apparently are.” She quickly looked upward, addressing the workshop AI. “Sebas, connect nearby speakers to my data pad’s audio.” Tracy elbowed the engineer lightly as the PA system chirped its affirmation. “Now, Mr. Golden Age music, which albums do ya want me to queue up?”
- - - - -
The two of them listened to music for hours, tossing on songs they liked as they came to mind while they worked. Harrison had a ton of recommendations that spanned all over the Golden Ages and some twenty-first century classics. She didn’t even know half of them, but she was vibing either way, adding on her own taste by intermingling some older rock tracks and newer electronic beats. The playlist was steadily built up as the day went on. Thank God her dad showed her a vast array of tunes; she might not have been able to keep up with the engineer if her old man hadn't.
It made the work go by so fast, their conversations blurring as they jumped from topic to topic. They discussed whatever came to mind—old hobbies, old jobs, and old interests. A lot was left behind in Sol… At least she knew that the only other human on the planet was more interesting than a soulless workaholic. It turned out that he was a pretty big history buff, and he apparently read a lot about the colonization of the Sol system and the various wars of independence thereafter. Curious, she asked where the interest stemmed from, and he explained that his grandfather was an admiral in the Slavic-Europan deep-ice submarine fleet, which explained how Harrison’s mother was able to afford to immigrate to Mars from Europa.
He could also play an acoustic guitar, and, unfortunately for Tracy, he wasn’t even the slightest bit interested in printing one out, citing that it was a waste of time and material that would be better used elsewhere. That didn’t stop her from writing a note on her data pad to do so later, though. She hadn’t seen someone play one of those in years—the last time was probably in some old music video from the early twenty-second century. What a shame. She would have liked to hear some of the Europan songs his grandmother taught him.
On the bright side, the man seemed to take an interest in her odd hobbies. He brought up the folder of 3D models that she accidentally uploaded to the inter-module system and asked where she got the inspiration for what was in it. Boy, was he not ready for her ‘WarHalberd40k’ lore dump. Props to the guy for not standing up and leaving the workshop throughout her rambling. He even asked questions about the different factions and their weapons, which she was more than happy to talk about.
She also ended up going over the other franchises and hobbies she was interested in, such as robotics and the like. The only interruptions to their chat were the occasional Akula or Craftsman asking for insight regarding the various tasks he had allotted to them, or Shar coming in to check up on Harrison between guard shifts.
The new dynamic of the group was pretty interesting, to say the least. Tracy hadn’t been out to interact with the whole lot of Malkrin, but she definitely noticed how they treated the engineer. They’d started to look up to him in a way ever since he started showing off technology. In a little over two days, the man had shown them that he could provide the materials for a brick house, fine clothing—especially by the alien’s standards—armor, and delicious food. That wasn’t even mentioning the other benefits the technician heard a few of the ‘banished’ talking about over their meals: heating, electric lights, and other assorted machines.
She’d be feeling pretty happy about herself if she was in his position, having so many look up to him and be grateful at the same time. He seemed to view it a lot more robotically, however, only striving to get the basics done. Luckily for him, his basics were their luxury.
That wasn’t all there was to the topic; the engineer lamented about how the colony was going through food just as quickly as materials. The meals weren’t the direct issue he had, more that he had to start focusing on long-term resource harvesting rather than directly preparing for a literal horde of monsters—which wasn’t exactly ideal. It was a good thing that they just so happened to take on an influx of Malkrin then…
Either way, they finally finished the ‘totally legal modification’ for the fabricator, meaning they could at least partially address the latter half of his worries. The whole process of ripping out an old printer and replacing the parts for a new one felt a lot easier than she imagined… even if it took her at least forty-eight hours to complete it… with help from Harrison. Maybe that was why it felt so easy… She supposed the colony overseers didn’t choose the man for no reason, so his skills made sense.
“So… what do we want to print out first?” Tracy questioned, having finished testing the last major component.
The engineer stretched his arms up into the air and rotated his shoulders, then pulled back the desk’s chair and took a seat. “I’ve had just one thing in mind since the start of this whole project.”
Her brows raised in a mix of excitement and curiosity. She leaned forward, looking at the computer monitor from over his shoulder. “Oh? What’s that, then?”
A smirk formed along his cheek, the computer mouse rapidly clicking through the blueprint folder. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about what kind of firearm we need since I started dabbling in belt-fed weapon systems.” He opened one final file, a short loading bar preceding the exploded assembly view of… “An M2 Browning machine gun. It’s more than powerful enough to kill in one shot, while also being capable of fully-automatic fire, with a capacity of however many rounds we want in a belt-box.”
“Uh…huh…” She gave a skeptical nod and took a step back, not exactly sold on the idea. “It looks ancient. It’s kinetic, right? Why aren’t we using energy-based weapons? Don’t we have a gunpowder shortage coming up?”
He moved his chair off to the side to look back at her. “We just can’t; Simple as. We’ll need who knows how many more AI cores before we can get started on that level of equipment, Trace,” he huffed, returning his gaze to the specifications of the firearm. “This isn’t the most ‘modern’ weapon we can make, but its twenty-first century counterpart helps with an improved design… somewhat. And, as I said before, it should be more than capable of killing a bug in one shot, so Shar can just tap-fire it to save ammunition.”
Her head tilted quizzically. “Shar?”
“Yup,” he returned confidently. “It’s the perfect weapon for her.”
She raised a brow. “How so?”
He held his hand up, counting his reasons on his fingers. “She’s always on the front line with a shield, she can absolutely handle the weight and recoil, her four arms make reloading it simple, plus she’ll need something with range and power that isn’t a spear. So, why not? And, if for some reason, she doesn’t want to use it, we can just convert it into a turret—which is something I was planning on doing anyways with however more M2s we print out later.”
“I doubt she’ll say no to any gun you give her,” Tracy chuckled while shaking her head, inadvertently causing her bangs to cover her eyes.
“Fair enough,” he conceded with a bob of his head. “What do you think, then? What kinda weapons do you have in mind?”
She reapplied her goggles into an impromptu hairband, feeling a smirk cross her face. “Thought you’d never ask. What purpose do we need these guns to fulfill? Hordes I’m guessing?”
“That’s the idea, yeah. That doesn’t mean they all need to be machine guns, though.” He tapped the belt-fed shotgun beside him.
“Well, lemme see what we’re working with first.” She suddenly stepped forward, leaning over Harrison’s seat to access the keyboard and mouse. Her arms briefly rubbed against him, forcing him to roll his chair backward. She suppressed a giggle at seeing his incredulous frown.
Her eyes quickly traced the hundreds of individual files, clicking through all sorts of folders, each arranged from pre-twenty-first century ‘antiques,’ to more modern iterations of kinetics and particle weaponry. There was… a lot on there—almost too much to reasonably comb through. Why? Did the colony overseers just say ‘fuck it’ and put whatever they could find on here? Were they expecting the pioneers to make a museum of everything?
She sighed, standing up straight and facing Harrison. “Y’know, I’m actually impressed you managed to find that M2-whatever in there…”
He shifted in his seat, resting an elbow on the desk. “Yup, there’s a lot. I’m almost tempted to just make several of those machine guns and just call it a day, but I feel like that’d be too much of a strain on resources, no?”
“I don’t really know enough about how you fight those spider-crab things, or how to get more gunpowder, so… maybe?” She shrugged, biting her cheek in contemplation. “You might just wanna make a few smaller caliber weapons… like, uh… those old kinetic service rifles. If your pump-action shotgun works fine, I’m sure some normal guns would work just fine for now, right?”
He hardily gripped his firearm, hauling it up to his lap. “Depends on what you mean by ‘smaller caliber.’ The whole reason why the KS-23 here works—” he pulled out a massive shell from the ammo belt, displaying it on his palm. “—is because the twenty-three-millimeter round has enough energy transfer to mess up any bug's shell and insides. I’d say the smallest rounds we could use would be point-two-forty-three caliber to get any similar results.”
Brief flickers of grungy orange shells and gnashing teeth marred Tracy’s sight. She forcibly suppressed them, distracting herself with dry humor and a strained laugh. “Guess those fuckers can really take a punch, huh?”
He shook his head somberly. “I couldn’t imagine going up against them without a gun… Anyway, I like your idea of a standard rifle for now. Then, when we have some product lines up, we can go a little more in depth into personal weapons.”
“So are you gonna take one?” She hopped up on the desk, letting her legs swing off the side.
“Don’t think so, no. I’ll stick with my shotty.” The internals of the heavily modified weapon rattled as he held it up and inspected it. “Doesn’t mean I’ll keep it as is. I’m thinking of printing a laser aiming module so I can point-fire it accurately, and maybe a melee-oriented muzzle brake or a lighter chassis to reduce weight… Not sure though.”
She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, her cheeks in her palms. “Melee-oriented? Oooooh, like a chain-sword or something?”
His short chuckle coerced a smirk to her face. “No, not like that. More something to use as a bludgeoning tool. Right before the blood-moon, I ended up getting just as much use out of this shotgun as a hammer than as a… well, a shotgun.”
“That’s pretty fuckin’ metal. So are you just gonna make the barrel into a giant bayonet?”
He nodded. “Not exactly a bayonet, but something more like a door-breaching break.”
A short silence settled on their conversation, the faint sounds of the fabricator’s hum and distant woodwork coming to light. Right, there was an outside world… She’d been too caught up talking to Harrison for however many hours it had been. She wondered how successful the fisherwomen were in collecting, and how things had been for the others working on the wood storage shack. Maybe it was already completed? The sun peered through the cargo bay door, proving that it was only about midday. What else would they work on today?
“Hey,” she ventured.
“Hm?” the engineer hummed, his eyes focused on the monitor beside the technician.
She scooted closer to his keyboard. “What’re we doing after this?”
“What do you mean?”
She leaned backward, propping herself up on two hands. “Project wise; what’s the next big thing?”
“Uhmmm…” he muttered, interacting with the computer for a few more seconds before finally meeting her gaze. “Well, I’ve just allocated the fabricator to print out the M2, three FALs—wood furniture, of course—then there’s the magazines and ammunition, so we’ve got a lot of time to kill. The next big thing is definitely going to be metal procurement, and— Oh, right!” Harrison stopped mid-sentence, reaching into his backpack and pulling out several finger-sized metallic cubes, a sudden fire in his eyes. “Okay, so a while ago, during an encounter with three colossi, Shar and Akula found a cave with some ‘surface’ metal deposits. I took a piece off to analyze, but never got the chance to until last night. Anyway, we don’t have any machines to examine the ore, so I made use of the recycler and broke it down to its baser components.”
She nodded along, seeing where he was going with his explanation. “I’m guessing those shiny cubes are the metals from the ore?”
“Sure is. So, as it turns out, we have a pretty damn close supply of not only iron, but also, zinc, sulfur, and a small amount of cadmium. I talked with Sebas about it and did a little research. We believe it’s something akin to sphalerite, given its composition and looks, which implies it’s a sedimentary exhalative deposit. That means there must have been some volcanic…”
Harrison continued talking about underwater deposits and ancient rock formations, bringing up some theories brought forward by the now 4-AI-core-powered Sebas, delving into the current land mass’ history and possible ore output. A lot of it went over the tradewoman’s head, but she still listened intently… Honestly, she could have listened to the man talk about finding metals for hours. It was sort of like the podcasts she used to listen to while completing colonist training, but even more personal and somehow easier to get lost in…
“…find some other minerals further down like silver, but it also might be an active lava zone. Again, these are all theories and this world could just throw the fundamentals of geology away as it does for physics. Anyway, sorry for going on for so long about that, just thought it’d be important for getting some metals in the future.”
“No, no,” Tracy assured, alleviating him of concern with a wave of her hand. “If there’s anything the colony overseers emphasized, it was farming and mineral acquisition. Don’t worry.” She smiled, pointing a thumb to herself. “I just wanna know how I can help.”
“Actually, I’ve a few things only you can do. I’d like to make use of your impressive drone-making expertise for a few applications, if you don’t mind.”
The task of keeping eye contact slipped into an impossible feat in the span of a singular second, planting a pang of embarrassment on her reddened face, forcing her to inspect her fidgeting hands. “I-I wouldn’t say ‘impressive’… b-but what do you have in mind?”
She could see him raise a brow out of the corner of her vision. “Well, after what you’ve shown me with the reconnaissance flyers, I’d like your help in setting up a more permanent ‘net’ of them to scour the meadow and parts of the nearby forest to look out for any approaching hordes. I don’t want to be snuck up on… again…”
‘Again.’
She noted his small frown and sunken eyes, both a little more exaggerated than they already were. It wasn’t like she’d deny his request, but the pangs of empathy over their shared situation all but solidified her resolve. It was the least she could do. She could help him. She would help him.
The technician exhaled slowly, taking on a more serious and understanding tone than before. “I… can do that. For sure. What else?”
“I appreciate it.” He gave a wane smile. “I’ll help you with whatever you need for the project. For the other drones, I’m thinking about a small exploration vehicle to map out caves around us and mark any minerals, as well as a submersible to look for potassium deposits in the ocean.”
“So… search bots?” She crossed her arms, confidence growing; those were her specialty. “Depending on how long the fabricators take and what kind of base drones are in the blueprint folders, I should be able to get those done in no time. All I need to know are the search cues for potassium and how many drones you want.”
He quickly shuffled a few folders on the computer, turning the monitor for her to see some scientific documents with various images and walls upon walls of text. “There’re plenty of resources for that on here for what to look for, and there’s always Sebas, so feel free to ask him since he can just sort through the data for you anyway. If you can, I’d like it if you could focus on the submersible after the reconnaissance drones.”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll be right on it, then.” She gave him a thumbs up, slipping off his desk and toward her own.
“I’ll bring you lunch in a bit. Imma go check on the others,” he called.
Her stomach grumbled at the mention, her head turning to give him an appreciative smile. “Oh! Thanks!”
\= = = = =
Avian creatures chirped from their perches in the trees nearby. The wind softly rustled red leaves as grass gently gave way to calculated footfalls. A warm sun laid its light on Shar’khee’s neck. It was surprisingly pleasant, were one to take the time to notice. The mainland was a confusing place for the paladin, with its disparate representations of nature contrasting so heavily. Some days were filled with blood and ravenous beasts, while others were left within the domain of simplicity and beauty. She was content to have the latter, yet it felt like a facade veiling the former—a soft exterior covering the maliciously spiked interior. Never could she leave herself to carelessness, no matter how welcoming it might be.
Hence why she worked to ensure the safety of the star-sent’s castles and their inhabitants, her days largely spent patrolling for any roaming swarms that may wish to cause them harm. She typically used the routine to think, but today offered little in the way of solitude. This time, she was accompanied by the previously banished guardswoman, and was tasked with instructing the new one, though the specifics of what such lessons should entail were vague. Still, Shar’khee did all that she could so as not to disappoint Harrison, so she could only attempt to meet his expectations of her.
She told the yellow-skinned female of the threats that the settlement faced, how one was to defeat them, and what to expect from the beasts. The guardswoman was directed to practice her form with the spear in both thrusts and throwing for some time afterward, proving herself to be well-built. Such was expected of her profession after all.
It was pleasing to have another capable of patrolling the settlement’s outskirts for swarms, as it would greatly impact how effectively the colony could react to such a threat. If her routine was to suffer for the colony’s well-being, she was happy to show the new one her patrol route and note what to look out for.
The guardswoman was not a perfect student, however. Shar’khee never addressed it directly, but the yellow-skinned female obviously discredited the danger posed by the abhorrent, not-so-subtly shrugging off any warnings.
…That was until they stumbled upon the ‘hyena-boars,’ as Harrison called them.
The beasts resided in a clearing not too far from the castles, carelessly meandering across the sea of tall grass. Shar’khee quickly crouched, dragging the guardswoman down with her. Once she assessed that the creatures were not an imminent danger, she decided it would be an excellent opportunity to show the new one how to properly engage a threat. She was about to propose the idea, yet her speech was silenced just as swiftly.
Orange flashes darted through the trees around the glade. Taloned feet and gnashing teeth tore across the ground toward the unsuspecting beasts at the center. It was much too late for them. They were slow. Surrounded. Unaware. It was as quick as it was vicious, the forest’s reds turning a deeper crimson hue in a moment's notice underneath the abhorrent’s brutality.
Gangly monstrosities gnawed and ripped at the dead creatures, brief glimpses of raw flesh and white bone protruding from the small spaces between the clumped-up beasts. Repulsive wet splatters of blood and gore overlapped the calm noises of the forest, the grisly scene serenaded by the softest of nature’s symphonies. It was a sickening juxtaposition.
Shar’khee bit back the unease and steeled herself. They were within twenty paces—close enough to smell the abhorrent’s vile stench of rot and bile, yet far enough so as not to be noticed. She briefly considered backing away and retreating, her focus bouncing between the different avenues of escape, or how to cover her footst—
Crack.
Several sets of feral, eyeless maws snapped in their direction, the blood dripping off freshly dampened teeth. The guardswoman gasped, Shar’khee’s gaze following to see the mistake: a singular broken branch crinkled as a yellow-colored foot raised off the splintering twig.
The paladin exhaled sharply and smoothly stood up, brandishing two spears and her shield. Her glare settled on the still crouching guardswoman. “You are to stay behind my shield and let them appr—ch. Rem—ber what I have told you. Aim for their maws when you thrust y—r lance.”
The other female nodded, shakily pulling out her own weapons with unsteady placement hampering her grip. There was an obvious nervousness to her gaze. Hesitance. That would not do.
Shar’khee faced the prowling abhorrent her knuckles shifting hue as she prepared for their advance, for there was no chance that they wouldn’t. True to her experience, the stalking turned to a gallop with several clicks of grotesque tongues, the swarm bolting toward her as one. She snarled and slammed her bulwark into the ground, letting the approaching beasts skewer themselves amongst its spikes.
There were only ten—a paltry amount. She had defended against magnitudes more, and yet she still stood. What is more, they were mindless. Uncoordinated. They would be but stains in the cloth she used to clean her armor. Perhaps, if they were fortunate, they might leave a furrow in her shield to remember them by. Her arms tensed as the first leapt.
One by one, the abhorrent fell, their repulsive green blood splattering under her thrusts. Each awaiting corpse tore across the grove’s grass, lunging to their deaths with gaping maws and unfeeling hunger, yet she did not yield. Their shells were crushed by her shield and impaled by her Goddess-blessed spears, becoming but one more smear across their surface. Ten motionless lumps lay before her, seeping their ichor into the soil, none having passed the barrier she became. Dead, just as the Creator intended. She remained vigilant for a few moments longer, watching for any more of the disgusting creatures.
None showed themselves, finally allowing blood to flow to her fingers once again. The shield’s heavy presence weighed down her back, the blood flicked off of her spears before she returned them to their place.
“Are y–u well?” Shar’khee addressed the frozen Malkrin, wiping away the splatter on her bracers. The guardswoman stared at the small pile of deceased creatures, her heavy breaths and widened eyes moving from the spear from her singular kill. The paladin huffed. “We are fort—ate that there were so few.”
“F-Few? God help us…” Her horrified, stunned gaze slowly met the paladin’s. “Y-You said there were hundreds on the crimson nights? H-How do you… They were s-so fast.”*
”As I h–ve warned,” Shar’khee affirmed.
“You are a paladin! You all exaggerate your feats… I thought it was just a facade!”
“I have no r—son to lie,” she returned tersely, shrugging off the insult to her station and shaking her head. “The mainl—d is far more dangerous than ten gnash—g beasts; more so than that of your island hamlet. Pick yourself up. We m—t inform the others of this incursion.”
The yellow-skinned female snarled, furrowing her brows at the ground in frustration. At whom…? Shar’khee? Herself? Regardless, the female promptly gathered her composure, pushing air through clenched jaws. A step forward had her feet splash in the small pool of blood, the Malkrin nodding toward the paladin to continue back to the castles.
“…for the village.”
Shar’khee paused in her stride and faced her, frowning at the determination and anger leaking through the intent. “W—t was that?”
Her question was returned with honesty, a huffed voice marred by vexation. “Paladin, how am I to defend my village-mates as I am now?”
“‘As you are now?’ What do you m—n?”
The guardswoman stared down at her spear, wood creaking under her grip. “I have faltered before what you deem a paltry threat, and the thought of an even greater one sows dread deep within my bones. I wish… I wish to be better prepared to defend those of my village. I cannot help but see their faces on those of the furred creature in the clearing, and yet, even if I am so close, I am just as unable to protect them.”
Shar’khee stared down the yellow female, a long gaze taking in a rare showing of sincerity. “Y—r fears are one we all share, new one. Do not be ashamed of them. All t—t matters is that you do not let them rem—n mere fear, but make them your strength. So tell me, do you wish to impr—e? To ensure they do not fall while you are support—g them?”
The yellow-skinned female released a shuddering breath that bled off the worst of her indecision, a newly invoked flame flaring within her visage. “I do, paladin. I seek to protect and to be of use.”
“Then, if you wish to make y—rself resilient in the face of all that opposes us, it would be my undertak—g to forge you anew. Fortunately, Harrison has ordered such already, and his guidance shall prove ever useful, should you pursue it.”
The guardswoman shuffled in place at the star-sent’s mention, her eyes slipping downwards. “He is of a great many resources, but I would rather receive your teachings than those of a craftsman… or that of a male, deity-sent he might be.”
She placed a palm on the female’s shoulder. “He is far more than you might ever k—w. Regardless of if you ac—pt his guidance, I commend your conviction. However—” Her hand gripped tighter, though not enough to instill hostility. “—understand that you are protecting more than just your vi—age-mates.”
The new one nodded, staring up at the paladin with stallwart resolve. “Of course. I shall be in your tutelage, then.”
Shar’khee smiled. “T—n let us begin.”
\= = = = =
Akula was becoming increasingly certain that she knew how her parents once felt. The green-skinned fisherwoman was currently rotating between the many tasks placed upon her, guiding the newcomers through the minutia of their tasks so they might live up to the potential Harrison saw within them. She was gratified to have her own talents recognized by the Creator, but it also placed a great many responsibilities in her talons. Of course, she handled each new addition with finesse befitting her heritage, never once balking from the increasing demands. If anything, she felt validated; it was required of her as a female anyway, was it not? The more feminine-appropriate labor and management one undertakes, the higher authority they were granted.
It began with a simple assignment to oversee the chef’s introduction to the star-sent’s provided cooking appliances. As fascinating and convenient as utilities were, she held no interest in preparing any more food than she already had, but teaching another to operate the machines would alleviate such requirements of her. She reluctantly accepted the task when it was proposed, especially considering the fact that Harrison was much too busy with his other projects to bother with something as benign as cooking. His work was more valuable elsewhere.
The task itself went well, and the pink-skinned chef was quick to pick up on the use of the various kitchen devices, as well as the smoker. A grin had grown when she considered the possibility of all males understanding such domestic things readily, yet her mirth at removing the masculine job required of her was short-lived. Despite the newly initiated Malkrin’s success, Harrison had Akula frequently return to oversee the numerous cooking operations being conducted. That was in tandem with the back-to-back fishing trips made by both herself and the newly acquired females.
…Which was something else the green-skinned cycle-worshipper was ordered to oversee.
She had left the chef to his devices after producing another batch of partially seasoned meals, returning to the Creator with hopes of a break. He applauded her efforts with a nod and tersely spoken appreciation, then quickly pushed two spearguns into her hand and directed her to the ocean, where the twins were ‘working with jack shit,’ as the busy male said. She was to give the fisherwomen the tools and make sure they were used properly, and offer additional assistance in acquiring ‘enough fish to have us fed for a little bit.’
So, she left to complete the given task, feeling somewhat appreciative that her speargun was of superior quality to those she would be delivering—the newcomers were only afforded the lesser, roped-bolt version. It was only natural that she was in possession of their greatest assets, of course; the star-sent saw her as the only one capable of wielding such fantastic ammunition, showing trust that was rightfully placed in her. That did not mean the gray-skinned females were unsatisfied with their own gifts, however. The twins were swiftly caught up on the ‘manual of arms’ and sent to work, somehow managing to keep up with Akula in spite of their land-based origins. The two were fast enough to outpace the cycle-worshipper in sheer speed, but their lack of numerous winters spent traversing deeper waters meant they required frequent rests, breaking the ocean’s surface after every third captured fish or so.
Still, she had to appreciate their dedication to their task. They never complained about Akula pushing them further to reach the star-sent’s vague objective. Such a task was entrusted to her—and by proxy, the other two—and thus it would be completed, no matter how much her comfortable bed… couch called her tiring muscles.
The group of three hauled net after full net of fresh meat to the chef—and sewist, who later joined him—forcing him to relegate much of the catch to long-term storage as the kitchen simply could not deal with the surplus. At least three-quarters of the fish were put to slow cook in the now Malkrin-sized smoker. The craftsman had upgraded it with a kit provided by Harrison, who had recycled much of the dining room and workshop furniture to accommodate it. The Creator’s showcased urgency to gather materials was clearly not unfounded… It was admirable how he used what little he had left to ensure food would not be scarce. Additionally, the apparatus exuded an excellent scent for all the survivors to enjoy, the earthy aroma drawing in some of the other Malkrin for their breaks or meals.
Those were not the end of the cycle-worshiper’s tasks, however. She was also required to report on Shar’khee’s progress in training the guardswoman—helping to recycle the small swarm of abhorrent they cleared earlier—as well as the wood storage building’s progress. Indeed, she was advising and assisting however and wherever applicable. To say she was seen all around the settlement would be an understatement.
Nevertheless, she was appreciative to see her efforts bearing fruit by sundown. The processing of their meals from sea to plate was quite efficient, and those that Akula taught were now well-practiced in their duties. The twin fisherwomen dove from wave to wave, bringing fish back to the barracks, where the cook and sewist swiftly worked to transfer the meat to pans and smoker hooks alike. Then, the remnants of the Sea Goddess’ aquatic gifts would be subsequently recycled and given purpose anew as biofuel or perhaps future fertilizer.
The endless onslaught of duties and responsibilities had enlightened her, in a way. She could see where Harrison came from now; having a working project go from one point to another without input nor difficulty was a sight to behold, and it made her swell with pride. It was a surmountable feat to teach the barbaric ground-worshippers to do something properly.
…Well, they were not horrible Malkrin, so perhaps simply calling them ‘uninitiated’ was a more apt descriptor…
No matter the tribulations faced, and no matter how draining her new authority might be, her rest at the end of the day would be one that was well-earned, and it would be had with a sense of satisfaction. She deserved it, and perhaps that extended to the rest of the settlement as well.
- - - - -
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Next time on Total Drama Anomaly Island - Mine! Mine! Mine!
2024.05.19 15:54 MendUrways Summer time shirt related blues
Every summer the sun comes out and the dudes take off their shirts. And I can't leave my house because I'm reminded that I can't do that in front of anyone. I couldn't even change in front of the other girls in the locker room in gym class, I'd feel obscene.
As a historian, I'm keenly aware men used to only go topless in homo-social situations where it was just men. About 100 years ago men fought for the right to go topless in public beaches, sharing space with women and children. The reason swimsuits were unisex was because 100 some years ago in America obscenity laws were equal for everyone.
Women have spent the past 100 odd years fighting to breast feed in the same spaces men can go shirtless, or anywhere people eat (like restaurants); it was in effort to stop feeding babies in public toilet stalls. Makes sense. Only the so-called female nipple has a practical function to be exposed.
Obscenity laws for our "bottom parts" make sense since they function in private and ought to function in private, whether to evacuate urine/feces or for sexual relations. It is precisely because of these functions the "genitalia" are banned and considered nudity.
Now, if women want to beat the heat, they better work out that booty because swimwear is about showing off the backside cheeks. However, I guess I grew up being told to cover my butt up, so that's not an option I'd do in public. I don't want people staring at my butt.
Meanwhile, even I'm wearing a tight so-called female swimsuit top it shows off the entire shape of my chest leaving nothing to the imagination the dudes walk around topless without the extra layer of spandex-y type material that is really trapping heat and annoying. Sure, should be moisture wicking and stuff, but women's swimwear seems to trap in the heat. Padding is like wearing little miniature winter coats on my chest, on each "boob," which for me draws attention to that area in more ways being topless would not... Does this make sense?
I'm supposed to show off the shape of my breasts while keeping them covered. I'm supposed to wear itty bitty triangles over them and prevent "nip slips"... let alone I'm expected to shave before I go out in public in these skimpy swimsuits which leave nothing to the imagination.
Men, however, get to throw on baggy shorts and they're ready to go. The prep time is nil. Unless he's in speedos no one is seeing the literal shape of his nether regions. I have supposedly no choice unless I put on even more layers. Shorts and shirts, sweltering in the heat, surrounded by topless dudes who I never gave my consent to frolic around me topless.
Used to be I advocated for equal rights and women going topless but now I just think men should cover up. The conservatives are using their children (girls mostly) to protest seeing a topless "boy" (actually trans) in the locker room. Apparently all this time unbeknownst to me girls don't want to see that. But at the pool, beach, playground, park, street, backyard, frontyard, etc, it's unavoidable. It's totally legal. Males can expose themselves outside the locker room all they want.
When do we accept this as... acceptable public behavior? We know it's nudity, but we must pretend not to notice it. Females are not covered up for having breasts, it's for having nipples. Well last time I checked, dudes have nipples. So that's a double standard.
Sure, this comes down to some primal jealousy I have but for all my life I can't enjoy the summer air the same way. I feel defective, not sexy, and why would I want to feel "sexy" in front of the public of all ages? Why should we say it's cool if men go topless because some of them are sexy, this is a family beach. We say we don't want groomers and pedoPh!les around our kids, who are mostly men let's face it, but we allow strangers to walk around our children topless and think it's OK.
If some topless dude sent your young teen a photo of himself topless, he's not being obscene? It's not nudity? I'd say lock that creep out, because if a woman did the same thing she'd be in prison.
It's rude and most dudes I ever met who go topless around kids/women are usually very narcissist and want that power over others. A sort of Look what I can Do but you Can't.... in addition I'm 42 so starting to have those hot flashes. It's impractical for me to wear more clothing but I'm basically indecent all over, from the bottom to the top. It depresses me so much, always has.
Wearing a sundress to air myself out is not helping plus dictating if only I changed what I wore I'd feel less hot in the sunshine. Put the dudes in sundresses too then. See how they like it.
We should all wear wetsuits. This inequitable definition of what is nudity has only resulted in over a century of men feeling superior for the most overlooked reasons --- they can mow the lawn half naked, they can walk down the street half naked, and no one will tell them what to do. The only places practicing good reason are the No shirts No service shopping centers. We should go back to decency laws, that apply to everyone equally. If men want to be topless, go back to the bathhouses where it was acceptable before and usually almost always places for gay men to frequent to "see topless dudes" DUH...
If nobody wants to see me topless, then understand this--- I don't want to see your dads and sons topless around me. Cover up. Show some respect to women/girls. It is at least disrespectful to flaunt and exercise this law around girls/women--- it is at worst abusive and done without remorse. "I don't care about your comfort, only my own".... it teaches misogyny.
But it's "too hot for a shirt!" Stop it. Apparently it's never been hot for me, I must run cold blooded...
End rant.
submitted by MendUrways to u/MendUrways [link] [comments]
As a historian, I'm keenly aware men used to only go topless in homo-social situations where it was just men. About 100 years ago men fought for the right to go topless in public beaches, sharing space with women and children. The reason swimsuits were unisex was because 100 some years ago in America obscenity laws were equal for everyone.
Women have spent the past 100 odd years fighting to breast feed in the same spaces men can go shirtless, or anywhere people eat (like restaurants); it was in effort to stop feeding babies in public toilet stalls. Makes sense. Only the so-called female nipple has a practical function to be exposed.
Obscenity laws for our "bottom parts" make sense since they function in private and ought to function in private, whether to evacuate urine/feces or for sexual relations. It is precisely because of these functions the "genitalia" are banned and considered nudity.
Now, if women want to beat the heat, they better work out that booty because swimwear is about showing off the backside cheeks. However, I guess I grew up being told to cover my butt up, so that's not an option I'd do in public. I don't want people staring at my butt.
Meanwhile, even I'm wearing a tight so-called female swimsuit top it shows off the entire shape of my chest leaving nothing to the imagination the dudes walk around topless without the extra layer of spandex-y type material that is really trapping heat and annoying. Sure, should be moisture wicking and stuff, but women's swimwear seems to trap in the heat. Padding is like wearing little miniature winter coats on my chest, on each "boob," which for me draws attention to that area in more ways being topless would not... Does this make sense?
I'm supposed to show off the shape of my breasts while keeping them covered. I'm supposed to wear itty bitty triangles over them and prevent "nip slips"... let alone I'm expected to shave before I go out in public in these skimpy swimsuits which leave nothing to the imagination.
Men, however, get to throw on baggy shorts and they're ready to go. The prep time is nil. Unless he's in speedos no one is seeing the literal shape of his nether regions. I have supposedly no choice unless I put on even more layers. Shorts and shirts, sweltering in the heat, surrounded by topless dudes who I never gave my consent to frolic around me topless.
Used to be I advocated for equal rights and women going topless but now I just think men should cover up. The conservatives are using their children (girls mostly) to protest seeing a topless "boy" (actually trans) in the locker room. Apparently all this time unbeknownst to me girls don't want to see that. But at the pool, beach, playground, park, street, backyard, frontyard, etc, it's unavoidable. It's totally legal. Males can expose themselves outside the locker room all they want.
When do we accept this as... acceptable public behavior? We know it's nudity, but we must pretend not to notice it. Females are not covered up for having breasts, it's for having nipples. Well last time I checked, dudes have nipples. So that's a double standard.
Sure, this comes down to some primal jealousy I have but for all my life I can't enjoy the summer air the same way. I feel defective, not sexy, and why would I want to feel "sexy" in front of the public of all ages? Why should we say it's cool if men go topless because some of them are sexy, this is a family beach. We say we don't want groomers and pedoPh!les around our kids, who are mostly men let's face it, but we allow strangers to walk around our children topless and think it's OK.
If some topless dude sent your young teen a photo of himself topless, he's not being obscene? It's not nudity? I'd say lock that creep out, because if a woman did the same thing she'd be in prison.
It's rude and most dudes I ever met who go topless around kids/women are usually very narcissist and want that power over others. A sort of Look what I can Do but you Can't.... in addition I'm 42 so starting to have those hot flashes. It's impractical for me to wear more clothing but I'm basically indecent all over, from the bottom to the top. It depresses me so much, always has.
Wearing a sundress to air myself out is not helping plus dictating if only I changed what I wore I'd feel less hot in the sunshine. Put the dudes in sundresses too then. See how they like it.
We should all wear wetsuits. This inequitable definition of what is nudity has only resulted in over a century of men feeling superior for the most overlooked reasons --- they can mow the lawn half naked, they can walk down the street half naked, and no one will tell them what to do. The only places practicing good reason are the No shirts No service shopping centers. We should go back to decency laws, that apply to everyone equally. If men want to be topless, go back to the bathhouses where it was acceptable before and usually almost always places for gay men to frequent to "see topless dudes" DUH...
If nobody wants to see me topless, then understand this--- I don't want to see your dads and sons topless around me. Cover up. Show some respect to women/girls. It is at least disrespectful to flaunt and exercise this law around girls/women--- it is at worst abusive and done without remorse. "I don't care about your comfort, only my own".... it teaches misogyny.
But it's "too hot for a shirt!" Stop it. Apparently it's never been hot for me, I must run cold blooded...
End rant.
2024.05.19 15:53 Gazooonga [Diary of a Press-Ganged Saurian] #1
Just another fun little story idea I had. I am still working on Humans are the violent ones but I like to bounce around and experiment with ideas to see what I really like. I also suck at writing more casual stories, as they give me severe writer's block as I try to map out how to make a scene feel genuine in my head, but I promise I'll update that soon. If you like this story and want to see more, then like and comment. I'll gladly continue this series as well.
Start of Personal Log
Humans don't like being told what to do. They don't like being commanded, put in their place, or snubbed. It was an inexorable, inalienable trait of humans, at least any noteable humans, to go against any authority that they believed was against their interests.
Humanity would not fit amongst the stars. Few ever did. It was a trait of most successful species to be willful, ambitious, and to desire more. But once they reached the stars the new (and simultaneously very old) pecking order either quashed any spirit such species had or simply eradicated them. Countless tomb worlds and diaspora served as painful reminders of what became of the nails that chose to stick out. The hammer of order would always strike. There could be no compromise, the very soul of the authority that held the Jurisdiction together relied on a show of unmatched power, or at least the illusion of item.
In reality, the Jurisdiction was an old, fat, and lazy beast. It filled its belly on the corpses of empires far and wide, and sated its bloodlust on the shattered dreams of hopeful cubs. It had every right to, for none could challenge it: there were no new frontiers to explore, nor were there any other enemies to conquer. The Milky Way, as humans had so strangely dubbed our cradle galaxy, as well as Andromeda, had long since been warred over and settled for millennia before humanity had arrived, bright-eyed and with familiar yet otherwise foolish dreams of cooperation and prosperity. The Jurisdiction did not cooperate, nor did it ensure prosperity. Oh, it claimed it did, but in reality it simply took. The rest was just the peace that came with not being the direct target of the biggest fish in the pond. The humans didn't like that, but they had no choice.
Slavery was a common tribute. The Jurisdiction had no use for other resources: it simply took. No, it wanted those who could facilitate that unequal exchange, those raised in a world where the only morality was the one set by your lord. The Jurisdiction was held together by expectations, obligations, and dury more than any kind of shared dream, so when you were ordered to take you did so without question. Humanity was new: they had no niche or value that set them apart, but they had a penchant for killing and taking, so the Jurisdiction gave them a taste of how the galaxy worked. They killed and they took. The humans didn't like that, but what choice did they have?
Humans were strange. They learned, but not in the way most species learned. Most species learned to adapt in a passive way, to adhere to the world around them. They flowed like water, moving past and around obstacles and confirming to the boxes they were assigned too. Humans didn't confirm, nor did they adapt: they made their circumstances fit their desires. They would not move around obstacles, but rather smash through them, and they refused to stay in one box for too long. The Jurisdiction merely saw them as a particularly loud nuisance, but those who faced their wrath knew better.
It is said that when a beast seeks to make an example, it shall humble its rival by killing it's cubs. Children were one of those universal constants that brought entire communities together: the Sok’klar saw their hatchlings as gifts, shaped by the fruitful currents of the universe in perfect harmony. The Yarrack saw each and every newborn whelp as an uncut gemstone, ready to be shaped into something magical. Humanity oftentimes referred to their offspring as angels, or spirits of unbridled good sent by the gods themselves. Children were seen by most of the galaxy as gifts.
The Jurisdiction saw them as a lever to inflict suffering. It had become quite effective at enacting psychological punishments on those that stood up and spoke out. You dare to disobey? You believe you can speak out? Your gifts shall be taken from you, and you shall be without joy.
Humans didn't like this, but the Jurisdiction would have their pound of flesh, and humankind would kneel. And they did. But humans were patient creatures: most species who retained that trait of willful spit also lacked patience.
I had long since become desensitized to the Jurisdiction’s actions: it was simply how the universe worked now, as if it were a constant akin to gravity. Cruelty was the unspoken rule of this seemingly unending age, where our lives never appeared to move forward or backwards, only lay dormant. The Jurisdiction had been the unyielding authority that ruled the galaxy for thousands of years, venerable yet feared all the same.
And for the longest time I was just another cog in its wheel. My name is Kalnuracht Sedjuur-Noumar VII, and was the scion of the noble house Sedjuur-Noumar. I was born into what most would describe as veiled apathy, living a life that could be attributed to the privileged class of feared scribes that enacted the will of those above. I was an administrator and nothing more. And now I am doomed to be far less than that in the eyes of my former constituents within the endless administration. I am the only scion, as is tradition, and without an heir I am the last of my house, our name to be scrubbed from the records, worthless, meaningless, and forgotten.
I am merely Kalnuracht, nothing else and nothing more. I have seen from their eyes, the eyes of the downtrodden, and it makes my crimes of association with the Jurisdiction feel all the more damning on my worthless soul. I am worthless to the world, and this is my story.
End Personal Log #1
Start of Neural Lace Narrative Log #1
They came from the black like carrion birds in the night, encircling our convoy as if it were a dying animal ready to be picked clean without remorse. There was no warning, no list of demands sent out as civilized peoples did, nor was there either any requirement for unconditional surrender nor chance to parlay, as was done so under letter of marque: this was an unmistakable call for violence and nothing else. They sought to reduce us to slag and scavenge the rest.
So, as one would expect, the entire bridge of the ship was nearing a panicked state. This was not the actions of those practicing civility, but rather the common behaviors of despoiling barbarians, the kind that tore their way through the dark reaches of the galaxy as if they owned it.
“Wayfinder, what do your probes see?” Shouted the ship’s sovereign. He was an older Kar’Rowmach, an amphibious cephalopod species with a venerable history within the Jurisdiction going back thousands of years. Normally one such as him would be above me if it weren't for the fact that I was under the authority of the Jurisdiction’s seal of office. He didn't like me very much, but most of his kind shared the same sentiment.
“All dark, honorable Sovereign: the sensor arrays are wailing but the feedback we're reviewing is beyond incomprehensible,” the wayfinder replied with a certain restrained temper in his voice. The Sok'klar wayfinder swayed gently, his tentacled limbs grasping different metallo-liquid braille output arrays, the liquid gallium flexing and reshaping unnaturally to allow him to to take in multiple different sources of sensory output at once, with the primary navigation computer plugged into the cybernetics surrounding his opaque, gelatinous head and plugging directly into his tube-shaped brain.
The Sovereign cursed in Loskat and pointed to his bridge crew while I simply sat in the back, near the Sovereign’s symbolic throne. “Prepare countermeasures and spool up the warp drive, we cannot allow the amanuensis to be taken! He carries sensitive information that only he can translate and transcribe!”
As the bridge crew nodded and began fiddling with their own systems, I preened my feathered hide anxiously. I wasn't a fighter: us nobles of the cloth were the educated minority above all else, not those who waged war or partook in hard labor. Special cybernetics in my brain allowed me to translate triple-encoded messages that usually took a ducal signet codekey or above to parse, but even without that I was a skilled mathematician and logician. I had terabytes worth of knowledge stored within the hardware installed in my head, all well protected of course, but if I were to die it would still be a waste. I could only imagine the damage any malcontenders could do with it if they were able to get their filthy hands on me.
Suddenly, the ship rocked, and the gallium overhead display began to form crescendos like I'd never seen before. “Sovereign, decks A-3 through C-12 are venting atmosphere and our coolant systems have been obliterated,” the Wayfinder spoke in an almost serene voice, as if he was completely unconcerned by current events. I knew they were simply incapable of tonal displays, but it was unnerving nonetheless. “Once we jump, we will not be able to risk another until the vacuum of the void can reduce temperatures to acceptable levels within the plasma capacitors.”
“Damn them,” the armored nautiloid hissed, his barbed feelers coiling in frustration, “May the currents take them. What are our options? what can we see? This fleet cannot fall to the void today, not with such vital cargo.” My hackles rose lightly at the Kar’Rowmach referred to me as some object rather than an esteemed amanuensis of the Jurisdiction, but I bit my forked tongue. Now was not the time to squabble with the sovereign over who was what and what titles I deserved, not while he was so desperately attempting to keep what semblance of order within his fleet that he had left.
I could not blame the crew for being panicked either: wars were practically mythologized now, having been long since rendered obsolete with the rise of the Jurisdiction, and that felt like an eternity ago. Now, either being levied into or joining a ducal naval force was simply another career, more akin to serving as an officer of the law rather than a fully fledged soldier. Minimal training was required, most of it being the technicals of one's duty rather than any kind of combat conditioning, so expecting a fleet to actually be prepared for a combat scenario in a universe where peace was the norm was laughable.
“We are practically blind, Sovereign,” stated the Sok'klar Wayfinder, “our probes are offline, and shipboard graviton displacement sensory arrays have been rendered unreliable at best.”
“What about the particle emission array? Has there been a spike in radioactivity where we were hit?”
The Wayfinder seemed to think for a second, his gelatinous form flexing and morphing a bit before answering. “Affirmative, a jump from negligible to forty billion becquerels along decks A through E-5 on our starboard side.”
“Torpedoes…” the Sovereign hissed, stroking his barbed feelers, “Human Torpedoes. Only those primitives would rely on crude nuclear warheads.” He then turned to his militant leaders on the ship. “Noddos, Rel’ads: organize your phalanxes and prepare to repel boarders. We are bound to be assailed by those rancorous primates, and I want their skulls piled at my feet if they dare set foot on our ship.”
“Your wish is our command, Sovereign,” the two militant commanders spoke as one. Noddos, a large bipedal with multiple sets of curved spines running down his back, a pair of graceful horns sprouting from his head, and multiple rows of sharp teeth in his snout, bowed first, followed by Rel’ads, a marsupial with long saberteeth and thick fur. They both must have been fierce warriors in their own right to each lead a phalanx. They wore thick, semi-powered armor and held dueling polearms alongside their usual plasma casters, and seemed completely unfazed by the situation we were in. As they stomped out of the brightly lit bridge, I let out a quiet squawk of discontentment. “Sovereign, why haven't we jumped again? We are wasting precious time.”
“I am working on it, you spineless beaurocrat!” He warbled back, his feelers tensing in anger, “besides, it's not as if you're the one who will be spilling blood today, amanuensis, so flatten your wretched beak or I shall weld it shut with a plasma torch.
I was about to reply with something indignant, but the ship rocked again, this time causing the lights to flicker and the air to become… thick. The skin under my feathers began to blister, and I became lightheaded and confused. “Seal the damnable vents, initiate radiation scrubbers, and activate secondary life support!” Shouted the Sovereign, “Their nuclear weapons are rendering the ship inhospitable!”
I coughed up magenta blood accidentally, and I could feel more seeping from under my eyes. Some of the crew was in a similar position, but others were more resistant to radiation than I. The Sok'klar seemed completely at ease as he ran his tentacles across his morphic braille arrays before calmly announcing the ship’s status. “I've regained some control over our probes: ten, twelve, and seventeen are active and fully functional, the rest are either still malfunctioning or permanently inoperable. A rapid rise in localized radiation is also interfering with the detection of graviton displacement; we can't sense photon redirection, thus readings will remain inconclusive.
“Wayfinder, damn you, get me some kind of out here! We're easy prey until we can respond in kind!”
“Negative, something has gone awry with our processing hub, I am attempting to troubleshoot-”
And with that, the Wayfinder’s bulbous head exploded in a cascade of opaque lavender blood, covering the front half of the deck crew like a morbid art piece. Some of the crew screamed and shouted in terror before removing their cranial adaptors and choosing to interact with their displays manually. Others died just as quickly, unable to unplug in time as their brain stems fried or their blood boiled. It was a horrible way to go, having your insides neutralized by your own cybernetics, so I was glad I wasn't connected to the system.
“Cybernetic warfare! All systems are to be considered compromised, switch to manual settings or you'll be killed!”
The lights in the bridge flickered again, and the displays went haywire. The bridge crew, which obviously weren't acquainted with working without being hard-linked into the mainframe, moved at a much slower pace.
“Launch missile pods A through F and set to self-target after five hundred kilometers, then rely on their ballistic coordinates to begin firing broadsides! If we can't see the humans due to their meddling, we'll just have to feel them.” Shouted the Sovereign, “and got me a detailed report on the ship’s diagnostics readings. I need to know if this flagship is still capable of escaping or if we'll have to scuttle it and retreat on another.”
“Acknowledged, Sovereign, launching now,” affirmed another deck officer as he swiped across his own gallium output array. I could hear the dull thunk, thunk, thunk of missiles pushing out of their pods before racing off to their intended targets, then the mechanical whirring as the pods rotated to be reloaded by slaves in the lower decks. I was regaining my bearings as the many horrible sensations of being overwhelmed by radiation poisoning were beginning to subside, but I still felt as if I had been microwaved. The air was stale, the crew was horribly sick as well, and even the sovereign himself seemed to be on his last leg. I was beginning to believe that I might die here.
“Sovereign, a message from the lower decks,” shouted a communications officer, his chitin scraping against itself as he turned quickly, “they're requesting reinforcements, something about being overrun.”
“Impossible,” the Sovereign hissed out in a vain attempt to exude confidence, “We must outnumber the humans, they always go for bigger targets out of arrogance.”
“I've received reports that it's not just humans: the primates seem to make up only a third or so of the assailing force, along with some Phaeldaer and Vrex.”
The commander slammed his clawed hands down on his own output array in a fit of rage, obviously overwhelmed by the circumstances, “Then this wasn't just a typical assault, but something more sinister!” The nautiloid warbled, blood seeping from his shell as the full effects of the radiation took hold, “Get Rel’ads on the line, have him divert all spare lances to the lower decks or else we'll lose the only offensive capabilities we can use.”
“Rel'ads has gone dark, Sovereign, his vitals are critical.”
“Then either get me Rel'ads tail-leader or get me Noddos!” He screamed in rage, “don't give me this nonsense! If we don't pick it up we're all going to die, is that what you want?”
“No, Sovereign, I'm simply overwhelmed-”
“We're all overwhelmed! By the tides, I'm dying of radiation poisoning you nincompoop! Get me something I can work with!”
The officer didn't even acknowledge the Sovereign after that, simply turning back to his display. Eventually, the Sovereign was able to get Noddos on the line.
“Sovereign, two thirds of my phalanxes have been decimated by combat with the primitives and the radiation, the rest are in shambles. We must retreat and fortify elsewhere!”
“Then the ship is compromised! Rel'ads is unresponsive and the lower decks are swarming with intruders. We must evacuate the amanuensis to another ship.”
Just as the Sovereign spoke, I heard several gentle thumps rattle against the bridge’s door, and it made me uneasy. Some of the bridge crew seemed to feel the same, as they looked incredibly nervous and some even drew their sidearms. Just as the sovereign turned to give further orders, the door blew inward with a deafening explosion, followed by shouting and gunfire. Several of the bridge officers were dispatched quickly, brain matter and blood splattering against the delicate electronics. Others were shot in the legs, the torso, or in any other exotic yet non-vital body parts. The humans poured in, brandishing primitive ballistic firearms and jury-rigged energy weapons while wearing scavenged, legion-grade powered armor.
The Sovereign was the next to go, but he wasn't afforded an honorable death. He was shot along the arm with a particularly potent plasma caster, burning off his clawed hand and cauterizing the wound, the acrid smell of roasting chitin filling the already hot and cramped bridge. He fell back against his output array, the gallium reaching new highs and lows as more diagnostics and casualty reports were delivered, and he clutched his stump angrily. “I'll burn every last one of you in the foundries! I'll tie you to stakes, cover you in wax and set you alight! Your screams will be broadcasted all over the galaxy!”
One human warrior stomped up and slammed the butt of his rifle into the sovereign’s face, shattering his facial plates and causing blue blood to splatter across his section of the bridge. “Shut the fuck up, you mutant lobster,” the human said before dragging him by both antennae towards the center of the bridge and receiving a stained breeching axe from one of his comrades. “Emmanuel, start recording. We need proof.”
The other human nodded and pressed a button on his armor before lifting up his gun again. The rest of the humans fanned out, holding everyone else at gunpoint. I tried to get up and sneak out, but a human grabbed me by my neck and nearly wrung it out as he forced me to my knees and pointed a sidearm to my skull. “Get down, you piece of shit, before I blow your brains out too.”
“Damnable primate,” I hissed, but he bashed me in my skull with the base of his sidearm’s grip and sent me sprawling, making my already pounding headache worse. Another human shouted at him in a language I didn't recognize, but he sounded furious. The first brought me back up to my knees again, and I complies with a hiss and a groan, blood still leaking from my eyes and mouth and my world was spinning.
The Sovereign struggled, but he was weak from the radiation poisoning and he couldn't exactly resist on account of his lost arm. The human with the breaching ax kicked the Sovereign down and forced him to kneel before lifting up the breeching ax and splitting his chitinous head down the middle with one powerful swing, sending more blood and brains across the floor. “Execution confirmed, take his antennae just in case and we've got ourselves a bounty. Now all we need is that ugly cat’s teeth and the fat hedgehog-thing’s grimy spines and we'll be in business. Although, they do have skulls… we might as well just take their heads.”
The real horror of the situation dawned on me at that moment: they were going to kill us all, or maybe worse. They mentioned a bounty for the commanders, and multiple of the higher ranking ship officers were already dead, their brains splattered against the walls or their bodies torn apart by gunfire. I wasn't dead yet, but that didn't mean much since I wasn't an immediate threat.
“Alright, round them up and bring all the grunts to the hanger bay, then kill the rest,” the leader of the humans said in such a lackadaisical manner that his complete disregard for life almost made me sick… almost. I had seen worse from the Jurisdiction before, but usually that was from me delivering some kind of ordered judgment on a world that had sinned against order. I might have simply been the messenger, but I had seen many of the outcomes. “And make sure to collect whatever proof of bounties you can, we'll need to deliver them to the office to get cashed out. Don't let this be a repeat of last time where Juarez fucking forgot to take a few heads and it ended up cutting our profits in half, the fucking retard.”
Some of the humans chuckled at that as they dragged more of the senior officers away, out of the room and into the hall,where I heard gunshots. The rest of the bridge crew froze in place, different fear instincts kicking in. The remaining Sok'klar corralled together into what seemed to be a singular, semi-congealed mass as if to try and trick the humans into believing that they were much bigger and much more threatening than they actually were. The one Thei’chi on the bridge, an ensign who had clearly thought this would be a simple mission, bore her curved fangs at the humans and growled as they approached, her hackles completely vertical and her eyes dilated. They quickly muzzled and bound her before beating her over the head with a gun stock, sending her sprawling onto the ground. Many others simply cooperated, eyes wide and yet simultaneously empty, as if they couldn't quite process that the ship had been taken and the commanding officers were being executed as the rest were escorted to the hangar.
“Get the damn messenger down to the hanger as well, we need whatever data's in his ugly lizard head, then we can decide on what to do with him.”
I spat at him in spite, as if to try and seem brave, but it was clearly an empty gesture. “You won't get anything, primate! You couldn't possibly crack the encryption!”
The human holding me seemed to wind up for another swing, but the commanding officer simply held up his hand to stop my tormentor before strolling over to me. He knelt down and removed his helmet, revealing a beige-colored face covered in scars, wiry black hair cut down to the scalp, and multiple tattoos. “You're really fucking mouthy for a hostage,” he said before punching me across my beak faster than I could register. I heard a sharp crack as his fist connected, and my head spun again as the metallic taste of blood pooled into my mouth. “I'd advise you to shut up, but I'm sure you won't listen: you aristocratic types are so full of yourselves. Maybe I should have you flogged in the public square until your vocal chords give out once we rip those cybernetics from your head, huh? How's that sound?”
“It won't matter… it won't change anything… the Jurisdiction will hunt you down.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it will happen for some time: they really suck at doing anything that requires effort, even when they're mad enough. They just keep sending their rabid lapdogs to try and smoke us out, and they always end up full of holes,” the human officer said with a smirk, his yellowish-white teeth and green eyes sending shivers down my spine as he drew his knife. “They're just horrible at their job, you know? You've all gotten so lazy and incompetent after being able to just take what you want without resistance, and now that you've met people who are angry and crazy enough to fight back you act as if we're committing some grave injustice,” he placed the knife against my throat, the flat just underneath my now bent beak, “No, we just took a few pages out of your book, ‘cept we've got standards. No kids, for one…” he seemed to look off into the distance as his sneer deepened, “but it's more than that, we don't attack the defenseless in general and we still win against you all in fair fights.”
I went to say something else snarky, but he quickly grabbed my thin tongue with his fingers and yanked it out, blood from my mouth pulling to the floor as he held the blade of his knife against it. “No no, none of that. Say one more thing and I'll cut that rancid little tongue of yours out of your mouth and feed it to you,” he hissed at me, pressing the blade down just hard enough to draw blood. “Do you know what it's like to see a planet turn into a tomb?" he asked me, gritting his teeth, “Do you know what it's like to see everything you've ever known crumble to ash and glass, all the life and the green stripped away leaving nothing but bones? I do. I've seen it happen to countless worlds, and my grandfather always told me stories of how you bastards did it to Earth. He still prays in its direction five times a day, to Mecca, but he knows the Kaaba is gone now, or maybe it's still there, buried in the bones of those who sought refuge there.”
I didn't care for the human’s nonsensical beliefs, but I did care to correct him. “I've seen it before, and I'll see it again. And so will you, it's inevitable. The Jurisdiction will always have its judgment fulfilled, there is no alternative.”
“One day, I hope we can rectify that,” he said, then he sheathed his knife and slammed my head against the metal floor with enough force to nearly knock me out. As I lost consciousness, I could hear him speak. “Take him to the Chop Doc, and make sure the cybernetics don't get damaged: they're supposedly more valuable than any bounty on this ship.”
Warning: Severe radiation poisoning detected. Flush system immediately.
Warning: Neural Lace removal detected, chance of neurological damage high. Proceeded with caution.
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Start of Personal Log
Humans don't like being told what to do. They don't like being commanded, put in their place, or snubbed. It was an inexorable, inalienable trait of humans, at least any noteable humans, to go against any authority that they believed was against their interests.
Humanity would not fit amongst the stars. Few ever did. It was a trait of most successful species to be willful, ambitious, and to desire more. But once they reached the stars the new (and simultaneously very old) pecking order either quashed any spirit such species had or simply eradicated them. Countless tomb worlds and diaspora served as painful reminders of what became of the nails that chose to stick out. The hammer of order would always strike. There could be no compromise, the very soul of the authority that held the Jurisdiction together relied on a show of unmatched power, or at least the illusion of item.
In reality, the Jurisdiction was an old, fat, and lazy beast. It filled its belly on the corpses of empires far and wide, and sated its bloodlust on the shattered dreams of hopeful cubs. It had every right to, for none could challenge it: there were no new frontiers to explore, nor were there any other enemies to conquer. The Milky Way, as humans had so strangely dubbed our cradle galaxy, as well as Andromeda, had long since been warred over and settled for millennia before humanity had arrived, bright-eyed and with familiar yet otherwise foolish dreams of cooperation and prosperity. The Jurisdiction did not cooperate, nor did it ensure prosperity. Oh, it claimed it did, but in reality it simply took. The rest was just the peace that came with not being the direct target of the biggest fish in the pond. The humans didn't like that, but they had no choice.
Slavery was a common tribute. The Jurisdiction had no use for other resources: it simply took. No, it wanted those who could facilitate that unequal exchange, those raised in a world where the only morality was the one set by your lord. The Jurisdiction was held together by expectations, obligations, and dury more than any kind of shared dream, so when you were ordered to take you did so without question. Humanity was new: they had no niche or value that set them apart, but they had a penchant for killing and taking, so the Jurisdiction gave them a taste of how the galaxy worked. They killed and they took. The humans didn't like that, but what choice did they have?
Humans were strange. They learned, but not in the way most species learned. Most species learned to adapt in a passive way, to adhere to the world around them. They flowed like water, moving past and around obstacles and confirming to the boxes they were assigned too. Humans didn't confirm, nor did they adapt: they made their circumstances fit their desires. They would not move around obstacles, but rather smash through them, and they refused to stay in one box for too long. The Jurisdiction merely saw them as a particularly loud nuisance, but those who faced their wrath knew better.
It is said that when a beast seeks to make an example, it shall humble its rival by killing it's cubs. Children were one of those universal constants that brought entire communities together: the Sok’klar saw their hatchlings as gifts, shaped by the fruitful currents of the universe in perfect harmony. The Yarrack saw each and every newborn whelp as an uncut gemstone, ready to be shaped into something magical. Humanity oftentimes referred to their offspring as angels, or spirits of unbridled good sent by the gods themselves. Children were seen by most of the galaxy as gifts.
The Jurisdiction saw them as a lever to inflict suffering. It had become quite effective at enacting psychological punishments on those that stood up and spoke out. You dare to disobey? You believe you can speak out? Your gifts shall be taken from you, and you shall be without joy.
Humans didn't like this, but the Jurisdiction would have their pound of flesh, and humankind would kneel. And they did. But humans were patient creatures: most species who retained that trait of willful spit also lacked patience.
I had long since become desensitized to the Jurisdiction’s actions: it was simply how the universe worked now, as if it were a constant akin to gravity. Cruelty was the unspoken rule of this seemingly unending age, where our lives never appeared to move forward or backwards, only lay dormant. The Jurisdiction had been the unyielding authority that ruled the galaxy for thousands of years, venerable yet feared all the same.
And for the longest time I was just another cog in its wheel. My name is Kalnuracht Sedjuur-Noumar VII, and was the scion of the noble house Sedjuur-Noumar. I was born into what most would describe as veiled apathy, living a life that could be attributed to the privileged class of feared scribes that enacted the will of those above. I was an administrator and nothing more. And now I am doomed to be far less than that in the eyes of my former constituents within the endless administration. I am the only scion, as is tradition, and without an heir I am the last of my house, our name to be scrubbed from the records, worthless, meaningless, and forgotten.
I am merely Kalnuracht, nothing else and nothing more. I have seen from their eyes, the eyes of the downtrodden, and it makes my crimes of association with the Jurisdiction feel all the more damning on my worthless soul. I am worthless to the world, and this is my story.
End Personal Log #1
Start of Neural Lace Narrative Log #1
They came from the black like carrion birds in the night, encircling our convoy as if it were a dying animal ready to be picked clean without remorse. There was no warning, no list of demands sent out as civilized peoples did, nor was there either any requirement for unconditional surrender nor chance to parlay, as was done so under letter of marque: this was an unmistakable call for violence and nothing else. They sought to reduce us to slag and scavenge the rest.
So, as one would expect, the entire bridge of the ship was nearing a panicked state. This was not the actions of those practicing civility, but rather the common behaviors of despoiling barbarians, the kind that tore their way through the dark reaches of the galaxy as if they owned it.
“Wayfinder, what do your probes see?” Shouted the ship’s sovereign. He was an older Kar’Rowmach, an amphibious cephalopod species with a venerable history within the Jurisdiction going back thousands of years. Normally one such as him would be above me if it weren't for the fact that I was under the authority of the Jurisdiction’s seal of office. He didn't like me very much, but most of his kind shared the same sentiment.
“All dark, honorable Sovereign: the sensor arrays are wailing but the feedback we're reviewing is beyond incomprehensible,” the wayfinder replied with a certain restrained temper in his voice. The Sok'klar wayfinder swayed gently, his tentacled limbs grasping different metallo-liquid braille output arrays, the liquid gallium flexing and reshaping unnaturally to allow him to to take in multiple different sources of sensory output at once, with the primary navigation computer plugged into the cybernetics surrounding his opaque, gelatinous head and plugging directly into his tube-shaped brain.
The Sovereign cursed in Loskat and pointed to his bridge crew while I simply sat in the back, near the Sovereign’s symbolic throne. “Prepare countermeasures and spool up the warp drive, we cannot allow the amanuensis to be taken! He carries sensitive information that only he can translate and transcribe!”
As the bridge crew nodded and began fiddling with their own systems, I preened my feathered hide anxiously. I wasn't a fighter: us nobles of the cloth were the educated minority above all else, not those who waged war or partook in hard labor. Special cybernetics in my brain allowed me to translate triple-encoded messages that usually took a ducal signet codekey or above to parse, but even without that I was a skilled mathematician and logician. I had terabytes worth of knowledge stored within the hardware installed in my head, all well protected of course, but if I were to die it would still be a waste. I could only imagine the damage any malcontenders could do with it if they were able to get their filthy hands on me.
Suddenly, the ship rocked, and the gallium overhead display began to form crescendos like I'd never seen before. “Sovereign, decks A-3 through C-12 are venting atmosphere and our coolant systems have been obliterated,” the Wayfinder spoke in an almost serene voice, as if he was completely unconcerned by current events. I knew they were simply incapable of tonal displays, but it was unnerving nonetheless. “Once we jump, we will not be able to risk another until the vacuum of the void can reduce temperatures to acceptable levels within the plasma capacitors.”
“Damn them,” the armored nautiloid hissed, his barbed feelers coiling in frustration, “May the currents take them. What are our options? what can we see? This fleet cannot fall to the void today, not with such vital cargo.” My hackles rose lightly at the Kar’Rowmach referred to me as some object rather than an esteemed amanuensis of the Jurisdiction, but I bit my forked tongue. Now was not the time to squabble with the sovereign over who was what and what titles I deserved, not while he was so desperately attempting to keep what semblance of order within his fleet that he had left.
I could not blame the crew for being panicked either: wars were practically mythologized now, having been long since rendered obsolete with the rise of the Jurisdiction, and that felt like an eternity ago. Now, either being levied into or joining a ducal naval force was simply another career, more akin to serving as an officer of the law rather than a fully fledged soldier. Minimal training was required, most of it being the technicals of one's duty rather than any kind of combat conditioning, so expecting a fleet to actually be prepared for a combat scenario in a universe where peace was the norm was laughable.
“We are practically blind, Sovereign,” stated the Sok'klar Wayfinder, “our probes are offline, and shipboard graviton displacement sensory arrays have been rendered unreliable at best.”
“What about the particle emission array? Has there been a spike in radioactivity where we were hit?”
The Wayfinder seemed to think for a second, his gelatinous form flexing and morphing a bit before answering. “Affirmative, a jump from negligible to forty billion becquerels along decks A through E-5 on our starboard side.”
“Torpedoes…” the Sovereign hissed, stroking his barbed feelers, “Human Torpedoes. Only those primitives would rely on crude nuclear warheads.” He then turned to his militant leaders on the ship. “Noddos, Rel’ads: organize your phalanxes and prepare to repel boarders. We are bound to be assailed by those rancorous primates, and I want their skulls piled at my feet if they dare set foot on our ship.”
“Your wish is our command, Sovereign,” the two militant commanders spoke as one. Noddos, a large bipedal with multiple sets of curved spines running down his back, a pair of graceful horns sprouting from his head, and multiple rows of sharp teeth in his snout, bowed first, followed by Rel’ads, a marsupial with long saberteeth and thick fur. They both must have been fierce warriors in their own right to each lead a phalanx. They wore thick, semi-powered armor and held dueling polearms alongside their usual plasma casters, and seemed completely unfazed by the situation we were in. As they stomped out of the brightly lit bridge, I let out a quiet squawk of discontentment. “Sovereign, why haven't we jumped again? We are wasting precious time.”
“I am working on it, you spineless beaurocrat!” He warbled back, his feelers tensing in anger, “besides, it's not as if you're the one who will be spilling blood today, amanuensis, so flatten your wretched beak or I shall weld it shut with a plasma torch.
I was about to reply with something indignant, but the ship rocked again, this time causing the lights to flicker and the air to become… thick. The skin under my feathers began to blister, and I became lightheaded and confused. “Seal the damnable vents, initiate radiation scrubbers, and activate secondary life support!” Shouted the Sovereign, “Their nuclear weapons are rendering the ship inhospitable!”
I coughed up magenta blood accidentally, and I could feel more seeping from under my eyes. Some of the crew was in a similar position, but others were more resistant to radiation than I. The Sok'klar seemed completely at ease as he ran his tentacles across his morphic braille arrays before calmly announcing the ship’s status. “I've regained some control over our probes: ten, twelve, and seventeen are active and fully functional, the rest are either still malfunctioning or permanently inoperable. A rapid rise in localized radiation is also interfering with the detection of graviton displacement; we can't sense photon redirection, thus readings will remain inconclusive.
“Wayfinder, damn you, get me some kind of out here! We're easy prey until we can respond in kind!”
“Negative, something has gone awry with our processing hub, I am attempting to troubleshoot-”
And with that, the Wayfinder’s bulbous head exploded in a cascade of opaque lavender blood, covering the front half of the deck crew like a morbid art piece. Some of the crew screamed and shouted in terror before removing their cranial adaptors and choosing to interact with their displays manually. Others died just as quickly, unable to unplug in time as their brain stems fried or their blood boiled. It was a horrible way to go, having your insides neutralized by your own cybernetics, so I was glad I wasn't connected to the system.
“Cybernetic warfare! All systems are to be considered compromised, switch to manual settings or you'll be killed!”
The lights in the bridge flickered again, and the displays went haywire. The bridge crew, which obviously weren't acquainted with working without being hard-linked into the mainframe, moved at a much slower pace.
“Launch missile pods A through F and set to self-target after five hundred kilometers, then rely on their ballistic coordinates to begin firing broadsides! If we can't see the humans due to their meddling, we'll just have to feel them.” Shouted the Sovereign, “and got me a detailed report on the ship’s diagnostics readings. I need to know if this flagship is still capable of escaping or if we'll have to scuttle it and retreat on another.”
“Acknowledged, Sovereign, launching now,” affirmed another deck officer as he swiped across his own gallium output array. I could hear the dull thunk, thunk, thunk of missiles pushing out of their pods before racing off to their intended targets, then the mechanical whirring as the pods rotated to be reloaded by slaves in the lower decks. I was regaining my bearings as the many horrible sensations of being overwhelmed by radiation poisoning were beginning to subside, but I still felt as if I had been microwaved. The air was stale, the crew was horribly sick as well, and even the sovereign himself seemed to be on his last leg. I was beginning to believe that I might die here.
“Sovereign, a message from the lower decks,” shouted a communications officer, his chitin scraping against itself as he turned quickly, “they're requesting reinforcements, something about being overrun.”
“Impossible,” the Sovereign hissed out in a vain attempt to exude confidence, “We must outnumber the humans, they always go for bigger targets out of arrogance.”
“I've received reports that it's not just humans: the primates seem to make up only a third or so of the assailing force, along with some Phaeldaer and Vrex.”
The commander slammed his clawed hands down on his own output array in a fit of rage, obviously overwhelmed by the circumstances, “Then this wasn't just a typical assault, but something more sinister!” The nautiloid warbled, blood seeping from his shell as the full effects of the radiation took hold, “Get Rel’ads on the line, have him divert all spare lances to the lower decks or else we'll lose the only offensive capabilities we can use.”
“Rel'ads has gone dark, Sovereign, his vitals are critical.”
“Then either get me Rel'ads tail-leader or get me Noddos!” He screamed in rage, “don't give me this nonsense! If we don't pick it up we're all going to die, is that what you want?”
“No, Sovereign, I'm simply overwhelmed-”
“We're all overwhelmed! By the tides, I'm dying of radiation poisoning you nincompoop! Get me something I can work with!”
The officer didn't even acknowledge the Sovereign after that, simply turning back to his display. Eventually, the Sovereign was able to get Noddos on the line.
“Sovereign, two thirds of my phalanxes have been decimated by combat with the primitives and the radiation, the rest are in shambles. We must retreat and fortify elsewhere!”
“Then the ship is compromised! Rel'ads is unresponsive and the lower decks are swarming with intruders. We must evacuate the amanuensis to another ship.”
Just as the Sovereign spoke, I heard several gentle thumps rattle against the bridge’s door, and it made me uneasy. Some of the bridge crew seemed to feel the same, as they looked incredibly nervous and some even drew their sidearms. Just as the sovereign turned to give further orders, the door blew inward with a deafening explosion, followed by shouting and gunfire. Several of the bridge officers were dispatched quickly, brain matter and blood splattering against the delicate electronics. Others were shot in the legs, the torso, or in any other exotic yet non-vital body parts. The humans poured in, brandishing primitive ballistic firearms and jury-rigged energy weapons while wearing scavenged, legion-grade powered armor.
The Sovereign was the next to go, but he wasn't afforded an honorable death. He was shot along the arm with a particularly potent plasma caster, burning off his clawed hand and cauterizing the wound, the acrid smell of roasting chitin filling the already hot and cramped bridge. He fell back against his output array, the gallium reaching new highs and lows as more diagnostics and casualty reports were delivered, and he clutched his stump angrily. “I'll burn every last one of you in the foundries! I'll tie you to stakes, cover you in wax and set you alight! Your screams will be broadcasted all over the galaxy!”
One human warrior stomped up and slammed the butt of his rifle into the sovereign’s face, shattering his facial plates and causing blue blood to splatter across his section of the bridge. “Shut the fuck up, you mutant lobster,” the human said before dragging him by both antennae towards the center of the bridge and receiving a stained breeching axe from one of his comrades. “Emmanuel, start recording. We need proof.”
The other human nodded and pressed a button on his armor before lifting up his gun again. The rest of the humans fanned out, holding everyone else at gunpoint. I tried to get up and sneak out, but a human grabbed me by my neck and nearly wrung it out as he forced me to my knees and pointed a sidearm to my skull. “Get down, you piece of shit, before I blow your brains out too.”
“Damnable primate,” I hissed, but he bashed me in my skull with the base of his sidearm’s grip and sent me sprawling, making my already pounding headache worse. Another human shouted at him in a language I didn't recognize, but he sounded furious. The first brought me back up to my knees again, and I complies with a hiss and a groan, blood still leaking from my eyes and mouth and my world was spinning.
The Sovereign struggled, but he was weak from the radiation poisoning and he couldn't exactly resist on account of his lost arm. The human with the breaching ax kicked the Sovereign down and forced him to kneel before lifting up the breeching ax and splitting his chitinous head down the middle with one powerful swing, sending more blood and brains across the floor. “Execution confirmed, take his antennae just in case and we've got ourselves a bounty. Now all we need is that ugly cat’s teeth and the fat hedgehog-thing’s grimy spines and we'll be in business. Although, they do have skulls… we might as well just take their heads.”
The real horror of the situation dawned on me at that moment: they were going to kill us all, or maybe worse. They mentioned a bounty for the commanders, and multiple of the higher ranking ship officers were already dead, their brains splattered against the walls or their bodies torn apart by gunfire. I wasn't dead yet, but that didn't mean much since I wasn't an immediate threat.
“Alright, round them up and bring all the grunts to the hanger bay, then kill the rest,” the leader of the humans said in such a lackadaisical manner that his complete disregard for life almost made me sick… almost. I had seen worse from the Jurisdiction before, but usually that was from me delivering some kind of ordered judgment on a world that had sinned against order. I might have simply been the messenger, but I had seen many of the outcomes. “And make sure to collect whatever proof of bounties you can, we'll need to deliver them to the office to get cashed out. Don't let this be a repeat of last time where Juarez fucking forgot to take a few heads and it ended up cutting our profits in half, the fucking retard.”
Some of the humans chuckled at that as they dragged more of the senior officers away, out of the room and into the hall,where I heard gunshots. The rest of the bridge crew froze in place, different fear instincts kicking in. The remaining Sok'klar corralled together into what seemed to be a singular, semi-congealed mass as if to try and trick the humans into believing that they were much bigger and much more threatening than they actually were. The one Thei’chi on the bridge, an ensign who had clearly thought this would be a simple mission, bore her curved fangs at the humans and growled as they approached, her hackles completely vertical and her eyes dilated. They quickly muzzled and bound her before beating her over the head with a gun stock, sending her sprawling onto the ground. Many others simply cooperated, eyes wide and yet simultaneously empty, as if they couldn't quite process that the ship had been taken and the commanding officers were being executed as the rest were escorted to the hangar.
“Get the damn messenger down to the hanger as well, we need whatever data's in his ugly lizard head, then we can decide on what to do with him.”
I spat at him in spite, as if to try and seem brave, but it was clearly an empty gesture. “You won't get anything, primate! You couldn't possibly crack the encryption!”
The human holding me seemed to wind up for another swing, but the commanding officer simply held up his hand to stop my tormentor before strolling over to me. He knelt down and removed his helmet, revealing a beige-colored face covered in scars, wiry black hair cut down to the scalp, and multiple tattoos. “You're really fucking mouthy for a hostage,” he said before punching me across my beak faster than I could register. I heard a sharp crack as his fist connected, and my head spun again as the metallic taste of blood pooled into my mouth. “I'd advise you to shut up, but I'm sure you won't listen: you aristocratic types are so full of yourselves. Maybe I should have you flogged in the public square until your vocal chords give out once we rip those cybernetics from your head, huh? How's that sound?”
“It won't matter… it won't change anything… the Jurisdiction will hunt you down.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it will happen for some time: they really suck at doing anything that requires effort, even when they're mad enough. They just keep sending their rabid lapdogs to try and smoke us out, and they always end up full of holes,” the human officer said with a smirk, his yellowish-white teeth and green eyes sending shivers down my spine as he drew his knife. “They're just horrible at their job, you know? You've all gotten so lazy and incompetent after being able to just take what you want without resistance, and now that you've met people who are angry and crazy enough to fight back you act as if we're committing some grave injustice,” he placed the knife against my throat, the flat just underneath my now bent beak, “No, we just took a few pages out of your book, ‘cept we've got standards. No kids, for one…” he seemed to look off into the distance as his sneer deepened, “but it's more than that, we don't attack the defenseless in general and we still win against you all in fair fights.”
I went to say something else snarky, but he quickly grabbed my thin tongue with his fingers and yanked it out, blood from my mouth pulling to the floor as he held the blade of his knife against it. “No no, none of that. Say one more thing and I'll cut that rancid little tongue of yours out of your mouth and feed it to you,” he hissed at me, pressing the blade down just hard enough to draw blood. “Do you know what it's like to see a planet turn into a tomb?" he asked me, gritting his teeth, “Do you know what it's like to see everything you've ever known crumble to ash and glass, all the life and the green stripped away leaving nothing but bones? I do. I've seen it happen to countless worlds, and my grandfather always told me stories of how you bastards did it to Earth. He still prays in its direction five times a day, to Mecca, but he knows the Kaaba is gone now, or maybe it's still there, buried in the bones of those who sought refuge there.”
I didn't care for the human’s nonsensical beliefs, but I did care to correct him. “I've seen it before, and I'll see it again. And so will you, it's inevitable. The Jurisdiction will always have its judgment fulfilled, there is no alternative.”
“One day, I hope we can rectify that,” he said, then he sheathed his knife and slammed my head against the metal floor with enough force to nearly knock me out. As I lost consciousness, I could hear him speak. “Take him to the Chop Doc, and make sure the cybernetics don't get damaged: they're supposedly more valuable than any bounty on this ship.”
Warning: Severe radiation poisoning detected. Flush system immediately.
Warning: Neural Lace removal detected, chance of neurological damage high. Proceeded with caution.
2024.05.19 15:48 lightingnations I found my girlfriend’s secret Google account and it feels like our entire relationship was built on a lie
I met Luna on a train two years ago. I’d just escaped from a toxic relationship, so romance was the last thing on my mind, but then she sat across from me in the carriage and asked about the book I was reading. She had a copy in her bag and wanted to know if it was any good.
I'd never felt such an instant, effortless connection with anybody before. I took a chance and asked her to dinner, and by the time the waiters cleared away our desserts, I already felt comfortable being vulnerable around her. So we went on a second date. And a third. And next thing I knew, we were planning our second anniversary.
In all that time she never gave off any 'creeper' vibes. Until a few months ago, when I stayed the night over at her place...
She'd gotten up early to use the bathroom. I grabbed her laptop off the side desk so I could catch up on some work e-mails, and the incognito tab was just sitting there. My first thought was: either she's having an affair or she's got a secret fetish.
What I found instead was a Google account with a photo album called ‘Michael’s EX’. In it, there were 427 photos of my former girlfriend turned psycho stalker, Sadie. This included shots of ‘Sadie the stalker’ with her family, screenshots of her passport—the works. On Facebook, Sadie's latest post said Moving to the Philippines, and since then she’d become a social media church mouse, so how did Luna keep her under surveillance? And how did you even get PERSONAL ID from a person halfway across the globe?
Down the hall, I heard the bathroom door swing open. Quickly I closed the laptop and pretended to be asleep until Luna planted a kiss on my lips. “Wakey wakey Bugs.”
I faked a stretch. “Morning Lola."
(At school, the other kids christened me ‘Bugs’ because of my cartoonishly large front teeth; I called Luna ‘Lola’ because of her blonde bangs and heart-shaped face.)
“How about we grab a fry for breakfast?” Her smile didn’t seem genuine, more like she was wearing a mask.
“Crap. I forgot I’m doing overtime today, I’ve gotta get to work.” With that, I shot out of there faster than a bullet train to Tokyo.
Because I didn’t wanna believe the worst about someone I cared so deeply about, I didn’t contact the police (not that anybody could’ve guessed what Luna was up to) and made excuses whenever she asked to meet, delaying the decision whether to end our relationship.
At night, I couldn’t sleep. Every time a hedge rustled outside, I’d run to the window and pull back the curtain only to discover a black cat skulking around the garden. I put this down to my previous relationship leaving me with a mountain of unresolved PTSD.
Sadie the stalker also seemed normal until we moved in together. After that she started picking fights if she caught me talking to another woman, even just distant relatives or childhood friends. The screaming matches went from weekly to nightly, only ever ending when I conceded to her every wish and gave her full access to my phone and social media accounts. I literally needed to grab my clothes into a bag and run away one night, and then I started hearing noises outside my new apartment. And although I never found any evidence, I was pretty sure she’d broken in at one point because the books on my side table were suddenly out of order one day. What hurt the most was Luna knew all this and still acted the way she did.
Right as I reached my lowest point, my close friend Gertrude called and said, “The universe is telling me you could use a sympathetic ear.”
I told her the universe didn’t know the half of it.
I’d met Gertrude—aka my surrogate mother—on a flight to London. Passing over Wales the aircraft hit heavy turbulence, and the grey-haired hippie in the seat next to mine squeezed my hand so tight that my fingers turned blue. After we levelled off, she apologized and said, “So what’s calling you to London?”
“A job.”
A few glasses of wine from the service trolley later, she blurted out, “You know your aura is strikingly similar to my husbands.”
“Uhh, thanks. Where is he now?”
“Oh, he burned to death in a house fire.”
Gertrude’s eyes started welling up. To take her mind off the subject, I said, “I lied earlier. I’m going to London because I fell in love with a Londoner.” I pulled up pictures of Sadie (back in her pre-stalker days) on my phone. “We met in Italy. She looked flustered trying to read a map book so I offered to help. Next thing I knew, we were planning a trip to this place called Orvieto.”
“Michael, I need to know how this story ends. Gimme your number.”
Since then, we’d met two or three times a year.
I laid the whole mess out over pizza. It was the first time since finding the Google account I didn’t feel hidden eyes crawling all over me.
Just as I wrapped up the story, over in the corner booth, a family burst into a chorus of happy birthday. A waiter appeared carrying a chocolate cake, capped by a giant candle that looked more like a flare. Gertrude tensed up.
“So what do you think about all this?” I asked.
She looked back at me and said, “It’s possible your reaction has been a touch on the dramatic side.”
“DRAMATIC??”
“Well consider things from Luna’s point of view. Your last relationship lasted for, what, three years? Maybe she felt threatened.”
“I don’t believe this.” I grabbed a cigarette from my pocket, but Gertrude snatched it away.
“You know how I feel about you poisoning your lungs, Michael.”
“Don’t you start. I got enough of that crap from Luna.”
Gertrude always encouraged me to work through my romantic problems. Ultimately, I decided her love of fairytale romances clouded her judgement and ghosted Luna instead. But I couldn’t escape her shadow. She always felt close. In fact, it got so bad that at a friend’s costume party several weeks later, my eyes kept compulsively scanning the crowd as if she was there in disguise, ready to pounce.
I stood off to the corner until, over the sea of heads, I spotted a beautiful stranger dressed as Jarlath the Goblin King. I took a shot of liquid courage and made a B-line towards her.
Halfway across the crowded room, beer splashed across the front of my Ziggy Stardust outfit.
“I am so sorry,” a female pirate said, patting me dry.
“Don’t worry about it.” Every time I tried circling her, she moved to cut me off.
“I am such a klutz. Why don’t you come into the kitchen so I can clean up this mess?”
I put my hands on her shoulders and steered her out of the way. “It’s fine. Trust me.”
Approaching Jarlath from behind, heart slamming against my chest, I said, “Well this is awkward. One of us is gonna have to change.”
Jennie had bright blue eyes and dimples impossible to miss. Ten minutes into our debate about David Bowie’s greatest album, I said, “You know Absolute Bowie are playing the Half Moon next week. I could take you?”
“Sorry. I’m going with my boyfriend,” she said with a sympathetic smile. From beside the buffet table, the pirate stared daggers in our direction.
“No worries,” I replied, despite the fact I was brimming with jealousy.
The next day, as I jogged off my hangover, a brown-haired lady cut across my path and we both went spinning to the ground.
“Flip, sorry.” I rushed to pull her up by the hands. “I’m like a bloody zombie lately.”
She did a doubletake. “Ziggy, right?”
There was no mistaking those eyes. “Jarlath?”
“Well, Jarlath or Jennie. Eithers fine.”
“Right. Well, sorry again. Enjoy Absolute Bowie.”
Before I could jog away, she said, “Hey, so that guy I was seeing? Turns out he’s a total prick.”
Jennie and I went for coffee. Coffee morphed into drinks. Drinks morphed into a steamy make-out session on my sofa.
But as she covered my neck in soft kisses, my stomach turned. It felt like cheating. So, I put the brakes on things and said, “I can’t do this. I’m really sorry. You’re amazing, but I just got out of a serious relationship…and…it’s just…”
“Hey, don’t worry about it.”
We agreed we’d let our connection blossom in its own time.
Jennie had a playful mystique to her. Within a handful of dates, we’d developed inside jokes and could tell what the other was thinking. But Luna’s imprint was hard to shake, to the extent I almost mixed up the two ladies’ names multiple times.
To detox, I suggested Jennie and I spend a romantic weekend in the Lake District, because after two days of hiking and kayaking my ex would no doubt be a spec in the rearview mirror.
Hours before we set off, however, Luna’s mom called. She wanted to meet and wouldn’t accept any excuses.
“Look, it’s obvious why I’m here,” she said, sitting across from me in Starbucks. “Ever since you and Luna broke up, she’s been acting…different.”
“Different? Different how?”
“I call but she hardly answers. I go over to her place but she’s never there. Now she’s telling me she needs to find herself. Says she’s moving to Australia.”
Her fingers tightened around her cup. “I need to know what happened between you two. And I don’t care if that paints anybody in a bad light. I’m just worried about my daughter is all.”
I told her about the Google account.
“Did you confront her about it?”
“Hell no. I ghosted that crazy bitc—” I cleared my throat. “I mean, I just…stopped seeing her.”
She started crying so loudly customers at nearby tables paused their conversations. I touched her forearm, promised I’d call if I remembered anything else, then set off for my romantic weekend.
But while Jennie and I enjoyed all that fresh air and pub food, a thought nagged at me. Luna adored London, so why move to Australia? It seemed so out of character. Back at our rented cottage, I was so fixated on the thought I needed a smoke, badly.
“What the hell is that?” Jennie demanded, as she stepped onto the front deck.
I glanced at my hands. “Uhh, a cigarette.”
“Michael! Don’t be sarcastic. You know how I feel about those things.”
“…Do I?”
“Uhh, well it’s the same as anybody else. Quit poisoning your lungs and put that thing out.”
“Alright alright, geeze. Sorry Luna.”
“That’s okay.”
A knot formed in my stomach as she went back inside. I’d called Jennie Luna by mistake. And she hadn’t noticed. In fact, her reaction to me smoking was identical to Luna’s—even the snappy way she said the ‘poison your lungs’ line.
I followed Jennie into the lounge, where she’d curled up on an armchair with a Colleen Hoover novel. She was hiding something. What else did she know about Luna? Maybe I could trick her into revealing some details…
From behind, I started massaging her shoulders. “Sorry for being rude before. I know what you said came from a place of love.”
“That’s okay.”
I waited until her eyes drooped shut, then said, “It really is perfect here, huh? Maybe we should stay forever.”
“Wouldn’t that be amazing?”
Her little groans of pleasure, the rhythm of her breathing, it all felt so familiar. I waited until the tension in her neck dissolved, then I pushed my lips against her ear and whispered, “So how about we take this into the bedroom…Lola.”
“Hmm. Sure thing Bugs.”
My hands froze. Jennie jumped up. “Uhh, that felt so good, why’d you stop?”
“What did you just say?”
“What did you just say?”
“I called you Lola,” I replied, my arms frozen in midair. “And you called me bugs.”
“Like the cartoon, right? I thought it’d be a cute nickname. Anyway, I’m tuckered out.” She forced a yawn. “Why don’t we get some sleep?”
As her hand laced with mine, an image of me waking up drugged and gagged and tied to the bedposts flashed before my eyes.
I said, “Sure. I just…need to use the bathroom first.”
The second the door shut behind me, I flew out of the house, climbed in my car, and sped away.
Within seconds my phone started blowing up with calls, followed by texts. Where are you going? Is everything okay?
No, I wanted to reply. I’m onto your sick little game. Whatever it is, I’m onto it.
Luna stalked my stalker, now Jennie somehow knew Luna and I’s nicknames. How? Did all women take turns drawing straws and whoever picked the short one needed to become my girlfriend?
I couldn’t go home. For all I knew, my exes would’ve been there burning effigies of me. I needed a safe place. Somewhere I could lie low until I got all this straightened out.
“Of course you can stay,” Gertrude said over the phone. “I’m out with some friends, but I’ll meet you later. If you hop the side gate there’s a spare key under the kissing gnomes out back.”
Gertrude lived in a detached house in Wembley. It took a bit of foraging to find the gnomes hidden beneath the weeds in the brown, patchy garden.
I needed to shoulder the door open. Inside, a mountain of letters and flyers had piled up on the welcome mat.
Down the hall, a huge archway connected the landing with a lounge, where a bar sat against the far wall, surrounded by upholstered sofas, a low table, and tie dye sheets strung over the filthy carpet. Everything had a real elegant vibe, despite the musty air.
I’d drained two glasses of whiskey before Gertrude arrived.
“Looks like you’ve had a rough evening.”
I said we could talk in the morning.
“Not a chance. You can’t take negative energy to bed. Come on, confession is good for the soul.”
She sat on the sofa and patted the empty seat next to her. So, with a weary sigh, I shared a tale of deranged exes.
“Crazy,” she said.
“I sure can pick ‘em, huh?”
“No, I mean you’re crazy.”
“What?”
“Think about it. What’s more likely: that your ex’s are secretly in collusion, or you’re being paranoid? Look how bloodshot your eyes are. When’s the last time you got a good night’s rest?”
She made a great point; teenagers on the street occasionally shouted ‘Bugs’ or ‘Thumper’ at me. Jennie might’ve come up with the nickname herself. I pinched the bridge of my nose, groaning.
“Look, sleep here tonight. Tomorrow we’ll brainstorm ways you can make it up to Jennie.”
I fumbled through my pockets for a cigarette.
“Really?” Gertrude said. “If you insist on poisoning your lungs, can you at least do it away from my home?”
“Well if I can’t smoke, I’m gonna need a refill.” I shook my empty glass.
On my way toward the bar, a wave of wooziness hit me. My first instinct was to blame it on the alcohol, but there was something else.
It was her reaction to the cigarette. My finger ran through the thick layer of dust along the bar’s countertop. Why was it like the place had been abandoned? Why did Gertrude always pressure me to stay with my psycho girlfriends? And how come she always reached out, as if on cue, whenever my relationships hit problems? It couldn’t be coincidence…
I poured two glasses of whiskey and carried them to the sofa. “So, you’re really against the whole smoking thing, huh?”
“Of course. It’s a filthy habit.”
“Yeah. Plus, there was that mess with your husband. House fire, right?”
“I’d rather not discuss it.”
“Sure, sure.” I ignited the lighter with a roll across my trouser leg.
Gertrude grabbed a cushion and hugged it. “What are you doing?”
“Alright, cut the crap. What the hell’s going on? Have you been sending your friends to date me?”
“What are you talking about?”
I wrestled the cushion from her and held the lighter beneath it. “I want an explanation right now or I’m torching this place.”
This was an empty threat. I wasn’t some pyromaniac—I just wanted answers. Inch by inch, I raised the flame. “Last chance. Why are the women in my life acting weird?”
Gertrude grabbed for the lighter. As I swatted her wrists away, we both got scorched, and for a moment her skin went wild with spasms, a sensation I can only compare to reaching inside a bucket of wet, writhing maggots. My gaze whipped between her face and her hands, which vibrated like plucked guitar strings.
Before I could scream, she yanked me up, clamped a cold, wrinkled palm across my mouth, and forced me against the wall. I thrashed around, unable to move. For a lady old enough to collect a pension, she was crazy strong.
She waited until I ran out of breath, then said, “Michael, please. I’m not going to hurt you. Open your heart and listen.”
What else could I do?
“You were right before. I have been keeping a secret from you. The truth is, I’ve been in love with you since we met. I’d never flown before. And you were so so sweet. You started talking about this other woman, but I knew our energies were perfect for each other. And it’s like I always say, love makes us do crazy things. You can’t begrudge me that can you?”
She looked as if she expected me to respond, so I shook my head.
“But I think we’ve reached a point where our connection is so deep we can be completely transparent with one another.” She took a slow, steady breath. “Michael, all your ex’s, Luna, Sadie, Jennie. They’ve all been…well, me.”
I stared at her, confused.
She sighed. “It’ll be easier if I just show you.”
Out of nowhere her hand wriggled again, then her face tightened, as though the skin was being stretched over the bone. Wrinkles smoothed out and colour bled into her grey hair, turning it brown, and within seconds I found myself face-to-face with Jennie. Even her vintage clothes morphed into a green blouse and white slacks.
“See?” she said in Jennie’s voice, her now blue eyes locked on mine.
I screamed into the soft flesh of her palm.
“Sssh, it’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. Watch.”
Her entire body jerked and twitched, the muscles spasming as she shifted from Jennie to Luna. “See? Think of these as costumes”—from Luna to Sadie—"the important thing is what’s underneath. And you’ve fallen in love with what’s underneath three times. Now I’m going to let go, but I need you to promise you won’t overreact. Understand?”
On the verge of a panic attack, I nodded furiously.
The second she pulled away I made a break for the exit. The thing posing as Sadie grabbed me and hurled me backwards against the wall.
Like a disappointed teacher, she put her hands on her hips. “I’ve been so patient with you, Michael. So very, very patient.”
She blocked off any hope of escape. I sidestepped around the outer edge of the room, towards the bar.
“All those years moulding you. Trying to grow you into the man I know you can be. I really thought we had it this time. For the record, I wanted to do this the easy way. But drastic times...”
I was so scared I slammed right into the cabinet and yelped. Glass bottles chattered together, and then something wet ran down the back of my shirt. It was whiskey, leaking from the overturned bottle onto the carpeted floor.
Speaking more to herself now, Gertrude said, “I’ll just have to keep you here until you love me as much as I love you. Of course, that means posing as you so nobody gets suspicious, but that’s no trouble. I’ll tell your dad you’re moving to Italy. You always loved Italy.”
Pose as me? She'd been killing my ex's and taking their place, I was just the latest in a long line. She’d keep me as a personal sugar baby if I didn’t escape, but how? She was impossibly strong, and the only thing that seemed to scare her was…
Snatching the bottle, I doused the remaining whiskey all over the carpet and furniture. As I flicked the lighter open, Sadie’s hands shot up.
“Bugs…darling…what are you doing?”
I took three slow, steady breaths. “Breaking up with you, you crazy bitch.”
I tossed the lighter forward. Within seconds flames sprung up all around us, spreading as far as the sofa. Sadie’s shoe caught fire, and as she stamped around, unintentionally fanning the blaze, her body writhed again, starting with the ankles. Fat boils climbed up every inch of exposed skin, milky white and with the consistency of frog spawn, like she’d had a killer allergic reaction to poison ivy.
She dropped to her knees, wailing like a wounded animal. This was my chance.
I made a break for the exit, giving the creature as wide a berth as possible. But as I got one foot planted in the hall something clamped tight around my ankles. My chin hit the floor, then I started sliding backwards.
I twisted onto my back. Where Sadie’s left arm should’ve been, a tentacle-like appendage stretched across the length of the room, a distance of over twenty feet. It reeled me toward her like a fish on a line. Whatever that thing was no longer looked human. It melted like an ice statue, with no bones or connective tissue inside, its lips nose and mouth becoming hideously elongated before dripping off in huge globs like melted candlewax. A fire alarm started wailing as the tentacle dragged me through the flames, scorching my arms and legs.
The loose mass of skin reached out and encased me like a mother bird sheltering its eggs.
“WHY WON’T YOU LOVE ME?” all my ex’s voices screamed at once. Whichever direction I looked, silhouettes of faces rose and fell, as if trying to burst through. Parts of them dripped inside my mouth, disgustingly warm with a bitter taste worse than Vaseline.
I put everything into clawing my way out if there. What was left of the beast had the consistency of wet clay and came apart just as easily. I tore away chunks until there was a hole large enough to squeeze through. Then, I crawled along surrounded by black smoke.
At the far side of the room I risked a glance back and saw a bumpy, uneven hand reaching out of a puddle of ooze. Soon I was crawling over the bristly welcome mat, then fumbling for the door. All I remember after that are paramedics wrestling me into an ambulance…
A specialist officer came to see me at the hospital the next morning. They’d been unable to contact the homeowner, Gertrude Huyton, and through his line of questioning I could tell they hadn’t found her ‘remains’ inside the charred house. Like the wicked witch of the West, my stalker had melted. I told the officer she said I could stay the night, and that I probably started the fire by dropping a cigarette.
“In that case, we’ll keep trying to reach her.” He walked to the curtain surronding my bed and paused. “Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, her cat is missing.”
“Her...cat?”
“Yeah. The little black one. One of the firemen pulled it out of the wreckage. The poor thing had burns over its legs but it ran off before anybody could take it to the vet.”
I swallowed a gulp and thanked him for telling me.
And now I’m still sitting here listening while nurses rush back and forth, terrified any one of them might be Gertrude…
submitted by lightingnations to nosleep [link] [comments]
I'd never felt such an instant, effortless connection with anybody before. I took a chance and asked her to dinner, and by the time the waiters cleared away our desserts, I already felt comfortable being vulnerable around her. So we went on a second date. And a third. And next thing I knew, we were planning our second anniversary.
In all that time she never gave off any 'creeper' vibes. Until a few months ago, when I stayed the night over at her place...
She'd gotten up early to use the bathroom. I grabbed her laptop off the side desk so I could catch up on some work e-mails, and the incognito tab was just sitting there. My first thought was: either she's having an affair or she's got a secret fetish.
What I found instead was a Google account with a photo album called ‘Michael’s EX’. In it, there were 427 photos of my former girlfriend turned psycho stalker, Sadie. This included shots of ‘Sadie the stalker’ with her family, screenshots of her passport—the works. On Facebook, Sadie's latest post said Moving to the Philippines, and since then she’d become a social media church mouse, so how did Luna keep her under surveillance? And how did you even get PERSONAL ID from a person halfway across the globe?
Down the hall, I heard the bathroom door swing open. Quickly I closed the laptop and pretended to be asleep until Luna planted a kiss on my lips. “Wakey wakey Bugs.”
I faked a stretch. “Morning Lola."
(At school, the other kids christened me ‘Bugs’ because of my cartoonishly large front teeth; I called Luna ‘Lola’ because of her blonde bangs and heart-shaped face.)
“How about we grab a fry for breakfast?” Her smile didn’t seem genuine, more like she was wearing a mask.
“Crap. I forgot I’m doing overtime today, I’ve gotta get to work.” With that, I shot out of there faster than a bullet train to Tokyo.
Because I didn’t wanna believe the worst about someone I cared so deeply about, I didn’t contact the police (not that anybody could’ve guessed what Luna was up to) and made excuses whenever she asked to meet, delaying the decision whether to end our relationship.
At night, I couldn’t sleep. Every time a hedge rustled outside, I’d run to the window and pull back the curtain only to discover a black cat skulking around the garden. I put this down to my previous relationship leaving me with a mountain of unresolved PTSD.
Sadie the stalker also seemed normal until we moved in together. After that she started picking fights if she caught me talking to another woman, even just distant relatives or childhood friends. The screaming matches went from weekly to nightly, only ever ending when I conceded to her every wish and gave her full access to my phone and social media accounts. I literally needed to grab my clothes into a bag and run away one night, and then I started hearing noises outside my new apartment. And although I never found any evidence, I was pretty sure she’d broken in at one point because the books on my side table were suddenly out of order one day. What hurt the most was Luna knew all this and still acted the way she did.
Right as I reached my lowest point, my close friend Gertrude called and said, “The universe is telling me you could use a sympathetic ear.”
I told her the universe didn’t know the half of it.
I’d met Gertrude—aka my surrogate mother—on a flight to London. Passing over Wales the aircraft hit heavy turbulence, and the grey-haired hippie in the seat next to mine squeezed my hand so tight that my fingers turned blue. After we levelled off, she apologized and said, “So what’s calling you to London?”
“A job.”
A few glasses of wine from the service trolley later, she blurted out, “You know your aura is strikingly similar to my husbands.”
“Uhh, thanks. Where is he now?”
“Oh, he burned to death in a house fire.”
Gertrude’s eyes started welling up. To take her mind off the subject, I said, “I lied earlier. I’m going to London because I fell in love with a Londoner.” I pulled up pictures of Sadie (back in her pre-stalker days) on my phone. “We met in Italy. She looked flustered trying to read a map book so I offered to help. Next thing I knew, we were planning a trip to this place called Orvieto.”
“Michael, I need to know how this story ends. Gimme your number.”
Since then, we’d met two or three times a year.
I laid the whole mess out over pizza. It was the first time since finding the Google account I didn’t feel hidden eyes crawling all over me.
Just as I wrapped up the story, over in the corner booth, a family burst into a chorus of happy birthday. A waiter appeared carrying a chocolate cake, capped by a giant candle that looked more like a flare. Gertrude tensed up.
“So what do you think about all this?” I asked.
She looked back at me and said, “It’s possible your reaction has been a touch on the dramatic side.”
“DRAMATIC??”
“Well consider things from Luna’s point of view. Your last relationship lasted for, what, three years? Maybe she felt threatened.”
“I don’t believe this.” I grabbed a cigarette from my pocket, but Gertrude snatched it away.
“You know how I feel about you poisoning your lungs, Michael.”
“Don’t you start. I got enough of that crap from Luna.”
Gertrude always encouraged me to work through my romantic problems. Ultimately, I decided her love of fairytale romances clouded her judgement and ghosted Luna instead. But I couldn’t escape her shadow. She always felt close. In fact, it got so bad that at a friend’s costume party several weeks later, my eyes kept compulsively scanning the crowd as if she was there in disguise, ready to pounce.
I stood off to the corner until, over the sea of heads, I spotted a beautiful stranger dressed as Jarlath the Goblin King. I took a shot of liquid courage and made a B-line towards her.
Halfway across the crowded room, beer splashed across the front of my Ziggy Stardust outfit.
“I am so sorry,” a female pirate said, patting me dry.
“Don’t worry about it.” Every time I tried circling her, she moved to cut me off.
“I am such a klutz. Why don’t you come into the kitchen so I can clean up this mess?”
I put my hands on her shoulders and steered her out of the way. “It’s fine. Trust me.”
Approaching Jarlath from behind, heart slamming against my chest, I said, “Well this is awkward. One of us is gonna have to change.”
Jennie had bright blue eyes and dimples impossible to miss. Ten minutes into our debate about David Bowie’s greatest album, I said, “You know Absolute Bowie are playing the Half Moon next week. I could take you?”
“Sorry. I’m going with my boyfriend,” she said with a sympathetic smile. From beside the buffet table, the pirate stared daggers in our direction.
“No worries,” I replied, despite the fact I was brimming with jealousy.
The next day, as I jogged off my hangover, a brown-haired lady cut across my path and we both went spinning to the ground.
“Flip, sorry.” I rushed to pull her up by the hands. “I’m like a bloody zombie lately.”
She did a doubletake. “Ziggy, right?”
There was no mistaking those eyes. “Jarlath?”
“Well, Jarlath or Jennie. Eithers fine.”
“Right. Well, sorry again. Enjoy Absolute Bowie.”
Before I could jog away, she said, “Hey, so that guy I was seeing? Turns out he’s a total prick.”
Jennie and I went for coffee. Coffee morphed into drinks. Drinks morphed into a steamy make-out session on my sofa.
But as she covered my neck in soft kisses, my stomach turned. It felt like cheating. So, I put the brakes on things and said, “I can’t do this. I’m really sorry. You’re amazing, but I just got out of a serious relationship…and…it’s just…”
“Hey, don’t worry about it.”
We agreed we’d let our connection blossom in its own time.
Jennie had a playful mystique to her. Within a handful of dates, we’d developed inside jokes and could tell what the other was thinking. But Luna’s imprint was hard to shake, to the extent I almost mixed up the two ladies’ names multiple times.
To detox, I suggested Jennie and I spend a romantic weekend in the Lake District, because after two days of hiking and kayaking my ex would no doubt be a spec in the rearview mirror.
Hours before we set off, however, Luna’s mom called. She wanted to meet and wouldn’t accept any excuses.
“Look, it’s obvious why I’m here,” she said, sitting across from me in Starbucks. “Ever since you and Luna broke up, she’s been acting…different.”
“Different? Different how?”
“I call but she hardly answers. I go over to her place but she’s never there. Now she’s telling me she needs to find herself. Says she’s moving to Australia.”
Her fingers tightened around her cup. “I need to know what happened between you two. And I don’t care if that paints anybody in a bad light. I’m just worried about my daughter is all.”
I told her about the Google account.
“Did you confront her about it?”
“Hell no. I ghosted that crazy bitc—” I cleared my throat. “I mean, I just…stopped seeing her.”
She started crying so loudly customers at nearby tables paused their conversations. I touched her forearm, promised I’d call if I remembered anything else, then set off for my romantic weekend.
But while Jennie and I enjoyed all that fresh air and pub food, a thought nagged at me. Luna adored London, so why move to Australia? It seemed so out of character. Back at our rented cottage, I was so fixated on the thought I needed a smoke, badly.
“What the hell is that?” Jennie demanded, as she stepped onto the front deck.
I glanced at my hands. “Uhh, a cigarette.”
“Michael! Don’t be sarcastic. You know how I feel about those things.”
“…Do I?”
“Uhh, well it’s the same as anybody else. Quit poisoning your lungs and put that thing out.”
“Alright alright, geeze. Sorry Luna.”
“That’s okay.”
A knot formed in my stomach as she went back inside. I’d called Jennie Luna by mistake. And she hadn’t noticed. In fact, her reaction to me smoking was identical to Luna’s—even the snappy way she said the ‘poison your lungs’ line.
I followed Jennie into the lounge, where she’d curled up on an armchair with a Colleen Hoover novel. She was hiding something. What else did she know about Luna? Maybe I could trick her into revealing some details…
From behind, I started massaging her shoulders. “Sorry for being rude before. I know what you said came from a place of love.”
“That’s okay.”
I waited until her eyes drooped shut, then said, “It really is perfect here, huh? Maybe we should stay forever.”
“Wouldn’t that be amazing?”
Her little groans of pleasure, the rhythm of her breathing, it all felt so familiar. I waited until the tension in her neck dissolved, then I pushed my lips against her ear and whispered, “So how about we take this into the bedroom…Lola.”
“Hmm. Sure thing Bugs.”
My hands froze. Jennie jumped up. “Uhh, that felt so good, why’d you stop?”
“What did you just say?”
“What did you just say?”
“I called you Lola,” I replied, my arms frozen in midair. “And you called me bugs.”
“Like the cartoon, right? I thought it’d be a cute nickname. Anyway, I’m tuckered out.” She forced a yawn. “Why don’t we get some sleep?”
As her hand laced with mine, an image of me waking up drugged and gagged and tied to the bedposts flashed before my eyes.
I said, “Sure. I just…need to use the bathroom first.”
The second the door shut behind me, I flew out of the house, climbed in my car, and sped away.
Within seconds my phone started blowing up with calls, followed by texts. Where are you going? Is everything okay?
No, I wanted to reply. I’m onto your sick little game. Whatever it is, I’m onto it.
Luna stalked my stalker, now Jennie somehow knew Luna and I’s nicknames. How? Did all women take turns drawing straws and whoever picked the short one needed to become my girlfriend?
I couldn’t go home. For all I knew, my exes would’ve been there burning effigies of me. I needed a safe place. Somewhere I could lie low until I got all this straightened out.
“Of course you can stay,” Gertrude said over the phone. “I’m out with some friends, but I’ll meet you later. If you hop the side gate there’s a spare key under the kissing gnomes out back.”
Gertrude lived in a detached house in Wembley. It took a bit of foraging to find the gnomes hidden beneath the weeds in the brown, patchy garden.
I needed to shoulder the door open. Inside, a mountain of letters and flyers had piled up on the welcome mat.
Down the hall, a huge archway connected the landing with a lounge, where a bar sat against the far wall, surrounded by upholstered sofas, a low table, and tie dye sheets strung over the filthy carpet. Everything had a real elegant vibe, despite the musty air.
I’d drained two glasses of whiskey before Gertrude arrived.
“Looks like you’ve had a rough evening.”
I said we could talk in the morning.
“Not a chance. You can’t take negative energy to bed. Come on, confession is good for the soul.”
She sat on the sofa and patted the empty seat next to her. So, with a weary sigh, I shared a tale of deranged exes.
“Crazy,” she said.
“I sure can pick ‘em, huh?”
“No, I mean you’re crazy.”
“What?”
“Think about it. What’s more likely: that your ex’s are secretly in collusion, or you’re being paranoid? Look how bloodshot your eyes are. When’s the last time you got a good night’s rest?”
She made a great point; teenagers on the street occasionally shouted ‘Bugs’ or ‘Thumper’ at me. Jennie might’ve come up with the nickname herself. I pinched the bridge of my nose, groaning.
“Look, sleep here tonight. Tomorrow we’ll brainstorm ways you can make it up to Jennie.”
I fumbled through my pockets for a cigarette.
“Really?” Gertrude said. “If you insist on poisoning your lungs, can you at least do it away from my home?”
“Well if I can’t smoke, I’m gonna need a refill.” I shook my empty glass.
On my way toward the bar, a wave of wooziness hit me. My first instinct was to blame it on the alcohol, but there was something else.
It was her reaction to the cigarette. My finger ran through the thick layer of dust along the bar’s countertop. Why was it like the place had been abandoned? Why did Gertrude always pressure me to stay with my psycho girlfriends? And how come she always reached out, as if on cue, whenever my relationships hit problems? It couldn’t be coincidence…
I poured two glasses of whiskey and carried them to the sofa. “So, you’re really against the whole smoking thing, huh?”
“Of course. It’s a filthy habit.”
“Yeah. Plus, there was that mess with your husband. House fire, right?”
“I’d rather not discuss it.”
“Sure, sure.” I ignited the lighter with a roll across my trouser leg.
Gertrude grabbed a cushion and hugged it. “What are you doing?”
“Alright, cut the crap. What the hell’s going on? Have you been sending your friends to date me?”
“What are you talking about?”
I wrestled the cushion from her and held the lighter beneath it. “I want an explanation right now or I’m torching this place.”
This was an empty threat. I wasn’t some pyromaniac—I just wanted answers. Inch by inch, I raised the flame. “Last chance. Why are the women in my life acting weird?”
Gertrude grabbed for the lighter. As I swatted her wrists away, we both got scorched, and for a moment her skin went wild with spasms, a sensation I can only compare to reaching inside a bucket of wet, writhing maggots. My gaze whipped between her face and her hands, which vibrated like plucked guitar strings.
Before I could scream, she yanked me up, clamped a cold, wrinkled palm across my mouth, and forced me against the wall. I thrashed around, unable to move. For a lady old enough to collect a pension, she was crazy strong.
She waited until I ran out of breath, then said, “Michael, please. I’m not going to hurt you. Open your heart and listen.”
What else could I do?
“You were right before. I have been keeping a secret from you. The truth is, I’ve been in love with you since we met. I’d never flown before. And you were so so sweet. You started talking about this other woman, but I knew our energies were perfect for each other. And it’s like I always say, love makes us do crazy things. You can’t begrudge me that can you?”
She looked as if she expected me to respond, so I shook my head.
“But I think we’ve reached a point where our connection is so deep we can be completely transparent with one another.” She took a slow, steady breath. “Michael, all your ex’s, Luna, Sadie, Jennie. They’ve all been…well, me.”
I stared at her, confused.
She sighed. “It’ll be easier if I just show you.”
Out of nowhere her hand wriggled again, then her face tightened, as though the skin was being stretched over the bone. Wrinkles smoothed out and colour bled into her grey hair, turning it brown, and within seconds I found myself face-to-face with Jennie. Even her vintage clothes morphed into a green blouse and white slacks.
“See?” she said in Jennie’s voice, her now blue eyes locked on mine.
I screamed into the soft flesh of her palm.
“Sssh, it’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. Watch.”
Her entire body jerked and twitched, the muscles spasming as she shifted from Jennie to Luna. “See? Think of these as costumes”—from Luna to Sadie—"the important thing is what’s underneath. And you’ve fallen in love with what’s underneath three times. Now I’m going to let go, but I need you to promise you won’t overreact. Understand?”
On the verge of a panic attack, I nodded furiously.
The second she pulled away I made a break for the exit. The thing posing as Sadie grabbed me and hurled me backwards against the wall.
Like a disappointed teacher, she put her hands on her hips. “I’ve been so patient with you, Michael. So very, very patient.”
She blocked off any hope of escape. I sidestepped around the outer edge of the room, towards the bar.
“All those years moulding you. Trying to grow you into the man I know you can be. I really thought we had it this time. For the record, I wanted to do this the easy way. But drastic times...”
I was so scared I slammed right into the cabinet and yelped. Glass bottles chattered together, and then something wet ran down the back of my shirt. It was whiskey, leaking from the overturned bottle onto the carpeted floor.
Speaking more to herself now, Gertrude said, “I’ll just have to keep you here until you love me as much as I love you. Of course, that means posing as you so nobody gets suspicious, but that’s no trouble. I’ll tell your dad you’re moving to Italy. You always loved Italy.”
Pose as me? She'd been killing my ex's and taking their place, I was just the latest in a long line. She’d keep me as a personal sugar baby if I didn’t escape, but how? She was impossibly strong, and the only thing that seemed to scare her was…
Snatching the bottle, I doused the remaining whiskey all over the carpet and furniture. As I flicked the lighter open, Sadie’s hands shot up.
“Bugs…darling…what are you doing?”
I took three slow, steady breaths. “Breaking up with you, you crazy bitch.”
I tossed the lighter forward. Within seconds flames sprung up all around us, spreading as far as the sofa. Sadie’s shoe caught fire, and as she stamped around, unintentionally fanning the blaze, her body writhed again, starting with the ankles. Fat boils climbed up every inch of exposed skin, milky white and with the consistency of frog spawn, like she’d had a killer allergic reaction to poison ivy.
She dropped to her knees, wailing like a wounded animal. This was my chance.
I made a break for the exit, giving the creature as wide a berth as possible. But as I got one foot planted in the hall something clamped tight around my ankles. My chin hit the floor, then I started sliding backwards.
I twisted onto my back. Where Sadie’s left arm should’ve been, a tentacle-like appendage stretched across the length of the room, a distance of over twenty feet. It reeled me toward her like a fish on a line. Whatever that thing was no longer looked human. It melted like an ice statue, with no bones or connective tissue inside, its lips nose and mouth becoming hideously elongated before dripping off in huge globs like melted candlewax. A fire alarm started wailing as the tentacle dragged me through the flames, scorching my arms and legs.
The loose mass of skin reached out and encased me like a mother bird sheltering its eggs.
“WHY WON’T YOU LOVE ME?” all my ex’s voices screamed at once. Whichever direction I looked, silhouettes of faces rose and fell, as if trying to burst through. Parts of them dripped inside my mouth, disgustingly warm with a bitter taste worse than Vaseline.
I put everything into clawing my way out if there. What was left of the beast had the consistency of wet clay and came apart just as easily. I tore away chunks until there was a hole large enough to squeeze through. Then, I crawled along surrounded by black smoke.
At the far side of the room I risked a glance back and saw a bumpy, uneven hand reaching out of a puddle of ooze. Soon I was crawling over the bristly welcome mat, then fumbling for the door. All I remember after that are paramedics wrestling me into an ambulance…
A specialist officer came to see me at the hospital the next morning. They’d been unable to contact the homeowner, Gertrude Huyton, and through his line of questioning I could tell they hadn’t found her ‘remains’ inside the charred house. Like the wicked witch of the West, my stalker had melted. I told the officer she said I could stay the night, and that I probably started the fire by dropping a cigarette.
“In that case, we’ll keep trying to reach her.” He walked to the curtain surronding my bed and paused. “Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, her cat is missing.”
“Her...cat?”
“Yeah. The little black one. One of the firemen pulled it out of the wreckage. The poor thing had burns over its legs but it ran off before anybody could take it to the vet.”
I swallowed a gulp and thanked him for telling me.
And now I’m still sitting here listening while nurses rush back and forth, terrified any one of them might be Gertrude…
2024.05.19 15:31 SpecialistDevice5770 Did Taylor have a secret relationship with Julien Baker?
 | Look, this is high level clowning. I don't typically speculate about muses and I've mostly been a casual listener of Taylor. Actually, to be completely frank I've also dismissed a lot of gaylor theories as intentional queerbating on Taylor's part, even if my gay little heart would love it if she was one of us. However, this 89th show truly awakened something in me with how unashamedly lesbian it was. submitted by SpecialistDevice5770 to GaylorSwift [link] [comments] So, seeing her do both Peter and Guilty as sin in Stockholm, I started thinking about Matty Healy and TTPD and what could have actually gone on in her life for her to write these lyrics - and I truly believe one of the muses for TTPD was Julien Baker. I understand this feels like it comes out of left field, but hear me out: Matty is a wild choice for a beard, for a lot of reasons, but it makes sense of she chooses her beards intentionally to conceal as much of what is actually going on in her life as possible. Julien and Matty were running in the same circles, so it gave Taylor a lot of plausible deniability. It also explains Matty signing up for it, doing a favor for several people he consider friends (at least Taylor, Phoebe, Jack). It would explain things like the "this is for you, i love you, you know who you are" - Julien was at that same show, and Matty saying it a few days earlier would make sense if Taylor needed cover up since she was planning to make a public move. Why she wanted to do that becomes clear a little further down this text. I also don't think she meant "this is about you", because as been theorized on this sub, cardigan is likely about Karlie Kloss. I think she literally meant "this is for you" as in, this is a song you like. Either way, let me wind back just a little bit and explain my reasoning. Why not Phoebe Bridgers? Okay, so I know there are some people on this subreddit that think that Phoebe and Taylor had a thing, however, a lot of the lyrics in TTPD wouldn't make sense with Phoebe (tattooed golden retriever? substance abuse issues?), and the timeline would be wonky - when the relationship is supposed to have happened Phoebe was seen with Bo Burnham, and tbh, to me their interactions have seen like they ended up on film unintentionally and also they seemed quite real. Phoebe's and Taylor's relationship has been way longer than the slow start-intense middle and end described in TTPD would suggest. Also, I think the sexuality/identity crisis in TTPD would suggest Taylor had some "new" influence in her life - if the Gaylor theories are correct she has been dating people who are either closeted or bisexual for years - but someone who is openly gay and has even slyly criticized Taylor for queerbaiting in the past (see this billboard article: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.billboard.com/music/rock/julien-baker-summer-of-pride-playlist-interview-8518598/amp/) - that is a whole different ballgame, and would probably function as inspiration for TTPD. Would Julien Baker make sense? Yes - first of all, look at Julien next to Matty - who here looks more like a tattooed golden retriever? https://preview.redd.it/ek0mzey4rd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e3d8c9716fa7f9f2d8ec350ee5f9c37268f5f589 https://preview.redd.it/bxfrzvo0wd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8aab59531a72cc7984df92e5cb1dc63d51d0d870 But also, Julien lives in Nashville. She has been friends with Phoebe Bridgers for years, so Taylor and Julien would have naturally met at parties or functions, and thinking that a closeted Taylor might need a queer friend to confide in - to me it seems only natural that she would gravitate to and take an interest in Julien. Notably, if you look at their respective instagrams, it also seemed like Julien broke up with her partner around the end of 2022, so perhaps not that strange if she needed more support, especially considering she has been vocal about mental health issues and her substance use. Both Lucy and Phoebe lives in Philly, so where could Julien go for support? Taylor's? Look, I know a lot of this is conjecture, but I personally think the most damning piece of evidence is seeing boygenius interact with Taylor at the Grammys - first of all look how happy Lucy and Phoebe seem to see her, like they don't seem to be the source of it being awkward as it later REALLY is. Also, look at the difference in the way she is embracing Julien: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeXkVr4p/ And then look at this video - for some reason the sound is cut out while she is talking to Julien, but the most important part to me is how the boygeniuses seem to stand in between Taylor and Julien, and how everyone - Jack, Lucy, Phoebe - seem to comfort Julien throughout the interaction, especially the way Phoebe comforts her as soon as Taylor has approached her: https://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/127739095.html Taylor is acting a little weird and erratic, and people say it is because she wants to make things about herself - honestly never a good explanation for human behavior. However, something that could explain it is if you just announced an album that your ex knows is partially about them, and you haven't seen them since your whirlwind romance, and they seem visibly upset. That would make anyone a little nervous. Julien is actually sad in those videos, those are not tears of joy. What other explanation could there be for that? (Also, I can see people being like, 'it's because they won a grammy - does this Julien, just a few moments earlier, seem sad to you? https://youtu.be/mI-MMMhLsow?si=X5XEX3CLMqsHyogJ The explanation that I have seen when looking around is that they had a discussion about the chairman of the Grammy's being a d*ck just before this happened, and while I think that is true, that seems a little far-fetched to me in terms of why she is looking so sad) Song references - Fortnight So let's talk some lyrics! This one I find interesting. Phoebe Bridgers toured with Taylor for about a month, and we know that Julien was there for at least the two first nights. (I just have to post this video of Julien and Matty at the eras tour... one of them seem like they are in a very new relationship, for sure: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeXBkeD8/) We also know that Julien lives in Nashville and easily could have been present for that time, and that she could have been around in Philly as that is where Lucy and Phoebe lives, so she would have had a place to stay. That is about a fortnight. Boygenius had a break in their own tour for this period of time, as Phoebe was touring with Taylor, so there would have been time for them to hang out together. We also know that "the rest" by boygenius was recorded in May of 2023, i.e. while Phoebe was touring with Taylor, so Julien and Lucy would have needed to be around for some of it. https://preview.redd.it/u0upzqcprd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=beadbde3b7bf0f882ee487eec3f0b680e837b76b "Run into you sometimes, ask about the weatheNow you're in my backyard, turned into good neighbors/Your wife waters flowers, I wanna kill her" So Matty and Taylor are not even close to being neighbours, but Julien and Taylor live in the same town. Also, the wife line makes Taylor sound as if she is jealous, despite having been very clear in Lavender Haze that she doesn't want to be seen as just a wife - maybe it is less about the marriage, and more about being in an openly gay relationship? "My husband is cheating, I wanna kill him" - Very clearly a parallel back to the wife line, and could be about being in a relationship with a male beard who clearly isn't interested in you, hence the 'cheating'. "I love you, it is ruining my life" - What if this isn't about pining for someone, what if it is about watching your closeted self crumble, wishing that you could be open so that you could be together? Julien has been vocal about why she feels it is important to be openly queer, if they were dating, that was definitely going to be a major issue. The experiment/asylum vibes would also make more sense if it is a reference to internalized (and external) homophobia - drawing references to how homosexuality has been medicalised and deemed a mental illness throughout history. What about "the rest"? Okay, since I mentioned it, here are the two songs Julien wrote for "the rest". https://preview.redd.it/6iwgrnxgsd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6bd721affd60379b598ea665acd48b2f58d670f https://preview.redd.it/6igdmkxgsd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5d809ac31a7f4a0d364e625991a127894786fc61 Notable appearances: Alien abduction (like down bad?), failed experiment (like fortnight?), trailing behind a comet (like dating a global superstar?) https://preview.redd.it/q8nayemlsd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=872c6bc99a67f0771b16bf561daa2dbbab9ea432 https://preview.redd.it/cnjhg0y5xd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=45b50de34a6f7439a780e926dc54ff0139146f3c https://preview.redd.it/b2edj0y5xd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e830b3782cd22b83f650fbba0e93df1234a1b28 Notable appearances: Stars and rain appareance (we'll get back to this), "it's out of your hands but have a safe flight" (being with someone who can't really be in control of their own life, who is constantly busy?), "all noise, fake smile, decoys" (beards? being miserable when nobody knows?) Important to note also that this was written towards the end of the recording of the EP, so if they dated, likely towards the end of the relationship, and it seems like it spells put some things that could have been frustrations. Song references - Tortured Poets Department Okay, so we have adressed the tattooed golden retriever-line, but let's talk about the typewriter line. Yes, Matty Healy has claimed to enjoy writing on vintage typewriters, but he has also been very clear he doesn't travel with them. Would he have really brought the typewriter to the US only to leave it at Taylor's apartment? It makes no sense, so I would think this is a red herring, specifically put in there because it takes the heat off of Taylor in a song where she makes some pretty clear references to someone else. Julien is however nearby enough that the line could have originally been about leaving something else, and that wouldn't really be odd. (For example, we know that Julien writes by hand a lot - try substuting "notepad" for typewriter in the first line, and the second typewriter for "handwriting", and especially the first line runs a lot smoother) There have been clips of Matty saying he doesn't like poetry, however he has written poetry in the past. He does however seem to separate poetry a lot from his actual songwriting, while Julien seems to consider the two intertwined: (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D7hbr1mqHj88&ved=2ahUKEwiBpquPy5mGAxUhCBAIHUCJAQ0QtwJ6BAhOEAE&usg=AOvVaw1wYqjHeiHq8rmlcnGgwbEk) The Chelsea hotel reference is one that many seem to link to Phoebe's song Chelsea, but there is a boygenius song that references Leonard Cohen and "not writing horny poetry" that someone in the trio wrote. We know it wasn't Phoebe, as the song is about her and a drive they took. If Julien wrote the song, which seems likely, that would explain the reference to Cohen. Julien smokes, just like Matty. Unlike Matty, Julien has smaller hands than Taylor, so she could fit her middle finger ring onto her ring finger (it is also an inherently lesbian move, not the move of Matty Healy, known comittment phobe). https://preview.redd.it/8zawhjassd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=32aab28dbcdc58db60aa04081b7b2031b8182963 The Jack and Lucy line shows why Matty was such a welcome beard. He gives plausible deniability here, even though Lucy has been openly antsgonistic towards Matty and does not seem to like him. She does, however, like Julien. Julien has also been suicidal before, and written songs about it herself “who put me in / your way to find? / what right had you / not to let me die" and had her friends write songs about it as well (see Lucy Dacus Please Stay). It also makes sense that Julien was more brittle at the time, if she had broken up from Mariah a few months earlier. Matty, on the other hand, has been quoted really wanting to live, and considering how nonchalant/aloof he has been about the potential relationship with Taylor, he doesn't seem distressed enough to be the person in the song: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3188904-i-think-about-dying-but-i-dont-want-to-die Julien Baker, however, as you saw from the Grammys but also from crying during their tour in 2023 (for example - this is from august 2023, crying during cool about it which is arguably such a gay song, about a relationship where you pretend everything is fine but it isn't: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeXBshbt/) could be that person. Song references - Down Bad https://preview.redd.it/ps2twknbvd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d698f54240456d5d5bae5b9406e88a3727dce996 I don't think I need to talk about how this song is gay (and how interesting the alien/experiement references are when put in relation to Julien's song ) so I just want to say - we know from this song that Taylor was left, she didn't leave the person she is writing about. For Matty, she would have been the one leaving because of all the noise - but as we know, he is a beard. Julien has specifically talked about how she leaves people before they leave her, and disappear so that she won't be a burden for them. I also think the lyrics to this song gives some more clues as to why someone would leave - "I'll build you a fort on some planet/where they can all understand it/how dare you think it is romantic/leaving me safe and stranded". This is alluding to someone leaving Taylor for her own good, specifically because "they don't all understand it". If you were dating someone so deep in the closet, that is genuinely fearful that their whole life might be ruined it the world finds out about you?? I've been there, and boy do I relate to I relate to the absolute heartbreak of having to leave someone because you can't stand being a secret that might eff up their life. Very gay. Song references -But daddy I love him The christian references? "If all you want is grey from me, then it is just white noise and it is my choice"? Nothing more to add here, except that Julien has specifically strugfled with christianity and homosexuality, and has written and talked about her experiences with that a lot (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5062456) Song references - Fresh out the slammer Also very gay, and about breaking free from a jail cell that she has referenced many times before. Just want to add a few things here - Matty Healy has a house in Hackney. He doesn't have a porch. You know who does? Julien Baker (momo_slider is Julien's ex-partner) https://preview.redd.it/dy9l8qvbtd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=56066e0340fbbf956f393157110383199f7c0fa4 Song references - The black dog Notably, Taylor doesn't call The Black Dog a pub, she says a bar. This is important, why? Bc I think it is a bar is Massachusetts, called the Black dog tavern. Boygenius played in Boston on the 18th of June and then drove to Pennsylvania for their next concert. The black dog tavern is in that direction, and it is in a quite remote location near an inn where the band could have stayed with much greater privacy than in central Boston before driving to Pennsylvania. I think The Starting Line is a red herring, it is interesting that Matty referenced them in May 2023 for the first time, especially considering that his taste in music is acoustic/synthpop/etc, whilst Julien is specifically into punk and metal. https://preview.redd.it/2bwem1pjtd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a9117f53a7d5cd389574a2dd42e85fc7db34a768 https://preview.redd.it/bmk962pjtd1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3737193da97a3e1d7ffcdde5b4725a2f478c2f1c (the last screenshot is from an article of Julien talking about her favorite bands) Also interesting is the rain mention here (see, I said I'd get back to it) and the rainstorm mentioned in Julien's song from the rest. The much younger girl could also be a reference to the actual age difference between Julien and Taylor. Empty voices Julien hasn't put out any music after 'the rest' apart from the new Orphan Black series theme song and a song called Empty Voices that she co-wrote. Apparently she offered to write on it after hearing it was about voice of the public and voices over social media. Here is the text. https://preview.redd.it/0l41r2vbud1d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e37e4acd2d9c6479198d668f00f0e430fdb2e553 "this block, this autonomy dread" - to me this reads as someone in a relationship with a person that prioritizes the opinion of others above the relationship. "maybe don't just go pulling this apart/before you brace yourself for a fall" could be referencing a fall from grace, the result of doing exactly what happens in TTPD, sort of an autopsy of the relationship, and someone finding out. It is especially interesting because Julien's last relationship before this (that we know of) was with a person who was very openly gay. In conclusion I could keep going, but I think I have said enough. To me, this album has such overtly queer undertones, the way she talks about being caged and breaking free into a new form of chaos, the pleading temporary insanity - it reads as someone conflicted about themselves and their identity. People have been baffled that she has placed such a huge impact on such a short relationship, but if the very breaking point of the relationship was her choice to prioritize her career over her true self, that would explain not only the need to write about it but also many of the lyrics that otherwise seem puzzling or inconsequential. It explains, next to midnight where she is clearly bored of and criticzing the life she has created, why she has lived her entire life like this and is now questioning her choices - the people she have been connected to before have mostly been people that have seemed to make the same choices as her. This would have been one of the first times that was really truly questioned, where her counterpart was someone who had chosen a very different life. It explains the TTPD part of the eras tour - but daddy I love him for explaining the cultural context she is in, so high school to make fun of and portray this image she has created of herself (v much a call back to the 'are you ready to go back to high school with me' part during fearless), who's afraid of little old me as a way to call out her audience and the comphet that keeps her caged, down bad to explain her regrets and frustration with herself, fortnight setting the scene for what their relationship was to her and to her realizations, the smallest man who ever lived calling out scott borchetta for what he did to her life and for the master's heist, and then reaffirming her choice as the one she 'has to' make in ICDWABH. It is a tragedy, a story of hunkering down and going forward even though everything in you tells you stop stop, to just be honest, to make place for the love of your life. Nothing makes more sense to me, honestly. If we assume that Taylor truly wants her relationships hidden, she doesn't want to involve the public, it isn't strange that we don't have more pictures of them interacting or of their relationship. The clues, to me, would be enough. So - I fully fell down a rabbit hole yesterday. This might all just be clowning, let me know if I too need to plead some temporary insanity - I might have been hit so hard by that 1989 mashup yesterday that my head isn't on straight (was it ever?). EDIT: Another thing of note - Julien has been discussing Florida as kind of the normative dream world/escape in the past, check out Satanist by boygenius (that she wrote). |
2024.05.19 15:01 ibid-11962 Writing and Publishing Eragon [Post Murtagh Christopher Paolini Q&A Wrap Up #6]
As discussed in the first post, this is my ongoing compilation of the remaining questions Christopher has answered online between August 1st 2023 and April 30th 2024 which I've not already covered in other compilations.
As always, questions are sorted by topic, and each Q&A is annotated with a bracketed source number. Links to every source used and to the other parts of this compilation will be provided in a comment below.
The previous post focused on details about the writing of Murtagh. This installment will focus on The Writing and Publication of Eragon, including the early abandoned starts and drafts the preceded the self-published version and Christopher's journey towards getting traditionally published. In this post the topics are arranged in almost a chronological order. The next post will focus on the writing of the Fractalverse, and so will be posted on /Fractalverse.
submitted by ibid-11962 to Eragon [link] [comments]
As always, questions are sorted by topic, and each Q&A is annotated with a bracketed source number. Links to every source used and to the other parts of this compilation will be provided in a comment below.
The previous post focused on details about the writing of Murtagh. This installment will focus on The Writing and Publication of Eragon, including the early abandoned starts and drafts the preceded the self-published version and Christopher's journey towards getting traditionally published. In this post the topics are arranged in almost a chronological order. The next post will focus on the writing of the Fractalverse, and so will be posted on /Fractalverse.
Writing and Publishing Eragon
The Original Idea[When I start to write a new book] I have an image. There’s always a strong emotional component to the image, and it’s that emotion that I want to convey to readers. Everything I do after that, all of the worldbuilding, plotting, characterization, writing, and editing—all of it—is done with the goal of evoking the desired reaction from readers. In the case of the Inheritance Cycle, the image was that of a young man finding a dragon egg (and later having the dragon as a friend). [10]
Who's your favorite character to write? Well, for me, it's the dragon Saphira. She's the reason I got into writing a dragon. She came first? She came before Eragon? Like she was the catalyst? The relationship came first, her and Eragon. [33]
I was specifically inspired by a YA book called Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville, which is a delightful book. I just loved that idea so much of finding a dragon egg, I was like, "Well, what sort of a world would a dragon come from?" And I knew I wanted the sort of bond between rider and dragon that Anne McCaffrey had, but I wanted the intelligence of the dragons that you find elsewhere, and the language and the magic. And I wanted sparkly scales because it just seemed like dragons are fabulous creatures and they ought to have sparkly scales. That's the fun thing about writing your own books. You can make them exactly the way you want to make them, and hopefully then that appeals to the audience as well. [30]
All of that kind of was swirling around in my head, and I wanted to write about dragons in a way that kind of combined a lot of elements in a way that, "I like this", and "I like this piece", and "I like this piece", but I kind of wanted to have all these different pieces in one type of dragon, and no one had quite done it exactly the way I wanted. [30]
I live in Montana, and our library is an old Carnegie or Rockefeller library, and especially back in the 90s, it didn't have that many books. So once I read all the fantasy in the library, I thought I had read all the fantasy there was to read. Because I was not the smartest kid in the world sometimes. And I kind of thought, "Well, it's the library. They have all the books that exist, right? All the books that matter are in the library." And I really had no idea what to read after that. So I decided to start writing myself and to try and write the sort of story that I would enjoy reading. And of course, what I enjoyed reading was books about flying on dragons and fighting monsters and having adventures. [35]
Reading and literature was always important in our family. My father's mother was a professor of comparative literature and wrote books on Dante and all sorts of stuff like that. Was the myths and folklore part of your life at this time? Yes, but I should clarify that it wasn't formally introduced to me. It was in the house. People weren't wandering around talking about. It was just like the Aeneid is sitting on the shelf. I would go read things. I have a great uncle. He's 90 now, my mother's uncle. Guy is still sharp as a tack. It's amazing. But he gave me a set of cassette tapes of Joseph Campbell, who did Hero of a Thousand Faces. So that was my exposure to his theories of the monomyth and the eternal hero and all sorts of things like that. That got me very much interested in and thinking about the origins of the fantasy that I was reading because I was reading Tolkien and David Eddings and Anne McCaffrey and Raymond Feist and Jane Yolan and Andre Norton and Brian Jaques, and all of these you know authors who were popular at the time. I was very curious where does this come from. Tolkien, of course, felt like sort of the origin in a lot of cases but then I was discovering that, there are earlier stories that even Tolkien was drawing from. That was really a revelation to me. I really sort of got enamored with it. A lot of fantasy is nostalgic and that appealed to me because I was homeschooled and my family didn't really have a lot of relatives in the area, so I felt very unmoored from the rest of society. I think I was looking for a sense of tradition or continuity with the past and fantasy helped provide that. That's an incredibly articulate thought for a 15-year-old author. Or has that come with age? No, it was something I was feeling at the time. You were conscious of it at the time? Well, listening to the Joseph Campbell stuff, I was looking: Where are our coming of age traditions? Where is the great quest to go on to prove yourself as a young adult, as a man? Where's the great adventure? What do I do in life? Those are all things that are part of the adolescent experience and always have been which is why so many mythic stories about coming of age deal with those questions. I think it's a universal thing. That's why Harry Potter, Eragon, Twilight, all of these have appealed so much because they deal with adolescence. They deal with finding your place in the world as an adult when you're starting as a young adult or a child. [28]
What games have taught you to be a better writer either in creating characters or worldbuilding or plotting even? All of my gaming experience was computer games, video games. One that had a huge influence on me was the old Myst series. Personally I love solving puzzles, so that's the first thing. And also the concept of the series, especially with the second game, Riven, it's all based around people writing books that create new worlds. And you get to go in them and solve puzzles and understand how that world works. And that just tickled every single part of my brain back in the day. Now, I'm going to be slightly unkind here, and I apologize if the author [David Wingrove] is listening to this, but there were a couple of novels based off of Myst. And I was such a fan of the series that I got the books, and I started reading them. And my first thought was, "I could do better than this." And so I decided to rewrite the first Myst novel. And I created a document in MS Word, and I got exactly three sentences into my rewrite. And I thought to myself, "okay, I think I can do this, but I could never sell it. So I better go write something of my own." And the next thing I did was Eragon. So video games kind of had a direct influence on me writing. But actually reading something that I felt was not particularly successful was such an inspiration. Because it was like, "this got published, I know I can at least get to this level." And it was published. And then maybe I can shoot for a little bit higher. [pause] I think some people have had that experience with Eragon. [26]
Early Abandoned Starts
I had the original idea, the concept of boy finding dragon egg, and I tried writing a couple of very short versions of Eragon when I was fourteen, and none of them panned out so I stopped writing for a while. [28]Real World Version
What do you remember about the early days of writing “Eragon?” Originally, Eragon was named Kevin and the story was set in the real world. But I only finished around 10 pages. [16]Arya Opening Fantasy Version
I wrote three versions of Eragon before I wrote the version that had the unicorn, which was the first major draft. The first version was set in the real world, and that's why he's named Kevin. And the reason it was set in the real world is I was inspired by Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher, which is set in the real world. [32]
I was specifically inspired by a book called Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville. By the way, Bruce knows this. If you haven't read it, it's a great book about this young man in the real world who, spoiler, goes into an antique shop and buys a stone that ends up turning out to be a dragon egg. And I really loved that idea of a stone that was actually a dragon egg and the young man becoming joined with the dragon. And so I tried writing the story. And I got exactly five pages or six pages into it and I ran into a brick wall, because a boy finding a dragon egg is a good event, but it is not a good story. And I needed to figure out what was going to happen after that. I didn't know that at first. [36]
But then I was going down the rabbit hole of, "Well, if there's a dragon, where did the dragon come from? What if it were an actual fantasy world where the dragons were native?" And then that led me to then write a second beginning--I didn't get very far with this--that was more of a traditional fantasy story, and it opened with Arya and a couple other elves escaping a dungeon with a big battle, and at the very end of the battle, they send the dragon egg away, and Kevin finds it. But I didn't have the rest of the story, so I stopped writing it in that format. [32]Research Break
So I tried writing a second version of the story. So the first version of that story I wrote was set in the real world. Second version was more of like a fantasy world. [36]
I had the original idea when I was fourteen. I even wrote an early version of the story where it was set in the real world. But I soon realized that it was a lot more interesting to have a dragon in a fantastical setting. [8]
I tried writing before and I always failed because I would only get like four to six pages into a story and then I didn't know what to do next. And that was because I didn't actually have my story. All I really had were the inciting incidents, like a boy finds a dragon egg in the middle of a forest. Great. But that's not a story, that's just one event. What happens as a result? So before starting Eragon, I was very methodical about this. I read a whole bunch of books on how to write, how to plot stories. [35]Unused Arya Outline
I realized I wasn't getting anywhere. And I didn't know how to do what I was trying to do. Now, fortunately for me, my parents had noticed that I was getting interested in writing. And all of a sudden, books appeared in the house. There was no comment, no one forced it, these just magically appeared, and I read them. Some of the books that were incredibly helpful to me were these books that were called The Writer's Handbook, which was a collection of essays published each year by The Writer's Digest magazine. I had one from 1998, and I had one from, I think, 1993, or something like that. And there were essays from Stephen King and John Grisham and I think Ursula Le Guin and all sorts of other authors about what it was like to be an author both professionally and creatively. And that was incredibly helpful to me because again, the internet was not a resource. But the book that really made the difference for me was a book called Story by Robert McKee. It's a book for screenwriters and it's all about the structure of story. And up until that moment, I had never really consciously thought about the fact that stories have structure and that you can control that structure for the effect on the readers. So I devoured that book and I said, okay, I'm going to try this again. [36]
Did you very much sit down and study structure and character development and etc? I did. It wasn't a formal course or anything, it's just that my parents started buying these books and they started showing up. In fact, I still have them here on my shelf. This bookcase to my right is full of research books, technical books, language books. I read a book called Story by Robert McKee, which is a screenwriting book, that was and often has been very popular in Hollywood. It's a fairly technical look at story structure. I would never say do everything he says because of course you shouldn't necessarily follow any one formula, but that book really got me thinking about the fact that stories do have structure, which I hadn't really thought about before that. And that one can control that structure, and that this gives you something to work with. Before Eragon, I tried writing a number of stories and I never got past the first four to six pages, ten pages, because I never had the plot. All I would ever have was the inciting incident which, in the case of Eragon, is a young man finds a dragon egg. Ok, fine, but that's not a story. So when I read that book, then I was like wow, so I can control the structure of this. [28]
The problem with all of my early writing was that I’d get an idea and just start — I didn’t actually have a plot. But I was a pretty methodical kid, so I started reading about how to write. Fortunately, my parents are observant, and these kinds of books magically began appearing in the house. And I read all of them. [16]
So at this point, I was 15, that's when I graduated from high school and I was very methodical about it because I hate failing. So I said, okay, I'm going to create a fantasy world. And I did that. And then I said, I'm gonna plot out an entire book in this fantasy world. And I did that too. And then I said, but I'm not gonna write this. This is just a thought exercise. I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna stick it in a drawer. And I still have that to this day, that world and that story, I still have it sitting in a drawer somewhere. [36]
Then I spent some time and I created an entire fantasy world and I plotted out an entire fantasy novel in that world and I did not write it. I just stuck it in a drawer and that's where it's been sitting for 25 years now. And then I just did that to prove to myself that I could plot out an entire book. [35]
Before writing Eragon, again I was very methodical even as a teenager, I created an entire fantasy world. Wrote pages and pages about the worldbuilding, and then I plotted out an entire story in that world just to prove to myself that I could plot a story, create a world, and then I didn't write it. I put it aside. I still have it all saved. Put it in a drawer. [28]
Kevin
Writing The First Full DraftAnd then I decided okay now I'm going to plot out a trilogy, because all great fantasy stories are trilogies. I'm going to do it as the heroic monomyth, because that is, at least my understanding back then, is this is one of the oldest forms of stories. I know it works on a general sense. It's going to give me a safety net, and then I'm going to write the first book as a practice book just to see if I'm capable of producing something that's three, four, five hundred pages long. And that's what I did. That was about two and a half months of worldbuilding, plotting, creating this. Then I wrote the first book and that was Eragon. That was my practice book. I never actually planned on publishing Eragon. It was only after I'd put so much work into it and my parents read it that then we proceeded with it. I was aware of story structure. I continue to read lots of books on it. [28]The First Draft
And then version three is the version that everyone generally knows. And that's where I spent the time to plot out the whole series before writing, because having a idea of where you're going seems to help with the writing, at least for me. Usually. [32]
I originally saw Eragon as a practice novel, which is part of why it’s a very typical hero’s story. I knew that structure worked and it gave me the safety net I needed. [16]
The first draft went super fast. It went really fast because I had no idea what I was doing. And I just wrote that sucker. I wrote the first 60 pages by hand with ballpoint pen, cause I didn't know how to type on a computer. And then by the time I typed all that into the computer, I knew how to type. I did the rest in the computer. But this was back in the day when computers were fairly new. We had a Mac classic, which only had two megabytes of RAM. And the problem is that the operating system chewed up some of that memory. And my book file was around two megabytes large. So I actually had to split the book into two because I couldn't open the whole file on the computer or the computer would crash. So I had to open half the book and then close that and then open the other half. [35]
Once I finished the first draft, I was super excited and I thought, "well all of these things on how to write say that you should read your own book and see if there's any tweaks you wanna make." But I was really excited because I was getting to read my own book for the first time, and I thought this is gonna be awesome. And it didn't take very long while reading it to realize that it was awful. It was horrible. And just to give you an idea of just how bad that first draft was, in the very first draft of Eragon, Eragon wasn't named Eragon, Eragon was named Kevin. And there was also a unicorn in that first draft at one point, so you know it wasn't very good. [35]Releasing the Kevin Cut
If I heard correctly as I was reading, Eragon wasn't originally called Eragon? No, in the first draft of the book he was called Kevin. There's a reason! Look I have an explanation for it, okay. The explanation is that my original inspiration was Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher which is set in the real world. The original version of Eragon that I was developing was set in the real world and when I decided that it would make more sense to have a world where the dragons were native to and switched it over to this fantasy world and began to develop that, I just kept the name that I'd been working with, which was Kevin. Naming a main character is hard, especially when you get used to a certain name. I don't want to say I was lazy. I want to focus on the world building and writing the first draft and I'll worry about the name later. [28]
There is an early version of Eragon that no one's seen, that even my editor at Random House never saw. And that was my first draft. And in that first draft, Eragon encountered a unicorn in the Beor Mountains on the way to the Varden. And the unicorn touches him and essentially affects the transformation that he goes under during the blood oath ceremony with the elves in the second book, in Eldest. And his whole storyline with the Varden once he gets to Farthen Dûr is completely different because now he has these abilities and he and a team of people ends up getting sent on a scouting mission in the dwarven tunnels to go find the Urgal army and then they have to flee back through the tunnels to warn everyone of this huge army and I had a underground cave full of lava, and multiple shades, and a huge Urgal army. There was there was a lot of dramatic stuff. Finding the Ra'zac in Dras-Leona was completely different. This is the draft where Eragon was named Kevin. [32]
I haven't thought about that version in ages. I think Arya was awake all the way from Gil'ead to Farthen Dûr in that version. That's right, I had to completely rewrite that. It's an unpleasant ride for her. No, no, no, she was awake and healed. She was awake. That's right, God, I had to rewrite most of the last chunk of the book now that I think back, it's been a long time. [32]
The worst thing is, I think Kevin would actually take a larger budget [to adapt to film]. No, stop. Why would Kevin take a larger budget? Because the battles were bigger, there was more stuff going on. Seriously, there were more creatures, more travel. Yeah, I think Kevin would actually take more money than Eragon. [32]
You said that Eragon's name was originally Kevin. Was Eragon's name originally Kevin? It was. And I really regret I didn't stick with it because I think that as many books as I've sold, the series would have been at least twice as successful if it had been about the adventures of the great dragon writer Kevin. Especially just seeing Kevin on the front cover. Imagine the appeal to the modern youth. Kevin the dragon writer. I mean Eragon, it's confusing with Aragorn. Oregano. Oregon. But Kevin, Kevin stands out, Kevin's original. That's why I had to move away from it. [31]
So do you wanna share some of those drafts with us, Christopher? Just kidding. Well, I actually had a fan reach out to me. He's one of the big members of the online fan community on Reddit and elsewhere. And he's kind of interested in some of these early versions from almost an archivist point of view, a scholarly point of view. Which is certainly an interesting idea. I mean, there is an early version of Eragon that no one's seen, that even my editor at Random House never saw. ... I cannot describe how much the Internet absolutely needs for you to put out an edition of Eragon that just says Kevin. Should this be like Mistborn or Way of Kings Prime? This is the Kevin edition of Eragon. The Kevin cut. Oh my god. It's "Eragon: Kevin's Version". ... We absolutely need Kevin's Version of Eragon. That's something we need. It's bad. It's bad. Look, there are certainly people who can look at Eragon, the version we have now, and say, "we can tell this was a younger writer." I look at it and I can tell. I could do so much more now with the material than I could then. But if you think that about the published version of Eragon, man, if you saw the unpublished version, the early version, it really is the raw writing of a homeschooled 15-year-old, who wrote a 500 page book about Kevin. I don't know, the internet is very unhinged these days. They would love this. It needs to exist somewhere on the internet. [32]
Publishing
EditingSo I wrote Eragon, and then I read the first draft and it wasn't particularly good, so I spent a good chunk of a year rewriting it as best as I could. I didn't know what I was doing but I was trying. I've heard it said that being displeased with your own work is actually a good thing because it means you know what is good work, and if you're not happy with your work because it's not good, it means you could at least have a goal to shoot for. If you read your work and you're like this is the best thing that's ever been written, you're never going to get any better. [28]Self-publishing
But I could see that the book needed work, so I decided to try to fix it as best I could, and I spent the better part of that year revising, rewriting, changing Kevin to Eragon. And then I gave the book to my parents and fortunately for me, they actually enjoyed what I had done. And they said, we think you have something, let's try to take it out into the world and see if anyone else wants to read it. [35]
[We] decided to self-publish the book as a joint venture since we didn't know anyone in the publishing world. That was again a good chunk of a year where we were editing the book as best the three of us could. Preparing it for publication, formatting, I drew the cover. [28]Promotion
Now you have to understand, my parents were always self-employed, have always been self-employed and we were always looking for things we could work on together as a family business. And Eragon was like the perfect opportunity for that. They'd had some experience self-publishing a couple of small educational books my mom had worked on. Because she was a trained Montessori teacher, and so she was trying to use that expertise to write some material herself. But I don't even think we sold 100 copies of those. So we spent another good chunk of a year preparing the book for publication with doing more editing, doing the layout, designing the cover. [35]
The first set of 50 books showed up while we were watching Roman Polanski's Macbeth, which seemed fitting because those first 50 books were all miscut from the printer. And as a result, we had to rip the covers off, send them back for credit from the printer, and then burn the insides of the books. So we had a proper book burning in our yard, and I actually saved some of those burnt pages just as a memory of that event. [35]
Self publishing wasn’t as viable then as a pathway to a career as an author as it is today. Why did it work for you? Everything completely changed because of e-readers. If you wanted to read an e-book, you had to have a PDF on your computer. There were no distribution systems like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Back then, the lowest amount you could print and not have the book be too expensive was probably about 10,000 copies. But we were fortunate because print-on-demand had just become a thing, so books were just printed as needed. Self publishing is a lot easier these days. Of course, today’s marketplace is a lot more crowded as a result. [16]
My family and I were going around the western half of the United States with the self-published edition of Eragon. I was cold calling schools, libraries, and bookstores to set up events. I was doing two to three one-hour long presentations every single day for months on end at various times. You have to understand that because my parents were self-employed, the time they took to help prepare Eragon for publication was time they weren't working on other freelance projects that would have been bringing in money. So by the time we actually had Eragon printed and in hand, if it had taken another two to three months to start turning a profit, we were going to have to sell our house, move to a city, and get any jobs we could. Because of that financial pressure I was willing to do things I probably would have been too uncomfortable to do otherwise. Like doing all those presentations. [28]Getting traditionally published
We were doing a lot of self-promotion. I was cold calling schools and libraries and talking them into letting me do presentations. And that worked pretty well because the librarians could take pre-orders for us. If we went into a bookstore, by hand selling, I could maybe sell anywhere between 13 to 40 books in a day. 42 was like the best I ever did, but usually it was around 15 or so books, which just didn't cover printing costs and travel and food and all of that. But going into the schools, we were doing about 300 books a day, which was excellent. [34]
Can you tell me a little bit about how you and your family self-published the first Eragon book and what marketing strategies you did? Oh, it was all nepotism, you know. I wouldn't have gotten published without my parents. There's nothing as powerful as a publishing company that's four people sitting around a kitchen table in the middle of rural Montana. So yeah, without Nepotism, I wouldn't have gotten published. You have to embrace something like Nepotism if you really wanna succeed in today's world. In fact, people don't realize that you actually get a Nepotism card. There's a secret club. You go to New York and there's huge network opportunities. There's branches of the club everywhere, especially strong in Hollywood, of course, in music. Taylor Swift is an example. So if you can get into the nepotism club, I won't say you're guaranteed success, but you got about 80% chance of actually making it that you wouldn't have otherwise. Do you think your mom and dad would be willing to be my mom and dad? No, absolutely not. No, no. You don't have brown hair, so it doesn't work. You have to have brown hair to be a Paolini. Okay, I'll try to find a different way in, I guess. [31]
So you were very much looking for that partnership? Well we were wary. But the thing is is we were selling enough copies of Eragon that to scale it up we were going to have to start duplicating all the things that a regular publisher does. We were actually looking at partnering with a book packager or a book distributor just to get more copies out. To do everything a traditional publisher could do for me was a huge amount of work so it made sense to pair with Random House or someone else at that point. But it was still nerve-wracking because the book was being a success and then handing it off to another company, we didn't know if it was just going to end up in the remainder bin two weeks after it came out. [28]Gaining Confidence
People in the book world were starting to take notice because of course, if you've been to public school, you may remember the Scholastic Book Fairs and all of the Scholastic reps in the different schools were seeing me come to the schools and selling these books and hearing the kids talk about it. And it was getting attention. So we would have gotten a publisher, I would have gotten a publisher eventually. [34]
The book sold enough copies and bounced around enough that we'd heard that Scholastic—because Scholastic does all the Book Fairs in schools in the US—was interested and that we might get an offer from them. Before that happened though... [34]
Eventually another author by the name of Carl Hiaasen ended up buying a copy of the self-published edition of Eragon in a local bookstore. Which now that I'm older, I'm rather shocked at because it takes a lot to get me to buy a self-published book. It's got to look really good. [35]
Carl Hiaasen wrote the young adult book Hoot as well as many adult books. He comes up to Montana, I think he's got a vacation home here in the valley, but he was up here fly fishing and he bought a copy of Eragon for his then 12 year old son, Ryan. And fortunately for me, Ryan liked the book and Carl recommended it to Random House and it sort of bounced around among the editors for a couple of months before my editor-to-be grabbed it and said, "Yes, we will. I want to take a chance on this teenage author and we're going to offer him money for a trilogy that only exists in his head and see what happens." [34]
How did you find an agent? We had the offer from Random House, and like two days later, we had the offer from Scholastic. And so we knew we didn't know what we didn't know. My dad participated in some online self-publishing forum sort of thing. So he posted up a question and said, look, this is the situation we're in. Does anyone have any advice? And another one of the members said, "well, I was just at this publishing writing conference and there was this young agent there and I was really impressed with his presentation, or him talking about the industry." So my dad got his information online and did what you're never supposed to do, which is he called the agent directly and left this long rambling voicemail message because it was lunchtime in New York and you take your lunch breaks in New York. And only at the end of the message did he say, "oh, yes, and by the way, we have two competing offers from two publishing houses." And when I asked him, I said, "why did you do that?" He said, "well, because if he's any good as an agent, he's going to listen to the whole message before he deletes it." And we found out later that he nearly deleted the message. Because my dad started off like, "I got this teenage son, and he's written this book", and yeah, that, OK. So it was like two hours later we got a call from Simon. And Simon said overnight me a copy of Eragon and if I like it I'll represent you. And Simon has been my agent for 21 years now. [34]
It was a big risk for Random House. And it was a big risk for me because the book was successful, self-published, and we knew that giving it to a publisher, you lose the rights to a degree, and most books don't turn a profit, and it could have just ended up in the remainder bin. So what really worked in my favor is that Random House, and specifically Random House Children's Books, and specifically the imprint of Knopf, which is where I'm at were looking for their own Harry Potter, essentially. Scholastic was publishing Harry Potter. And Scholastic also gave me an offer for Eragon, but I could tell that Random House was the one that really loved the book and Scholastic was doing it because they thought it was a good business opportunity. Scholastic actually offered more money than Random House. But I went with Random House and it was the right choice. And I found out after the fact that Chip Gibson who was the head of the children's department at the time basically chose to use Eragon as sort of something to rally the troops and put the entire children's division behind it, and I was the very fortunate recipient of that love and attention. Which of course would only get you so far if people didn't enjoy reading the book. But fortunately for me, they did a great job marketing it and then people actually enjoyed the book. Which is why when people ask me how to get published, it's like, what am I supposed to say? The answer ultimately is you write a book that people want to read, and that's a facile answer, but it is true. If people want to read it, it makes everything else easier. The agent wants you, the publishers want you, and ultimately the public wants you. [34]
And I didn't realize how much was behind that email, because large publishers do not just casually say, "hey, we want to publish your book". There was a whole plan there, and they had a plan. And so they did. Eragon came out and then I had to figure out how to write a book with everyone expecting the sequel. [36]
So you kind of went and peddled your books at schools, as I understand, right? It seems to have paid off though, because it eventually landed in the hands of bestselling author Carl Hiaasen, but not right away. First, your book got in the hands of his stepson, and the kid liked it so much that he told Hiaasen about it, who then got Eragon fast-tracked with Penguin Random House. I really admire the way that you went for the weakest links, manipulating the minds of our youth and using them to shill your book for you. It's a tried and true marketing strategy from Girl Scout Cookies to coupon books, and I applaud you for your ingenuity. My biggest question here is, do you pay Carl Hiaasen's stepson the agent royalties he so rightfully deserves? He tried to collect one time, but I had to hire a couple of guys to drive him off. But, no, you always go for the weakest link. Back when I was self-published and all that I even tried to get Eragon reviewed by Entertainment Weekly, so I called up the subscription number on the back of the magazine and told them I'd made a mistake and asked them to transfer me over to corporate, and managed to get right to their book reviewer and tried to talk him into reviewing Eragon. So you always go for, as you said, the weakest link. Which is corporate. Ryan, Carl's son, though, yeah, I probably owe him a ridiculous amount of royalties. I'd say so. He made you. Oh, he did, absolutely. Without him, I'd be nothing. I guess the lesson here for aspiring authors is that it's not really about finding your target audience, necessarily. You just have to find your target prolific author's stepson and let the kid take it from there. Yeah, absolutely. As I said, that's part of the nepotism package. The sort of networking inside the industry. This is the stuff that you can never access otherwise, and you'll never get published otherwise. So it's not like you can just grow up in the middle of nowhere in Montana, self-publish a book, and then just become a success, by promoting it. You have to have connections. That's genius. I think you could have had an incredible career in designing loot boxes for mobile games based on how good you are at manipulating the world. Absolutely, microtransactions are God's work. [31]
Was anxiety something you felt moving to this deal with Random House? Was that quite pressuring? Yes, it was a big change to go from writing for yourself as a teenager, homeschooled, living in the middle of nowhere, to knowing that there was a large audience for your next book and that they had expectations. I got criticized quite a bit, critiqued quite a bit when Eragon came out for, shall we say, my lack of experience on the technical side of things with the writing. I'd say some of those were certainly fair critiques. The great advantage of youth is that you don't know how difficult things are and you have a lot of energy. The great disadvantage of youth is you don't have experience, and there's no fixing that aside from time and effort. All of that was definitely in my head when I really started work on Eldest and it was pretty nerve-wracking quite honestly. [28]
When you finished the book, I mean your parents believed in it obviously. Did you too? Or were you like, "You know what, maybe the second book, maybe go all in on the second one?" I didn't feel like I was actually an author until my third book was published. Because the first one, well, that could be a fluke. Well, the second one, yeah, but you know. But once the third book came out, then I was like, okay, maybe I'm actually a writer. But even then, even after I finished the series, I still felt like, okay, now I have to write something that's not Eragon, just to prove that I can. So every book has been its own challenge and has been a way for me to keep feeling like I'm growing as an artist and learning to become a better and better writer. [2]
It took me, I wanna say almost 10 years to feel like I wasn't an imposter and that it wasn't just gonna get yanked away. You know what my dream was when Eragon was was going to get published by Random House? Like this was my pie in the sky because I didn't think it was going to happen. But this was my dream. I did all the math and I was like, man, if I could somehow someday sell 100,000 books, which is impossible. But man, if I could sell 100,000 books, that's a darn good living. Man, I could really make a living off that. I could support a family and 100,000 books. Man, that'd be amazing. And then it kind of took off from there. [33]
2024.05.19 14:41 SubstantialCreme7748 Howie Carr in Canton Townies and the Karen Read Case
https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/05/18/howie-carr-karen-read-trial-is-a-corrupt-canton-townie-sideshow/
POSTED: Howie Carr: Karen Read trial is a corrupt Canton townie sideshow
PUBLISHED: May 18, 2024 at 4:25 p.m. UPDATED: May 18, 2024 at 4:27 p.m.
Paul Revere used to summer every year in Canton, but he wouldn’t recognize the place today.
One thing, though, hasn’t changed since the 18th of April in ’75 — the locals still love their midnight rides, but with one big difference.
Paul Revere wasn’t hammered out of his mind when he was on horseback, spreading the alarm to every Middlesex village and farm.
Through the first 14 days of the Karen Read murder trial in Dedham, we have learned much about life in the Town of Canton, post-Paul Revere.
As you know, Read is accused of murdering her boyfriend, BPD cop John O’Keefe, by drunkenly running him over in a snowstorm in January 2022.
His body was found outside the home of another BPD officer, who has since sold the house, gotten rid of his phone and dog and abruptly retired from the job, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
How screwed up is this case? Well, the feds are all over it like white on rice.
Read’s defense attorneys have said the G-men’s accident-reconstruction experts have concluded that O’Keefe couldn’t possibly have been killed by a car.
Then there are all those texts that haven’t been “mistakenly” deleted…
The state’s lead investigator is thisclose to the Hibernian hillbillies who are up to their eyeballs in this mess.
According to opening statements, State Trooper Michael Proctor’s first thought when he was assigned the case was to text his Canton high-school buddies. He told them he was already searching online for nude photos of Karen Read.
Proctor is now under investigation by MSP Internal Affairs — if only because it’s the feds who discovered his texts, rather than the corrupt Staties themselves.
How will Proctor do on cross-examination? Do you remember an LAPD detective by the name of Mark Fuhrman?
Back on the stand Tuesday will be Jen McCabe. She’s the one who’s missing one of her front teeth.
Don’t confuse Toothy McCabe with Julie Albert. Julie is the one who chews gum while testifying. Her father’s name is/was Jack Daniels — coincidence?
Julie is married to Chris Albert. He did a six-month state bit in 1995 after killing a Hungarian exchange student in a hit-and-run accident.
His public defender was one John Prescott, whose sister is the judge in the case — Beverly Cannone. She’s a lifelong payroll patriot from Quincy, like the rotund district attorney, Meatball Mike Morrissey.
If you want to hide something real good, just stick it in one of Judge Cannone’s law books.
From her courtroom rulings, Cannone seems to believe that the synonym for “exculpatory” is “excluded,” as in, if the evidence is exculpatory for Karen Read, it’s excluded.
Chris Albert, by the way, is a Canton selectman. As the only jailbird in the fight, he was elected in a landslide. Forget it Jake — it’s Canton.
Even if you haven’t been paying close attention, there are easy ways to figure out who’s who. The townies — which is everyone except the defendant — all pronounce their hometown not as “Canton” but as “Can-UHN.”
Here’s how the examination begins after each witness is sworn in.
Where do you live? Can-UHN. Where were you born? Can-UHN. Where did you go to high school? Can-UHN High.
Have you ever been anywhere else? Yes, once I drove to a packy… in Stough-UHN.
Selectman Albert owns the local pizza parlor. On the night John O’Keefe died outside his brother’s house, he closed his shop, then walked across the street to a local dive where he ordered “appetizers.” That’s how good his own restaurant is.
Then, meeting up with the rest of the Can-UHN townies, the selectman ordered the usual — a round of Fireballs. How Canton is it?
After last call, he offered to take the crapulous crew back to his pizzeria for some free eats. Everybody said… nah.
Almost all these people live, or did live, in the same houses they grew up in, bought by their parents 50 years ago as they fled Boston after the start of busing.
Lucky for them they inherited these tear-downs, because otherwise most of them would have already fled back to their natural habitat — trailer parks.
See, Canton’s on the commuter-rail line, so housing prices have been going up, up and away. It’s only a matter of time until all these low-rent losers are priced out.
So resentment is simmering among the old Can-UHN crowd. They don’t like what’s happening — just last year, their favorite hang-out, Big D’s Neponset Grill, went out of business.
It was the last place in town where you could get a fried-baloney sandwich. Now that was some really fine Can-UHN cuisine.
What must the U.S. attorney be thinking as he watches this legal lynching unfold in deepest, darkest Dedham? The defense has said in open court that the feds already have a proffer — a deal — with the only witness who didn’t go to Can-UHN High.
The hack prosecutor did not dispute the statement.
Judge Cannone has instructed all the parties not to mention that federal grand jury, where at least three cops have apparently told conflicting stories from what they testified before Meatball’s state grand jury.
But the other day, one of the younger witnesses was asked who’s questioned him about O’Keefe’s death.
“The feds,” he blurted out in front of the jury.
Well, what could you expect? He went to Can-UHN High.
This trial is drawing a huge audience. Unlike Trump’s kangaroo-court case in New York, there are cameras in the Dedham courtroom. Live streaming coverage.
And Karen Read is not guilty. Tensions are running high. There have been fights and restraining orders — and that’s just among the reporters.
Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney is the blogger who’s made the case into a national story. He’s been barred from the courtroom for certain witnesses — the “McAlberts,” as he calls the Alberts and the McCabes.
The McAlbert witnesses begin weeping when they talk about Turtleboy. He makes them want to spit out their chewing gum and order another round of Fireballs.
How dare he call their hero Jailbird Chris Albert “Chicken Parm Charlie?”
I have Turtleboy on my radio show most afternoons. On Friday, he said Jen McCabe has a worse set of teeth than George Washington did.
The most appealing thing about this case is that you can watch it and feel better about your own hometown. In Holbrook, they listen to Chicken Parm Charlie and realize that he makes their ex-selectman Daniel Lee look like Daniel Webster.
In Methuen, they see Canton’s Keystone Cops and think, you know, maybe Chief Solomon wasn’t that bad after all…
If Paul Revere could only see what’s become of Canton, he’d put the spurs to Brown Beauty and keep riding. Only instead of “The British are coming!” he’d be yelling something different. “The white trash are coming!”
submitted by SubstantialCreme7748 to justiceforKarenRead [link] [comments]
POSTED: Howie Carr: Karen Read trial is a corrupt Canton townie sideshow
PUBLISHED: May 18, 2024 at 4:25 p.m. UPDATED: May 18, 2024 at 4:27 p.m.
Paul Revere used to summer every year in Canton, but he wouldn’t recognize the place today.
One thing, though, hasn’t changed since the 18th of April in ’75 — the locals still love their midnight rides, but with one big difference.
Paul Revere wasn’t hammered out of his mind when he was on horseback, spreading the alarm to every Middlesex village and farm.
Through the first 14 days of the Karen Read murder trial in Dedham, we have learned much about life in the Town of Canton, post-Paul Revere.
As you know, Read is accused of murdering her boyfriend, BPD cop John O’Keefe, by drunkenly running him over in a snowstorm in January 2022.
His body was found outside the home of another BPD officer, who has since sold the house, gotten rid of his phone and dog and abruptly retired from the job, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
How screwed up is this case? Well, the feds are all over it like white on rice.
Read’s defense attorneys have said the G-men’s accident-reconstruction experts have concluded that O’Keefe couldn’t possibly have been killed by a car.
Then there are all those texts that haven’t been “mistakenly” deleted…
The state’s lead investigator is thisclose to the Hibernian hillbillies who are up to their eyeballs in this mess.
According to opening statements, State Trooper Michael Proctor’s first thought when he was assigned the case was to text his Canton high-school buddies. He told them he was already searching online for nude photos of Karen Read.
Proctor is now under investigation by MSP Internal Affairs — if only because it’s the feds who discovered his texts, rather than the corrupt Staties themselves.
How will Proctor do on cross-examination? Do you remember an LAPD detective by the name of Mark Fuhrman?
Back on the stand Tuesday will be Jen McCabe. She’s the one who’s missing one of her front teeth.
Don’t confuse Toothy McCabe with Julie Albert. Julie is the one who chews gum while testifying. Her father’s name is/was Jack Daniels — coincidence?
Julie is married to Chris Albert. He did a six-month state bit in 1995 after killing a Hungarian exchange student in a hit-and-run accident.
His public defender was one John Prescott, whose sister is the judge in the case — Beverly Cannone. She’s a lifelong payroll patriot from Quincy, like the rotund district attorney, Meatball Mike Morrissey.
If you want to hide something real good, just stick it in one of Judge Cannone’s law books.
From her courtroom rulings, Cannone seems to believe that the synonym for “exculpatory” is “excluded,” as in, if the evidence is exculpatory for Karen Read, it’s excluded.
Chris Albert, by the way, is a Canton selectman. As the only jailbird in the fight, he was elected in a landslide. Forget it Jake — it’s Canton.
Even if you haven’t been paying close attention, there are easy ways to figure out who’s who. The townies — which is everyone except the defendant — all pronounce their hometown not as “Canton” but as “Can-UHN.”
Here’s how the examination begins after each witness is sworn in.
Where do you live? Can-UHN. Where were you born? Can-UHN. Where did you go to high school? Can-UHN High.
Have you ever been anywhere else? Yes, once I drove to a packy… in Stough-UHN.
Selectman Albert owns the local pizza parlor. On the night John O’Keefe died outside his brother’s house, he closed his shop, then walked across the street to a local dive where he ordered “appetizers.” That’s how good his own restaurant is.
Then, meeting up with the rest of the Can-UHN townies, the selectman ordered the usual — a round of Fireballs. How Canton is it?
After last call, he offered to take the crapulous crew back to his pizzeria for some free eats. Everybody said… nah.
Almost all these people live, or did live, in the same houses they grew up in, bought by their parents 50 years ago as they fled Boston after the start of busing.
Lucky for them they inherited these tear-downs, because otherwise most of them would have already fled back to their natural habitat — trailer parks.
See, Canton’s on the commuter-rail line, so housing prices have been going up, up and away. It’s only a matter of time until all these low-rent losers are priced out.
So resentment is simmering among the old Can-UHN crowd. They don’t like what’s happening — just last year, their favorite hang-out, Big D’s Neponset Grill, went out of business.
It was the last place in town where you could get a fried-baloney sandwich. Now that was some really fine Can-UHN cuisine.
What must the U.S. attorney be thinking as he watches this legal lynching unfold in deepest, darkest Dedham? The defense has said in open court that the feds already have a proffer — a deal — with the only witness who didn’t go to Can-UHN High.
The hack prosecutor did not dispute the statement.
Judge Cannone has instructed all the parties not to mention that federal grand jury, where at least three cops have apparently told conflicting stories from what they testified before Meatball’s state grand jury.
But the other day, one of the younger witnesses was asked who’s questioned him about O’Keefe’s death.
“The feds,” he blurted out in front of the jury.
Well, what could you expect? He went to Can-UHN High.
This trial is drawing a huge audience. Unlike Trump’s kangaroo-court case in New York, there are cameras in the Dedham courtroom. Live streaming coverage.
And Karen Read is not guilty. Tensions are running high. There have been fights and restraining orders — and that’s just among the reporters.
Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney is the blogger who’s made the case into a national story. He’s been barred from the courtroom for certain witnesses — the “McAlberts,” as he calls the Alberts and the McCabes.
The McAlbert witnesses begin weeping when they talk about Turtleboy. He makes them want to spit out their chewing gum and order another round of Fireballs.
How dare he call their hero Jailbird Chris Albert “Chicken Parm Charlie?”
I have Turtleboy on my radio show most afternoons. On Friday, he said Jen McCabe has a worse set of teeth than George Washington did.
The most appealing thing about this case is that you can watch it and feel better about your own hometown. In Holbrook, they listen to Chicken Parm Charlie and realize that he makes their ex-selectman Daniel Lee look like Daniel Webster.
In Methuen, they see Canton’s Keystone Cops and think, you know, maybe Chief Solomon wasn’t that bad after all…
If Paul Revere could only see what’s become of Canton, he’d put the spurs to Brown Beauty and keep riding. Only instead of “The British are coming!” he’d be yelling something different. “The white trash are coming!”
2024.05.19 14:22 Medical_Work1712 The design excellence: HSAA, The Top Interior Design Firm In Delhi
Are you looking to give your space a new, modern look? We are here to give your home a new image. With 37 years of experience and award-winning interior Design services for homes and offices, HSAA is one of the top interior design firms in Delhi. We will design spaces that make you feel alive.
Our professional and experts in the best interior design firms in Delhi will give your home and office space a unique style and personality. Whether you want a modern look or a traditional one, we emphasize the best services and look out for your every requirement.
We offer you a wide range of services including space planning, material, furniture selection, lighting design, and much more. Our professional teams will handle all work and elements to ensure that the result is not just a space but a feeling that is created with love and dedication.Read this blog:- The design excellence: HSAA, The Top Interior Design Firm In Delhi
Our interior design services in Delhi go beyond creating spaces; we give complete makeovers to your home and office spaces. In addition to this, We meticulously build, evaluate, and design concepts, transforming them into intricate architectural frameworks that inspire and uplift.
Besides this, interior design is an art that changes the look of the space. It’s about understanding the significance of a person’s home and how it might influence their identity. HSAA is a modern interior design company where we design functionally to provide you with high-end interior design creation.
Our skilled design team and experts are the company’s backbone that leads you in designing a well-designed home with our special group of highly skilled individuals in this premium interior design firm in Delhi. The real identity of HSAA is about creating something that you love and cherish and providing you with extraordinary designs.
The initial phase is the Evaluation of a property, followed by design intent and idea implementation. Our interior designers in Delhi complete all of these based on the requests and recommendations of our clients. If you’re searching for exquisite design for home and office décor with high-end furnishings and perfect custom-built furniture, Do get in touch with us today!
Furthermore, our design firm enjoys taking on new projects. Whether it’s a modern apartment, penthouse, or private villa, we provide exceptional quality service. When it comes to finishing, excellent service—our team’s perfection and skilled work will give you the ultimate unique solutions to building a new space.
We will provide you with more than just a design concept. Book your allotments today, and you’ll receive refreshed elegance, relaxation, and positive vibes.
At HSAA, the initial step of the interior design process always begins with extraordinary space planning that takes into account all of the important requirements and concerns that our clients bring to the table.
There is no design without discipline, so we can analyze and determine the most effective way to accomplish your goals to meet the needs and requirements of your project. Once the detailed concept has been formed for your venue, our team will work on it.
We give you a comprehensive collection of drawings that might include recommendations for walls, ceilings, electrical, woodworking, and furniture arrangements.
We maintain top-notch quality at the sites throughout the process. HSSA works with you at every point, from the start to end process to the design of practical aesthetics, and provides you with a modern living space that fits your needs and lifestyle without compromising on anything.
Beside finishes, furnishers, and fixtures, fine art advisory keeping in mind the specific pre-decided schedules, complete design management services, ongoing client interaction and aesthetic updates, process, and project turnover, our full design solution can be followed as space planning, designing, building, and installing.
Residential Design: Whether creating a new family home or a cosy studio apartment, HSAA, the interior design firm in Delhi, offers functional and stylish living spaces. Our team utilizes space planning techniques to optimize layouts and operates innovative interior design solutions to ensure a pleasing and healthy environment. Their keen eye for detail extends to furniture selection, material choices, and lighting design.
Commercial Design: Understanding the specific needs of clients and their businesses, HSAA makes life into a reality of commercial spaces. We create work environments that expand productivity and collaboration and also reflect the company’s brand identity. Our expertise in creating superior designs from office space to meeting rooms and conference rooms including with the present restaurants, cafes, and hotels that are both functional and memorable.
Are you looking to give your space a new, modern look? We are here to give your home a new image. With 37 years of experience and award-winning interior Design services for homes and offices, HSAA is one of the top interior design firms in Delhi. We will design spaces that make you feel alive.
submitted by Medical_Work1712 to u/Medical_Work1712 [link] [comments]
Our professional and experts in the best interior design firms in Delhi will give your home and office space a unique style and personality. Whether you want a modern look or a traditional one, we emphasize the best services and look out for your every requirement.
We offer you a wide range of services including space planning, material, furniture selection, lighting design, and much more. Our professional teams will handle all work and elements to ensure that the result is not just a space but a feeling that is created with love and dedication.Read this blog:- The design excellence: HSAA, The Top Interior Design Firm In Delhi
How does Interior design work for you?
Interior design is the art of combining simplicity with aesthetics, a powerful tool that can transform a house into a home, and an office into a productive space. At HSAA, we understand the significance of space in shaping one’s identity.Our interior design services in Delhi go beyond creating spaces; we give complete makeovers to your home and office spaces. In addition to this, We meticulously build, evaluate, and design concepts, transforming them into intricate architectural frameworks that inspire and uplift.
Besides this, interior design is an art that changes the look of the space. It’s about understanding the significance of a person’s home and how it might influence their identity. HSAA is a modern interior design company where we design functionally to provide you with high-end interior design creation.
Our skilled design team and experts are the company’s backbone that leads you in designing a well-designed home with our special group of highly skilled individuals in this premium interior design firm in Delhi. The real identity of HSAA is about creating something that you love and cherish and providing you with extraordinary designs.
Our Creations
It’s true to say that the goal of interior design is to offer attractive and captivating designs for a higher quality of life. However, the aim of HSAA luxury interior design firm in Delhi is to enhance the customer experience and discover a design concept that works for all kinds of needs.The initial phase is the Evaluation of a property, followed by design intent and idea implementation. Our interior designers in Delhi complete all of these based on the requests and recommendations of our clients. If you’re searching for exquisite design for home and office décor with high-end furnishings and perfect custom-built furniture, Do get in touch with us today!
Furthermore, our design firm enjoys taking on new projects. Whether it’s a modern apartment, penthouse, or private villa, we provide exceptional quality service. When it comes to finishing, excellent service—our team’s perfection and skilled work will give you the ultimate unique solutions to building a new space.
We will provide you with more than just a design concept. Book your allotments today, and you’ll receive refreshed elegance, relaxation, and positive vibes.
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There is no design without discipline, so we can analyze and determine the most effective way to accomplish your goals to meet the needs and requirements of your project. Once the detailed concept has been formed for your venue, our team will work on it.
We give you a comprehensive collection of drawings that might include recommendations for walls, ceilings, electrical, woodworking, and furniture arrangements.
We maintain top-notch quality at the sites throughout the process. HSSA works with you at every point, from the start to end process to the design of practical aesthetics, and provides you with a modern living space that fits your needs and lifestyle without compromising on anything.
How Interior Design Reflects Your Style and Needs
HSAA provides the best interior design services in Delhi to make your home extra comfortable and delightful. When imagining how our clients’ homes should look, HSAA makes sure the process is persistent with fixtures and finishes, as every home is filled with inspiring artwork.Beside finishes, furnishers, and fixtures, fine art advisory keeping in mind the specific pre-decided schedules, complete design management services, ongoing client interaction and aesthetic updates, process, and project turnover, our full design solution can be followed as space planning, designing, building, and installing.
Residential Design: Whether creating a new family home or a cosy studio apartment, HSAA, the interior design firm in Delhi, offers functional and stylish living spaces. Our team utilizes space planning techniques to optimize layouts and operates innovative interior design solutions to ensure a pleasing and healthy environment. Their keen eye for detail extends to furniture selection, material choices, and lighting design.
Commercial Design: Understanding the specific needs of clients and their businesses, HSAA makes life into a reality of commercial spaces. We create work environments that expand productivity and collaboration and also reflect the company’s brand identity. Our expertise in creating superior designs from office space to meeting rooms and conference rooms including with the present restaurants, cafes, and hotels that are both functional and memorable.
The process of designing: An aesthetics home story
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Beyond Design: Building Relationships
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The design community has recognized HSAA’s commitment to excellence. For outstanding work, we have received prestigious awards like the India Architecture Award. These awards stand us apart from the crowd and help our dedicated team create and design truly exceptional spaces.Are you looking to give your space a new, modern look? We are here to give your home a new image. With 37 years of experience and award-winning interior Design services for homes and offices, HSAA is one of the top interior design firms in Delhi. We will design spaces that make you feel alive.
2024.05.19 14:20 Crazy-Concern8080 Hearts and Minds 4: When All is Said - (Part 4)
Whatever you do, never drink to cure a mental issue.
First
Previous
You know the drill: credit to SpacePaladin15 for the universe.
Thank you JulianSkies for proofreading.
Memory Transcription Subject: Gillab, Gojid Citizen, Father
Date [Standardized Human Time]: March 28, 2142
I made sure to wake up as early as possible so I could do what I needed to do before Billy woke up. First things first, get rid of all the liquor in that fridge. If Billy was going to get better, the first thing he needed to do was stop drinking. He was only running from his problems and as long as he had that out he was going to take it.
I pulled a trash bag in front of the fridge, propped it open as best I could, and started stuffing it full of bottles. Cheap Venlilian liquor was being poured down the drain by the second, it almost made me feel bad for anything living in the sewers. This stuff had enough alcohol in it to kill someone, a rat would be dead in seconds.
By the time I poured the last bottle down the drain, I had probably sanitized the entirety of the New York sewer system. I hoisted the bag onto my back, making sure not to break the bag with my quills, and started to make my way to the dumpster. Thankfully Billy’s apartment was on the first floor so the journey wasn’t too long.
I tossed the bag into the dumpster carelessly, causing a few of the bottles to break when they hit the others that had been thrown in yesterday. It was only the second day, but I felt like we had already made some progress. I was able to make him admit he was just scared of feeling the pain of his memories, even if it was only accidental. Small steps were still steps, now all I had to do was make him realize that he didn’t deserve this. I have a feeling that once he jumps that hurdle, everything should come much easier.
A familiar song brought me out of my thoughts, drawing my attention to my phone. I had changed the ringtone to the first Human song I had ever heard, T-Shirt, to always remind me of my time on the Cradle. I pulled out my phone and accepted the call, smiling as I saw just who it was.
“High sweety, having a good morning?”
The camera shook up and down in sync with my daughter's face. “Yeah, but I wish you were here.”
“Oh sweety, I know you do, but I have some important work to do and I can’t come home. Just know that I will always love you. Now you have a good day at school, you hear?”
“Mmhm, I will. Here’s mommy.”
The camera shook again as it passed from my daughter’s claws to my wife’s. In the background, I could hear the chitter of my daughter’s voice and then rapid footsteps away. When the camera stopped shaking, I was met by the most beautiful woman in existence.
“Hello, Sweet-fruit.”
Kirala smiled and tilted her head. “Hello, my big guolo tree. I missed you this morning.”
“I missed you too. I had to sleep on an uncomfortable couch and I think it messed up my back a bit.”
“Oh, how the mighty veteran is felled! Surviving a plasma wound to the chest but felled by the mightier couch.”
I flicked an ear in amusement. “To be fair, it was one vicious couch.”
I couldn’t help but melt at her laugh, it was like sunshine during the darkest night. It was light and cheerful and genuine, and I couldn’t imagine myself living without it.
With a final few chuckles, Kirala pulled herself together enough to respond. “Well, it sounds like you need to wear some armor to bed then.”
I feigned a thoughtful expression. “Maybe I will, I already sleep with clothes on.”
She threw her head back in disgust. “Ugh, I still don’t know how you do that. I still feel a little uncomfortable when I wear them when I’m awake, I couldn’t imagine sleeping with them.”
“It’s an acquired taste, you’ll come around.”
“Mmhm, I’m suuure.”
I sighed. “How’s Julaly doing?”
“Well, she misses you, obviously, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. She was good yesterday, but we both wished you had given us a little more of a warning. I didn’t expect your little trip to the memorial to turn into an impromptu therapy session.”
“Sweet-fruit, you know I wish I could have too. It was sprung on me just as much as you. I’m just glad I found him when I did, do you know what I found in his room? A suicide note.”
Kirala gasped slightly. “Oh dear I… I really-”
“It’s fine. I didn’t know either. But just think, if I had come back for just one day, he would be dead. I made the right call here, even if I was torn at the time.”
“You need to get back to him then.”
“I’ve got a little longer. He’s still asleep. I was throwing away some alcohol when you called me, and when I get some free time I’m going to go to the nearby bars and tell them not to serve him. Today I’m thinking I’ll try and get him to go to a veterans’ meeting so he can connect with some others like him, let him know he’s not alone and it’s not just me who cares about him.”
“Still, you should go back to him. And stay safe. He sounds unstable, just keep an eye on him.”
“Sweet-fruit, he’s not dangerous.”
“You don’t know what’s going on in his head. Promise me you will stay safe.”
“I promise.”
“Like you mean it.”
“I promise with all of my heart that I will stay safe.”
“Good, now get back to it. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
The call blinked out and left me staring at my home screen. It was true that I missed them both dearly, even a day without them left me longing, but I knew what I was doing was right. Billy needed someone to save him, and I was the only one available. Kirala was right, I needed to get back to it. I couldn’t leave Billy alone for too long, it would only end in disaster.
As soon as the door clicked open, Billy descended upon me. “Gillab, what did you do?! Where’s the liquor?!”
I stepped past him and made my way to the living room. “I threw it all away. You were poisoning yourself and I needed to put an end to it.”
Billy was stunned for a moment. “You fucking- GILLAB! Get the FUCK out of my house!”
“I’m not going anywhere! Not until you heal!”
Billy looked back and forth, raising his arms in frustration. “What the FUCK does that even mean?! You keep spouting this fucking ‘healing’ word like it’s some catch-all miracle wonder word that means everything!”
“I mean, you need to come to terms with what you’ve done, accept them, and move on! Otherwise, you are just going to rot in this room for all eternity. You are so much better than this, and you know it. You are strong enough to carry on, and you know this. You know, deep down, that you don’t deserve this life. But you are stuck thinking that you do! I saw you at the memorial and I literally didn’t recognize you, remember? That is how much you have changed, but it doesn’t have to stay like this. You can end the pain, and not in that way, all you have to do is trust me. And not just say that you do.”
I paused for a moment to catch my breath. “You said that you would go through the motions for me, right? This is just another motion. The next one is to find other veterans who are or have been through what you have and talk to them. They will make you realize that you aren’t trash or a parasite or any of that! It’s just another motion, right?”
Billy growled and stormed towards me. “You are on thin fucking ice right now.”
“Good. It means you care. Now sit down, we are going to set up a meeting with a group of veterans.”
“I don’t want to go meet some fucking soldier. I’m fine without that.”
“It’s just the motions, right? Humor me.”
With a deep sigh, Billy sat in the chair across from me. That was all I needed to see to confirm it, Billy really did want help, he just couldn’t even admit it to himself.
“You still haven’t given me your promised speech from yesterday. The hour-long one about how much I don’t deserve what I’m doing to myself.”
“Oh trust me, it’s coming. But right now we are going to set up a date for you to meet a veterans’ group. After that, let’s clean up a little more, get some food, maybe go for a walk in a park, then you’ll get the speech. Okay?”
Billy rolled his eyes and waited for me to pull up a website. After a bit of scrolling, I found a phone number I could call to find a meeting time. I prepared everything and set the phone on the table, but didn’t call yet.
“Okay Billy, I’m leaving this up to you. All you have to do is say your name and ask for a time you can come to the meeting.”
“Why can’t you set it up for me?”
“That’s not how it works. You need to be the one that calls them, not me. Plus, I don’t think they would accept me signing you up. The person coming has to be the one to set it up. Are you ready?”
Billy sighed. “Yeah.”
I called the number, set the phone on a table between Billy and I, and waited. After a few rings, a man began to speak.
“Hello, you have reached Richard’s group therapy for veterans, how can I help you?”
Billy looked up to me for guidance, to which I only motioned for him to speak to the man. “H-hi Richard, m-my name is Billy. I was… wondering if I-I could join your next meeting.”
“Oh course, we are always open for more. You didn’t even need to call, you could have just shown up at the meeting. We accept anyone and everyone at any time. Our next meeting is tomorrow at noon if you are available. If not, the next one is that same day at six-thirty.”
Billy glanced at me twice before giving his answer. “The… six-thirty one sounds good.”
He was pushing it back as much as he could, but at least he would get to it eventually. There was some quiet clacking in the background before the man responded. “Great, I’ve reserved you a seat. I’m happy to have you join us. Is there anything else you need?”
“No, that’s all. See you tomorrow.”
Billy set his phone down and sighed deeply. His face quickly changed from concerned and awkward to angry and annoyed. I could see him prepare to say something, but it ended up dying in his throat. Instead, he stood up suddenly and stomped back to his room, wanting to be left alone.
submitted by Crazy-Concern8080 to NatureofPredators [link] [comments]
First
Previous
You know the drill: credit to SpacePaladin15 for the universe.
Thank you JulianSkies for proofreading.
Date [Standardized Human Time]: March 28, 2142
I made sure to wake up as early as possible so I could do what I needed to do before Billy woke up. First things first, get rid of all the liquor in that fridge. If Billy was going to get better, the first thing he needed to do was stop drinking. He was only running from his problems and as long as he had that out he was going to take it.
I pulled a trash bag in front of the fridge, propped it open as best I could, and started stuffing it full of bottles. Cheap Venlilian liquor was being poured down the drain by the second, it almost made me feel bad for anything living in the sewers. This stuff had enough alcohol in it to kill someone, a rat would be dead in seconds.
By the time I poured the last bottle down the drain, I had probably sanitized the entirety of the New York sewer system. I hoisted the bag onto my back, making sure not to break the bag with my quills, and started to make my way to the dumpster. Thankfully Billy’s apartment was on the first floor so the journey wasn’t too long.
I tossed the bag into the dumpster carelessly, causing a few of the bottles to break when they hit the others that had been thrown in yesterday. It was only the second day, but I felt like we had already made some progress. I was able to make him admit he was just scared of feeling the pain of his memories, even if it was only accidental. Small steps were still steps, now all I had to do was make him realize that he didn’t deserve this. I have a feeling that once he jumps that hurdle, everything should come much easier.
A familiar song brought me out of my thoughts, drawing my attention to my phone. I had changed the ringtone to the first Human song I had ever heard, T-Shirt, to always remind me of my time on the Cradle. I pulled out my phone and accepted the call, smiling as I saw just who it was.
“High sweety, having a good morning?”
The camera shook up and down in sync with my daughter's face. “Yeah, but I wish you were here.”
“Oh sweety, I know you do, but I have some important work to do and I can’t come home. Just know that I will always love you. Now you have a good day at school, you hear?”
“Mmhm, I will. Here’s mommy.”
The camera shook again as it passed from my daughter’s claws to my wife’s. In the background, I could hear the chitter of my daughter’s voice and then rapid footsteps away. When the camera stopped shaking, I was met by the most beautiful woman in existence.
“Hello, Sweet-fruit.”
Kirala smiled and tilted her head. “Hello, my big guolo tree. I missed you this morning.”
“I missed you too. I had to sleep on an uncomfortable couch and I think it messed up my back a bit.”
“Oh, how the mighty veteran is felled! Surviving a plasma wound to the chest but felled by the mightier couch.”
I flicked an ear in amusement. “To be fair, it was one vicious couch.”
I couldn’t help but melt at her laugh, it was like sunshine during the darkest night. It was light and cheerful and genuine, and I couldn’t imagine myself living without it.
With a final few chuckles, Kirala pulled herself together enough to respond. “Well, it sounds like you need to wear some armor to bed then.”
I feigned a thoughtful expression. “Maybe I will, I already sleep with clothes on.”
She threw her head back in disgust. “Ugh, I still don’t know how you do that. I still feel a little uncomfortable when I wear them when I’m awake, I couldn’t imagine sleeping with them.”
“It’s an acquired taste, you’ll come around.”
“Mmhm, I’m suuure.”
I sighed. “How’s Julaly doing?”
“Well, she misses you, obviously, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. She was good yesterday, but we both wished you had given us a little more of a warning. I didn’t expect your little trip to the memorial to turn into an impromptu therapy session.”
“Sweet-fruit, you know I wish I could have too. It was sprung on me just as much as you. I’m just glad I found him when I did, do you know what I found in his room? A suicide note.”
Kirala gasped slightly. “Oh dear I… I really-”
“It’s fine. I didn’t know either. But just think, if I had come back for just one day, he would be dead. I made the right call here, even if I was torn at the time.”
“You need to get back to him then.”
“I’ve got a little longer. He’s still asleep. I was throwing away some alcohol when you called me, and when I get some free time I’m going to go to the nearby bars and tell them not to serve him. Today I’m thinking I’ll try and get him to go to a veterans’ meeting so he can connect with some others like him, let him know he’s not alone and it’s not just me who cares about him.”
“Still, you should go back to him. And stay safe. He sounds unstable, just keep an eye on him.”
“Sweet-fruit, he’s not dangerous.”
“You don’t know what’s going on in his head. Promise me you will stay safe.”
“I promise.”
“Like you mean it.”
“I promise with all of my heart that I will stay safe.”
“Good, now get back to it. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
The call blinked out and left me staring at my home screen. It was true that I missed them both dearly, even a day without them left me longing, but I knew what I was doing was right. Billy needed someone to save him, and I was the only one available. Kirala was right, I needed to get back to it. I couldn’t leave Billy alone for too long, it would only end in disaster.
As soon as the door clicked open, Billy descended upon me. “Gillab, what did you do?! Where’s the liquor?!”
I stepped past him and made my way to the living room. “I threw it all away. You were poisoning yourself and I needed to put an end to it.”
Billy was stunned for a moment. “You fucking- GILLAB! Get the FUCK out of my house!”
“I’m not going anywhere! Not until you heal!”
Billy looked back and forth, raising his arms in frustration. “What the FUCK does that even mean?! You keep spouting this fucking ‘healing’ word like it’s some catch-all miracle wonder word that means everything!”
“I mean, you need to come to terms with what you’ve done, accept them, and move on! Otherwise, you are just going to rot in this room for all eternity. You are so much better than this, and you know it. You are strong enough to carry on, and you know this. You know, deep down, that you don’t deserve this life. But you are stuck thinking that you do! I saw you at the memorial and I literally didn’t recognize you, remember? That is how much you have changed, but it doesn’t have to stay like this. You can end the pain, and not in that way, all you have to do is trust me. And not just say that you do.”
I paused for a moment to catch my breath. “You said that you would go through the motions for me, right? This is just another motion. The next one is to find other veterans who are or have been through what you have and talk to them. They will make you realize that you aren’t trash or a parasite or any of that! It’s just another motion, right?”
Billy growled and stormed towards me. “You are on thin fucking ice right now.”
“Good. It means you care. Now sit down, we are going to set up a meeting with a group of veterans.”
“I don’t want to go meet some fucking soldier. I’m fine without that.”
“It’s just the motions, right? Humor me.”
With a deep sigh, Billy sat in the chair across from me. That was all I needed to see to confirm it, Billy really did want help, he just couldn’t even admit it to himself.
“You still haven’t given me your promised speech from yesterday. The hour-long one about how much I don’t deserve what I’m doing to myself.”
“Oh trust me, it’s coming. But right now we are going to set up a date for you to meet a veterans’ group. After that, let’s clean up a little more, get some food, maybe go for a walk in a park, then you’ll get the speech. Okay?”
Billy rolled his eyes and waited for me to pull up a website. After a bit of scrolling, I found a phone number I could call to find a meeting time. I prepared everything and set the phone on the table, but didn’t call yet.
“Okay Billy, I’m leaving this up to you. All you have to do is say your name and ask for a time you can come to the meeting.”
“Why can’t you set it up for me?”
“That’s not how it works. You need to be the one that calls them, not me. Plus, I don’t think they would accept me signing you up. The person coming has to be the one to set it up. Are you ready?”
Billy sighed. “Yeah.”
I called the number, set the phone on a table between Billy and I, and waited. After a few rings, a man began to speak.
“Hello, you have reached Richard’s group therapy for veterans, how can I help you?”
Billy looked up to me for guidance, to which I only motioned for him to speak to the man. “H-hi Richard, m-my name is Billy. I was… wondering if I-I could join your next meeting.”
“Oh course, we are always open for more. You didn’t even need to call, you could have just shown up at the meeting. We accept anyone and everyone at any time. Our next meeting is tomorrow at noon if you are available. If not, the next one is that same day at six-thirty.”
Billy glanced at me twice before giving his answer. “The… six-thirty one sounds good.”
He was pushing it back as much as he could, but at least he would get to it eventually. There was some quiet clacking in the background before the man responded. “Great, I’ve reserved you a seat. I’m happy to have you join us. Is there anything else you need?”
“No, that’s all. See you tomorrow.”
Billy set his phone down and sighed deeply. His face quickly changed from concerned and awkward to angry and annoyed. I could see him prepare to say something, but it ended up dying in his throat. Instead, he stood up suddenly and stomped back to his room, wanting to be left alone.
2024.05.19 14:08 Yurii_S_Kh Monotheism, Part 3: Islam
 | Islam: Origins submitted by Yurii_S_Kh to SophiaWisdomOfGod [link] [comments] Jibril (Gabriel) appears before Mohammed, drawing The religion of the Law, which for 15 centuries prepared the chosen people for the coming into the world of the its Savior, the Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, preceded New Testament religion. According to the Holy Apostle Paul, "the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ" (Gal. 3:24). It was all in all only "a shadow of good things to come" (Heb. 10:1). When the Savior came into the world, Old Testament religion had fulfilled its purpose. Our Lord Jesus Christ revealed to us the mystery of the Heavenly Kingdom and established the New Covenant, which was foretold by the prophet Jeremiah. "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. 31:31-33). Man was redeemed from original sin and its consequences by the voluntary death on the Cross of Jesus Christ as Savior of the World. He entered into an entirely new period in terms of his relationship with God in comparison with the Old Testament: instead of the law, there was a free condition of sonship and grace. Man received new means for achieving the ideal set for him of moral perfection as a necessary condition for salvation. Islam, having arisen in Arabia in the seventh century, appeared as the religion of the law six centuries after the God of the chosen people of the religion of the Law fulfilled its purpose. The difference between the Old Testament religion of the Law and Islam is not only that the latter emerged more than two thousand years after God gave on Mount Sinai the Ten Commandments and other precepts that governed life for the chosen people. The most important difference is that the Law of Moses has a Divine source. The book of Exodus gives a narrative of the majestic Epiphany. "And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up" (Exod. 19:17-20). The founder of Islam, however, did not have a Divine revelation. How did Islam arise? We read about this in the Hadith “Al-Jamii al-Sahih”. A mysterious being began to visit Mohammed. He slept in a cave on the slope of Mount Hira. On the night of the 24th of the month of Ramadan in year 610 someone appeared to him in human form. This event is considered the beginning of Islam. This story about it is from the Sunnah: “[A]n angel appeared to him and bade him 'READ!' 'I am no reader!' Mohammed replied in great trepidation, whereon the angel shook him violently and again bade him read. This was repeated three times, when the angel uttered the five verses that commence the 96th chapter: 'READ! in the name of thy Lord, who did create—who did create man from congealed blood. READ! for thy Lord is the most generous.’” Mohammed puzzled over whether a demon or angel visited him. He confided his experiences in his wife Khadijah. I will introduce more of the story of Mohammed's biography, generally accepted by Muslims: “She said to the messenger of God, ‘O son of my uncle, are you able to tell me about your visitant, when he comes to you?’ He replied that he could, and she asked him to tell her when he came. So when Gabriel came to him, as he was wont the apostle said to Khadija, ‘This is Gabriel who has just come to me.’ ‘Get up, O son of my uncle,’ she said, ‘and sit by my left thigh.’ The apostle did so, and she said, ‘Can you see him?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. She said, ‘Then turn round and sit on my right thigh.’ He did so, and she said, ‘Can you see him?’ When he said that he could she asked him to move and sit in her lap. When he had done this she again asked if he could see him, and when he said yes, she disclosed her form and cast aside her veil while the apostle was sitting in her lap. Then she said, ‘Can you see him?’ And he replied, ‘No.’ She said, ‘O son of my uncle, rejoice and be of good heart, by God he is an angel and not a satan’” (Ibn Hisham, Biography of the Prophet Muhammad). It is surprising how easily and, gently speaking, naively this question, which in the spiritual realm is a question of life or death, had been answered with the help of a woman. Before all else, an Angel is a bodiless being, and for his sight there are no actual barriers: one can see through even clothes. Clothes hide nudity only from the eyes of man. Even so, the body of man in and of itself is not something perverse or shameful. It is a creation of God. The lust of man is sinful as well as is carnal desire, but not the body. In paradise the progenitors were naked and were not ashamed (see Gen. 2:25). The nature of an Angel is inviolate. They are alien to passions of man. But if this was a demon, then he could easily resort to trickery. Knowing how they tested him, he especially would be able to take leave of himself, so that they would take him for an Angel. The attitude of Islam towards the Bible Islam emerged as something syncretic out of several sources: ancient Arabic cults, Judaism, Christianity, Hanifism (a pre-Islamic monotheistic movement in Arabia) and Mazdaism (an ancient Iranian religion). There is no doubt that the Old Testament holy books and the Gospel had an influence on the formation of Islam. In the Quran many people and events from biblical history are mentioned. However, these stories are presented completely arbitrarily and inaccurately. According to the Quran, man was created from water. "It is He Who has created man from water: Then has He established relationships of lineage and marriage: for thy Lord has power (over all things)" (25:54). In another surah, it says: "Proclaim! (or read!) in the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created man, out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood" (96:1-2). In another part it speaks about clay, "He created man from sounding clay like unto pottery" (55:14). In contrast to the Bible, the Quran does not say that man was created in the image and likeness of God. This discrepancy is most profound. With God's image and likeness, man is summoned to commune directly with his Creator. He can become one with the Lord. This is not so in Islam. The book of Genesis tells the story of how the entire family of the patriarch Noah (in Arabic, Nuh) was saved in the Ark. The Quran speaks about the death of Noah's son: "So the Ark floated with them on the waves (towering) like mountains, and Noah called out to his son, who had separated himself (from the rest): ‘O my son! Embark with us, and be not with the unbelievers!’ The son replied: ‘I will betake myself to some mountain: it will save me from the water.’ Noah said: ‘This day nothing can save, from the command of Allah, any but those on whom He hath mercy!’ And the waves came between them, and the son was among those overwhelmed in the Flood" (11:42-43). Another surah tells it somewhat differently: "(Remember) Noah, when he cried (to Us) aforetime: We listened to his (prayer) and delivered him and his family from great distress" (21:76). There is no need to provide more examples. In the Quran, things are especially distorted when discussing New Testament events. Here the differences are purely fundamental. The Incarnation, the Crucifixion on Golgotha, and the Resurrection are all denied. Even the event of the Nativity of Christ, known to the whole world, is described very strangely. It is alleged that Maryam retreated to a faraway place and gave birth to a Son under palms (19:23). In this surah, called Maryam, She is called the "sister of Harun," i.e. Aaron. He indeed had a sister named Miriam, but she lived 15 centuries before the Nativity of Christ. Probably due to so great a number of errors and distortions, many representatives of Islam, in order to escape from this quandary, allege that the modern Holy Scripture of Christians has been distorted (a circumstance known as tahrif). Immediately, the question arises: what evidence do they provide? There is no evidence. Characteristically, the view of Muslims toward the Bible has undergone significant change over the course of several centuries. Early Islamic writers such as al-Tabari and ar-Razi believed that the distortion comes down to tahrif bi'al ma'ni, i.e. the corruption of the meaning without changing the text. However, later authors such as Ibn Hazm and Al-Biruni introduced the idea of tahrif bi’al-lafz, i.e. the corruption of the text itself. At that, both of these positions have been preserved to the present day. Thus, the level of acceptance among Muslims of the Bible depends on one's understanding of tahrif. The very existence of these fundamentally different positions indicates that there is no concrete evidence. It is impossible to ignore one interesting feature of the attitude that representatives of Islam have toward the Biblical text. In that they do not have their own "undistorted" biblical text, they cite our canonical text as undistorted. However, when they need to support a point, for example, negative examples from the life of Banu Isra'il (the children of Israel) with a reference to parts that do not conform to Islam, they proclaim the text to be distorted. Muslims allege that the New Testament (Injil), which the Quran refers to positively, is not in fact the current four Gospels. We have already said that they do not provide any evidence. The falsehood of the accusation that Christians distorted the Scriptures stems from the internal inconsistencies of the very Islamic authors who wrote on this theme. According to the Quran, the New Testament was originally a true, sacred text. "And in their footsteps We sent Jesus the son of Mary, confirming the Law that had come before him: We sent him the Gospel: therein was guidance and light, and confirmation of the Law that had come before him: a guidance and an admonition to those who fear Allah" (5:46). In another section: "Say: ‘O People of the Book! ye have no ground to stand upon unless ye stand fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you from your Lord.’ It is the revelation that cometh to thee from thy Lord, that increaseth in most of them their obstinate rebellion and blasphemy" (5:68). This excerpt clearly demonstrates that the Quran itself does not speak of the distorted Scripture, but about "rebellion and blasphemy" related to misunderstanding. There is one part of the Quran (10:94) which is very problematic for Islamic commentators: "If thou wert in doubt as to what We have revealed unto thee, then ask those who have been reading the Book from before thee: the Truth hath indeed come to thee from thy Lord: so be in no wise of those in doubt." This ayat refers the Muslim "in doubt" to the authority of the biblical Holy Scripture. Abdul-Haqq writes: “The learned doctors of Islam are sadly embarrassed by this verse, referring the prophet as it does to the people of the Book who would solve his doubts” (Abdul-Haqq, A. A. (1980). Sharing Your Faith With A Muslim. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers. As cited in Geisler, N.L. (1999). Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group). According to the logic of this verse, the biblical Scripture was undistorted in the 7th century at the time of the Quran's creation. Then one must recognize that the current text is also correct, since we use manuscripts written over several centuries prior to the Quran. Textual criticism of the New Testament has achieved outstanding breakthroughs in the 20th century. Currently, there are over 2,328 manuscripts and manuscript fragments in Greek, coming to us from the first three centuries of Christianity. The most ancient New Testament manuscript, a part of the Gospel of John 18:31-33, 37-38, is the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, dated 117-138 in the era of the reign of emperor Hadrian. Adolf Deissmann acknowledges the possibility of the emergence of this papyrus even under the reign of Emperor Trajan (98-117). It is preserved in Manchester. Another ancient New Testament manuscript is the Papyrus Bodmer, P75. The 102 surviving pages contain the texts of the Gospels of Luke and John. "The editors, Victor Martin and Rodolphe Kasser, date this copy to between 175 and 225 A.D. It is thus the earliest surviving known copy of the Gospel according to Luke available today and one of the earliest of the Gospel according to John" (Bruce M. Metzger. The Text of the New Testament. p. 58). This precious manuscript is located in Geneva. Uncial script on parchment: leather codices with uncial script, (in Latin uncia means inch) letters without sharp corners and broken lines. This script is distinguished by its great refinement and precision. Each letter is disconnected. There are 362 uncial manuscripts of the New Testament. The most ancient of these codices (Codex Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus) have already been mentioned. Scholars complemented this impressive collection of ancient New Testament manuscripts with the New Testament text, which consisted of 36,286 excerpts of the Holy Scripture of the New Testament found in the works of the holy fathers and teachers of the Church from the first through fourth centuries. This text is lacking only 11 verses. Scholars of textual criticism in the 20th century did a tremendous job on the collation of all—several thousands of—New Testament manuscripts and identified all textual discrepancies caused by scribal error. An evaluation and typologization was performed. Precise criteria for determining a correct variant were established. For those familiar with this rigorous scientific work, it is obvious that allegations of the distortion of the current holy text of the New Testament are unfounded. In terms of the number of ancient manuscripts and the brevity of time separating the earliest surviving text from the original, no one work of antiquity can be compared with the New Testament. Accusations that the Bible's text is distorted are puzzling. How could it actually have been done? How could Christians and Hebrews have come together to do this? Everyone knows the degree of their mutual [doctrinal—Ed.] alienation. And yet both Christians and Jews use one and the same canonical text of the Old Testament. Furthermore, the entire New Testament was preserved in the Chester Beatty Papyri, composed in approximately 250 A.D. It is inconceivable to accept that under the conditions that existed in Christian society, hundreds of exemplars of the New Testament text were miscopied for the purpose of distortion. On the Monotheism of Islam Historians and religious scholars regard the three "Abrahamic" religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as monotheistic religions. For the researcher, the doctrinal principles that representatives of each of these three religions formulate are sufficient. However, on a theological level, the insufficiency of such a formal approach becomes clear. Monotheism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for true religion. Only a religion that has Divine revelation as a source has the true and spiritually accurate doctrine concerning God. Christianity not only maintains that God is the living, absolute source, "the only true God" (John 17:3; 1 Thes. 1:9; cf. John 5:20), but also teaches thoroughly and in depth of the nature of God as without beginning, without end, and of a perfect Spirit. The chief characteristic of the Divine nature is love. "God is love" (1 John 4:16). These words of the apostle contain the principal idea of the New Testament as the good news of salvation. The ineffable goodness of God created the world. The Lord housed man in paradise. Even after the Fall, God continued to love mankind. The greatness of God's love was revealed when the incarnate God died a most agonizing death for us. Christians know from not only the Holy Scripture, but also through the power of spiritual experience, that God is all-knowing and all-wise. The apostle says: "Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:13). God knows not only all that has happened, and all that is, but he has also perfect knowledge of the future. The mirror of the supreme Wisdom of God is the universe which He created, astounding man with its extraordinary complexity, beauty, and harmony. God demonstrates his ineffable Wisdom also in the dispensation of our salvation. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out" (Rom. 11:33). True religion is not limited by the demand of worship for the Creator. Its ultimate goal is the spiritual unity of man with God. The Savior speaks about this in a prayer to his Father before his suffering on the cross: "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us" (John 17:21). From the aforementioned characteristics of the Divine follows the concept of true, Christian monotheism. There can be only one all-powerful and all-just God. The concept of God in Islam does not have a source of divine revelation. It developed on the basis of ancient Arabic religion. The word “Allah” was used in the polytheistic pantheon of Arabs to denote “God”: Allah (al - the definite article; ilah - god). Among the pagan Arabs, prior to their adoption of Islam, Allah was the supreme lunar deity, worshipped in north and central Arabia. The father of Muhammed, who was a pagan, was named Abdullah ("Servant of Allah"). In pre-Islamic times, the crescent moon was the symbol of the worship of the moon-god among the Arabs. This is confirmed by archeological evidence. The crescent moon was carried over as the main symbol of Islam. Arabs of the Syrian desert called the wife of Allah as Al-lāt, and in the south of central Arabia, Al-‘Uzzá. In other areas of Arabia, they, along with Manat, were worshipped as the daughters of Allah. This genetic trail was preserved in the Quran. There is mention of this in the 53rd surah: "Have ye seen Lāt, and ‘Uzzā, and another, the third (goddess), Manāt? What! For you the male sex, and for Him, the female? Behold, such would be indeed a division most unfair!" (53:19-22). In Islam, Allah is a created religious image by the human consciousness. He does not express the real almighty divine personhood. Consequently, monotheism in Islam is imagined. In a number of places in the Quran, he is endowed with intrinsically human characteristics and traits. Allah says:
The idea of monotheism, (tawhid, from the verb wahhada—to reckon something as one) was formulated in the Quran in several surahs. For example, in the 16th surah, "The Bee": "For We assuredly sent amongst every people an apostle, (with the Command), "serve God, and eschew evil" (16:36). In the terminology of the sharia, anything people worship except for Allah is "taghut". Since Islam does not know of direct revelation, nor the holy Manifestation of God to the world, nor the unification of man with God on the foundation of love, its monotheism is imagined, formalistic and abstract, requiring not that man change himself or his way of life, but only worship and daily prayer. Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) |
2024.05.19 13:55 Super-Associate-4157 How do I stop a kid from becoming addicted to the internet?
For context my grandmother babysits 2 little girls (6 and 8) while their mother is at work to make a little more money on the side.
From what I understood, this girls live in a motel room (I don't mean flat, I mean room) becouse their mother can't afford an house or flat and has to live on the bare minimum, they often are unshowered, say things like "i like it here, we can run around/talk louder", hairs uncombed/unwashed and don't seam to eat much.
The oldest one is severely mentally disabled, can't speak, screams when she doesn't get her way, desperately cries at the slightest inconvenience and can't go to the bathroom alone, the only way to calm her down is to show her kid cartoons that my grandma will give to her as soon as she makes a noise becouse she really has no way of dealing with her otherwise.
Now, her younger sister that isn't disabled will get jealous or tired of drawing all day and also want the phone since at her house there isn't wifi and since she spends most of the time in my room (our house isn't that big neither but a LOT bigger than their motel room) I've noticed she is spending a lot of time looking at brain rot yt shorts with cringey high pitched sped up music.
I too grew up with unlimited internet access and it didn't fuck me up in ways that bad, but I know that everyone is different and I don't want her to end up as a internet addicted skibidy toilet fanum tax whatever kid, so, how can I help, even just a little?
I should point out that in no way I'm related to her but she seams to look up at me as a sort of cool older brothecousin (atleast from what I understood). If more dettails or context are needed I will be glad to give them, I really just want to help her also I'm not English so sorry for the grammar
submitted by Super-Associate-4157 to Advice [link] [comments]
From what I understood, this girls live in a motel room (I don't mean flat, I mean room) becouse their mother can't afford an house or flat and has to live on the bare minimum, they often are unshowered, say things like "i like it here, we can run around/talk louder", hairs uncombed/unwashed and don't seam to eat much.
The oldest one is severely mentally disabled, can't speak, screams when she doesn't get her way, desperately cries at the slightest inconvenience and can't go to the bathroom alone, the only way to calm her down is to show her kid cartoons that my grandma will give to her as soon as she makes a noise becouse she really has no way of dealing with her otherwise.
Now, her younger sister that isn't disabled will get jealous or tired of drawing all day and also want the phone since at her house there isn't wifi and since she spends most of the time in my room (our house isn't that big neither but a LOT bigger than their motel room) I've noticed she is spending a lot of time looking at brain rot yt shorts with cringey high pitched sped up music.
I too grew up with unlimited internet access and it didn't fuck me up in ways that bad, but I know that everyone is different and I don't want her to end up as a internet addicted skibidy toilet fanum tax whatever kid, so, how can I help, even just a little?
I should point out that in no way I'm related to her but she seams to look up at me as a sort of cool older brothecousin (atleast from what I understood). If more dettails or context are needed I will be glad to give them, I really just want to help her also I'm not English so sorry for the grammar
2024.05.19 12:13 heyyyitsjess_ my experience with streamers of all sizes, as a streamer~ an inspired rant from seeing a friends tweet: "When people show you who they are PLEASE BELIEVE THEM."
There will probs be more posts like this in time. Only bc I refuse to be silenced by "Cancel Culture" or "Blacklisting"
Streaming has shown me a completely different kind of evil people and almost all of them preach kindness and inclusivity while “protecting their communities” publicly but privately is a whole different animal.Once, as a baby streamer I went to one of those preachy kinda streamers who I thought was actually a pretty good friend cuz she said she loved me so much she called me her sister. I thought I was safe to confess the sensitive information that I had been excessively cyberstalked and sexually harassed by someone in the community, not that I wanted them to do anything about it but i wanted them to know why that person may be yelling his version of events to anyone that will listen when I inevitably have to ban him. At the time i did not know this person was a frienemy but when the time was right for them, they used that sensitive info to hurt me and made the man who sexually harassed me & cyber stalked me their mod, even tho they knew he went as far as threatening to kill me if I wasn’t his friend. Others on twitter came forward shortly after saying he’s done this before. AND on top of that, that same frienemy added their other streamer buddy who was more well connected with other streamers AND MODS as her mod too and he was actually the first out of everyone to victim blame me for being harassed, stalked, and threatened w\o asking for proof. When he found out I had proof, he lied to others saying I bullied the poor guy I banned and accused. He then confidently smear campaigned me (failed) on Twitter back then just because I wanted a public apology. This streamemod combo conman later became a very loud mod to the guy who publicly announced my cancellation and without a doubt in my opinion was one of the ones pushing him to do it.
THEN there's the kinds of “safe space acceptance of all” assholes that team up with the above assholes
These guys within themselves have a tight inner circle of people all groomed to be loyal (people that owe the leader something out of admiration for being helped through a life event-for example needing money for Christmas for your kids, money to stop a house being foreclosed on, money for whatever. OR false promises of success and support on twitch through various means) These kind of people love raising money for private causes and not actual charities to play hero to suffering individuals they raised the money for-so people feel indebted to them. These same streamers also have no problem only coming back to streaming to ask for personal donations to help them in their time of "need" literal days before a huge St Judes Community fundraiser event. Ponder that as you will.
They use their loyal gophers to stalk, bully & blacklists anyone thats makes them feel disobeyed, threatened, envious, or bitter. They even go against their own, people there aren’t allowed to have differing opinions because anything different than the leaders is “disrespectful” and personal slight towards them. Those people usually slowly get pushed unless they redeem themselves or give up dirt on someone on the watch list.
& to the people who courageously leave bc it becomes creepy finding out how fucked the inner workings really are, People like me, become public enemy #1. You all know what happened there and if you dont, comment and ill tell you about "The Great Cancelation of HeyyyitJess" fucking cringe bro im really not that important lmao
ANYWAY These kinda streamers use their loyals to pressure other creators or threaten to take their numbers away if they refuse to obey or stop being friends with someone they want deplatformed. Yes, I said Deplatformed. They do this so they don’t catch the fall when the truth comes out how fucked up this behavior is. They have an almost onion layered shield around them taking the full brunt of it all. If called out they could say something like "Those were my mods who conspired with those other people to plan a scandal, not me, but im sorry this is happening to you. Mistakes were made." or "I was not threatening to take your viewership, support, relevancy or friends away, that was my mods who i have no control over. Mistakes were made" \)keeps all mods and rewards them*
ALLEGEDLY 😂 these are my personal experience of what ive witnessed or others who have come forward but i could be a big fat liar guys its up to you who knows i might think im jesus too and think i can become the irl sailor moon or little mermaid lol its not funny but bc its so ridiculous its hard not to laugh.**
I DIGRESS-But u know who does end up getting the fall? The streamer who they convinced enough to make a declaration LIVE ON STREAM March 21st 2024 for the first 45 minutes of stream (vod is still up and ill link it-if its taken down i have it recorded and saved per legal advice Paskaroni's March 21st 2024 VOD Rule #1 Stream. • QotD) **(assuming he is talking about me bc ik he was and so does everyone else) that im-**in not exact words but close-a bully, toxic, and he declared me and my 3 friends a danger to the whole community so in his words we were and are now “DEAD” in the community...In my POV, He said that not once but twice giggling with glee basically as he told the community to flame me out bc I apparently don’t deserve to be on Twitch, have success, friends, or a platform etc and that he knows the community is strong enough to make this happen. He then seemingly encouraged people to DM him to find out who he was talking about because he had no problem sharing all the names in order to get rid of the filth of the community. Also went on bragging that at CONs they all talk about us bad people and share notes with everyone to protect the whole website from us bullies (ooooo im so scary with my truth and autistic personality that seeks justice)
I want to draw more attention to the fact that the streamer said this ALL WITHOUT PROOF. & admitted on his own accord and free will ALL BY HIMSELF there was no proof, that there were alot of screenshots from the haters that didnt say much but that he wanted to give HIS 12 hater friends the benefit of the doubt even though he always saw me as a wonderfully positive part of the community. I guess I suddenly wasnt considered a friend which is oh so convenient. Not even considered enough so to get the same benefit of the doubt let alone a conversation in general. I wouldve happily handed over the link to the 5GB file of VODS, others testimonies via calls and VALID screenshots as well as a list of other peoples info who are willing to be CREDIBLE references that witnessed events as well but NOOOOO im too scary for that. Sorry tho guys I guess im not as evil as you all think i am especially not enough to go through with suing most of their asses like my lawyer wanted. And im poor as fuck so that should mean alot.
So back at it, now, who did him wrong? In my experience the kinda cult communities that do this bullshit is easy to spot once you know what this looks like. They manipulate people, and they dont discriminate, their prey could even be the most well meaning streamers- like the one who fell victim this time. (I'm very heartbroken that that streamer i linked did that to me live and essentially had hundreds of people leaving me hate dms, threatening me, threatening my friends, friends of friends, and stream leaders, but i still am mature enough to know he is a victim too in a way).
The problematic predatory streamers or communities like the ones responsible for this dumpster fire are usually the ones preaching and over amplifying positive vibes, safe space, inclusiveness, encouragement, acceptance, enabling etc bc they are a “close knit gamers of chosen family” or even the infamous kinda things some people say unironically “were totally not a cult-those people are cults OMG do you see how toxic...THAT STREAMER IS FAKE AF she is alllllll makeup look at and her simps. She's not even a good streamer or gamer she just has her simps play for her” seeing people saying that publicly on any platform seriously is......BIG RED FLAG oh and unfotunately get used to all the toxic men getting away with everything. sad but true. then you have me over here who gets cancelled for breathing wrong. Its apart of life and i hate it. SO HERE WE ARE
BASICALLY notice if you join one of these kind of communities see how fast you can pick up on mean girl behavior. itll be obvious. (Ive seen both cult themes vary in a dark silly way but the worst I have seen is a cult theme disguised as a form of DnD themed video game religion-both sinister af imo) like these people straight up have calculated religious church or temple themed community roles like The Archpriest, Highest Priestess, Acolytes, Initiates, "so in so's" whipping boy etc.
But yeah those total MotherMarys & JesusTheHealer's that own those kinda communities totally would NEVER abuse their connections or false appearance of power to start a witch hunt of cruel lies towards an ex inner circle member who walked away. Nah it couldn’t be that they would only do that just bc they were paranoid and guilty of what little ol me or whoever knows like...idk....their unmasked personal life behaviors and actions. Nah. Couldnt be them.
All in all....Ill never understand what the point of witch hunting and manipulating creators to shield you or get them to do your dirty work is, bc it will always come to light. None of it logically makes sense on a healthy level and people will realize that it sure does seem like peeps have alot to hide or cover up EHH? 🫎
Or maybe not. Walking away peacefully and minding your own business apparently now justifies a witch hunt cyberbully party based on lies no one even attempted to confront me about. So that being said youre fucked either way. BE CAREFUL ON TWITCH lol
Id be surprised if i dont get attack comments on this. <-says this cuz now they won’t but a few passive aggressive ones won’t resist the urge for sure. Its always the ones that seem the kindest but also the loudest about how kind they are. Just something to consider.
2024.05.19 12:00 AutoModerator Weekly Reminder: Rules and FAQ - May 19, 2024 (Now with updates!)
Below you will find a weekly reminder of our Rules and partial FAQ. It's definitely a long read, but it's worth your time, especially if you are new to the community, or dropping by as a result of a link you found elsewhere. We periodically revise our rules, this weekly notice will help keep you informed of any changes made.
NOTE: These rules are guidelines. Some moderation discretion is to be expected.
submitted by AutoModerator to stepparents [link] [comments]
NOTE: These rules are guidelines. Some moderation discretion is to be expected.
Community Rules
1. Kindness Matters
Advise, don't criticize.- Post with empathy, thoughtfulness, and constructive commentary rather than judgment. Don't be an asshole.
- Name-calling, slurs (including gender or race based slurs), and insults towards other community members will not be tolerated. Do not attack others for their personally held values, custody situation, marital status, physical distance from stepkids, or economic status; or on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, age, religion, or ethnicity.
- No name-calling toward children, including the above-mentioned insults or the term "skids", or terms such as "mini-wife" or "mini-husband."
- Comments advocating spanking or any mention of wanting to harm children are not allowed.
- This is a support sub, not a judgement sub, assholes are not tolerated. Comments with terms used in other subs to pass judgement on assholes will be removed.
2. No Drama
This is a support sub.- Bickering, nitpicking, and thread derailment will not be tolerated and will be subject to removal at moderator discretion.
- Do not repeatedly badger a poster demanding answers, or refuse to acknowledge an answer that's already been given.
- Do not use sensitive issues from past posts (either from this sub or other subs) to attack another user, as we are all discussing vulnerable topics.
- Crossposting anything from /stepparents to any other subreddit might result in a ban and may result in the original thread being locked. Brigading our sub will result in an immediate ban.
3. Report, Don’t Rant
No backseat modding.- If you see someone breaking the rules, report the post or comment to the mods rather than engaging them in an argument. Failure to do so may be subject to comment removal at moderator discretion.
- No meta posts complaining about rude comments, DMs, or general sub issues.
- If you think someone is a troll or previously banned user, either use the report function or message the mods to direct their attention to the issue.
4. No Naming & Shaming
No userpings or links.- Tagging/pinging users or other subreddits in an attempt to bully, harass, or complain will not be tolerated. Do not tag other subs, ever.
- If you want to complain about another subreddit being hostile to stepparents, do not name the subreddit. "Other parenting/advice/judgement subs" will suffice.
5. No Platitudes
Nobody knew what they were getting into.- Comments like "You knew what you were getting into", "Love them, love their kids!", "They're a package deal!" and "You have to love them like your own!" will be removed.
- Comments suggesting that OP is not cut out for stepparenting will be removed at moderator discretion.
- Comments like "This is just a part of parenting, deal with it!" will be removed at moderator discretion.
6. No Trolling
We have zero tolerance for trolls.- This is a support sub. Our subscribers do not have the time, nor inclination, to provide support to internet trolls. Posts that are suspected to be trolling attempts will be immediately removed, and the poster banned.
- Concern trolling, devil's advocating, gish-galloping, sealioning, and general asshattery are subject to immediate removal and banning without warning or notice.
- Any attempt to circumvent the ban by creating a new username will be reported to reddit admins and possibly result in account suspension.
7. No Personally Identifiable Information
Use discretion when posting.- We highly recommend using a separate account for support subs to help prevent being doxxed. Do not post any information that may allow others to figure out your identity.
- Do not post photos of children, or any other photo that could be used to identify you or another user on the sub.
- Any image that contains a name or other identifying information should have the name or identifying information blurred out. This includes drawings, notes, and screenshots.
- Do not link to social media or any articles/blogs where you or another user on the sub is mentioned by name.
8. No More than 2 Posts per 24 hours
Use the daily threads.- We are not a huge sub, but we are no longer a small sub. If you have multiple grievances to air, use the daily discussion threads instead of multiple posts.
9. Follow Reddiquette
Remember the human.- Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life.
- Read it in full here.
- Downvoting is reserved for comments that don’t contribute, and shouldn't be used to indicate disagreement.
- If you believe someone is in violation of the subreddit rules, please either use the report function or message the mods to direct their attention to the issue.
- Suspected brigading will be reported to reddit admins.
10. No Porn, Spam, Blogs, or Research Studies/Surveys Without Mod Approval
Just don't.- This is a SFW subreddit. Posting pornography will result in immediate post removal and permanent ban.
- Advertising on the subreddit (outside of Reddit's own advertising) is not allowed.
- No personal blog posts are allowed without express moderator permission.
- No advertising without prior mod approval.
- No asking for money/posting fundraisers/etc.
- For links to parenting research studies or surveys, please message the mods for permission before posting.
11. Disputes in Modmail Only
Don't argue with the mods on the sub.- Any issues specifically related to how a mod is moderating should be addressed to the full moderating team via mod mail. This ensures that all mods are aware of any concerns and prevents disintegration of the topic thread at hand.
- This means to do not message or send chat requests to individual mods. All discussion and complaints about mod actions need to be done in mod mail ONLY. Failure to follow this rule can result in an immediate permanent ban.
- Comments in threads asking about mod decisions are subject to removal without notice.
12. Moderator Actions
We aren't kidding.- Users are expected to know the rules before posting. If you are warned or banned for violating the rules, ignorance is not an excuse.
- Moderators will remove posts and comments and/or lock threads in accordance with the rules above. Typically this happens when threads have gone off-topic in a way that is not productive for the OP, or comments overall have become contentious or disrespectful.
- If a poster continues to argue or to willfully violate these rules, temporary and permanent ban procedures will be followed. Any attempts to avoid or bypass temporary bans will result in a permanent ban. User bans will not be discussed in the sub. Questions posted about user bans are subject to removal and the poster subject to warning/ban procedures. The mod team will not discuss a specific user ban with anyone other than the user involved.
- New accounts are subject to manual approval until they are no longer deemed "new" by the mod team. This helps to weed out trolls and ban evaders.
- We rely on Automoderator to scan for specific words and phrases that are not welcome here and notify the mod team to review the comment or post. This includes slurs of any type and platitudes such as "Love them as your own!"
- The mod team uses a combination of blacklisting and banning when dealing with trolls.
- We employ the use of a bot that automatically bans anyone who comments in subs that have historically harassed our users. If you are picked up by the bot for telling trolls to get fucked, reach out via mod mail and we'll get you sorted out.
- The rules above as well as ban procedures are considered guidelines only; some deviation may be necessary on a case by case basis and/or at the mod team's discretion.
13. Ban Procedure
These actions are at moderator discretion.- Pornography will result in an automatic permanent ban.
- Extremely egregious content will result in an immediate permanent ban.
- You may receive a 7 or 30 day temporary ban for first and second rule violations, depending upon severity.
- Continued rule violations will result in a permanent ban.
- Willful attempts to avoid or bypass temporary bans will result in a permanent ban.
- We recognize the reddit site-wide rules of using alt names to get around bans and will ban those as well as report them to reddit admins.
FAQ - About the Rules
What does Kindness Matters mean?
- Shortest version? Don't be an asshole. People come here for support and advice, they do not come here to be yelled at or told they are the reason everything is going sideways. There are ways to point out that someone may want to do some reflection on their own actions and reactions without being an asshole about it.
- The purpose of this subreddit is to provide support and a sense of belonging for struggling stepparents. We aren't here to pass judgement, but rather to offer support, empathy, and constructive commentary. That does not include "hard truths" or "tough love." Stepparents get enough of that in every other subreddit, we're not passing it out here. Be respectful.
- Remember, most people aren't going to come to a sub like this when everything is going great and everyone is getting along. People are coming here when they are down, when they are feeling defeated and stretched to the limit. Kicking someone when they are down is shitty behavior and we don't tolerate it.
What about being kind to the kids?
- "Won't somebody think of the children?" Pearl clutching isn't needed here. If you read the Kindness Matters rule closely, you will see that there is a clause in there about name calling children. We don't allow it. We also don't allow people rolling in telling OP that they feel sorry for their stepkids because OP is feeling overwhelmed and overloaded.
- If anyone is advocating slapping, spanking, or any other form of violence, report the comment immediately. We do not advocate violence towards children of any sort. The mod team does not advocate any sort of physical punishment at any time.
- Venting about behaviors is not the same as insulting the kids. However, if you see a post or comment where kids are being name called or dragged to the point of no return, use the report button. We try to catch the posts and remove them before they hit the sub, but we cannot see every comment without your help. Use the report button to bring problematic comments to our attention. Don't engage in a war of words on our subreddit.
Why is this sub such an echo chamber?
- Not allowing contributors to pile on and tell OP that they are a terrible human being who should never be around children does not equate to being an echo chamber. Many contributors here will offer OP suggestions to help them work through their resentments and frustrations, and the most egregious situations are called out. We simply ask that it be called out with respect.
- If you feel that a post is simply too much for you to handle without following the rules, move on to another post.
- If you believe that a post itself is crossing the rules report it. If the mod team has approved the post, it is because the mod team believes that the OP needs help from the community or needs a moment to vent and move on from their vent. That does not give you license to pile on disrespectfully. Unless it is proven that OP is a bot, assume that OP is a human being with real thoughts and feelings and has posted from a place of vulnerability.
Why can't I tell OP that they are an asshole?
- Because this isn't a judgement sub. We aren't AITA, we don't want to be AITA.
- Comments with terms like YTA, NTA, ESH, NAH will be removed.
- Don't start your posts with INFO either. We generally recognize that as a fishing attempt for more information to pass judgement on OP, and again, we are not a judgment sub.
But OP asked if they were an asshole?!
- Their post somehow got past our automoderator. Just use the report button. We will address it with OP.
- If you've asked if you are an asshole, a-hole, a*hole, a**hole, whatever, don't be surprised if your post is removed without warning. This isn't a judgment sub. If you want judgment, you know where to go.
What is a gendered slur?
- While it seems that everyone understands what racist slurs are, people struggle understanding the concept of gendered slurs. Generally speaking, we are talking about derogatory nouns or verbs that are used to negatively describe people or situations based on gendered terms.
- We've gone back and forth on this a few times, and the truth is, we get it, it's your safe space and you want to be able to vent about BM/BD how you want to vent about them, without us telling you how to vent about them. Fair enough. Vent away. What we are going to stick to here how people are referring to other users and to stepchildren.
- Examples that are not allowed:
- "My SD is such a little bitch."
- "She dresses/acts like a slut."
- "My SS acts like a pussy."
- "My SS is such a beta male."
- "You are all fucking whores."
- "Any dude who is raising some sluts kids is a cuck!"
- "Little Lord Fauntleroy over here thinking he runs the house!"
- "You're just the bangnanny, get used to it."
- Don't call users here names, don't call stepchildren names.
- Masking the term with asterisks or other neat little tricks might get you around the bot, but if we see it, we're removing it and quite possibly giving you a time out. The intended word is still there and you deliberately tried to skate the rule.
- As there is not enough space to list every term that is offensive and does not belong, nor every situation in which term or phrase may be allowable in context, this rule is enforced based on moderator discretion.
Seriously? You are the language police now?
- We're here to talk about stepparenting. And we would like for that to happen in a respectful way. Attacking each other doesn't help. Belittling stepchildren draws in trolls who don't understand your frustration, all they see is an evil stepmonster talking shit on the internet about a poor, innocent baby. Yes, even if that "poor, innocent baby" just robbed you blind and set fire to the house on their way out the door. That's just how it goes.
- We are aware that this is a relatively new rule and a lot of older posts and comments contain a lot of problematic language, including some from mods themselves. We are growing and evolving, and rules change as the sub grows and evolves.
What does No Drama really mean?
- Pretty much what it says, do not bring drama from other subs into this sub. Do not engage in vote brigades. Do not try to incite other subscribers to riot in a different sub. Don't follow posters into this sub from other subs to continue to harass them. Do not badger someone or derail threads. Do not harass community members because you don't agree with them. There's enough drama in the daily lives of subscribers, more isn't needed.
What is thread derailment?
- When a comment chain has devolved to the point where all you are doing is arguing back and forth with someone about the same thing over and over again, you have derailed the thread. Also known as bickering. It's what children do. We assume if people are in a stepparent role they are adults. We expect you to act like it.
- If you aren't a stepparent, or in a stepparenting role, consider that perhaps this subreddit isn't for you. If you want to participate, do so with respect. Thread derailment, arguing, bickering, and nitpicking are not allowed.
But what if they didn't answer my question?
- No one has to answer your questions. This is a support sub, not an inquisition. Jumping on a bandwagon with "OP is evading the question" in a 20 comment long chain is the epitome of thread derailment. You'll find more information about trolling below and how this might be considered such.
Why am I being silenced? I'm just asking for a back and forth!
- Thread derailment, badgering, and nitpicking are considered harassment. Continued harassment of either community members or mods will get you banned.
Why can't I look at someone's post history and comment about it?
- No mod in the history of this sub has ever once said post histories are forbidden. What we do frown upon is using someone's post history to attack, belittle, or otherwise harass someone.
- Example Post: "My stepkid's mom really hates me. How can I make this better?"
- Okay: "Based on the timeline and your post history, it looks like this may have started as an affair. Unfortunately there's going to be outstanding issues for a long time due to that. Try focusing on yourself and how you can move forward without worrying about how someone else feels about you."
- Not Okay: "Holy shit! You were the OW! What the hell do you expect, homewrecker?!"
- Example Post: "I am completely overloaded and feeling very down about myself."
- Okay: "In your post history you mentioned that your spouse wasn't really helping around the house. Has that changed at all?"
- Not Okay: "LOL, you already got the answers you need in your post on relationships. You are stupid for sticking with your lazy spouse."
Why can't we crosspost stuff to other subs?
- We can't stop you from doing so. The problem isn't that something has been crossposted, it's when the community that it's been crossposted to feels the need to come over here and harass OP. When we see that happening, we lock the post and start passing out bans. If you did the crossposting, you'll be banned. If you participated in the brigading, you'll be banned.
What if it's my own post?
- Again, we can't stop you from doing so. We prefer that you don't technically crosspost, but rather just copy and paste your post. Why? Because inevitably the above will happen. Redditors from other subs will follow you back to /stepparents and start attacking users here. It just happens.
What is "brigading"?
- Reddit defines vote manipulation and brigading as follows:
- Using multiple accounts, voting services, or any other software to increase or decrease vote scores.
- Asking people to vote up or down certain posts, either on Reddit itself or through social networks, messaging, etc. for personal gain.
- Forming or joining a group that votes together, either on a specific post, a user's posts, posts from a domain, etc.
- We, along with pretty much every other subreddit that has ever had to deal with this nonsense, further define brigading as this: You saw a post on another sub that linked to our sub either via a link in a comment or a crosspost. It was basically saying something along the lines of "OMG, check out these assholes over on /stepparents! They literally hate all their stepkids!" And then you and your friends come over and start hammering on OP and telling OP how much they suck. Congrats, you have just participated in a brigade.
What is this whole Report, Don't Rant thing about?
- If you see a post or comment that breaks the rules, instead of engaging, report it. When you report it, it sends notification to the mod team. We will act on it where appropriate. Engaging with bad faith users may result in your comments being removed. If you repeatedly do so, you may end up being banned.
What if I see an obvious troll?
- Report it.
What if they are being really mean in comments?
- Report it.
What if they are harassing me in private messages?
- Step 1: Report them to admins. You can report harassment to reddit by using this link or send a DM to reddit admins. Include the link to the DM, admins can see your inbox and providing a direct link is helpful for them to weed out bad actors.
- Step 2: Block the person so they cannot directly contact you again.
- Step 3: Send us a mod mail and let the mod team know. Tell us who they are and what they said, send us a screenshot if you can - admins can see your DMs, mods can't. We'll take action where necessary by banning from the sub if they aren't already banned.
What do you mean by No Naming & Shaming?
- Just as we prefer to not be linked to or crossposted from, we do not allow linking to or calling out other subs by name. If you see something you want to share, say it's a hot post that has hit the front page and a stepparent is being absolutely flayed, just refer to it as "that hot post that hit the front page." If you want to complain about other places in general, "other parenting/advice/judgement subs" will suffice. Absolutely under no circumstances should you link to anywhere else.
I can't link to other subs?
- Do not directly link to another sub. (e.g.: "/insertsubnamehere is ridiculously hostile to stepparents!")
- Do not name other subs. (e.g.: "I won't link to it directly, but insertsubnamehere is ridiculously hostile to stepparents!")
- Do not abbreviate other subs. (e.g.: "I know that ISNH is ridiculously hostile to stepparents!")
I can't ping other users?
- Do not summon another user with a username ping/tag. (e.g.: "insertusernamehere was being an asshole.")
- If you are agreeing with someone, it is okay to link to them. (e.g.: "I agree with insertusernamehere, you need to take a couple of steps back and reflect on this.")
What does No Platitudes mean?
- Sanctimonious, overused clichés that grossly oversimplify the stepparenting experience are neither wanted nor allowed here. We have all heard it a thousand times before, we don't need to hear it again. It's not nearly as insightful and wise as some would like to think.
Why don't you people understand it's a package deal?
- Any comment that suggests that OP should have known what they were getting involved with, or that they needed to understand that the kids were part of some package they needed to accept before signing up for marriage is subject to immediate removal.
- This is one of the most insensitive things you can say to a stepparent. Most stepparents were aware of the children, but they were probably not aware of all of the family dynamics.
Why can't you just love them like they are your own?
- Demanding that a stranger you do not know love children that are not biologically theirs as if they were theirs can be incredibly damaging to someone who is already in a vulnerable situation. Any comment that falls along these lines will be removed.
What do you mean by No Trolling? I was just...
- No means no. No trolling. No pretending to be a stepparent and then whipping out the Greatest Hits Bingo Card of The Worst Stepparent in the History of Stepparents. We see you. We've seen you a thousand times.
What does "concern trolling", "gish-galloping", and "sealioning" have to do with stepparenting? This isn't a debate sub, why are you using debate terms?
- That's absolutely right, this isn't a debate sub. And yet, here we are, day after day, having to defend ourselves against this sort of thing. So, enough. No more. Usage of any of these things will get you banned.
What is "Concern Trolling?"
- A concern troll is someone who disingenuously visits sites of an opposing ideology to disrupt conversation by offering unwanted advice on how to solve problems which do not really exist.
- Example Post: OP expresses concern that she will feel, and possibly act, differently towards her stepchildren after her husband decides that no, he doesn't want anymore children after all.
- Example Concern Troll pulled from actual mod mail after their comment was removed: "Possible child abuse claims need to be sorted out well before whatever empathy you believe the OP was looking for."
What is a "Devil's Advocate"?
- "I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but have you considered that maybe BM is just really tired and needs a break, too?" BM has dozens of different mom based subs alone on reddit she can complain on, this sub is for stepparents. The stepparent doesn't need to consider that maybe BM is just really tired and needs a break.
"Gish-galloping?" What does that even mean?
- The Gish Gallop is the fallacious debate tactic of drowning your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument collection without great effort. The Gish Gallop is a conveyor belt-fed version of the on the spot fallacy, as it's unreasonable for anyone to have a well-composed answer immediately available to every argument present in the Gallop.
And "sealioning?" What's that?
- Sealioning involves jumping into a conversation with endless polite, reasonable questions and demands for answers, usually of entry-level topics far below the actual conversation (e.g. "please prove sexism exists"). This tactic differs little from harassment; instead of discussion, the point is to derail discussion, receive criticism (for their ignorance) so as to look like a victim, or to make someone feel overwhelmed and quit talking.
Who gets to define what is considered asshattery?
- The mod team, of course! If we feel that comments are out of line, are trolling, are leading up to a fight or "just asking questions", we are going to remove them and most likely ban the offender.
FAQ - Sub Questions
Posting Guidelines for Stepparents
- Body text is required, we suggest you use line breaks between paragraphs as a wall of text is difficult to read. Posts that have only a title are likely to be removed. Instead of using names (even fictitious ones), try to use the sub acronyms. It helps our users to follow along if you use the acronyms and not names.
- Assign a post flair that accurately describes what your post is about and what you are seeking. If you are posting an update from a previous post, include a link to that post.
- Flairs are applied to posts to determine what a person is looking for. When submitting a new post, you should choose a flair that specifies if you are looking for advice, support, etc. The following link flair is available and is color coded with side bar links so that you can search by flair:
- Advice - For when you are specifically asking for advice or help.
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- Discussion - A little advice, a little "How does your family handle this?"
- JustBMThings - Pretty sure this is self explanatory!
- Legal - Asking for legal advice? Tag it with this!
- Miscellany - Just a sort of off topic thing? Use this tag.
- Resource - Sharing a good resource or asking for one? This is the tag you need!
- Support - For those days when you want nothing but a good old fashioned cry and some community love.
- Update - Updating us on something that you posted about previously? Use this one!
- Vent - We all need to vent sometimes. Respect the tag as a vent. This isn't how OP talks all day every day.
- Win! - Celebrate those wins with us with this tag!
- Megathread - Mod Use Only, for large mega threads (typically around major calendar events.)
Posting Guidelines for Bioparents
- Stepparents is a support community for stepparents, by stepparents. As bioparents, you may want to have more insight into how the stepparent in your life feels or thinks. You may have questions on how to ease the transition for your partner. However, please keep in mind that this community was not created for you. It was created for your partner or your ex's partner. If you are seeking support on how to deal with a stepparent, there are other subs more suited for your situation and your post is subject to removal.
- There are some posts from bioparents we will accept:
- Seeking advice on how to support your partner as they navigate stepparenting
- Seeking resources to help you better support your partner
- Seeking resources for your partner
- There are some posts from bioparents we will not accept:
- Complaints about how the stepparent is too involved in your kids lives
- Vents about how the stepparent is not involved enough in your kids lives
- "Cautionary tales" advising stepparents to back off
- Seeking advice on how to tell the stepparent to back off
- The Do's and Dont's of Stepparenting
- How your kid's stepmom is literally The Worst
- Comments from bioparents that are helpful and supportive are welcome and appreciated. Comments from bioparents that are not helpful or supportive are not welcome and subject to removal. There are several other subs that may meet the needs of bioparents better than we can. We recommend /coparenting, /parenting, /parents, /blendedfamilies, and /singleparents as starting points.
Guidelines for Stepkids
- At this time, we do not generally accept posts from stepkids. Comments from stepkids that are helpful and supportive are welcome and appreciated. Comments from stepkids that are not helpful or supportive are not welcome and subject to removal. If you are a stepkid seeking support, we highly recommend /stepkids. It is a very supportive community specifically for stepkids. We also recommend /blendedfamilies as another potential group for support.
What the heck are all these acronyms? I'm confused!
- Check out the Common Acronyms wiki page. We try to keep this updated as new terms are introduced to the sub.
Why aren't my posts or comments showing up?
- New posters and accounts go through a waiting period before their posts will show in the sub and the comments on posts automatically. During the new account approval period the mod team will check posts to be sure you aren't attempting to circumvent a ban with a shiny new account. Please be patient while the timer runs down on your "new" status and the mod team approves your posts and responses.
Why was my comment removed?
- Comments are removed when they do not follow the rules of the sub. These rules are published in several places for your reading pleasure.
- Comments are removed at moderator discretion. In some cases your comment may be removed while another remains up. If you find this to be the case, and you believe the comment to be violating the rules, instead of arguing with mods or demanding they remove the additional comments, just report it.
This comment/post is really offensive! Why is it still up?
- All moderators are volunteers and have busy real lives. Sometimes things get past us. The best thing you can do is report anything you find offensive or inflammatory. It's the quickest and most reliable way of alerting us to an issue.
I've received a hurtful/unwanted PM from someone about my recent post. What should I do?
- If you receive an unwanted/hurtful PM from a name you don't recognize, please report it to Reddit Admins using our handy pre-populated form. Be sure to include the permalink to the message. We've been dealing with a few unhappy folks who like to attack stepparents, and reporting it to the admins is the only way to make it stop.
What are the general moderator guidelines?
- Users are expected to know the rules before posting. If you are warned or banned for violating the rules, ignorance is not an excuse.
- Moderators will remove posts and comments and/or lock threads in accordance with the rules above. Typically this happens when threads have gone off-topic in a way that is not productive for the OP, or comments overall have become contentious or disrespectful.
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- New accounts are subject to manual approval until they are no longer deemed "new" by the mod team. This helps to weed out trolls and ban evaders.
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- The mod team uses a combination of blacklisting and banning when dealing with trolls.
- We employ the use of a bot that automatically bans anyone who comments in subs that have historically harassed our users. If you are picked up by the bot for telling trolls to get fucked, reach out via mod mail and we'll get you sorted out.
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I've been wrongly banned/Why can't I comment here?
- Due to an influx of harassment from users with specific user histories, we have employed a user history ban bot as described above. If you think this has affected you and wish to appeal, please message the mods.
Why was I banned without warning?
- There are numerous reasons that the mod team might opt to move perm banning without warning. Message the moderators if you have specific questions.
2024.05.19 11:53 Seeker1904 New District Idea: The Old Quarter
The Old Quarter
Bit of a long post but I thought this could be a cool idea and I wanted to share it:Description:
"Even before the current troubles, the Old Quarter was a favoured haunt of vagabonds, vagrants and those with ill-intent. Nestled beneath the towering estates of Cathedral Row, the streets of the Old Quarter are a twisting and cramped warren. Constructed in the early days of the city, the Old Quarter was built haphazardly to accommodate the city's rapidly expanding population.
In recent times, the Old Quarter has become downright sinister. A permanent, sleazy fog hangs over the area and residents report a strange figure peering through their window at odd hours. The Constables abandoned the district soon after the current crisis began. The Huntsmen now patrol the main street and control a few key landmarks, including the power-station and the old jailhouse. But even they are loathe to venture into the dank passages where the light never reaches.
Tread carefully here Dr. and take care if you happen to hear tapping at the window..."
Explanation:
This is an idea I have had for a while about how parts of the demo area could be reincorporated into the main-game. I think that the main-game is far superior to everything in the demo but the cramped and winding streets of the demo area are still fun to explore and the feeling of being boxed-in really helps contribute towards a feeling of claustrophobia which isn't quite present in the open-spaces of the Market District.
Instead of collecting seals to open the manor in the town square, the Dr. would need to find several puzzle items to progress. These items would open the portcullis gate on the other side of the guard post in the demo. The Sylvian estate (manor from the demo) would serve as an optional area with heightened security which could be broken into. Other side-streets, alleys and passages which were only partly accessible in the demo would also be opened-up as would several derelict buildings. This would include opening up the play-space above the flooded basement where the monocle can be found in the demo.
The Old Quarter would serve as a prelude of sorts to the Cathedral row district. After sneaking through a factory/ warehouse complex, the Dr. would enter the lift to the Old Quarter and the section would begin in much the same way that the demo opens.
Note found before entering the Old Quarter:
“Sir,
As requested, we have sealed off the main routes into the Old Quarter and have set an automated sentry to guard the entrance to Cathedral Row. I have ordered our remaining forces to fallback accordingly. Let the Huntsmen deal with those creatures.
Constable Burlington.
“
Upon reaching the main save station-house from the demo, the windows would be heavily barricaded and the Dr. would instead be prompted to enter through a door which hangs open. In the main room of the safe-house the gramophone plays its soothing tune. Unlike in the demo, the house is devoid of huntsmen and, much like the lighthouse, a recorded message would play from the gramophone the first time it is used to make a save.
“Welcome to the Old Quarter Doctor. Our mutual friend informed me that you might pass this way but I regret that I \cough* will be unable to greet you in person. Help yourself to any supplies you find here. You will need them for what lies ahead. Before they left, the Constables destroyed every exit and left the Huntsmen to loot the ruins. The only way out is through the gate at the end of Stonehaven Road. But the lock is a fiendish thing and not easily cracked. I had a few ideas of how to get past it before *cough*… well it hardly matters now. I have barricaded this area as best I can but don’t forget: Lock The Doors and pray you never hear tapping at the window. Fare well Doctor. I hope your luck is better than mine.*
-William the Tinker”
Exploring the house, the Dr. finds the corpse of the owner beside which sits a key. The key is used to unlock and open the two doors of the safehouse. Beside each of the doors is a button which can be used to automatically seal the doors from the inside (think the safe room in Amnesia: The Bunker).
Also scattered throughout the house are a few food items, notes and a revolver with a number of spent casings. On the upstairs landing, in the room where there is a lootable cabinet in the demo, the unbreakable door is instead locked. The reason for this can be found in William’s diary which sits on his writing desk.
“I can no longer bear to look into that mirror she gave me. Sometimes I fear that it is not only my own reflection peering back. I have locked the accursed thing away and have cast the key into the sewers with the hope that there it will remain.”
To discover more about the Tinkers Lock, which is the primary obstacle of the district, the Dr. can read other pages in the diary and notes scattered throughout the house. On William’s writing desk there also sits a map which marks key places of interest in the district.
“I sit imprisoned by a mechanism of my own making. The lock is a fiendish thing. The three-digit combination is rewritten every sixty seconds, the only way to decode the sequence is by using a Graphite Cylinder. I had a spare but the Huntsmen confiscated it and are holding it in the Old Jailhouse as evidence. I believe that brute Fitzroy means to bring me to trial, though for what crime I cannot imagine. More difficult to obtain is the key needed to access the mechanism. Father Ulfred kept a copy … but none who venture near his church return.
There may be another way to open the gate but it is so dangerous as to constitute madness. The lock draws power from the two electrical substations on either side of the district. Disabling both generators is the first step. Then, theoretically, it should be possible to disconnect the lock by severing its link to the back-up supply. To do so, one would need to brave the labyrinth of maintenance tunnels beneath the streets. All while the entire district is plunged into darkness. It is suicidal folly, but without Father Ulfred’s Key I see few other options.”
The safe house from the demo serves as a base of operations through which further expeditions can be made into the district. The basic layout of the demo remains in that the player has the freedom to tackle the objectives in any order. However the area of the district is now expanded. Example, in the dock area, there is now an apartment before crossing the bridge where the Dr. can survey the area and learn patrols from a distance. Additionally, foggy streets leading on from the Dock will take the Dr. into the Western part of the district where the Western Substation sits alongside the abandoned butchery. Similarly, beyond the power station from the demo (the Eastern Substation) are more foggy streets which lead to Father Ulfred’s Chapel and the Clearview Lodging-House.
As in the demo, the Huntsmen control the main streets, the dock, the jailhouse, the Eastern Substation and have an outpost in the maintenance tunnels/ sewers as well as at the Western Substation. But a new foe prowls the dark and misty streets where the Huntsmen fear to tread.
The Peeping-Tom.
Appearing as an abnormally tall and slender gentleman in a top hat, these strange creatures stalk the Old Quarter. The Peeping-Tom (and the Old Quarter in general) take heavy inspiration from late-Victorian Whitechapel and the Jack-The-Ripper murders. The Peeping-Tom carries a large butcher’s knife in its left hand and prowls with murderous intent. Its face is ghost white and its tattered clothes barely cover an emaciated and skeletal form.
What sets the Peeping-Tom apart from other bestial enemies is that they display a form of crude intelligence and take care to harass and terrify their prey before striking. Additionally, the Peeping-Tom is sensitive to light and will become staggered from entering a well-lit area. This includes the light generated by the Doctor’s lantern.
In combat the Peeping-Tom is very damage resistant to bullets and slashes. However, removing the top hat of the Peeping-Tom (either by shooting or slashing it) reveals a spider-like insect nestled in the skull of the creature which can be shot/stabbed to instantly kill the Peeping-Tom. Flash-grenades are particularly effective against this enemy and a single flash grenade will vaporise the puppeteering-spider and thus kill the Peeping-Tom if its hat is removed.
In general, the Peeping-Tom moves in a slow and deliberate manner akin to the Divider necromorph in Dead Space. However, if the Peeping-Tom’ss hat is removed, its movements become erratic, and its attacks are faster and inaccurate.
After being staggered by a light-source, the Peeping-Tom will flee to a darkened area before trying to stalk the Dr. once more.
Another aspect of the Peeping-Tom is that they will attempt to unnerve the Dr. by leaning around corners and tapping on the windows of buildings the Dr. has entered using their long bony fingers. While they can exhibit this behaviour if the power-stations are still active, if the power is deactivated, the Peeping-Toms expand their patrols significantly and will harass the Dr. while he is in the safehouse. The Peeping-Toms can even enter the safehouse if the doors are left open&unlocked.
A crafty Doctor could even strategically deactivate the power to enable the Peeping-Toms to thin out the hunters and make certain areas more accessible.
Other areas and notes
In traditional Imsim fashion, notes scattered throughout the district (as well as conversations between huntsmen) would also fill in the lore and backstory of events which occurred prior to the Doctor’s arrival.
For example, the armoury in the central guard house would be locked and a note attached to the door would read as follows:
“You lot are welcome to continue wasting ammunition shooting the locals but you shall no longer be using my bullets to do so. The armoury is locked until further notice. Perhaps the scarcity will encourage you to find a way out of this mess.
-Captain Fitzroy”
The sewers and passages beneath the district would also be expanded. If the substations are deactivated then the passages will be almost completely dark, thus necessitating the usage of the lantern for purposes of navigation. Like the demo, the tunnels would be populated by the Crowmen. The dark tunnels would give them ample opportunity to stalk the Doctor and lie in ambush.
In the demo, there is also a sign in the sewers which refers to the Underport. This passage would serve as a way to link the Old Quarter and Underport together. The Dr. would be able to find a key in the sewers to the room in the main safe-house which houses one of the Countess’s mirrors for later fast-traveling back to the district.
No matter which method is chosen for tackling the Tinker’s Lock, the Dr. will have to venture either into the Maintenance-Sewers or the Old Chapel. The Chapel serves as a lair of sorts for the Peeping Tom’s and several would patrol the grounds and the adjourning graveyard. Father Ulfred’s Key would sit in a crypt area beneath the Chapel. The Dr. would need to drop into the Crypt and stealth/ fight past an aggressively patrolling Peeping-Tom to open the gate to obtain the key and escape the crypt.
There would also be expanded opportunities for tackling the Jailhouse. One of the cells could house a crazed huntsmen who, upon release, attacks everything in his path (including other huntsmen) thus causing a distraction and allowing the Dr. to steal the Graphite Cylinder from the evidence locker.
No matter how they chose to do it, overcoming the Tinker’s Lock would allow the Dr. to push on from the Old Quarter and access the towering estates of Cathedral Row.
Conclusion
With the game taking heavy inspiration from Victorian London, I do think that it is only a matter of time until we get a Jack-The-Ripper inspired segment and I think that incorporating some of the spaces from the demo could be an interesting way to do this. Additionally, so much work must have gone into designing all of the spaces and passages in the demo that I think it would be a bit of a shame not to see any of that architecture in the main game.
2024.05.19 11:51 heyyyitsjess_ my experience with streamers of all sizes, as a streamer~ an inspired rant from seeing a friends tweet: "When people show you who they are PLEASE BELIEVE THEM."
There will probs be more posts like this in time. Only bc I refuse to be silenced by "Cancel Culture" or "Blacklisting"
Streaming has shown me a completely different kind of evil people and almost all of them preach kindness and inclusivity while “protecting their communities” publicly but privately is a whole different animal.Once, as a baby streamer I went to one of those preachy kinda streamers who I thought was actually a pretty good friend cuz she said she loved me so much she called me her sister. I thought I was safe to confess the sensitive information that I had been excessively cyberstalked and sexually harassed by someone in the community, not that I wanted them to do anything about it but i wanted them to know why that person may be yelling his version of events to anyone that will listen when I inevitably have to ban him. At the time i did not know this person was a frienemy but when the time was right for them, they used that sensitive info to hurt me and made the man who sexually harassed me & cyber stalked me their mod, even tho they knew he went as far as threatening to kill me if I wasn’t his friend. Others on twitter came forward shortly after saying he’s done this before. AND on top of that, that same frienemy added their other streamer buddy who was more well connected with other streamers AND MODS as her mod too and he was actually the first out of everyone to victim blame me for being harassed, stalked, and threatened w\o asking for proof. When he found out I had proof, he lied to others saying I bullied the poor guy I banned and accused. He then confidently smear campaigned me (failed) on Twitter back then just because I wanted a public apology. This streamemod combo conman later became a very loud mod to the guy who publicly announced my cancellation and without a doubt in my opinion was one of the ones pushing him to do it.
THEN there's the kinds of “safe space acceptance of all” assholes that team up with the above assholes
These guys within themselves have a tight inner circle of people all groomed to be loyal (people that owe the leader something out of admiration for being helped through a life event-for example needing money for Christmas for your kids, money to stop a house being foreclosed on, money for whatever. OR false promises of success and support on twitch through various means) These kind of people love raising money for private causes and not actual charities to play hero to suffering individuals they raised the money for-so people feel indebted to them. These same streamers also have no problem only coming back to streaming to ask for personal donations to help them in their time of "need" literal days before a huge St Judes Community fundraiser event. Ponder that as you will.
They use their loyal gophers to stalk, bully & blacklists anyone thats makes them feel disobeyed, threatened, envious, or bitter. They even go against their own, people there aren’t allowed to have differing opinions because anything different than the leaders is “disrespectful” and personal slight towards them. Those people usually slowly get pushed unless they redeem themselves or give up dirt on someone on the watch list.
& to the people who courageously leave bc it becomes creepy finding out how fucked the inner workings really are, People like me, become public enemy #1. You all know what happened there and if you dont, comment and ill tell you about "The Great Cancelation of HeyyyitJess" fucking cringe bro im really not that important lmao
ANYWAY These kinda streamers use their loyals to pressure other creators or threaten to take their numbers away if they refuse to obey or stop being friends with someone they want deplatformed. Yes, I said Deplatformed. They do this so they don’t catch the fall when the truth comes out how fucked up this behavior is. They have an almost onion layered shield around them taking the full brunt of it all. If called out they could say something like "Those were my mods who conspired with those other people to plan a scandal, not me, but im sorry this is happening to you. Mistakes were made." or "I was not threatening to take your viewership, support, relevancy or friends away, that was my mods who i have no control over. Mistakes were made" \)keeps all mods and rewards them*
ALLEGEDLY 😂 **these are my personal experience of what ive witnessed or others who have come forward but i could be a big fat liar guys its up to you who knows i might think im jesus too and think i can become the irl sailor moon or little mermaid lol its not funny but bc its so ridiculous its hard not to laugh.**
I DIGRESS-But u know who does end up getting the fall? The streamer who they convinced enough to make a declaration LIVE ON STREAM March 21st 2024 for the first 45 minutes of stream (vod is still up and ill link it-if its taken down i have it recorded and saved per legal advice Paskaroni's March 21st 2024 VOD Rule #1 Stream. • QotD ) (assuming he is talking about me bc ik he was and so does everyone else) that im-in not exact words but close-a bully, toxic, and he declared me and my 3 friends a danger to the whole community so in his words we were and are now “DEAD” in the community...In my POV, He said that not once but twice giggling with glee basically as he told the community to flame me out bc I apparently don’t deserve to be on Twitch, have success, friends, or a platform etc and that he knows the community is strong enough to make this happen. He then seemingly encouraged people to DM him to find out who he was talking about because he had no problem sharing all the names in order to get rid of the filth of the community. Also went on bragging that at CONs they all talk about us bad people and share notes with everyone to protect the whole website from us bullies (ooooo im so scary with my truth and autistic personality that seeks justice)
I want to draw more attention to the fact that the streamer said this ALL WITHOUT PROOF. & admitted on his own accord and free will ALL BY HIMSELF there was no proof, that there were alot of screenshots from the haters that didnt say much but that he wanted to give HIS 12 hater friends the benefit of the doubt even though he always saw me as a wonderfully positive part of the community. I guess I suddenly wasnt considered a friend which is oh so convenient. Not even considered enough so to get the same benefit of the doubt let alone a conversation in general. I wouldve happily handed over the link to the 5GB file of VODS, others testimonies via calls and VALID screenshots as well as a list of other peoples info who are willing to be CREDIBLE references that witnessed events as well but NOOOOO im too scary for that. Sorry tho guys I guess im not as evil as you all think i am especially not enough to go through with suing most of their asses like my lawyer wanted. And im poor as fuck so that should mean alot.
So back at it, now, who did him wrong? In my experience the kinda cult communities that do this bullshit is easy to spot once you know what this looks like. They manipulate people, and they dont discriminate, their prey could even be the most well meaning streamers- like the one who fell victim this time. (I'm very heartbroken that that streamer i linked did that to me live and essentially had hundreds of people leaving me hate dms, threatening me, threatening my friends, friends of friends, and stream leaders, but i still am mature enough to know he is a victim too in a way).
The problematic predatory streamers or communities like the ones responsible for this dumpster fire are usually the ones preaching and over amplifying positive vibes, safe space, inclusiveness, encouragement, acceptance, enabling etc bc they are a “close knit gamers of chosen family” or even the infamous kinda things some people say unironically “were totally not a cult-those people are cults OMG do you see how toxic...THAT STREAMER IS FAKE AF she is alllllll makeup look at and her simps. She's not even a good streamer or gamer she just has her simps play for her” seeing people saying that publicly on any platform seriously is......BIG RED FLAG oh and unfotunately get used to all the toxic men getting away with everything. sad but true. then you have me over here who gets cancelled for breathing wrong. Its apart of life and i hate it. SO HERE WE ARE
BASICALLY notice if you join one of these kind of communities see how fast you can pick up on mean girl behavior. itll be obvious. (Ive seen both cult themes vary in a dark silly way but the worst I have seen is a cult theme disguised as a form of DnD themed video game religion-both sinister af imo) like these people straight up have calculated religious church or temple themed community roles like The Archpriest, Highest Priestess, Acolytes, Initiates, "so in so's" whipping boy etc.
But yeah those total MotherMarys & JesusTheHealer's that own those kinda communities totally would NEVER abuse their connections or false appearance of power to start a witch hunt of cruel lies towards an ex inner circle member who walked away. Nah it couldn’t be that they would only do that just bc they were paranoid and guilty of what little ol me or whoever knows like...idk....their unmasked personal life behaviors and actions. Nah. Couldnt be them.
All in all....Ill never understand what the point of witch hunting and manipulating creators to shield you or get them to do your dirty work is, bc it will always come to light. None of it logically makes sense on a healthy level and people will realize that it sure does seem like peeps have alot to hide or cover up EHH? 🫎
Or maybe not. Walking away peacefully and minding your own business apparently now justifies a witch hunt cyberbully party based on lies no one even attempted to confront me about. So that being said youre fucked either way. BE CAREFUL ON TWITCH lol
Id be surprised if i dont get attack comments on this. <-says this cuz now they won’t but a few passive aggressive ones won’t resist the urge for sure. Its always the ones that seem the kindest but also the loudest about how kind they are. Just something to consider.
2024.05.19 11:31 Significant-Tower146 Best Carhartt Balaclava
 | submitted by Significant-Tower146 to u/Significant-Tower146 [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/p208gpa2rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5fffa3132c1f6bd9a9089b97f04a24c8a2fc3af8 Welcome to our roundup of the best Carhartt Balaclava options available in the market. It's time to get warm and cozy with this versatile piece of outdoor gear. In this roundup, we'll be exploring the top choices for balaclavas to help you find the perfect fit for your needs. The Top 14 Best Carhartt Balaclava
Reviews🔗Carhartt WIP Storm Chunky-Knit Balaclava - Blackhttps://preview.redd.it/ucekphr2rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c28712cf6dce32e8a29ca75f756672d173657a17 Wearing the Carhartt WIP Storm chunky-knit balaclava in black made me feel like a cool-weather, street-smart daredevil. I'd step out into the frost, ready to conquer the biting cold with this stylish companion on my face. The chunky knit felt soft, keeping me cozy as I braved the winter's icy winds. But what made this balaclava really stand out was the signature box logo on the front. It added a touch of edginess to my everyday look, turning heads wherever I went. But, there was one minor downside - the face opening was slightly more generous than I would have liked. When the wind picked up, or I took a sharp turn, some cold air still found its way in. Overall, though, this balaclava kept me toasty while adding a bit of panache to my style, making it worth the investment. 🔗Carhartt Black Cotton Face Gaiter with Filter Pockethttps://preview.redd.it/vfqmwyh3rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=763c698bc503638fa8abe0ddc5c75abb4e11f1f0 I've been using the Carhartt Black Cotton Gaiter with Filter Pocket for a few weeks now, and I must say, it has been a lifesaver during these pandemic times. As someone who needs to wear a mask at work, I was initially apprehensive about how comfortable the gaiter would be, but boy, was I pleasantly surprised! First off, the fit is just right. It's adjustable, so it's easy to pull it tighter or looser depending on how you want to wear it. The one size fits most, so it's a great option for those who want a gaiter that can adapt to different head sizes without sacrificing comfort. But what really stood out to me is the filter pocket. It's designed to accommodate a filter, and I found that it actually works quite well. With just a small piece of filter, the gaiter provides a great level of protection without feeling too claustrophobic or uncomfortable. However, there were a couple of things that I wasn't particularly fond of. First, the stitching seemed a bit flimsy at times. I had to be extra careful when washing it to avoid any unraveling, which was a bit of a bummer. Overall, though, it held up pretty well despite its slightly weak stitching. The other downside was that it wasn't as easy to get on and off as some other gaiters I've tried. It took a bit of fumbling around to get the elastic cord to secure itself properly, which was a bit of a hassle. Despite these minor issues, I still highly recommend the Carhartt Black Cotton Gaiter with Filter Pocket. It's comfortable, effective, and a great option for anyone looking for a reliable mask alternative during these challenging times. 🔗Carhartt Force Mask: Fast-Dry Winter Balaclavahttps://preview.redd.it/8taciqm3rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=afed3ca32fa711fc68e2a9dfbdee8330c7109920 I've been using the Carhartt Men's Force Helmet Liner Mask for a while now, and it has been a game-changer during my outdoor adventures. The full-face protection that extends below the neckline is a fantastic feature, as it shields me from the biting cold and howling winds. I particularly love the face mask, which can be tucked under the chin when not in use. One of the highlights is the Carhartt Force fabric with Fast Dry technology, which wicks away sweat for added comfort, even during heavy activity. This is perfect for someone like me who tends to sweat a lot during my adventures. The interior of the mask feels incredibly soft and cozy, thanks to the fleeced material. However, there are a few cons to this product as well. First, the mask can get a bit rank due to my persistent breathing through it. I've ended up washing it a hundred times or more and it still shows very little wear. Another feature that could be improved is the neckline. If it were two inches longer, it would provide better coverage and feel even more comfortable. Overall, the Carhartt Men's Force Helmet Liner Mask has been a crucial addition to my wardrobe for those cold outdoor days. It strikes a perfect balance between comfort and functionality, although there is always room for improvement. 🔗Carhartt WIP Black Mission Balaclavahttps://preview.redd.it/b87skly3rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=169b7ad4f9f639775f4ec1319d589988bd6c3b9a Ever find yourself shivering in the chilly outdoors, needing something to keep your face warm without blocking your view of the world? That's where the Carhartt WIP Mission Mask comes in. Made of 100% polyester with a thickness of 220g/m², this mask effortlessly covers your head, face, and neck. The best part? It lets you see the world around you without obstruction. Now, let's talk about the pros. The polyester material is durable and comfortable, perfect for a range of activities from hiking to city exploration. The mask itself is a solid black, giving it a sleek and modern look, which can blend in most outdoor settings. The military label adds an element of ruggedness, perfect for those outdoor enthusiasts. However, there are a few cons to mention. While the mask effectively keeps the chill at bay, the 39 cm height might not be enough for those with a taller stature. Also, some users might find it slightly heavy on the face over extended periods. Overall, the Carhartt WIP Mission Mask is a reliable and fashionable solution for those looking to withstand the cold without compromising their view. Just remember, it's primarily designed for cooler weather, so you might want to opt for another solution in extreme-cold situations. 🔗Carhartt Flame-Resistant Force Balaclava for Comfort and Protectionhttps://preview.redd.it/jzqa4fg4rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dfbbf328251fb7ad19761a050d9bea5b5f2d9f26 The Carhartt Flame-Resistant Balaclava proved to be a reliable companion on chilly days at work. I loved the full face coverage that extended below the neck. The FastDry technology kept me comfortable throughout the day as the sweat was wicked away, and I felt cool despite the heavy tasks on hand. I appreciated the force technology that pulled the mask down below my chin when needed. However, the drawback of this balaclava was its thickness - it was not as ample warmth on my face as my expectations. Despite this, I would recommend it for those who prioritize comfort and functionality while working in risky environments. 🔗Stay Warm in Extreme Conditions with Carhartt's Fast-Dry Helmet Liner Maskhttps://preview.redd.it/v0h7dfr4rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9770ea30cf71da1711bc574bb4e03ffaeeaa8063 The Carhartt Men's Force Helmet Liner Mask is a reliable companion for those harsh, freezing days. Just like the name suggests, it really does force out the chill. It's a bit like a superhero cape for your neck - you can tuck it into your clothing or wear it loose, and it's always ready to deploy when the winds come howling. The face mask has a nice feature that pulls down under the chin when not in use. It's a little bit like a superhero who can change shapes - it turns from a full-facial protection into a handy scarf for your winter stroll. When it comes to comfort, it uses technology that's akin to a superhero's invisibility cloak. The material wicks away sweat, keeping you dry and cozy. The mask is made from a blend of fabric that's more like a superhero's suit than a simple piece of cloth. It's made from 88% polyester and 12% spandex. This strong blend ensures the mask fits snugly without feeling too tight, and it makes it durable enough to last through many winters. There's a thing about this mask which reminds me of Batman's utility belt - it's full of surprises. It has a full-facial protection that extends below the neckline, which ensures that no icy wind will catch you off guard. And for those times when a little extra chin protection is needed, it has a nifty feature that can pull the front end up, but it still allows enough breathing room. The material is quite breathable but remember, it’s not designed or medically certified to stop airborne disease or protect from viruses. However, it does a commendable job of keeping out dust during winter, which is a relief when you're working in an environment that's full of dusty snow drifts. The design of the mask is simple yet effective. Its quick-dry technology, the antimicrobial finish, and its flat-seam construction all make it an excellent choice in a pinch. Just like a trusty sidekick or a sleek racecar, its one size fits most, and it can be easily washed. The face mask will fit perfectly snug under a helmet, providing extra warmth. The material is quite breathable, but it can get a bit rank from your own breathing, especially after a long workday. But, it shows very little wear after many washes. However, one thing to note is that you won't be stopping an actual criminal with this mask, it’s not designed or medically rated to provide protection from viruses or airborne disease. So, while it may not be a James Bond-style gadget, it's still a pretty decent investment for a warmer, comfier winter experience. This Carhartt Balaclava isn’t just a protective gear; it’s like a superhero's secret weapon that you can tuck under your shirt during those cold and harsh winter days. It’s like wearing a little bit of warmth right under your nose while you go about your day. 🔗Cozy Carhartt Balaclava for Outdoor Adventureshttps://preview.redd.it/esaefni5rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b85f915ed468c58757ea3eb2bec49ae349426c9a I recently had the opportunity to test out the Carhartt WIP Remi Hood Balaclava, and I'm excited to share my experience with all of you. I decided to give it a try as a versatile piece of clothing to keep me warm during those chilly outdoor activities. The very first thing I noticed when I opened the package was the high-quality materials used to create this hood. At 100% acrylic and 5-gauge, it certainly felt luxurious to the touch. It's a great choice for those cold days and nights out. In terms of its design, the Remi Hood delivers a minimalist, yet sleek look. I particularly loved the script logo on the hood, which added a touch of elegance without being too overpowering. The soft acrylic backdrop made it incredibly comfortable to wear, and it fit perfectly despite only having one size. Despite being so comfortable, I couldn't help but notice the occasional itchiness from the acrylic material. However, this trade-off was well worth the overall warmth and comfort the Remi Hood provided. Overall, I highly recommend the Carhartt WIP Remi Hood Balaclava for anyone looking for a practical, stylish, and comfortable way to stay warm during those chilly outdoor adventures. 🔗Carhartt Balaclava: Durable Rib-Knit Insulated Face Maskhttps://preview.redd.it/gj9lfir5rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7e7d6656d46b2b43307d3dfded31d30cdcfbe9d I recently had the chance to try out the Carhartt Black Knit Insulated Face Mask, and let me tell you, it's a game-changer when it comes to staying warm in cold weather. The highlight of this face mask is its long neck, which provides not only enhanced protection from chilly winds but also a greater sense of comfort and security. One of the things I appreciated most about this face mask is its acrylic rib-knit fabric. It offers just the right amount of insulation, keeping you cozy during those frigid winter days. The softness of the material also ensures that it's comfortable to wear, even for extended periods. However, there were a couple of drawbacks I noticed while using the mask. Firstly, the overlock stitching, which is designed to resist abrasion, can sometimes be a bit annoying as it tends to catch on clothing and other surfaces. Secondly, the mask can become quite wrinkled after washing, which may affect its overall appearance and effectiveness. Overall, the Carhartt Black Knit Insulated Face Mask is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a reliable, warm, and comfortable winter accessory. Its unique features and high-quality materials make it a standout option in the market, even if there are a few minor drawbacks to consider. 🔗Carhartt WIP Brown Balaclava for All Seasonshttps://preview.redd.it/id7fcmg6rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f45bce00e88e154dcb8aa4af22b574e0f9497442 I recently gave the Carhartt WIP Storm Mask a try, and I must say, it's been a game-changer for me during these chilly months. Made of a cozy, warm acrylic fabric, its comfort is unparalleled. The stretchy rib knit construction makes it fit like a glove, and the Carhartt WIP logo on the cuff gives it that classic touch. One downside I noticed was the color of the mask appearing more reddish-brown in the picture than what I received, but that didn't affect my overall experience. Overall, it's a great tool to protect against the winter's harshness and make my commutes more enjoyable. 🔗Off-White Remi Balaclava by Carhartt WIP - Rib Knit, 100% Acrylic, 5 Gaugehttps://preview.redd.it/t8k4v1r6rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3ec1401ffe1d9a8134fe08c6e476090ecf88f412 The Carhartt Work in Progress Off-White Remi Balaclava was a game-changer for my daily routine. As someone who's always on the go, the height of 36.5 cm was a perfect fit, allowing me to stay comfortable and protected. The 100% acrylic and 5-gauge material proved to be both durable and cozy. The label with the script logo added a touch of class to the overall design. However, the one downside was the balaclava's trim, which felt somewhat too tight and constricting. Despite that minor hiccup, the Remi Balaclava has undoubtedly become a staple in my wardrobe. 🔗Carhartt WIP Storm Mask: Winter Gear for Full-Face Protectionhttps://preview.redd.it/6ntcq297rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8d077cbb519f5e84cb91b15237ebc6d65ea45366 I recently tried the Carhartt WIP Storm Mask in black - a snug little warm-up you might want to explore this winter. Made of a stretchy, four-gauge rib-knit acrylic fabric, it feels soft and cozy against your skin. The one-size-fits-all approach means it's perfect for all genders and head sizes. Although it covers the entire face, it still has a subtle see-through pattern over the eyes. If you live in a chilly area, this might be the right piece for you. It's perfect for keeping your face warm, shielding you from the harsh winter cold. However, be aware that it may get a bit itchy after a long time of use. Overall, it's a pretty handy, comfortable and stylish bit of winter attire. So far, so good! 🔗Carhartt Men's Washed Duck Insulated Hood: Adjustable Balaclava with Quilted Nylon Lininghttps://preview.redd.it/g5qxtck7rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c7bd9ddc99fadbd852c698827597d34b74f3a04 I recently purchased the Carhartt Men's Washed Duck Insulated Hood for my coat, and I must say I am quite impressed. The quilted-nylon lining provides warmth and comfort, while the three-piece hood construction and draw cord adjustable with cord lock allow for a perfect fit. Although I have faced some difficulty with the triple-stitched main seams coming undone after a few months, overall, I am satisfied with my purchase. The hood has come in handy during those windy days, providing adequate coverage on the sides and top. However, the snaps on the hood may not align perfectly with the coat, causing a minor inconvenience. In summary, the Carhartt Men's Washed Duck Insulated Hood offers a decent fit and warmth, but the snaps may require a little tweaking to work correctly. 🔗Carhartt Camo Balaclava with FastDry Technologyhttps://preview.redd.it/nqi4js08rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1ded5d332ed60b3e8d30c87e512cda58869f03c As a seasoned outdoor enthusiast, I recently tried the Carhartt Camo Fleece 2 in 1 Headwear, and I was thoroughly impressed. The headwear not only provides adequate warmth but also offers excellent protection from the elements. The 2 in 1 design, with a pull-down face mask, truly makes this product stand out. One of the most noteworthy aspects of the Carhartt Camo Fleece Headwear is its FastDry technology. This feature really comes in handy when I'm out in the cold for extended periods, as it ensures my face mask dries promptly after use, maintaining its effectiveness. The fact that the mask can be tucked up into the hat when not in use is a simple yet effective design that adds convenience. The Carhartt leatherette label sewn on the front is a thoughtful touch that adds a certain elegance and authenticity to the headwear. It makes the product stand out from others in the market, giving it a unique identity. However, there are a couple of minor drawbacks with this product. While I appreciated the face mask, it could have been slightly longer to ensure better coverage and tuck-in capabilities. Additionally, I found that the fit around the ears could be slightly better, as I experienced some slippage with my current headwear size. Overall, the Carhartt Camo Fleece 2 in 1 Headwear combines comfort and protection in one convenient package. It's perfect for those who spend time outdoors, hunting, or simply need to keep their face and ears warm in cold weather. With its unique 2 in 1 design and FastDry technology, this headwear is definitely a worthwhile investment. 🔗Carhartt Fleece 2-in-1 Winter Protection Balaclavahttps://preview.redd.it/tkgj8ru8rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=78d6640d793379f00c819f877e88ca7394318a76 When I was using the Carhartt Fleece 2-in-1 Headwear, I noticed how versatile it was. With the ear flaps and pull-down face mask, I felt like I had complete control over my level of warmth. As one reviewer mentioned, the hat really delivers warmth during the coldest of winter days, and it's perfect for when you need that extra protection. However, there were a couple of cons that I came across during my experience. Firstly, the size seemed to be a bit small, especially for those with larger heads or those who wear glasses, as mentioned by some users. While it was a small issue for some, others reported having cold necks when using the headwear. Lastly, the face mask was not detachable, even though it's very useful in cold weather. This made it a bit inconvenient for wearing while engaged in lighter activities, like working around the house. Overall, I found this product to be a really useful tool for the unpredictable winter weather. It offers both warmth and comfort, and the moisture-wicking backing helps keep any moisture away from your skin. Despite the minor cons, I would definitely recommend the Carhartt Fleece 2-in-1 Headwear to others looking for all-weather protection. Buyer's GuideWelcome to our comprehensive buyer's guide for Carhartt Balaclavas. In this section, we'll provide you with essential information to help you make an informed decision when purchasing one of these versatile headwear pieces. The Carhartt brand is renowned for its durable and high-quality products, and their Balaclavas are no exception. Without further ado, let's dive into the details. https://preview.redd.it/pzx7zba9rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22ed36641608bd48a97f5284b90ed38db1990280 What is a Carhartt Balaclava?A Carhartt Balaclava is a multi-functional head covering that's designed to protect the wearer from cold weather and harsh conditions. Balaclavas are typically made of a warm insulated material, and their unique design allows the wearer to expose only the face or mouth while covering the entire head and neck. Due to their adaptability and versatility, they are a popular choice among outdoor enthusiasts, athletes, and workers.Material and InsulationThe quality of the material and insulation is a crucial factor when considering a Carhartt Balaclava. Make sure to choose a model that made of a durable, moisture-wicking, and insulated material. Common materials used in Carhartt Balaclavas include polyester, fleece, and acrylic knits. Look for proper insulation in the form of fillers or lining to help maintain body heat and prevent cold temperatures from affecting your comfort. https://preview.redd.it/jv7yrjw9rc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7dd991411c6f7a34302fd414bc29c38206d80900 Fit and ComfortWhen shopping for a Carhartt Balaclava, ensure that it fits well and is comfortable. A snug, yet not too tight, fit will provide optimal heat retention and protection from wind and snow. The Balaclava should be easy to adjust and wear, with minimal bulkiness around the face.StylingWhile styling may not be the first priority when choosing a Carhartt Balaclava, it's still worth considering. Look for designs that match your personal style or the needs of a specific activity or occasion. Some Carhartt Balaclavas come with adjustable necklines and face openings, allowing you to customize the look to your preference. https://preview.redd.it/qctx02carc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=52a9dbda5bc1596dc7771a50698f434d6f3f7bb0 Brand Reliability and ReputationCarhartt is a reputable brand known for their high-quality, durable, and practical designs. By choosing a Carhartt Balaclava, you can rest assured that you're investing in a product that's built to last and will provide you with excellent protection from harsh weather conditions.Customer Reviews and RatingsBefore making a purchase, take a look at customer reviews and ratings for the Carhartt Balaclava you're considering. This will help you gain insight into the product's performance, durability, and fit from real-world users.A Carhartt Balaclava is an essential item for those who love spending time outdoors in cold and windy conditions. By considering the features, materials, fit, and style, you can find the perfect Balaclava to meet your specific needs. Remember to always read product descriptions, reviews, and ratings before making a purchase to ensure satisfaction. https://preview.redd.it/ibqc6gwarc1d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=311db60b0998783857050c9c94e55d68e44bbe24 FAQWhat is a Carhartt Balaclava?A Carhartt Balaclava is a type of face mask designed to provide both warmth and protection from harsh cold weather conditions. It is typically made of durable materials, like Carhartt's signature rugged fabric, making it suitable for outdoor activities.Why should I choose a Carhartt Balaclava over other brands?Carhartt is known for its high-quality products that are built to withstand the toughest conditions. When you choose a Carhartt Balaclava, you can expect it to be both comfortable to wear and resistant to wear and tear. Additionally, the brand has a long-standing reputation for crafting reliable and durable workwear, making it a trusted choice for many consumers.How do I choose the right Carhartt Balaclava for me?
Are Carhartt Balaclavas suitable for various activities?Yes, Carhartt Balaclavas are versatile and suitable for a variety of activities, including outdoor sports, winter hiking, skiing, and snowboarding. The choice of balaclava will depend on the specific activity and weather conditions you expect to encounter.How do I care for and store my Carhartt Balaclava?
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