I've lurked for a long time so thought I'd share. Even writing this post seems pointless like all other interactions I've had with everyone, online or IRL. Mother is the only person that's my connection to humanity at this point. Someone on an imageboard of all places commented on something I wrote that I sound like I'm in the last stage of depression where I've completely given up on everything. I had no idea it sounds like that to other people, because I find I'm somewhat content with life.
Somewhere along the way I convinced myself that what people call 'connection' or 'bonding' is just a shared illusion that distracts us from our default solitary state that some perceive as loneliness. Until I read posts here, I wondered how come that 'loneliness' feeling only happens when I'm around other people. I thought I was the only one; glad I'm not.
Anyway. I wasn't always like this, this was developed over the years with me being unable to form that elusive connection that people talk about. I was socially oblivious but enthusiastic with people. Then as time passed and certain things happened my obliviousness started to fade and trying to connect with people felt like pouring water in a bottomless well. This is probably due to undiagnosed autism or God knows what else, but I don't even care at this point.
I've got 2 analogies: 1) Don-Quixote - the Stranger transition. I started out energetic and oblivious only for later to become apathetic and lifeless. Those who read the books know. 2) Theater play. You think you are among the actors in the play, but for some odd reason you forget your script, don't know your lines and you try to improvise on the spot. It doesn't work, it makes things awkward until you finally get off stage and take a seat in the audience, thus becoming an observer to the play, or in my case life.
On normalcy. It's no secret that most of us here don't have the typical experience regarding anything. In my 20+ years of living, I've had a total of 2 friendships, both of which ended within a year. Don't know why. No relationships. I used to see these things as items on a checklist that I had to acquire as a teenager to appear normal, but I'm no longer in high school and right now, in the privacy of my room I can finally admit to myself that I don't care much. I used to think that I liked to appear normal but I've realized that what I actually wanted was for people to accept me and understand me as I am. I like the idea of forming a connection, but the few times such an opportunity was presented to me, I failed to have it for one reason or another. I don't know how it happens, but it always happens.
Few months back, something happened that I think was the final push that sent me falling over the cliff. I decided for that semester to actually show up for classes in one of my courses. I went in there I noticed someone from a distance whom I liked. Usually in a situation like that, I know (and expect) that nothing between me and the person will ever happen because I keep to myself, I have flat expression and I'm silent all the time. I didn't know this persons name, but I'd seen them a couple of times before. After the third lecture, we talked. For a normal person this isn't a big deal, but for isolated me this was very out of the ordinary and almost like out of a movie. An extroverted, happy, smart and nice person you have a small crush on and see from a distance, one day gets talking to you, a total recluse, after class. Of course I thought this was a one time thing. Next lecture came and...we talked again. They even went out of their way to run after me and talk to me as I was walking home. I was happy but also confused and nervous. I think I had sort of a limerence going on. On one hand I started to think that after all these years I'd finally found someone on the same frequency as me, on the other I was afraid that I'd push them away, ghost them or have them ghost me because that's what has always happened before with literally everyone I know. All this overthinking made me way too exhausted tbh. We continued to talk during the semester, usually they'd follow up with me as we exited the classroom, and then we'd talk, just the two us. At the last class of the semester, I thought about telling them I liked them. I wasn't sure whether I'd go through with it. Well, they made it easy for me: as we left the classroom before I could utter a word, they turned their back on me and took the other exit of the building, opposite of where we were usually headed, with another student. Not even a "Bye."
It would have been enough to have them even as a friend, but that's not happening anymore. I don't know if it's something I said, or something I did since I actually made effort to reciprocate the interest they showed me. What was interesting for me, was that I was so relieved after that last class. Like a giant weight has been lifted off of my shoulders and my assumptions were confirmed. Like I was almost happy that it ended that way. Well, I wish them all the best but I hope I don't run into them in the future. But even if I do, who cares... to me, they are back to being a random face in the crowd.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I've had recurring nightmare all my life, about being out and about in the city, heavy clouds gather, people suddenly rush off and vanish and heavy rain starts pouring. I try to find shelter but water level rapidly rises in a matter of seconds and I find myself drowning in rainwater. Another theme is being behind an invisible wall and yelling at people but no one can hear me, not even my mother. I think that's sort of how this feels like. I'm not depressed because I don't feel worthless or bad or even sad. I have some everyday anxieties about bills, school, health stuff like that, but nothing too dramatic or serious. I haven't truly cared about things in a long, long time apart from the aforementioned person from last semester. I've been just slowly zoning out and fading away. I've been replacing my real life with excessive daydreaming and introspection for years now. But I have exhausted even that. I've devoured and dissected my mind and there is nothing left to introspect anymore. The 100+ .doc journal is my witness. There are no more things left to be written. I think I've finally reached the point of no return. And I don't think I'll be having daydreams anymore as well, because they imply that there is some part of me that still yearns for connection. There is only autopilot mode from now on.
That's it. I avoid writing posts like this and I get viscerally sick if I open up to people even remotely, even anonymously online, but I don't think I'll have interactions with people much more because like I said I've been getting more and more withdrawn, as if I'm drowning further and deeper and I can't resist the blissful peacefulness that comes with it. People exhaust me way too much. I'll try to not delete this later. Idk.
Edit: Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to read and respond. It occurred to me that this could mean finally ending my schizoid dilemma that has lasted for years.

... Oh god.
What are you bemoaning about now, you shitty mod?
There has been a lot posts...
... Yes? And...?
Why does Nijisanji or even other companies just keep on doing stupid stuff?
Fuck if we know
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening
I am CPC_Alice
So I scrolled down for my weekly review of the week in kurosanji and I'm just utterly struck by how many posts and comments I have to go through for this review. That is a lot of activity that is public facing ONLY. We Mods do mod things and there is the stuff that we actions on based on our principles, rules, and analysis. So... lets review...
Anyone remember? There was that Enna Tweet that she made alongside her RL friend or w/e that did a little skit. You don't? Yeah, better be negligible on it tbh. It is nothing major tbh. At best, I'll believe the other explanations that floated around (I personally didn't think they were true tbh). At worst, it was an immature skit that was largely ignored. As I said, Negligible.
Next.
Oh, there was that NijisisteNDF cope about how people are trying to compare VR-SG vs Holo's DreamHack Down Under concert. How DARE people compare the two? Don't you see how SMALL SG is on the map compared to Australia? OF COURSE Australia would have MORE people so that would EXPLAIN WHY there is more people at Holo's sh-tty concert (what they implied, to be clear) than VR-SG!
Of course, that kind of sentiment would absolutely get violated by Community Notes via Twitter if it was actually noted... Not really sure if they did get hit by one... Anyways... They missed the fact on how SG has a very high population density vs Australia's low density. So comparing landmasses is just fundamentally incorrect in the context. Facts are Facts. Down Under was just absolutely better in any objective data point you can scrounge up vs VR-SG. Still a high grade copium tho, ngl.
More NijisisteNDF cope/malding on how their PUBLICLY POSTED PICTURES are used in pieces that call out Nijisanji for their spectacularly bad VR-SG. Some of it was cropped and doesn't have any obvious identifiers (which is the proper way of doing things btw.) while some were used in video thumbnails with their faces in full view (which is admittedly rude). Regardless of things, they were PUBLICLY POSTED. It was just there for anyone to grab and see without any restrictions. Did people really forget how to keep things they want private... private? No idea. I could just feel my braincell scream trying to figure it out.
Moving on, there was that Helldivers 2 Edit that someone made for the "Yachtsinkers". Honestly, it gave me a bit of a chuckle but it also annoyed me on how it obviously played into someone not knowing JP. Yes, the subtitles were not accurate. Either way tho, still gave me a chuckle.
Then there is that little story about a fan who flew to VR-SG to attend the event. I personally think it wasn't worth it but I'm obviously biased. Also regardless of everything, if you are that passionate about something, then flying to go for it ain't something that is fundamentally wrong. That is how HoloFes is after all. Condensing everything, their M&G (which was overpriced imo) got cut short and all the compensation offered were 2 random badges of the girls for that event. When she tried to refuse the compensation and just wanted the full time, she got pulled out from her M&G even BEFORE that already reduced time.
Now, looking at it objectively, that is a VERY scummy and sh-tty thng to do on a fan who paid for the time that was listed. It is a rightful condemnation for that kind of action. However, typical NijisisteNDF fashion, the fan hid the social media post and then came out saying on how it is ok (what happen to her) and using her post to criticize Nijisanji/AnyColor is not good. My mind was absolutely blown.
Then there is the Mika/Michi Tax situation. To be clear, if you work for a foreign company, it is expected to clarify your tax situation with that said employer. It is also typical (unless specified) that said employer would be the one navigating and taking care of any taxes and doing the necessary things to cover them. After all, it is in the best interest of the employer that the employee that they brought in would focus on actually doing the job they are hired to do. Handling Taxes is just a burden that could potentially distract said employee from doing their job. That is no good. An employer already does their taxes alongside their other employees anyways so it is best to just centralize that stuff. Logical no?
Not so much with Nijisanji it seems. According to Michi/Mika, she did ask Nijisanji about her taxes and they said they'll take care of it. Fast-forward time and when Michi/Mika was straightening her stuff out, the government on her place came knocking with notice that she hadn't paid her taxes to them. She had to sacrifice quite a bit of stuff pay off the taxes owed. That is not a situation you really want to be in. So she ask Niji the understandable question of "wtf, I thought you were paying taxes!" and Niji went "Yeah... we were paying taxes... our taxes.". Now of course noone outside of Niji and Mika/Michi knew how that particular conversation has gone so that little thing is a skit written by me. To be honest tho, it doesn't seem too far from the truth tho. It really is a shitty thing tho, to be clear.
Hmmm... Oh, I aired some Random Thoughts.... Meh, not important enough. Next.
This one also made me chuckle... hehe.... Delete Delete Delete....
Oh, I also started monitoring a certain imageboard's vtuber section because there is a need to monitor a certain group's situations y'know? I picked up that there were certain Vtubers who died. I took a moment to pay respects. I also saw it posted for one of those incidents.
Oh right! FalseEyeD's news drop. It turned out that Nijisanji did not like a tweet by FalseEyeD and threatened the Convention that the picture was taken in to do something about it or they will cut off the Convention not just from any participation from Nijisanji, but things like JP VA guests too. FalseEyeD took down the tweet cuz he didn't want to cause potential actual harm to WeebCon. Basically, this just shows that before the Selen Shock stuff, Nijisanji was already doing the "big dog" strut and being quite the bully around things. Hey, now we know that Nijisanji/AnyColor is a black company. It just so happen that they *always has been* all this time. WeebCon also dodged a bullet by cutting Niji/AnyColor off that early. lol
Then there was this little thing that was done as a collab between a user and the moderation team... Haaaaaa.... I'm not unfamiliar with things bombing hard... It is just been a while and to have that little interaction with it... Well, I like to think positive! That just means that NOONE has questions or has a need to criticize our mod actions! *MikaXD.png here*
Oh right, TTT's debut song was not sung by them.... WTF... This is allowed? What? I... I don't even know.
oh, someone made an April 2024 Summary of things.
It sure would be better than whatever you have been doing
Yup, no doubt.
... WTF...
Anyways.... VSTATS dropped for April 2024 too. Numbers, eat your heart out.
Sakana, that Chad of a Fish CEO of Phase Connect, has had some posts of his stuff lately too. It serves as a contrast as to what a certain CEO of Nijisanji does. Riku is now being compared to YAGOOD (or is it YAGOD?) and H2oSakana (Fish Man). Frankly speaking, Riku is losing tremendously.
Oh right. Honkai Star Rail (a Mobile Game by MiHoYo for those who have been living under a GOSH DARNED ROCK) turned one of their characters into a Vtuber and held a concert. Naturally, Nijisanji got compared to it. It is quite hilarious that a game character has a more successful concert than what Nijisanji did with VR-SG.
Oh yeah, the Nijisanji Digital Storefront did a massive oopsie. Oopsies range from doing a gacha pull on your purchases (getting someone else's voice packs.... even those who have left already) to outright getting personal information of another person. Negligible "oopsie" right?
Shu also released a new costume. Calling it "long legs" is an understatement. No, really. Daymn its long.
Ah yes, Armcha1r Expert's Video... It brings into words and perspective as to what some people already know to have happen and gave it an easily digestible form for the masses. I mean, none of it should be news to anyone that is read in on the situation to be honest. The video itself is not wrong nor am I saying it is not needed. It really is something that is made to give people understanding of the circumstances. It is just... well... spoon-fed y'know? I guess it is just a bit of a "nothing burger" to someone that is well read into the whole situation. Still a nice video to be honest...
Then there is the Vivi stream where she expressed some frustrations of her situation. The stream is private btw so no links to it. It is just really such sad circumstances to be honest. Your Oshis left the company you just joined. Management is... less than helpful (putting it lightly). Your growth is... Negligible. It is really sad. To the point that when it was pointed out in /vt/, the denizens of 4chan expressed empathy over that situation. Let that sink into your mind. 4chan expressed empathy over Vivi's situation. Wild but also at the same time quite shockingly sad at the same time.
Oh! Comic Frontier is hosting a M&G for VShojo's Michi Mochievee for IDR 450,000 (28.08 USD). It notes "2-Day Pass Included". I'm not too sure if it means "the M&G is included in the 2-day Pass" or "the 450,000 IDR includes a 2-Day Pass". It is very unlikely I will be attending that con (barring a sudden attendance and flight) so I don't know. Good for her tho! She got a M&G gig 2 weeks in... Daymn.
Oh right. Somebody pointed out that VR-SG nor its livers hasn't put up any post-event social media posts. Weird.
Oh, Sayu Sincronicity got her 100K sub on youtube! Silver Play button! Congrats!
Hmn... OffKai is doing a lottery system for its M&G. A lottery system could either be a hype apparatus used to drive the "exclusivity" of the event (this is quite common in JP) or there is just so much demand that to make it "fairer", the system is in place. No idea, not part of OffKai staff. Mint is showing up tho. Nice!
Oh right! Sayu and Michi got new models! One is a retro theme and the other is a chibi!
On another note, a Mumei re-broadcast surpassed a 3D Debut from a Niji Talent. Anyone remember the times when a 3D model (from Live2D models) debut is actually like... a very fricking hype thing? I am suddenly reminded of a little discord leak on how HoloCouncil apparently failed.... HEH.
Reaching the end... Claude's absolute clown of a statement about "fucking ask" on the play button reached the logical conclusion. He is right, you can just f-cking ask. Doesn't mean the response will be a positive one :P
AH! ITS DONE! I AM DONE! FREEDOM!
No you're not you shitty mod. How about the mod review?
^{SHUT UP LET ME DREAM QAQ}
This is your weekly round up. There are some stuff I skipped because I really wanted to finish this already. So...
Thank you very much for reading (if you did!)
I'll see you next time!
CPC_Alice
PS. This is unedited. I didn't even do a once over. I am just glad I'm done QAQ
PPS. I just realized that someone posted 3 min before me that Mint got 200K subs. Congrats to her!

Over and over, especially in the last week or so, this subreddit has stepped away from "Nijisanji as a corporation is evil" and further into the conspiracy rrats that dominate the chan imageboards.
Every other post treats nonsense such as "the clique" as some kind of hard proven fact, rather than the endless anon/greentext meme rant it is - and then takes any piece of gossip or quote (regardless of context) as proof positive that some random NijiEN liver is out to get those few that have escaped the company.
Hell, the last few days have seen people acting like 3-year-old Discord leak drama of a single stupid comment from Fulgur (which he already got raked over the coals for, and Calli buried the hatchet on) spammed in comments and links as if it were the smoking gun proving that Millie is some kind of evil psychopath.
No, the links to 30-minute irresponsible dramatuber video quoting half of a sentence from a streamer, and then copying screenshots of unrelated tweets spanning 3 years of shitposting do not count as proof.
No, a screenshot of a speculatory greentext on /vt/ does not prove anything.
Even comments that call for reasonable levels of proof about these types of allegations are now getting downvoted into oblivion.
Absolute Nijisister behavior, full stop. We're supposed to be better here than that - Doki would want us to be.

⟳ f-droid.org from Wed, 07 Feb 2024 08:51:09 GMT updated on Sun, 11 Feb 2024 17:52:27 GMT contains 4316 apps.

Added (7)

• Broker 1961: Very attractive board game which was created in 1961 for trading shares
• Oshi Uploader: an Android app that can upload to any Oshi instance
• Chooser: Android finger picker app
• DailyLog: A quick-logging notes app with customizable shortcut buttons.
• Oblique Strategies: Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas
• WG Auto Connect: Auto connect to a WireGuard tunnel
• Play Deals: Find the latest app deals and discounts on paid apps and games.

Updated (106)

• Unciv (version 4.10.7): Open source 4X civilization-building game
• Tux Paint (version 0.9.32-1): A drawing program for children.
• Linphone - open source SIP client (version 5.2.3): SIP (VOIP) phone
• YAACC (version 4.1.0): UPNP/DLNA client and server
• Mull (version 122.1.0): Privacy oriented web browser
• aTalk (version 3.3.4): XMPP/Jabber client with encrypted instant messaging and video calls
• Fennec F-Droid (version 122.1.0): Browse the web
• Everest (version 1.1.6): Mathematical puzzle game
• Cigaló (version 0.1.2): Introducing Cigaló: The Open Source Android Drinking Game App!
• PlainApp: File & Web Access (version 1.2.36): Manage your phone on the web! Access files, contacts, videos, music & more.
• GreenStash (version 3.0.0): Simple app to help you plan and manage your savings goals easily.
• SimpleLogin Anti-spam (version 1.21.1): Protect your email inbox with a secure and open source solution by SimpleLogin
• CrossWords (version 4.4.201): A Scrabble-like game
• CPU Info (version 5.3.1): Information about device hardware and software
• Xray (version 5.1.0): Xray GUI Client For Android
• Iconeration (version 1.3.2): Open-source icon pack creator
• Acode editor - Android code editor (version 1.9.0): A lightweight but powerful text/code editor.
• Mumla (version 3.6.7): Voice chat on Mumble servers
• Keep Alive (version 1.1.3): Notify others if you haven't used your device in a given period of time
• Amethyst (version 0.83.12): Nostr Client for Android
• Shattered Pixel Dungeon (version 2.3.2): A roguelike game based on Pixel Dungeon
• Nextcloud Passwords (version 1.0.8): Secure app for viewing passwords for the Nextcloud Passwords app
• NextDNS Manager (version 4.9.2): Manage your NextDNS settings quickly and easily!
• Joplin (version 2.14.5): a note taking and to-do app with sync between Linux, macOS, Windows, and mobile
• NOVA Video Player (version 6.2.55): Video player for local/network content with subtitle/metadata download support
• Suntimes (version 0.15.11): Sunlight and moonlight times (and alarms)
• Jami (version 20240206-01): Audio & Video Calls / Chat Take Control of your Communication!
• Jerboa for Lemmy (version 0.0.57): An app for Lemmy, a federated reddit alternative.
• OpenAthena™ for Android (version 0.19.8): OpenAthena™ lets common drones spot precise locations
• Conversations (version 2.13.1+free): Encrypted, easy-to-use XMPP instant messenger for your mobile device
• Openreads (version 2.4.1): Your private and open source books tracker, organizer and reading list.
• Oinkoin (version 1.0.48): Oinkoin Money Manager makes managing personal finances easy and secure.
• Read You (version 0.9.12): A modern and elegant RSS reader with Material You design
• Valv (version 1.6.1): An encrypted gallery vault for Android devices
• Interval Timer (version 1.0.8): The simplest interval timer you can imagine
• Cuscon (version 4.0.0.9): Icon pack with varied shapes
• MIFARE Classic Tool (version 4.2.2): An NFC app for reading, writing, analyzing, etc. MIFARE Classic RFID tags.
• Myne: Ebook Downloader (version 2.8.1): Android application to download ebooks from the Project GutenBerg.
• Arcticons Day & Night (version 8.7.1-hotfix): A monotone line-based icon pack for dark & light themed setups.
• Obtainium (version 1.0.2): Get android app updates directly from the source
• idTech4A++ (version 1.1.0harmattan38): DOOM III/Quake 4/Prey(2006) game runtime environment for Android
• Arcticons Black (version 8.7.1-hotfix): A monotone line-based icon pack for light themed setups.
• Insular (version 6.3-e46a1948): Isolate your Big Brother apps
• KurobaEx (version v1.3.33): Free and open source image board browser
• SilverDict (version 1.4.1): Android client of the SilverDict dictionary server
• Railway station photos (version 15.2.0): Collect photos of railway stations for https://railway-stations.org
• Unexpected Keyboard (version 1.26.0): Lightweight and privacy-conscious virtual keyboard for Android.
• SiYuan (version 2.12.7): A privacy-first, self-hosted knowledge management app
• Invoice Ninja (version 5.0.154): Invoice your clients, accept payments, track expenses & time billable-tasks
• Tailscale (version 1.58.2-tb0e1bbb62-gcd1f0649958): Mesh VPN based on WireGuard
• Zapp (version 8.5.0): Collection of German public broadcasting live streams
• Gauguin (version 0.20.0): A Sudoku-like logic game
• Exodus (version 3.2.2): Exodus show you trackers and permissions in apps installed on your device.
• Gallery (version 2.1.0): Light-weight Media Gallery
• Arcticons Material You (version 8.7.1-hotfix): A line-based icon pack with a Material You color palette.
• Pie Launcher (version 1.18.0): Control your phone with a dynamic pie menu instead of fixed positioned icons.
• Emacs (version 30.0.50): The extensible self-documenting text editor
• Cache Cleaner (version 1.10.8): Clean cache of installed user and system apps using Accessibility
• AF Weather Widget (version 2.5): Graph weather widget for Android
• ente - encrypted photo storage (version 0.8.55): ente is an end-to-end encrypted photo storage app
• FairEmail (version 1.2156): Fully featured email client. Neat, intuitive user interface. Privacy friendly
• MoeMemos (version 0.7.3): An app to help you capture thoughts & ideas, syncs with self-hosted Memos server
• Sayboard (version v4.1.2): An open-source on-device voice IME (keyboard) for Android using the Vosk library
• TorrServe (version MatriX.129.3.F-Droid): Download torrent files
• Timed Shutdown [No Root] (version v2.4): This app emulates manual gestures to power off the phone.
• Linwood Butterfly (version 2.0.3-rc.0): Powerful, minimalistic, cross-platform, opensource note-taking app
• AgoraDesk: buy BTC anonymously (version 1.1.18): Buy or sell Bitcoin without ID verification. Cash or online. Safe, fast, easy.
• droidVNC-NG (version 2.2.0): VNC server app that does not require root privileges.
• F-Droid Build Status (version 5.1.0): Shows and monitors build status from F-Droid
• Table Habit (version 1.10.5): Boost your own habit growth with charts.
• Canta (version 1.3.0): Uninstall any app without root!
• Keyoxide (version 2.0.1): Verify decentralized cryptographic identities on the go
• FlashDim - Dim your flashlight (version 2.3.1): Modern flashlight app with dim functionality on Android 13+
• Infomaniak Mail (version 1.2.1): The secure messaging service for your emails
• Eat Poop You Cat (version 1.1.2): Eat Poop You Cat is a bit like telephone with writing and drawing.
• Emerald Dialer (version 1.0.16): Make calls, view call log
• Weechat-Android (version 1.9): Relay client for the WeeChat IRC client.
• Shitter (version 3.5.4): Lightweight Mastodon client
• Super Retro Mega Wars (version 0.32.2): Play retro games against each other in any combination.
• Xtra (version 2.29.0): a Twitch player and browser
• OpenKeychain: Easy PGP (version 6.0.0): Encrypt your Files and Communications. Compatible with the OpenPGP Standard.
• Open Stable Diffusion (version 1.9): An app for generating images using AI
• Quicksy (version 2.13.1+free): JabbeXMPP with Easy Entry and Easy Discovery
• RetroArch (version 1.17.0): Retro games and emulators on your device!
• eduVPN (version 3.2.2): eduVPN connects securely and encrypted to your institution or Internet
• Lexica (version 3.13.0): Find as many words as possible on a grid of random letters within a time limit
• RiMusic (version 0.6.20): A multilingual Android application for streaming music from YouTube Music.
• Mirror (version 1.1.1): Simple Android application turning your device into a pocket mirror🪞
• Average data usage widget (version 4.0): Check your data usage and compare it with an indicator of the average usage.
• Infomaniak kDrive (version 4.4.4): The most secure cloud in Europe for SMEs and private individuals.
• SimpleX Chat (version 5.5.2): SimpleX Chat - e2e encrypted messenger without any user IDs - private by design!
• Library App VideLibri (version 2.782): Renews books borrowed from libraries and searchs in OPACs
• e1547 - e621 browser (version 18.0.0): browser for the e621 and e926 imageboards
• LocalMonero: buy XMR privately (version 1.1.18): Buy or sell Monero without ID verification. Cash or online. Safe, fast, easy.
• Pocket Broomball (version 5.1.2): The world's first Broomball video game with 100+ real world teams!
• BendyStraw (version 1.1.0): An app for managing NewPipe databases
• Wattz (version 1.17): A battery power status bar indicator
• Simple Time Tracker (version 1.36): Track how much time you spend on different activities during the day.
• ntodotxt (version 0.4.7): Managing your todos within a todo.txt file locally or via webdav
• openHAB Beta (version 3.9.3-beta): Vendor and technology agnostic open source home automation
• Syncthing (version 1.27.3): File synchronization
• Standard Notes (version 3.189.3): An end-to-end encrypted note-taking app for digitalists and professionals
• QuickWeather (version 2.6.3): Weather at a glance for anywhere in the world!
• Arcticons (version 8.7.1-hotfix): A monotone line-based icon pack for dark themed setups.
• Tabletop Tools (version 1.28): Handy tool collection for tabletop games
• EasySync (version 1.7): Synchronize your phone with your WebDAV server, the easy way.

^{2024-02-11T18:26:00Z}

Hello there lady, I knew you'd be here. Sooooo where do I start this tumultuous first year, hm ... let's start with the basics !
My venture started on January 13th,, not the best number to get started with since it was also on a friday. I played every day without fail despite the obstacles imposed by my connection's (and therefore ISP) whims. Did that prevent me from logging in with a capped sanity on a couple occasions ? Absolutely not. Weird sleeping schedules are a bitch, man.
How I was led to try out this game is a little strange, I suspect myself to have done it to cover the enormous hole I had just left after a 8 years long career on this very obscure game you may call 'Kantai Collection'. I have quite the history with this game, but this ain't the topic. (I shall refer to it as KC from now on) As far as my memory goes, I first heard of Arknights in January 2021 during a long day of browsing through imageboards at random. The first five characters I came across all share a common point I'll let you figure out for yourself. Kal'tsit, Platinum, Mudrock, W, Ptilopsis ... they were my first contact through rather 'unsavory' displays, if you want a tame wording. I had put this name in the back of my mind for a whole two years and almost forgot about it. I really am not big on gachas to start with, so the idea of getting into this was not the most tempting. This is truly my first experience with the genre and its following mechanics got me hooked for longer then I had foreseen.
To add to this sentiment of venturing into the unknown, (which I very much dislike, getting into new stuff on my own is a serious product of anxiety for me, I am a conflicted person) I knew firsthand that I would have to deal with the tower defense genre, which I had NO prior experience with. The gameplay seemed like something out of a puzzle game with RPG elements ? Insert confusion here. Having a knack for teamwork, foreknowledge of the field and executing a plan flawlessly is everything I love, no matter how slow it is, I enjoy this kind of stuff. If this ain't complex and engaging, I shall see myself out. Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed in the slightest by what Arknights had to offer. This is not all, this game must have the most elaborated and respectful designs (e.g balance of cool and fanservice) I've ever seen from the crazy sphere that is the gacha market. One final factor that encouraged me to get into it was that a lot of ex-KC players I was acquainted with were well-established veterans here, so if I wanted some help of any kind I could just ask them. With all that set and done, this year was going to be mine.
My first 10-pulls on the (now different) newbie banner started off with both Lappland and Exusiai in the first bag. I wish I had kept those old screenshots though, so my operator menu is all you're going to get. Having 0 knowledge of the game, I did not know that one of the very best 5-stars blessed me with her presence, this is a good start.
I was surprised to find out that I would get challenged that early on and my first order of business was to conquer the first Annihilation stage with what I started with. I saw, I advanced, I conquered. Day 3 400 kills baby.
With my first day being the same day Ideal City opened, I naturally burned through all my pulls on my first limited banner to see what I would get and what I would be crying over. Much to my dismay, it seemed that I missed getting Savage by being slow on the take. This is not accounting for the absolutely insane nature of my first 10 pulls here. Yep, you're looking right. Balans herself had decided to carry the entirety of my early game. These two new recruits were also very much worth looking over !
I directed my selection from the 5* ticket toward Ptilopsis, as she was the only face I was familiar with before starting. She ended up being the love of my doctor life, I can't express how right of a choice this was. She may talk like a robot, but I personally empathize with her on a pretty deep level. This isn't something I could say for any random character, you gotta trust me on that !
As told above, my first event was Ideal City. I did not get above IC-9 and kept getting tossed over by the boss of this stage. "Who the heck would design something like this ?", I thought. It wasn't much of a big deal in the end, since I ended up earning a modest amount of Aketons and Gels from this. I skipped over the story since I was not comfortable with the idea of being shoved with spoilers, some people may find it to be a strange choice. Does it matter in the long run ? No. Funnily enough, I still did not read this story as of today ...
The Trials for Navigator gauntlet came by. I wasn't able to clear anything except TN-1, which I abused to the full extend of the jam in order to cap my level. Doing it manually was quite the drag, however.
The next arc is the CC#10 Ashring arc, which is to this day still the most impactful time period I lived through on this game. I had no real carry to rely on and the only gate of exit available to go through was the very recent Myrtle I had just acquired and E2'd in the nick of time. I had heard of her prior, being the mythical hidden 6-star disguised as a 4-star who would carry everyone with unmatched DP generation speed. With this requirement fulfilled, my joy was quickly shut down by the absolutely RIDICULOUS difficulty from both the permanent map with its multiple layers of mechanics and the daily map. It took me 4 hours to obtain my very first Risk 8 here. A significant personal achievement, but ultimately nothing in front of what was going to come after.
You see, I hate to be defeated repeatedly and will do everything in my power to succeed against an obstacle I enjoy going through. Getting kicked in the face a lot does not matter when you always get up and ask for more. So, with all the free time I had on my hands, I started practicing Londinium Outskirts very seriously and cracks started to show. I came back for more of it, and then even more because I knew there was something going on here. And then it happened, 25 days account newface gets a trimmed medal.
If you fail, just persevere and try some more. You might get something out of it after 20+ hours of trying like I did, the odds don't matter. (If you have the time, lol)
While this crazy bullshit and my hours long crash courses on every daily map were unfolding, I also got to recruit Mudrock before she got swept away by the banner's deadline. She is one of the greatest girls here, I absolutely love her.
For all the tribulations I went through during the 3 first months of the game, I had a lot of fun and was continually surprised at how far skill and smart play can get you even if the quality of your squad is piss poor. Do you struggle against a mechanic ? Just practice it and understand its logic, it'll turn out to be much easier to digest. With the bar of severity not being very high, it leaves space for imagination and creative ways to get things done and I'll make damn sure to realize the goal I'll be aiming for, even if I am too broke to spend any real money. See all these nicheknights squads all around us ? I shall be one of them even if it takes a long time. A fine vision is hard to realize. This is what makes this game so great by the way, so why not remove the practice plans eh HG ? I'm sure this can be done and everyone will be happy in no time, promise !
I do not wish to bother you any longer with retellings of event stories, so I'll go straight to the point and end this talk abruptly with not more than some extra stuff out of my pocket.
Apparently, this is how much credits I have consumed in a year ? I do not know how much this is in the grand scheme of things, but it's honest work I suppose.
The current state of my squad can be viewed here. I don't feel like it's a lot, but I have very clear goals and always look ahead of time. If this was not clear enough, my ultimate aim is to raise every silvewhite haired operator and do fun clears with as many of them as possible. If you did not catch the answer, I don't blame you.
Lastly, I'd like to thank all the people who helped me to climb all the way up here no matter who they are (Well, they may not be a part of this subreddit, but I feel compelled to do so anyway), I may not have been this successful without guide makers and other resourceful doctors. Special shoutouts to Stormlight for his incredibly helpful advices and operator insights, as well as my boi Lenzchen for constantly answering my questions and even taking over my account when I had no way to play. I hope you're going to read this !
So long, and see you for more random posts !

For those unaware the 'Small Web' (sometimes called 'Yesterweb' or 'Indie Web') is a generalized term for websites outside of Big Tech Social Media, and which operate outside of or deliberately in opposition to common Social Media standards. These can be old websites, created before the social media era, like
Fanart Central
http://www.fanart-central.net/
or
SomethingAwful
https://forums.somethingawful.com/
or they can be newer sites like The Melonland Forum
https://forum.melonland.net/
or
Heyuri
https://heyuri.net/
There are several reasons why I think smaller websites like this will start to take off as time goes on:

1. This trend dovetails with the 2000s revival:

Before social media took off in the mid-late 2000s, browsing lots of small websites was literally just how people used the Internet by default. You would check out links given to you by your friends or posted on forums, or you would browse around on someone's site until you found a link to somewhere else. You could end up in lots of crazy, unique places. People are growing nostalgic for this kind of variety.

1. Greater control over your Internet browsing experience:

One benefit of this movement to make and use smaller websites is an element of control. Apart from avoiding things like algorithmic echochambers or ads people have more freedom about how they can post. When you use Social Media platforms you are kind of operating out of someone's backyard. There are a lot of things you can't do. The Indie Web gives people the ability to completely customize the look of their websites, with as much glitter and as many obnoxious gifs as they want. On the intellectual side, people are much freer to post whatever kind of fringe ideas they'd like to espouse, in whichever words they'd like to use without being deplatformed. Webhosts and ISPs are generally pretty permissive; in some cases the only thing they will put a stop to is the spread of government secrets or child porn. Even if you're not into making your own website, there are a variety of sites you can post on, sites which won't screw over the userbase to appeal to advertisers or Big Tech ideals.
Actually, a lot of people who got into the Indie Web did so because they were banned/deplatformed from social media, (like many right-leaning users) or because Social Media decided to crack down on the kind of content they liked, (like Tumblr users after the porn purge in 2018)
Additionally there is a certain 'privacy' here. There is that easy assurance that what you post on Indie Web sites will never go 'viral' and thus affect your real life. It's a small, close knit community,(with many sites being anonymous), where people can express even their weirdest opinions.

1. Escaping polarization/identity politics

Despite how political some of the motivations here sound, many sites in the Indie Web scene were created as, or evolved into, places where people could avoid all the cancerous politics of Social Media and foster reasonable debate. That doesn't mean that they're apolitical, precisely (some bill themselves as safe space for queer folk, bipoc etc, some are about refusing modern degeneracy and excess etc, others just let you do whatever), but you can have much saner conversations in many of these places. You know how people talk about how Tumblr has quietened down since the Porn Exodus? Well all of these sites are like that.
Some argue that the way that Social Media is built actively encourages polarization;
The algorithm feeds you content that will engage you
content that shocks and angers you engages you (even apart from SocMed, this is why stuff like Jerry Springer was so popular in the 90s)
said shocking content makes you more judgemental and makes you hold to your beliefs about life more strongly
this leads to polarization.
Meanwhile the Indie Web has no algorithms or engagement farming techniques at play, thus it can be considered healthier.
Even big YouTubers like Kurgtesatz have been promoting the Small Web using this same reasoning. He advocates decreasing polarization by returning to the 'forums that old people probably remember ':
https://youtu.be/fuFlMtZmvY0?si=UgBiNyagNX6OXcYN
On my part, Ive been into this 'Small Web' thing since 2019, when I got into y2k aesthetics and started looking for old websites or anything that approached the feeling of such sites, so of course I've got kind of a vested interest in getting people on this wave. (You've probably seen me talking about this kind of stuff already, or not-so-subtly mentioning it.)
I figure I ought to do my part by recommending a few sites:
Agora Road's Macintosh Café:
https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php
(A vaporwave forum, however at this point they discuss so many cultural topics that many newbies don't know it's about vaporwave.)
Our World of Text:
https://ourworldoftext.com/
(A sprawling, anarchical text site; like 2b2t as a website. You can type literally anything literally anywhere, plus copy/paste whatever you want. Lots of cool pixel art.)
The Cidoku Network:
https://cidoku.net/gb/
(An archetypal Indie Web personal page lots of interesting writing, music, and OCs. My favourite part of this website is the Guestbook, which looks like an imageboard. Lots of interesting characters pass thru here, from crazed fan girls to music enthusiasts, to people giving writing advice.)
B3TA:
https://b3ta.com/
A two-decade old British message board with a penchant for creating comedic images. They in fact set themed challenges for creating memes. If you've got Photoshop skills this is the place to flex them.
Wiby:
https://wiby.me/
This is a search engine for the small we. No SEO here. You can find countless old buried websites, and some new ones, on various topics , from sites all about men named 'Bob' to forums for people with an addiction to chewing ice. There is even a randomizer button.
Search Marginalia:
https://search.marginalia.nu/
Like Wiby but much broader. It has various easy to use search modifiers that let you decide the specific time period you want results from, and a randomizer button that gives you a dozen random sites, as opposed to Wiby's one.

Attempting to keep it brief

• I pay for 1200 mbps internet
• I am connected directly by ethernet cable
• The XFinity app says I'm getting 115% speed to my router (1389 mbps)
• three internet speed websites tell me I'm getting
  • 300 - 500 (Fast.com)
  • 300 - 700 (Google)
  • 700 - 900 (Ookla speedtest)
  • Randomly I'll get 100-200 in tests depending on whatever day (Doesn't really seem to be focused on the time of day)
• I get half decent/random speeds except when using imageboard websites, where in those cases after opening a couple of tabs, internet randomly drops to 0 and completely stops working for a whole minute. Even my music radio will just cease. It only specifically happens with browsing image-focused websites but it seems to be that it happens locally (On my PC only) rather than across my entire internet service (ie affecting other users)

​
Is the last one just a normal thing with all image focused websites, and it's my fault? Are these speeds normal, despite paying for 1200? I've never once felt even remotely close to 900s. These are speed tests that connect to close cities as well, so I imagine that's ideal circumstances for those speed tests.
​
A couple months ago I called XFinity to see if they could see something amiss. They had me answer many questions, do a test where I rebooted the server slowly (twice), and did a bunch of other tests over the phone including command prompt lines.
They also said I had an older version of a router & sent a new one after the end of it all, to see if that was the issue, and that I would get a followup call where they would send an agent free of charge to check it out if my issue persisted. I didn't get any sort of followup, and I work from home so it was difficult for me to call back again and do all those steps all over again, so I held off on it. I'm now having a Verizon representative come to my door saying they're available in my area now, so I felt the temptation to both switch, and see if I could resolve this issue again. I don't like paying $90+ and getting 1/4th of advertised speeds despite being ethernet plugged.

I identified as a trans girl for 2 years and was pretty happy with that, but I want to be sure of everything.
Physical traits that give me the most distress are hair everywhere and my face, I wish everything mentioned to be female (and I am completely okay with being an ugly girl). I have some other things that I am dysphoric about, such as hands or muscle mass. Though it’s important to add that I look pretty androgynous, looking like a random man is horrible for me.
I never wanted breasts pre-realization, and I don’t feel acute distress over being flat, but I would like to have an A cup or even half of that, but probably not more. I got very slight breast development from low-dose estrogen and liked it that way more, so it’s not purely theoretical.
I don’t have severe discomfort with penis in general, but don’t like like it either. I don’t consider any surgeries in reality due to cost and anxiety and so on, but having both sets of genitals would feel good, I think.
I like being reffered with feminine terms and sought ways to affirm me being like a girl in whatever regard since I was like 13, but I admit that prior to realizing that I have dysphoria I never had a problems with recognising myself as male.
I also feel that it’s important to say that when I was 14 I was reading a blog of a trans woman on a local imageboard, and I wasn’t really interested in details of her transition, BUT when someone in discussion said that they used estrogen to “make oneself sexless" I decided that I also want it but got scared of having to depend on pills.
So like, does it sound like binary dysphoria or nonbinary one?

Every day, when I wake up I think "I won't get on the phone today." and a little bit of morning hope seeps in, and I feel quite confident in my ability. After all, the phone is there. I could just, not pick it up.
I break my promise within 20 minutes. I spend the next 9 hours lying in a foetal position scrolling.
I'm going to be very clear. I do not enjoy being on the internet. I derive zero pleasure from being on the reddit home page. It's borderline sickening to me. I am not interested in consuming the content because the content is preposterous, trite, inane and just mind-numbingly stupid.
When I used to compulsively scroll through tiktok or random imageboards, I could manage a few odd laughs. Now I'm just a corpse mechanically flicking my shriveled up bony finger up, up, up. I'm so severely anhedonic. Depression might justify this, and I cope with the depression by compulsively escaping to this even more depressing digital space, and the shame of my cowardice, my inability to break this loop is compounding and exacerbating my actual, rapidly turning clinical, depression.
Ever since I was younger, and I knew very well that I couldn't regulate my internet usage, and that this was my vice. I could never picture that it would ruin my life, my academic performance. That it would chisel me into this cowardly, sniveling, bitter, husk of a person at a mere 25 years of age. This coping mechanism overtook me. Turned me passive, avoidant. I was perfectly placed to seize so many life opportunities and I just let them pass me by.
And it's always something different too. First it was random forums, then it was the holy trinity of neaderthal-esque content (Facebook, Instagram, Snap), then it was video content websites (Youtube, Tiktok). Now I'm discontented and scrolling my youth away on Reddit... Just when I get rid of one compulsion, another bites me in the ass.
At this point I wish I were an alcoholic or an Opiate fiend or the like. At least with chemical substances, I'd get some semblance of real unadulterated pleasure. I would also get a real, socially acceptable reason for why I'm so fucking miserable. Besides, being an Alcohol abuse survivor means you're heroic. Having trouble restricting your finger twiddling time on za forums with the anonymous strangers means you're a dysfunctional child.

So we all know in this comunity how chaotic mm can be. It always was that cs encouraged you to sociolise. public 2000$, fy_pool_day or wingman/ casual. Fun of not shooting but shooting each other, as friends, is natural part of cs. Yet if 1.6 were more of a fps analog of imageboards GO on other hand is fully consumed by sweat. And hard boiled in it! Thus problem with ranks. Soul ecosystem of cs:go spoils when you go in and act like its a discord chat, or your favorite parkbench more talking more than actually mooving and doing anything. And its bother me. Why should oldies like me, remembering how we used to do it back then not without nostalgia, yet liking polish of Global offensive push ourselves to denial of second option and fully focusing on one? When you sweat you cant have normal talk, and when you talk you are spoiling game for everyone. Sooooooooo. why not to divide our potential timespending when its time to sweat and when nothing matters at this point and games in general worth less for meta progress so you could just enjoy game?
Im talking about wipes. Tarkov, trackmania, their clones. I found myself very comfortable myself in this games both tryharding and casually spending time due to the fact that I always could calm or encourage myself with simple fact that my effort worth not same every time. Its like when randon carries you but not so frustrating. More than that, I do find it needed for valve to find a valve to drop a steam of comunity. And they do aswell. Arms games, deathmatch changes, co-op, battle royale, rankless gamemode, guardian. No one asked for this, yet this things exist(ed). And usually they are getting cut away as useless or halngs there cause it comes in no expense to run obviouce sidekicks of bomb plant match making.
problems of this approach ofcouse easy to spot. such popular game as csgo needs extremley good anticheat to catch chaters just after global rank wipe, as they gonna just make bad start for many people ruining their potential growth. And eve if it gonna be there you dont need it second, much longer, period of time when dust settles and people will chash on respective ranks. Also in case if ranks would be wiped each and then you need much faster upranks. But how much fast? Another question witch gonna make first dozen wipes really bad. and last but not least Valve time. Will wipes be on fixated tiimigs to prevent confussion? Yes? Will Valve with their love to go with "different approach" do it? I dont know. What I understood for maky years as die hard source game fan- Valve is weird. They are strategs more than buisnessman. they dont do stuff as you wait. And thats a reason why its possible that wipes will be semi random, and thats the reason why wipes will follow no rules if any randomness will be given to process.

Don't know if this is the right sub reddit for this but I was scrolling through youtube and found this channel called Jennifer Henson. It has over 5.4 thousand videos on it with random alpha numerical names and like, TV static as the background for all of them. I don't think it's like a creepypasta thing. Most of the videos have audio tracks it seems of random things, podcasts, music, people just talking informally. Most of the videos have no views and seem to be added in batches, 76 videos of varying lengths usually about an hour long all posted 14 hours ago.
I was wondering if anyone had any information on it or what any of it is supposed to be for
link down below
https://youtube.com/channel/UCuIJ9Ede0_Gt3QeTc-u2rKQ
Edit: Hey y'all U/Leequidity brought up that this stuff has been popping up quite a bit for y'all and I apologize if this is old hat. After some further investigation it seems like there's some really intetesting information being uncovered.
The ARG community has been tracking this for a couple months now, dubbing it the Hecatoncheires Mystery due to the number of channels imvolved. About 368 with a couple being piggy backs to try to turn it into an ARG, however they seem to have concluded it's not an ARG due to there being no attempts to garner attention and no attempts to actually interact with those discussing it.
Most of the content on offer in the video are clips pulled from various radio and podcast programs. There is no real common links between the content. As U/SEND-STEAM-KEYS-PLZ points out in his excellent investigative work below one of them was a japaneese podcast where a guy rants for about an hour. Another redditor in the ARG threads pointed out one clip was taken from the Jim Cornett show. Most of these clips are scraped seemingly randomly in the program with no attempts made to take and present a full episode of a podcast or radio program.
The interest in this mystery has garnered global attention with a thread about it being archived on a 4chan like Russian imageboard site. They postulated a couple different theories from AI being trained to better be able to provide live captioning to a hypothetical youtube drive using stenography techniques to store data on youtube like a hard drive.
Both Russian and American communities investigating have assembled a database of all known channels, what they found is that the videos being uploaded even a few months ago would take about 75 years to completely listen to with exponential growth likely inflating the figure. The Jennifer Henson channel for example uploaded 76 of these videos at roughly the same time 21 hours ago.
Furthermore a few of the Russians postulated the names of thse channels seemingly a random collection of first and last names are pulled from a partocular github archive. Though that was debated in the thread.
The Russian Thread: https://arhivach.ng/thread/814152/
The Youtube Drive thought experiment: https://habr.com/ru/company/first/blog/676282/
Original thread by U/Gabthegayfrog who to my knowledge originally brought the case up and I believed dubbed it: https://www.reddit.com/ARG/comments/vnxyj7/the_hecatoncheires_mystery/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Follow on/recap thread: https://www.reddit.com/ARG/comments/wv8r8q/the_youtube_mystery_that_would_take_70_years_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Video on the Library of Babel, which produces pictures not unlike those used for the background of the videos:https://youtu.be/awpVjv2-Ow0

Check out SexySpaceBabes, and its Discord
First Chapter Chapter
Previous Chapter Chapter
Next Chapter

Society!

Morsh and Natalie
“Really? Kidnapping!?” Natalie erupted, furious. “He mentioned it before but- why does he keep looping back around to that?” Her arms flew out to the sides in disbelief at her boyfriend’s behavior, and frustration at not knowing what was even going on.
“Well, kid, we got a lot of blame goin’ round, and a lot to talk about, and uh..”
Morsh turned and not-quite-smiled at the human man approaching the hallway from the lobby, carrying a familiar pitch-black bag in one meaty hand. “Ah, great. Thanks, Mike.” The man seemed familiar to Natalie, and as he drew closer she recognized who he was, the man from the background of the latest video Elias had sent her.
The big man handed over Elias’s bag to Morsh with a smile, “Came quick for once. You should’ve told me you were comin’ into town, I could’a made up some time in my schedule, maybe hit up that pizza joint on 11th street?”
“Depths, if only I had the time.” Morsh flicked her head toward Natalie. “Her mom had to attend some big dinner party last-minute, I barely had enough time to prepare, and things got sorta ‘complicated’. You know how those fancy noble get-togethers go.”
“Hell no I don’t, listen to my trade Shil’, you think they stick me in those? ‘Anybody starts speakin’ High Shil’ to me, it might as well be fuckin’ Greek.” He froze, his gaze shooting down to Natalie. “Uh. Friggin’ Greek.”
Morsh laughed, “I saw you in that video, did the boy run you around much?”
“Nothin’ I couldn’t handle. Made a little sight-seeing tour of it for’m.”
Natalie was torn between adhering to her manners in front of an unrelated, unaccompanied male, and giving Morsh one big piece of her mind. She settled for something in between, stepping forward and clearing her throat, taking Elias’s bag from her bodyguard in the same motion, and giving her what she hoped was a very serious-looking frown while her back was to the man.
Morsh looked nothing if not unphased. “Oh yeah- Hey Mike, how about you go watch the floor for a minute, gotta talk to the ‘ward.”
“Yeah sure, I’ll play scarecrow for a few. And uh, it was nice to meet you Natalie.” He gave her a little wave.
Natalie maintained her strained smile for as long as the man was facing them- and as soon as his back was turned, the mask fell and she scowled up at her bodyguard.
“Kid packed light,” Morsh observed.
Morsh, what happened? How did you see Elias’s videos? Those were sent to me! They’re supposed to be private!” Natalie’s anger was practically rolling off her in waves.
“Oh, then why did you post them online?” Morsh challenged, leaning down to her ward, finally tired of the whining.
“You knew about that?! Have both of you been monitoring my omni-pad?!” She asked, outraged.
“No, but the Interior sent your mother a message letting her know you’d been posting things past the information filter- which you aren’t supposed to be doing, by the way.”
“I- well, nobody really cares about that rule anyway, it’s all just videos of Elias being cute- and that is far from the point.” Her anger was briefly mollified by confusion.
“Well, someone saw it and cared to bring it to their attention. The Interior weren’t exactly happy, but they complimented us on your good work, and asked if they could use some of the video themselves.”
“What? Why would they do that? Why would they even care?”
“Nataliska, you have to know, things are not going well in Delaware, or a lot of the planet for that matter. They’re desperate for friendly human faces to shove onto screens while they try to get a handle on things. They can only fly in so many famous Shil’ in these dumbass prettied-up green zones, with the same smiling human actors hanging around them every fuckin’ time. The interior is desperately trying to make Earth presentable to the rest of the galaxy, like taking a perfumed turox turd and trying to convince ‘em it’s all rosey down here. But it’ll only work for so long before people catch on that they’ve seen these exact places over and over, and wonder why no one wanders around anywhere else on the planet, or why the datanet connections are still locked down, why nobody’s allowed to visit, and start connecting those dots to make a real ugly picture. So of course they’re panicking up there, hiring guys like Weinberger to find a handful of pretty faces to trot out for the masses, who can regurgitate their lines the way they’re supposed to and smile on cue. Then along comes those videos he sent you- which you uploaded to the datanet originally, don’t you forget.”
Natalie looked away, and Morsh sighed, gently resting a hand on the girl’s shoulder until she picked herself back up a bit.
“Fresh new content out of a red zone from a cute young boy of first-courting age, addressed to a Shil’ girl, speakin’ Shil’ all about how he likes the girl on the other end of the video, showing her all kinds of neat human stuff, all recorded on modern Shil’ technology so the techs in the Interior ain’t gotta convert it or whatever to work on an omni-pad? Well, duh, of course they’re gonna want that, and of course because it’s from a state that’s got ‘Emperor’ somewhere in it, it’s going to do well. Really well.”
Natalie was clearly following along, though Morsh knew from experience that her ward’s understanding of a concept was completely different to her accepting it.
“But…but why!?”
“Well, I think she hoped it might raise your station. Your mother’s busy, but she’s not clueless about what you were going through back on Braxis. Uploading videos of your boyfriend to the datanet though?” She gave her a look that was part reproachful, part amused.
“I didn’t… I was doing.. fine. And I didn’t upload it anywhere weird or-” She tried not to fidget, using her newfound skill at it she’d discovered in the car ride back- only to crumble once she met her guardian’s eyes. The glare she was giving her could have turned away laser fire.
“Nataliska Rakten, a noblewoman must be honest.” The bodyguard quoted.
Natalie bristled for once, instead of wilting as usual, surprising Morsh. “Honest, like you and my mom?”
The glare disappeared into a bark of laughter. “Well for starters I’m not a noble, us commoners get to lie all we like.” When Natalie failed to smile, Morsh sighed deeply, suddenly appearing very tired. “Listen, my point is that you uploaded them to some imageboard on the datanet to prove you had a human boyfriend, that he was real, and not another case of ‘oh my boyfriend lives in another solar system’.”
Natalie’s shocked expression didn’t earn her much besides a sad and weary nod from Morsh, who went on. “Your mother’s teenage years weren’t that much better, and you’re not the first to think it up as an excuse. It probably felt great to finally have one- and then being doubted on your success? That probably sucks, but, look…”
“You wouldn’t get it…” Natalie mumbled.
The scarred Shil’ woman sighed. “I’m sorry she took your videos off the home server. She should have asked. But once it’s out there, that’s it, it’s out of your hands, and ours, and you can’t really argue that it’s ‘yours’ anymore, and you know that. The Interior are all too happy that it’s circulating, and may throw up roadblocks to any kind of copyright claim- or maybe not, I dunno, that’s more your father’s area. Thing is, we just weren’t sure how to tell you- and if the Interior decided it would be good for the Empire, well, your mother has her duty to fulfill.”
“And you thought I wasn’t mature enough to be told?”
“Would you have told Elias?”
“I… it seemes allegiances- allegiance to the Empire, even, is really… more complicated than I thought.” Natalie swallowed. “But I still don’t see how Elias thinks we almost ‘sold’ him. If he thinks that then…” Now Morsh looked uneasy, and Natalie picked up on it immediately.
“...What? Sold…you mean, like, he said sold like, brought him here so he could sell…services like appearing on TV, like he said, right?”
“Kid…” Morsh said quietly. “It…wasn’t really something we wanted to do…”
“Wh-what? But he was involved in the child kidnapping. Elias said so- and Myrrah just took him in. You’d have let him go with Weinberger? Elias was right? Morsh! You took a house vow!”
“I took a vow to you, kid, to not harm Elias. I wouldn’t be harming Elias. I just wouldn’t have had to do anything to protect him. Not that I-”
“-Which would have resulted in him being harmed!” Natalie interrupted shrilly, arms thrown wide again, as if to try and seem imposing. She took in another frantic breath, “We’re- we’re not… we’re not involved in the disappearances! I told him that, and I was so mad he had assumed it- and now he won’t trust me, and…”
“Yeah, well…” Morsh scratched behind one of her long ears in thought. “Probably, kid. You’re right about that,” she admitted slowly. “But, there’s something you need to learn about being an adult, and a Noblewoman. It’s where power rests. As an example, and a reminder, you’re not the woman I took an oath for. You’re her daughter. I did the house vow with you about not harming Elias because you asked- but you aren’t the one with power here. Your mother is. Her decision’s final. You want power? You have to go and earn it.”
“I- I do have power!”
“Oh yeah?” Morsh leaned forward until she was eye-level with her ward, then flicked Natalie’s forehead.
“Ow!” Natalie reeled back in surprise at the pain.
“Do something about it that isn’t running to Mommy,” Morsh’s tone was challenging, and her gaze bore into her. Then, softening at Natalie’s pout, she added: “See? The root of all power is violence. The capacity for it, at its basest level. That right there is the kind of power a young woman has. As she ages, she has other, new forms of power become available to her.”
“F-Fine, then…maybe…I’ll shoot you in the back!” Natalie proposed, with no real energy behind it and arms crossed over her chest, now shrunken in defensively. Morsh knew there was nothing behind it but still stared the girl down, until she looked away.
“That’s not going to get you any points with anyone, not even yourself unless you’re delusional. Anyone can shoot anyone in the back. A girl gets strong, though, and she can use that to build power. Power to have others carry it out for her if she wants- using influence, or money to hire toughs, or militia if you’ve got a Title. Even the capacity to inflict those things carries weight, do you understand?”
“That this is crazy?” Natalie said exasperatedly.
“Not really, kid. Think about it- people won’t cross someone else without at least thinking about whether she can crush them. If she’s smart, and has that first bit of power, she uses it to build herself a base, a network of people who trust her, who follow her orders. And it can go way past other people who can carry out acts of violence for her.” Natalie wasn’t following along, so Morsh grunted and then sighed. “Do you need a more practical example?”
“Are you going to flick my forehead again?”
Morsh chuckled. “The Empress- say, and just as an example, you try and make some kind of a stand against her, what’ll happen to you? Do you think she comes out here in a spaceship, lands, and gets out of it and slaps you around herself? Of course not, she’s got better things to do, but an example would still have to be made. So she has someone else do it for her. That’s what power is, kid. Real power. Once it’s ossified enough she won’t even need to give the order, she won’t even be aware it happened. But it stems and roots from violence, and the ability to carry it out. Strength. If and when someone who isn’t in the Empress’s power structure has the power to carry out violence and get away with it, that’s a challenge. A threat. And it tends to get squashed.
People follow her because, well, if they don’t- remember the era of strife? She may not start with killing, because we’ve got laws- fines, imprisonment, denobling, that sort of thing. But make no mistake that she and the legal system run in her name can mete it out as punishment. She doesn’t even need to know the name of every criminal who gets executed for treason, and I guarantee you she doesn’t, because she doesn’t have to. See, now that is true power. To project your will across the stars, on every sentient you call your own, and make them live in a way you see is proper- and it just so happens that we all agree it’s all fair enough, and that it’s not worth it to gang up and try to kick over the government, not with her wielding that level of power.”
“Morsh, that’s really dangerous to say,” Natalie whispered urgently, terror in her eyes.
“What, that it’s not a good idea to kill the Empress because she’s a fair ruler?” She had a gleam of mischief in her eyes, and Natalie blinked, realizing that her bodyguard hadn’t actually said anything subversive. “See? That fear right there in your voice when you just said that? But you know- and I know, that nobody just gets killed for no reason. It’s part of why she has so many people willing to follow her. She isn’t executing us at random, so no one wants to depose her unless they’re insane. See? That’s the importance of not just ‘having power’ or even being ‘a leader’, but being a good leader, being the leader people look up to and want to follow, like our Empress is. And that means not shooting people in the back who are your friends. And, uh, also, not lying.” She clapped Natalie on the arm, sitting back. “Get it?”
“Yeah, I guess that is kind of obvious.” She looked at Morsh with a sharp frown.
Morsh stared back, with the feeling she was missing something her ward was trying to tell her. Then it clicked..
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Not shooting our friends in the back. Like Elias.” Natalie said it slowly, and Morsh felt a twisting up in her gut.
Morsh bit her lip. “Yeah, kid, that was fucked up. I’ll admit that. But there’s more to it.”
“I figured. Society can’t be all that simple, can it? ‘Do what I say or I’ll kill you’?”
“It can be that simple, and it pretty much is. Or maybe I’m just not smart enough to put all the pieces together, and this is just how I make sense of things. There’s a reason your mom’s a noblewoman, and I’m the bodyguard. We’re both good at different things. But what I do know is: if you don’t have the capability to kill, and harm, and carry out violence, and put up with violence carried out in your name, then no one will respect you, and others who can do those things will take everything from you- everything that matters.” She glanced over her shoulder back to the hallway where Elias was talking with her mom, lowering her voice. “See? That’s power, and that’s why it’s important that you learn these things. I won’t always be at your side. Once you’re an adult, I’m staying on my contract with your mom, and you may have to fend for yourself for a few years, and I want you to do it right. Now, if you were stronger than me, and we made that kind of decision- to, you know, go through with the plan with Weinberger, then you’d have enough power on your side to do something. That would have made you a factor in your mom’s plan, something she’d have to plan around. Maybe it would have changed things- she might’ve made sure you weren’t in attendance tonight, or maybe just completely ruled out handing the boy over as an option.”
“You’re saying- mom really would have sold out Elias? That’s so wrong though. So wrong! I can’t accept that. No matter what.”
“To get out from under Myrrah and the Interior, and from Weinberger?” Morsh blew out a sigh. “Yeah, probably. Seems there was this last piece of evidence left behind. If she didn’t get rid of every trace of what she was up to- then that was it. For her. For you. For the entire family line. The concept of a ‘family tree,’ you told me about from school, remember drawing that? All those aunts, that uncle, and you and your sisters? They’d have chopped it down, mulched the roots, burned the branches, ground up the seeds, and ejected any traces of ash of you all into a black hole. Every sister you have, your father, all your aunts, all their kids. Think of everyone- everyone, all that, just to be sure whatever she might have done didn’t wade into the gene pool. She’d have taken that deal, and I don’t blame her.”
“But, that’s wrong! Immoral!” She repeated, as if Morsh wasn’t capable of telling right from wrong. “Doing that to Elias have gotten us in so much more trouble-”
Morsh silenced her with a slashing gesture.
“Wrong. I’m sorry kid, but not really. Even if we were actually carting him away to some slaver out in the periphery-of-the-periphery, we’d still get in less trouble than what we’ll all be in if your mother gets caught. Realistically, we just oversaw a contract getting signed, with a guy who actually does have that job, and left Elias with him of his own accord. Whatever happens from there, it’s on Weinberger, and with all the demand for actors he probably chews through several Elias’s per month.” Natalie’s look of horror weighed on Morsh so much the giantess bent down even further. “Your mom likes Elias, Natalie. Probably likes him a lot more now, too, since she owes him her entire family’s continued existence at this point. But that’s the trade you make when you’re in that kind of position, when you don’t have power. My advice, personally, was to avoid Weinberger at all costs. Burn all the evidence we could, call turoxshit on this cock and call his bluff, claim it was forged if it ever came up again - or to send me in alone to kill him for what he tried tonight, fully armored up with that rifle you saw me carrying, in another unregistered car.”
“Woah. Really?” Natalie’s voice was in awe just thinking about it.
Morsh grunted with a grin, rising back to her full stature. “Hell yeah, kid. Why do you think I stood around in all that gear tonight, and why they wouldn’t let me up there with you two? I wanted to send a message there, that he doesn’t have all the power in this equation.”
“I…” Natalie thought for a second. “That’s pretty badass. But there was really no other way?”
“This line of work your mother does, it requires a very small circle of confidants, and your mother can call in a few reliable favors for certain things, but not this. If it were anyone other than Azraea running the state, and an untamed Turox like Myrrah doing the rounding-up, there might have been some chance. With those two, her connections don’t mean much. Like you said- power, allegiance, it’s complicated. Are you starting to see it yet?”
“I don’t understand though…I don’t even know precisely what it is…”
“Kid, this stays between us.” She waited for Natalie to nod. “It’s not quite my place to tell, but…after tonight, depths. Besides, it’s your life in the firing line, too. You have a right to know.” She leaned in close, and whispered it in Natalie’s ear.
Her golden eyes flew wide open. “What?! How?! Why do this at all- why put our family in this position in the first place!? It doesn’t make any sense, Morsh! We’re supposed to be Noble. Noblewomen are supposed to help people. To show them the way- by not doing illegal things.” Natalie looked dangerously close to crying, like her world was coming crashing down around her.
Morsh looked at Natalie, eyes sad. “Her Majesty demanded personally- yeah, as in, personal audience, that your mother do the work she does. That’s why.”
“What?” Natalie’s jaw dropped.
“Oh come on. You took biology. Do you really think that a galactic empire this size can get by without genetic editing going on at some level? Plagues crop up, and then someone has to stop it- and if it wipes out a keystone species, someone has to reintroduce that species by finding a ‘survivor colony,’ or something, but this time with a new genetic resistance carefully woven in. The work’s limited to ‘wildlife reintroduction’ and ‘contagion spread containment.’ But it’s an important- vital, even- task. Her Excellency can’t be seen ordering such a thing, though. The scandal would be enormous, along with the fallout. So, your mother works quietly, in the dark. No glory to it, no militia entourage anywhere she goes, no big fancy parties. She carries on with a boring, tedious job and a small paycheck because she’s loyal, and that’s exactly what Her Excellency wants from someone working this post, not someone seeking glory, public acclaim, or trying to make a name for themselves, you know?”
“I…I guess…”
“If it’d been any other Governess or Interior agent that had caught onto us, we’d take a different post, somewhere on the far end of the galaxy. Your mother’s proven she’s loyal, capable, and competent. Maybe she’d be posted as a small-time planetary governess- and your life would change, kid, a lot. I’d promise that much- way more fancy balls.” Morsh chortled. “Balls. Y’know, speaking of biology class and boys-”
“-Morsh!”
“Sorry. Not the time for it, I guess.”
There was a moment’s silence as Natalie tried to grapple with the revelation. “-Why didn’t she do that, then?”
“Well, like I said, those two really were the worst possible people to take up the case. Weinberger popped up and had the some kind of hard data, too, which I think coupled with whatever evidence Azraea probably had, was enough to get your mother pinned to the wall by the interior or for Azraea to blow the whistle, so it would no longer matter where we all ran off to. Azraea’s high enough of a rank to decrypt that data-slate, and isn’t the type to put up with corruption, secrecy, or turoxshit. So your mother started working overtime to bury everything, and left behind that fast, unregistered car for you, just in case the Interior moved in on their own, or if tonight’s host decided the Rakten family were best ‘taken care of’ permanently by making a big show of hauling her in. I don’t blame you for using it for a joyride. I forget what it’s like to be your age sometimes, and it’s not like we told you all this before going, but it was meant to get you back home- to your dad, who knew the score well enough. He’d ensure you had enough to start a new life elsewhere in the galaxy, and would make sure you got there alright, and to start scattering the family. It was all laid out- your Father and Mother are both incredibly good at planning contingencies, the company he inherited wouldn’t have been half as successful if he weren’t. Your mother left instructions on your omni-pad with a dead-woman’s switch, just in case we failed. It would have told you most of this.”
Natalie swallowed. “Could- I have brought…?”
“Elias? It depended on if he was interested in coming along, but, I don’t think your mother factored that in- or that you’d be in D.C. with us. Leaving aside how I think it would’ve drawn too much attention bringing him along to wherever you went, I think until tonight she thought he was sort of a first crush- you know, like a ‘practice boy’- not a suitable husband for a noblewoman, like your father. Pretty sure tonight’s changed all that.”
“A lot’s changed,” Natalie whispered, as she took it all in and weighed everything.
“Yeah,” Morsh agreed glumly. “You got brought along to Earth to learn how to be a noblewoman, and this is it. Welcome to being an adult. Personally? Between you and me? If the deal had gone through, your mom and you in the car with the data slate, and Weinberger showing his greasy face in the stairway saying ‘pleasure doing business’? I’d have blown it clean off. Consequences be damned.” She shrugged.
“I think you would have been doing him a favor, the man’s in the clutches of the interior now.” Natalie reflexively winced at the idea of a male being thrown into an interrogation room. “I don’t think I feel sorry for him though, not really.”
“Better him than us,” Morsh agreed. Come on, let’s go check on how your mom and Elias are doing, okay?” She turned and walked down the hallway, the man in the suit turning and giving Morsh another bright smile.
“Things not go good at that dinner I guess?” He asked, hands in his pockets.
“Better than expected,” Morsh answered. “By the way, the kid said something about a warning- do you know anything about that?”
“Yeah actually,” the man answered. “It’s the damnedest thing, I got paid a couple weeks worth of tips to pass off a message to the kid basically tellin’ him he shouldn’t go anywhere with the ‘host’, whoever that was, and to make sure he understood it. Paid in cash by someone dressed like he was from the nineties, you know? Leather jacket, tan shirt, boots, brown beard. Maybe in his early thirties. Never seen him before, but kind of a ‘nobody’ y’know- like you notice the outfit but not the face. Why? Did it cause trouble?”
“No,” Morsh sighed. “Alright, so that’s why the kid was so wired up about something being wrong tonight. I’ll ask him if he knows anyone who matches that description, but… Why not tell the kid himself, you know? It’s weird.”
“Shit,” he looked pensive. “I hope I didn’t cause any problems, ‘seemed kind of important, and like nothing bad would happen to the kid- I told him to stick close to you, that he could trust you.”
“Nah, you did good.” His whole body seemed to relax back into its natural posture at that. “Honestly, it was for the best he was given the tip, it ended up working out well. Alright, come on Natalie, time to go see your boyfriend.” She started walking off into the lobby, and the man piped up.
“I’ll be seein’ you around, right?” There was a glimmer of hope in his voice.”
You know it,” Morsh grinned lewdly, and the man stood there with his own grin, hands casually resting in his pockets.
Her bodyguard put a hand on her shoulder and leaned over just a little as they walked. “Alright kid, you know what you’re going to say to him? It usually helps to make plans where boys are concerned.”
“Y-yeah,” Natalie said. “Uh, what was that about? Was that a friend of yours?”
“Something like that,” Morsh grinned. “Ready to get out of here?”
“Almost…” she replied, staring down at her hands. “Morsh? Am I…? You know, genetically modified?” She squeaked the last two words out, throat tight, and the invasive thoughts already starting to unsettle her as the two of them turned the corner.
Morsh looked Natalie up and down- from the small tusks, to the wiry thin arms and gentle, gracile features. “You got an enviable sense of self-confidence, kid, I’ll give you that,” Morsh grumbled.
​
Rule 5 compliance- 'all author links,' including statement of express permission from original author, SSBsubjugation: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42092739/chapters/105678297
Buy the original author a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wtzjdq7gzmi
Check out SexySpaceBabes, and its Discord
Or the Alien-Nation Discord
First Chapter Chapter
Previous Chapter Chapter
Next Chapter

Pebble by pebble we will build a tower that reaches high up to the heavens; behind, a hole that leads to hell.
We are looking for the fragments of Prometheus, a foolish errand that will never yield results to our hands. Nevertheless, we search despite our negligeable size and capabilities. Our Prometheus will be formed by the union of the child of suffering and the child of light, of the union of masculine and feminine. These are not any random androgynous couple to have experienced the two forms of suffering (wrath/pride); it should be apparent that we are not referring to these terms with the physical meaning we usually perceive them with.
An interesting find we recalled recently was that humans are neither right nor left-handed, in truth they are a mixture of both. A regular person will only be able to perceive “right-handed” and “left-handed” not any complex admixtures, likewise, our terms such as masculine and feminine, though we believe to see them daily in the people around us, in truth we are perceiving impure versions of masculinity and femininity. We are all to some degree vessels of Prometheus but none of us are pure enough to become him.
The body is a reflection of the soul, they are one and the same and at the same time completely different. The body could be described as a very crude form of the soul, it is incapable of fully expressing the pure soul that it houses; therefore we may perceive male and female in body but the souls behind them are nowhere near as black and white as the bodies (in human terms). In divine terms, males and females are not even perceived as black and white, they are both gray. That is because as previously said, they are admixtures and they are very homogenous at that with males leaning by a negligeable degree to the masculine aspects and females the other way around.
Opposites attract, the pure opposites we are looking for will bond harder than diamond but if their attraction is so great, then why haven’t they been joined yet? That we are uncertain of but we have come up with a few possible scenarios; as for the opposing polarities attracting each other, that is something that everyone can confirm. It is possible for regular people with no actual skill or knowledge to distill to a small degree their aspects. They will then see that they become more attracted to their opposing aspect and the other way around. Think of a man that becomes more masculine, they are then more likely to show more interest to a more feminine woman, whereas the lower a man’s masculinity, the more likely they are to be attracted to masculine women or other men.
Let’s take a look at conservative and liberal societies: conservative ones such as Japanese ones and those of tight religious groups tend to have a lot more incidents of pedophilia whereas liberal societies do not. Degenerates only make a small portion of the population and in liberal societies they are more likely to find a “softer” solution to satisfy their lust instead of turning on children. In the conservative society, even none degenerates may be pushed far enough for them to do what would be unthinkable in the liberal society. The more people are oppressed the more violent they become.
Since there is no society that consists of a majority of degenerates, we don’t have a true example of the opposite of a conservative society. Some anecdotal evidence of what would happen in such cases can be found in online “communities” of degenerates like 4chan and other imageboards (communities well known for their large concentration of Nazis). It’s practically a given that most of the Nazis in those communities wish to be dressed up like little girls. Therefore, we can see that the extremely sexually liberal lean towards the politically conservative.
Now onto the different possibilities of the nature of the pure aspects we are seeking:
Firstly, it might be that God does not exist among us in their pure form, in other words the fragments of Prometheus are not already existing. In this case, someone will have to forge them on their own but who would be able to take upon themselves such a task? This process would not merely require the sacrifice of two lives that have barely sprouted: it would require for a human to have the entire world’s suffering inflicted upon them, to be dying forever /to be in their last breath forever. The other one would have to be fed all the virtues of the world, depriving them from the rest of us. The two of them would at last have to violently tear each other apart, feast on their flesh before making love.
The process described uses terms that are impossible for us to put into scale so we will explain the issues of this scenario. Whoever participates in the forging of the fragments, will without a doubt break after they themselves will be exposed to the incomprehensible. The participants will themselves be forged in the process and as the temperature of the forge continues to rise, eventually nothing that could be considered human will be able to continue it without turning into an unrecognizable mold.
“Standard vague occult strings of words”
That’d be right, the reader can take this post purely metaphorically and they wouldn’t be completely wrong about their conclusions but we’ve come to realize the truth does not have to be nuanced. There’s no need to keep secrets, people will more often than not jeer and sneer at the truth, they will laugh at it.
The second possibility is that the fragments do not exist in pure forms but their aspects do. In this case, a pure glorious aspect might exist but it might not be found together with the pure wrathful aspect. In this scenario the attraction is not great enough for the fragments to naturally join each other and furthermore, there will be a need to forge the fragments together in a specific order, a process that would be completely different and possible more difficult from the previous one. To further complicate matters, since we’ve already established that opposites attract each other, a pure masculine aspect is far more likely to have attracted feminine aspects, the result would be a perfect metal ingot covered by an amalgamation of random unwanted aspects.
A third possibility is that the fragments are already out to be found but there are purposeful attempts to prevent them from joining each other. Those to lose from the creation of Prometheus are those too attached to their mortal desires, specifically the immutable. However, it seems that god themselves are trying to become Prometheus, whether they are directly trying to prevent the creation or discovery of the fragments is unknown but we can certainly see that they are indirectly making the process more difficult. Sharp objects are banned from modern societies, discouraging the creation of any pure individuals who have more acute aspects. In the end this effort might prove futile since as already established opposites attract each other and the more someone is suppressed, the more dangerous their explosion will be. Either that, or god will succeed in convincing everyone they are not suppressed.
Finally, it might be that the two perfect opposites are able to at last recognize each other as one, creating a contradictory relationship of the perfect love and hatred. These are fragments of the same being; both are subconsciously aware of each other’s existence and of the negative and positive influence they exert on each other, hence their love is accompanied by a matching hate. It is after all a key part of the procedure that the two feast on each other before they make love.
As for the rest of us, the impure, there is no hope of us becoming the pure fragments that will liberate our brethren but that does not mean that we are obliged to wait for an eternity till we are saved. It is not possible for us to become something that we aren’t already, it is impossible for a person to remove part of them to purify their aspects. If they did so, they would cease to be the same person and it is without a doubt that they would eventually lose sight of their initial goal after turning into an unknown number of unrecognizable molds. We’ll give an example of how reckless that process would be: the initial person would have to pass through an infinite amount of different incarnations while maintaining their initial goal, one of such incarnations could have such a broken soul that it is almost animalistic, not unlike that of a 3 year old’s; how would they be able to keep sight of their goal at that state? Instead, it is possible to break all the bonds within us and to destroy the self, becoming one with the All. In that fabled process we become God, we become undifferentiated from the essence that makes up our world. Such a process is unfortunately well beyond us and we could never dare to begin describing it, although there are many texts on it for those interested.

Hi, I kept thinking about this idea for a while.
The idea is basically to create some website or platform or electron app or something, that works in a sense like torrent or p2p networks, but at the same time would work to host a temporary imageboard or subreddit totally anonymous, where people discuss business oportunities, using some kind of poll system for daily and weekly investment goals for the comunity of the site or app.
Eventually the ideas would be upbooted or downbooted like well, reddit system, and the most popular ones for the users of the site/app would quickly rise in some upbooting system.
The idea would be like wallstreetbets, but more in a decentralized fashion to not be totally controlled or banned for any random reason.
Eventually the system would work like a decentralized locust swarm of small fishes of retail investors, moving in sync of what the comunity hivemind would upboat as good daily or weekly or even montly ideas.
Dunno if my idea is good or bad, I basically just wanted to share, and if my idea is dumb/bad, I would to hear why.

Hi ! This is the hypest post of a series whose aim is to share the Monogatari short stories that hadn't been translated into English yet.
Short stories masterpost here, updated regularly to show our progress with the translations.
 
 

まよいウエルカム - Mayoi Welcome folder

• まよいウエルカム（スキャン）- Mayoi Welcome (JP scans).pdf
• まよいウエルカム（テキスト）- Mayoi Welcome (JP text).txt
• まよいウエルカム（英訳版）- Mayoi Welcome (EN translation).pdf
• まよいウエルカム（英訳版 テキスト）- Mayoi Welcome (EN translation text).txt

Shareable tweet

 
 

“I see, I see. So Hmm.”
Gaen-san spoke as if slowly digesting Hachikuji’s words.
“Yes. For more details, please read the short story 'Mayoi Welcome’. It’s a story that’s particularly difficult to obtain, but I believe the short stories will be collected in a book in seventeen years, so please wait warmly.”
“I can’t wait that long!”

- Shinobumonogatari, Shinobu Mastered 024
 
Then let's settle this today, shall we.
Today, I'm very proud to present Mayoi Welcome (translated by Polaris Translations and proofread by »sawa«), an ultra-rare story distributed to the winners of an event called Nisio Isin's Challenge at AnimeJapan on March 26, 2017 (as I'll explain in a bit). For once, it is also plot-related, as it is a prologue to Shinobumonogatari, the first novel of Monster Season (which would be released only 4 months later), showing the. It is narrated by, and since it happens shortly before Shinobumonogatari, that places it around.
 
 
I will go into the extensive details about this story and my quest for it below in my appropriate Gaen-infodump voice, but if you don't care about any of that, then just know that Polaris, who had already translated Shinobumonogatari itself, nicely agreed to come back from the dead for this special occasion, and »sawa« not only took care of proofreading but also applied his cool typesetting know-how to produce this gorgeous Mayoi Welcome PDF.
It is available in the Mayoi Welcome folder, along with the text-only version of the translation, as well as the actual Japanese raws of the story and Japanese transcript, that I'm sharing for every Monogatari fan in the world to read.
 
 

Origin

Off Season ended on January 12, 2017, with the publication of its fourth novel, the controversial Musubimonogatari. At the end of this book, the usual advertisement pages announced the upcoming Monster Season, as well as its first book and arc, Chapter 1 : Shinobumonogatari, Shinobu Mastered, slated for later this year. As mentioned earlier, Shinobumonogatari would be released on July 2017, but the first published part of Monster Season is technically this very story, Mayoi Welcome, released several months earlier. But how was it distributed exactly ?
From July 2016 to January 2017 was held a festival called 西尾維新祭 2016 (Nisio Isin Matsuri 2016, lit. "Nisio Isin Festival 2016") organized by Kodansha and Aniplex. In this event, you could earn "coupons" by buying the different pieces of merchandize listed on this website, such as books and Blu-rays. The purpose of these coupons was to give you a chance to win one of three prizes in a lottery labeled A, B and C. Of those, the A-prize, with a barrier entry of 5 coupons, would be limited to 240 winners, and consists of an invitation to something called 西尾維新の挑戦状 (Nisio Isin no Chousenjou, lit. "Nisio Isin's Challenge") which would take place during AnimeJapan on March 26, 2017 in Tokyo. In early March, the A-prize winners received this cool-looking envelope adorned with a golden logo of Nisio Isin's Challenge, containing details along with a free ticket.
(The following details were picked up from this Japanese blog post. Amusingly, at the start of the post we can find this sentence : "I will write [the details about the event] here for the purpose of writing it as information in a corner of the net so that it will be useful for later researchers (exaggerated).". The later researcher (me) thanks you for your help.)
(Edit from me hours later while writing this post : I was going to explain the details of the deduction game here but I'm seriously approaching Reddit's post character limit so I need to abridge it)

First contact

(I don't recall off-hand the exact details of these things that happened several years ago, but this should be pretty accurate as I have been using Discord conversations and Reddit messages from the time to help me figure this out.)
A little bit of background : the Monogatari Short Stories Translation Project began in November 2015 when I discovered the existence of the short stories and asked this subreddit about them, discovering with surprise that they weren't widely known at all, and barely translated. I then thought I could just ask people here to start translating them, and well, you know how that worked out. The success was so great that one year later, in November 2016, I wrote the final masterpost after we had managed to get almost caught up with the main short stories.
One of my sources for short story-related information at the time was the Wikipedia page List of Monogatari novels, which also listed the short stories and their date and way of publication. In particular, the most frequent editor of this page was a certain (fellow Frenchman) Erigu, and he would sometimes update this page with information that could only be known to someone speaking Japanese, so I would regularly scan this page for any interesting updates. Erigu wasn't a stranger to the short stories project either, as he had already contributed by sending me a transcript (typed entirely by hand !) of the short stories Hitagi Coin and Suruga Neat in May 2016. (As an aside, Suruga Neat is the second-most hard-to-get short story now. It was the only one of the stories published in Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, which wasn't then republished in the Monogatari Blu-rays. There has been auctions for it with prices as crazy as Mayoi Welcome.)
On May 18, 2017, Erigu made an edit which added an entry for the newly-released Mayoi Welcome. On May 26, I sent him a message on Reddit, to let him know that I had been browsing the equivalent Japanese Wikipedia page with Google Translate and that I had noticed a short story he didn't seem to know about called Doushite, the Kizumonogatari-related story that was released in the Nisio Isin Matsuri 2016 Special Fanbook, which is to say the B-prize of the very same Nisio Isin Matsuri 2016 that started this quest (note : I literally just learned of this connection while writing and researching this post :D). I also casually asked him about what he knew about Mayoi Welcome, to which he replied that he came across it by chance on the Japanese imageboard 2ch, that given its particular circumstances there were probably not many copies in circulation, and that it was apparently a prologue to Shinobumonogatari, so he speculated that the story could be included in the book later, like how Utsukushihime was first published in the Shinobu Heroine Book before becoming the prologue of Wazamonogatari. Of course, things could not be so easy.

In the dark

Now, I can't remember what was my mindset at the time, but it would seem I was either not that worried about coming across it eventually while I was busy taking care of the other stories or projects, or just resigned to this fate. I might have been hopeful that it would be released more conventionally, but that hope probably died out after some time. In any case, what I can say is that I have not been diligent at all when it came to actively hunting for it. Maybe doing so would have spared me a few years of despair.
On August 30, 2017 is the first time I bring up the blog post explaining the details of Nisio Isin's Challenge (along with this Yahoo question) in the /araragi Discord server, asking if those were mentioning any actual official confirmation of Mayoi Welcome getting released in a book (the answer was no). One of the answers does mention Mayoi saying it might happen in 17 years.
On July 28 and October 23 respectively, Allie from Mirrored Translations posted translations of chapter 035 and chapter 047 of Shinobumonogatari on her blog. A full fan-translation of the book, though, wouldn't come before a while, and from someone else.
On November 25, I found some random post (February 2024 edit : dead link now) saying that.
On February 9, 2018, a Discord user named Sarcen brings up the actual taunting mention of Mayoi Welcome in Shinobumonogatari that I quoted at the beginning of this post. However, the conversation implies that I was already aware of it, which is annoying because I couldn't find any previous reference to it in the Discord history.
On May 28, I expressed the unlikely hope that Mayoi Welcome might be released in the upcoming Yoimonogatari (slated for June 14), as the title of the book and its arcs implied it would be the Mayoi-centered novel of Monster Season.
On August 14, while listing the short stories that I still don't have, I state that I "have no idea what Mayoi Welcome is about", showcasing my incredible memory.
On September 22, I attempted to post a comment on another Japanese blog post from someone who attended the event and won the story, and that mentioned that he might post a synopsis and impressions if the commenters wanted it. I received no reply.
On November 24, bluex and I released the Short Stories Book to celebrate the third anniversary of the project, and I had to write in the preface that it didn't include Mayoi Welcome because we couldn't find it anywhere. (If you're wondering, I have still been planning on a Second Edition all this time, and now I can say that it won't be missing anything.)
On January 25, 2019, I found this tweet showing a Japanese user who got their hands on the story, with a picture attached. As you can see in the replies there, I attempted to contact them in Japanese (which Azart, who you might remember as the translator of Jun Build, wrote for me), and received no reply.
Not much more happening in 2019 besides frequent hilarious jokes about it from best user of all time CXSaltwater.
On April 8, 2020, I came across this Mercari past sale of Mayoi Welcome, for 120000 yen (more than 1100 dollars at the time, although I do not know when the sale actually took place). This would be a good indicator of just how rare and sought after it became. It also seems to be the first such sale that I learned of.

Rise of the AquaDed

On May 22, 2020, Mayoi Welcome was jokingly brought up in a conversation, prompting user TheBlueDot to ask if we did not have it, to which I replied no, and that a copy had been sold for 120000 yen before. Another user, Loli Hunter (yes), asked if I was being serious and what made it so rare. We had a brief conversation, in which I proceeded to look for the links to the blog post about Nisio Isin's Challenge and to the 120000-yen sale, and we discussed the reasons why nobody seemed to want to share it. At 20:14 (local time), I said the following sentence : "I would consider buying the story at 120000 yen to share it with everyone here". I'm guessing that's when I routinely ended up googling a bit the story's title to see if anything new popped up, because only four minutes later, at 20:18, I pressed my Caps Lock key to exclaim "OH SHIT, THERE'S ANOTHER ONE". I had found another, currently ongoing Mercari sale of Mayoi Welcome, for a price of 110000 yen. The link to the sale itself is unfortunately not valid anymore, but Discord's thumbnail saved the picture attached to it.
By the way, Mercari is a Japan-based website where individuals can resell used goods. It is directly integrated with a proxy service named Buyee : if, like me, you're a foreign buyer, Mercari will have to place your order through Buyee first, which will then have their Japanese employees to actually place the order on Mercari, receive the order at the Buyee warehouse, and then forward the package to whatever country you're in, for an extra fee. This is a very useful service to get around domestic shipping limitations (for example, if you find an item on Amazon Japan whose seller doesn't want to deliver to another country, you can still get it through a proxy service which will buy it from then and then send it to you), but in this case it would spell my doom.
Obviously, this whole event was extremely coincidental and unexpected. And admittedly, this was not the best time for me to make such an eccentric purchase, as I had recently lost my job because of the pandemic. But I had enough savings that it would not hurt me that much financially, and this was the first real occasion in three years, so I wasn't about to let that one go, even if I was fighting some hesitation at first.
Around 20:45, I started entering my personal information in Buyee. At that time, I was already put under stress, as the website was being pretty finicky in what it would accept : I could not enter the name of my region (Île-De-France) as it was over 12 characters. (I put in IleDeFrance instead)
At 21:15, I contacted Valan, who I had been recently collaborating with to work on the audio commentaries together, as he had started commissioning them since January. I guess it felt appropriate to converse with him as someone who was about to join the ranks of the people who sacrificed their wallet for a Monogatari cause. I was still not entirely decided at that point because of the sheer price of it, stalling a bit before committing to the purchase.
At some point before 21:39, I found out that the seller had reduced the price to 100500 yen, although that might have been the case from the start and I just didn't notice or understand how Mercari worked.
At 21:46, my stomach dropped, as I finally attempted to place the order, and was greeted with the very unhelpful message : "An error occurred. Failed to process your order". I tried switching my payment method to Paypal, but then it would tell me the payment method wasn't valid. I didn't know what to do save for contacting support.
At 22:09, Valan did something absolutely amazing, as he often does. He decided, on his own, to place the order himself. I can't overstate how much of a show of trust this was, but please just imagine how grateful I felt. He would get the story delivered to me directly and I would repay him via Paypal later.
Flawless plan, right ? Now is where my downfall begins.
Remember what I said about how a proxy service works ? You place an order to the proxy, then the proxy places the actual order on the thing you wanted to buy. This means there is a delay, this isn't an automated, instant thing. At that point, even though we had placed the order through Buyee which was directly integrated into Mercari, Mayoi Welcome was still available to buy on Mercari until some Buyee employee would actually order it on our behalf, even though our money had already been transferred to Buyee by that point.
Around 22:50, a Japanese commenter posted on the Mercari sale page to ask the seller if the price could be reduced by 10000 yen again. Now, I don't know for how long this sale had been up (as dates weren't indicated), but no matter how coincidental it was, that meant there was another Japanese buyer currently interested who noticed it.
At 23:34, Valan reports that the page is now marked as sold. "Hopefully to us. :p"
On May 23, at 11:20, Valan's very next message informed me that the sale had been cancelled. The reason "the item was out of stock when purchasing" is our basis for our understanding of what happened with the proxy service, and we assume this means that the Japanese buyer could just buy it directly since Buyee had not been fast enough in getting it for us.
Game Over.
At 12:37, I report the sad news to the /araragi server.
At 14:25, I post this meme that I made in commemoration of the tragedy. This would also be the start of something of a tradition : as the most appropriate emote reaction, I would often post an AquaDed whenever Mayoi Welcome was mentioned after that, or even when someone would just use the word "welcome" in conversation.
Following this incident, Valan looked for other past sales or auctions of Mayoi Welcome. As he's more competent than me in many ways, he found not only the known 120000-yen one, but two more : one from January 2019 for 100000 yen, and one from June 2019 for 200000 yen.
On May 24, Valan and I looked into signing up on Mercari, as it seemed there was the possibility of setting up automatic notifications that might be able to alert us if another Mayoi Welcome ever appeared. However, we couldn't do it, as the application was simply not available to foreigners. I figured the next best solution would be to just bookmark the Mercari search for Mayoi Welcome, and click on it every day to check. Valan did the same, along with the equivalent Yahoo.jp search, and swore to check it as part of his morning routine. It was personal now.

Patience

Now the both of us were on the case, compulsively checking these bookmarks every single day. We had to, we just couldn't allow another copy to evade us, if another one ever was to present itself in possibly years.
On June 2, I added a bookmark of a Google search restricted to the results in the last week, which would be helpful in singling out new results.
On July 8, I talked to Valan about how my Google bookmark found a new result, but it was only a tweet mentioning one of the old auctions. Curiously, Valan's bookmark did not show this result. We didn't know about it yet, but there was a slight discrepancy here that we would need to account for.
On August 8, I got a Reddit message from someone named namelessonne, tipping me off about a copy being sold on the Taiwenese website Ruten for about 500 dollars. I immediately freaked out. It was not possible for me to sign up to this service, as it would only accept Taiwanese or Chinese members, and even asked for ID at registration, so I went through the route of a proxy service again. However, we quickly realized the item was apparently marked as being sold since January 2019, and its image was the one displayed in the previous auction that took place in that period. In other words, this was a false alarm, just some outdated listing, and the proxy service would soon confirm to me that it was out of stock.
However, this user also provided some useful information during the conversation. For reasons that are mostly over my head, the "e" character in "Mayoi Welcome" can be written ェ or エ (yielding a title of まよいウェルカム or まよいウエルカム). This matters, because this impacts what a Google or website search can find, depending on which spelling people used. This was the reason we got different results in what we thought was the same bookmark : we used different versions of this character. We therefore had to duplicate our bookmarks to get both versions covered.
Namelessonne then sent us a simple .bat script that would automatically open in a browser these bookmark links for several marketplaces. Valan added the "other character" versions of each link in it, and set it up to execute every morning at the same time, instantly opening a dozen tabs to check for new results.
On August 10, I once more attempted to contact a Japanese seemingly-owner of Mayoi Welcome in a Twitter direct message, and received no reply as expected.
On February 28, 2021, I floated the idea of getting a commission done of my self-insert character looking happy while holding the story.
From April 8 to May 13, Polaris posted a full translation of Shinobumonogatari in 6 batches. The third one, from April 20, is the one that contained Mayoi's playful reference to the story.
In early May, someone who would soon reveal to be a pathological liar pretended they had read Mayoi Welcome and should still have it somewhere in their Nisio collection, it was just of matter of fetching it. Still waiting for it to this day.
On August 21 and September 29, we briefly get other false alarms from outdated listings showing up again for no reason.

Unforeseen victory

Things were looking pretty bleak. It's not like I was in any shortage of Monogatari things to do otherwise, but we were slowly approaching two years since our last chance.
So imagine my surprise, when on Monday, February 28, 2022, at 13:00, Valan greets me with "SCRIPT HIT SOMETHING". This time an auction, not a direct sale, with a starting bid of 200000 yen (about 1700 dollars), ending in 3 hours, no bids yet.
I just wanna take a moment to highlight how lucky in every way the timing was. First, it turned out that the auction had been created less than 24 hours before, meaning that there had been a chance for the auction to not be detected by our daily script before it was over. Also, it was a Monday afternoon. I happened to have found a new job, and I did not have access to Discord there. However, as luck would have it, I was allowed to partially do remote work, at a rate of about 2 or 3 days per week. There was no set schedule for it, meaning that Monday was just a day where I happened to pick remote work. It was literally a 50/50 pick. I could have gone to work that day, and went home only to discover I missed out on this auction. (Well, to be fair, if Valan had not gotten an immediate answer from me then, I don't doubt for a second that he would have just gone for it again and bought the story before triumphantly telling me about it as soon as I would get back. Still, this was a scary possibility.)
And now for the other huge blessing : as I said, this was an auction and not a direct sale. The bids from a proxy service for an auction happen in real time, unlike the act of placing an order for a direct sale. Meaning, theoretically, the proxy service shouldn't give us a delay that would allow a Japanese buyer to snipe us like two years ago. Of course, it being an auction meant that a Japanese buyer could just regular-snipe us with a normal bid, but that was a more manageable risk.
Buyee was seemingly restricted from bidding on this auction, but fortunately, my go-to proxy service FromJapan seemed to do the trick. Except... the item was too expensive : "Cannot place bid using selected payment method. This bid exceeds the monthly auction spend limit. Please select "Deposit" or "FJ Points" to bid.". I then tried to add a deposit, and got the ever-so-helpful "ERROR - An unspecified error occurred". I was thinking this could be an issue on the bank side, with maybe a ceiling on the amount I could transfer in one time from an account, so I tried changing that. Valan also tried to place a bid himself, and his account promptly got blocked from bidding on Yahoo Auctions as a whole, maybe because it was a newly-created account and his bidding instantly on an expensive item with it was mistakenly considered fraudulent.
Despite the heart-wrenching issues, I finally managed to make the deposit to FromJapan, and at 13:18, I placed a bid on the Mayoi Welcome auction. It actually worked, and the auction page was now displaying "1 bid". I only needed to wait for the remaining 2 hours or so, to monitor the auction, and see if any other bid would be coming. I was hoping that the steep price would increase my odds of being the sole bidder here, but I also did deposit extra funds in case I would need more. I was determined.
What followed would be a very stressful afternoon with me completely unable to focus on the work I was supposed to be doing remotely, only looking at the time and refreshing the page far too often. I looked into setting up a sniper bid (a bid placed automatically by the proxy service a few minutes before the end of the auction). The instructions noted that it was possible that "the seller does not wish to sell to proxy services and cancels our bid".
With still zero bids in sight as the auction was coming close to an end, I decided to get cheeky, and instead of the 250000 yen I had been planning to set as my sniper bid, I put in 240240 yen for maximum Nisio hilarity.
But this would reveal unnecessary, since at 15:27, the auction ended with no other bidder, and I won it with the starting bid of 200000 yen, as the FromJapan confirmation email assured me.
I couldn't even pop off after all this. I just did not believe it. I was waiting for something to go wrong, like the payment not going through or something.
Was it over ? Was the nightmare finally over ?
I had not said anything publicly yet, as I wanted to avoid another terrible disappointment when this would fatally fail again. And in my mind, it still very much could. I could not relax until it was physically in my hands. This would take at least a week for the package to be delivered to FromJapan and then from FromJapan to my place. In the meantime, I started looking into the possible translator for it, as well as the commission. Ideally, I wanted to get the commission done as soon as possible (which would already be after I received the story), and then make the public triumphant announcement that I got it using the commission as a celebration picture. Then we would post the translation at some point later.
This took me by surprise though, and that meant I wasn't prepared at all regarding the choice of artist. I needed to find someone who was available in the short term, and that I also liked/trusted enough to go ahead with them. Fortunately, an artist that was available very soon for commissions was ricman_rt, a fantastically skilled artist that I had on my radar for some time because he drew a lot of excellent Shinobu pieces.
On March 2, the status page on FromJapan indicated that the item had been shipped by the seller. It was not cancelled after all.
Still on March 2, I contacted »sawa« with the intention of asking him to be the translator, as he was obviously a talented one, and knowledgeable about Monster Season. The obvious first choice would have been Polaris, but he had not shown any sign of life in months after publishing his translation of the Amarimonogatari arc Yotsugi Buddy. sawa was reticent, and suggested other people for this work. He did, though, seem very enthusiastic when I asked just in case if he had any interest in making a custom PDF for it, like he had done for his own Off/Monster Season translations. He also offered to do a full text transcription of the raws, and proofreading of the translation that someone else would work on.
On March 3, I got the arrival notification from FromJapan. They had gotten the story and I only needed to get it sent to me. It was looking more and more like it was happening.
On March 3 and 4, I contacted ricman to let him know that I was probably going to require his services, barring any unexpected AquaDed.
sawa had also suggested I try reaching out to Polaris despite his disappearance. I didn't really expect anything to come out of this, as I had gotten no answer from Polaris in months, but it's not like I had anything to lose, so I did it, and lo and behold, on March 4 : "wowie zowie, I shall resurrect from the dead for this special occasion" ! Everything is coming together !
On March 7, I got a notification telling me the package was scheduled for delivery the next day. I went to the office, but I had written down the tracking link to be able to check it at work just in case. Good thing I did, because as soon as I got to work after my almost-one-hour-long commute, I checked it again, and it had been updated to being delivered that same day. So I waited until noon to be able to say I accomplished a morning of work, then went home in the afternoon for "remote work". I didn't want any extra risk of having to fetch it at a pick-up location or anything. Good thing I did, because it arrived at 13:45.
This was it. I officially was the proud owner of Mayoi Welcome.

From me to you

I immediately set out to find some local scanning shop as I didn't have a scanner myself. I got very scared when the employee there roughly handled the sheets of paper to make them fit in her huge machine, but they were fine. I got the raws in PDF form, and sent them to sawa, who transcribed them by the next day. I then sent all of that to Polaris.
(Alright I'm just realizing I'm seriously approaching Reddit's post character limit here so I need to keep things short I might develop that later sorry I just can't shut up)
ricman started drawing around March 16. The plan was to wait for him to be done to make the announcement.
However. In a complete plot twist, the same seller that sold me Mayoi Welcome... is selling another one. For only 30000 yen. And people noticed. This was a problem, because it felt just cheap enough that someone might actually try to buy it, not knowing I already got it. So I was forced to reveal my secret too early and without the beautiful picture, just to be sure. (Also, later, the same seller would sell yet another one, back to a terribly expensive price, and would disallow proxy service bids.)
On March 22, ricman finished and I made the announcement.
On April 1, I poked Polaris again and he might have forgotten he was supposed to translate it until then.
On April 5, Polaris sent me the translation, which I forwarded to sawa for proofreading and PDFing.
On April 6, Yahoo Japan stops being available in Europe for some reason.
And we get to today, April 9, where I'm finally posting the results of our years-long adventure after spending the whole day typing this monster of a post.
 
 
I don't really have anything to say about the story itself, which was alright (always good to see Mayoi and also to have something not completely irrelevant).
There are far much more feelings related to the journey I accomplished to be able to read it. Of course, my thanks go to everyone involved, as well as the entirety of #monogatari-anime which bullied me about it for the last 2 years.
I am not only publishing the translation, but also the original raws, because I want every single fan in the world to be able to read it, including the Japanese people who couldn't even read it themselves.
I am revolted by the attitude of those hoarders who care only about the "value" of a story increased artificially by keeping it to themselves and making it impossible to read.
This is unfair.
I am ending this, here and now.
I would like to spread the news as far as possible. I will be asking Monogatari-involved people with some social media presence, like Edo or Hiki, to relay it to their followers. I have already been in contact with folks from the Chinese, Russian, and Brazilian communities that I would be able to share it with them soon.
If you can contribute yourself by forwarding it to such persons of interest or communities, please do so. In particular, it would be helpful if you guys had ways to let Japanese communities know about it. Send this Reddit thread, the shareable tweet, and the Google Drive folder to whoever needs it.
This was maxdefolsch, fulfilling my destiny as the Short Story Guy.
You're welcome, and so am I.
Thanks for reading and see you next time for another story !

I recently got a (good paying)job, I am studying and will study a second course of studies after I finish(this one),and I discovered polyphasic sleep thus Ill have a whole lot of time in my hands. But I spend HOURS a day in front of screens: play4, netflix, PC...Im getting very adult,im 26, but I still watch too much anime,play games a lot,or just randomly surf or shitpost on imageboards for hours.
I dont get a limited detox,I want to change my lifestyle. lifespan isnt assured,death may come at any day for us mortal men, I dont want my last day to have-been glued to screens .What do I do? how do I enjoy the outdoors,conversation,walking,sports and just life in general?(im 26 man)

I recently read a new book Adventures on the Alien Planet Gok in 1985. This one claims to be a true story. But whether it is true or not. It is very shocking to read just as science fiction. There are many new ideas mentioned in the book. Describes the framework of a complete and logically sound alien world. A lot of unheard of information about alien technology, culture and life is presented.
The author is a Chinese farmer who claims to have been abducted for a month in 1985 to an alien planet called Gok. The aliens exceptionally imparted to him some knowledge of alien technology and allowed him to bring back his memories.
It's Saturday and it seems I could introduce the book. But I'm not the author. I just think the story is amazing.
I can't tell if the story is true or not, I just know that this person is real.
There is also a lot of physics. I am not an expert in physics. So it's not good to comment.
Here is some information that I found more interesting:

The Alien Mass-energy Formula

Alien scientists explained to,

"Your momentum on Earth is mass multiplied by velocity; our concept of momentum on the planet Gok is the vector speed of light minus the velocity of the object's motion multiplied by its mass. The direction of the vector speed of light can change.
"Why does our concept of momentum have an additional vector speed of light than Earth concept of momentum? You earthlings do not realize that the space around an object is always moving at the vector speed of light in all directions.

Alien Scientist Teaches Unified Field Formula

"Taking the derivative of this momentum equation with respect to time (a direct translation of their words is to find the variables) yields 4 forces, the first is the change in mass over time multiplied by the vector speed of light, this electric field force, the second is the force of the mass of the object over time multiplied by the speed of motion, this is the magnetic field force, the third is the force of the vector speed of light over time multiplied by the mass, this is the nuclear force, and the fourth is the force of the speed of motion over time multiplied by the mass, this force is the universal force of gravity and the inertial force of your Newtonian mechanics.
"This is the grand unified equation that your earthly scientist Albert Einstein struggled to write the 4 forces of the universe in one equation. He worked hard for decades without success."

What is Time?

Alien scientists explained to,

"Time is just the feeling given by the light-speed emission motion of space around a person. Without human, there would be no time.
"The core secret of the universe is actually hidden in space, the essence of the field is the space of movement, so it can also be said that the core secret of the universe is hidden in the field.
"Any object in the universe, including our body as an observer, with the space around the object as the center, with the speed of light to disperse the movement around. This motion of space gives us, as observers, a sense of time.

The principle of UFO flight

Chang introduced that UFOs (flying saucers) use anti-mass field engines. It can reduce the mass of the UFO to zero or very small, so the UFO can run at the speed of light. Since the passenger mass is zero, the acceleration felt is also zero. they will not be killed by acceleration. (About G-force is shocking to me. Even Hollywood writers could only come up with something like 'damping system'. And the theory of zero mass and 0 G-force perfectly explains the high speed maneuvering of the UFOs and the survival of the passenger. If he made up this story - a Chinese farmer, it's unbelievable!)
Spacecraft can travel at the speed of light. It can reach any corner of the universe instantly without consuming time. Because at the speed of light, the distance ahead has been compressed to zero. But a trip usually takes several hours because the reduction to zero mass takes time to get into and out of the speed of light.
The principle of the engine is not very complicated. It is a ring-shaped particle accelerator that uses high-speed spinning particles to create an anti-mass field.
The spacecraft cannot carry much energy. It relies on an external power source from the base to obtain its initial state at takeoff and consumes very little energy during flight.

The structure of the UFO

On the outside is a torus and on the inside is a tube for particle acceleration. In the center of the spacecraft is a cylindrical tube that seems to be where the fuel (a kind of particles) and the engine are stored. The passengers stay in the middle annular area. The diameter of the ring area (segment) is about ten meters, which is still relatively spacious. It is a small flying saucer.
Due to the zero mass, the dust of interstellar space does not damage the spacecraft. But if the volume is too large, like a planet, it can cause damage to the machine. So they need computers to plan their route.
In short, their spacecraft are not invulnerable.
The aliens explained that their spacecraft could also have accidents. But certain more advanced alien civilizations have ships that can do so with zero accidents.

The principle of flying in the atmosphere

Reach the planet's atmosphere, ship well slight increase a bit weight. Floating in the air. When it needs to move on the planet, reduce its mass to zero in a very short period, travel a short distance at the speed of light, and then exit. Repeat over and over again. In this way, the flying saucer can move on planet at less than the speed of light, but at a very high speed and with amazing maneuverability.

UFOs can reach tens of light-years away in a few hours

The aliens explain that time is a relative concept. They depart from within an artificial field that alters the speed of time passing locally. So a round trip to explore other planets takes only a few hours, not decades.

Four types of motion in spacecraft

Alien scientists say that there are four types of motion in the universe. The first is the Newtonian mechanical motion of your earthlings. The second is the gok alien way of variable mass motion. But they are sure there is a third way of motion. It is their goal to study the principles of the third mode of motion. There is even a fourth way of motion. They know that some more advanced aliens have mastered the third mode of motion.

No interstellar wars between advanced alien civilizations

The aliens explain that advanced alien civilizations are extremely productive. They can easily convert matter, and they are not interested in plundering material resources. They will have some intellectual competitions(mathematics), but they will not fight and kill each other as the Earthlings do.

Alien's artificial field technology

The aliens seem to have mastered an artificial field technology manipulating space. This technology is very powerful and is the basis of alien civilization. Space can be used to calculate, store, and analyze information. That it can perform amazing functions such as teleporting objects, recording information from the brain without loss, physical construction, and communication without delay.

A two-dimensional universe

Aliens say that the universe has only three dimensions. Information travels at the speed of light, and in the case of an object moving at the speed of light, the distance along the direction of motion is zero, so the universe is relatively two-dimensional. Therefore, the universe is two-dimensional as far as information is concerned. Any point in space contains all the information about the past, present and future of the universe.

Aliens can live forever

Aliens use artificial field technology to record human consciousness. It is then installed in artificially bred body mentions to achieve immortality.
The largest industry on their planet is the manufacture of bodies.
They study the bodies of various races. If you like, you can change one. But earthlings cannot be replaced. They explained that alien species have not been studied to replace their bodies. Maybe some research institutes have.
The aliens showed him many types of bodies. Different materials, combinations of different species. It was also said that most of them would be eliminated, and only a few might become popular.
Chang said to the alien, "There can't be two of me in the universe. Your replicated human bodies cannot be considered original humans. When people arrive at your human replication factory, they are actually killed and burned by you, and then select a random person comes out and says, 'The human body has been replicated successfully!'"
The alien seemed outraged by this comment. But the alien put a helmet-like device on him. He experiences two consciousnesses alternating in different places simultaneously, and the total experience time is twice as long as the actual time. Hence, he believes the alien's immortality technology is real.

How long will it take for Earth to develop immortality technology?

Alien scientists explained to,

"One is a matter of confidence. If you earthlings have this confidence, understand that the core of human is the consciousness, and the consciousness is just the form of movement of charged particles in the human brain, which belongs to information. If you earthlings have mastered the scanning technology of artificial fields, it only takes a few decades to do it," Gapon replied. ... "However, the most crucial thing is that you earthlings have to know what the nature of the field is. Only after mastering the nature of the field, you can use the field to penetrate deep inside the human brain and record the information of human consciousness. ... "It's also important to recognize that the direction of the problem," Norton said.
"At the core of the human being is the consciousness of the mind. Thought-consciousness activity can create perturbations in the surrounding space, causing it to fluctuate, which is space itself. The speed of fluctuation is the speed of light. It is important to record the fluctuating forms of space as recording the forms of motion of charged particles in the human brain.

Life on Earth began on land

The alien scientist told him that you Earthling scientists say that life on Earth originated in the oceans. This is wrong. Life on Earth originated on land a billion years ago. In small pools of water on land, to be exact. The environment of the ocean was not suitable for the evolution of primitive life.

All aliens characteristics are not very different from human

Alien scientists say that the appearance of all terrestrial evolved intelligent life is not very different from that of Earthlings. Because this is the optimal solution for the evolution of life.

Death does not exist

The alien scientists told him that the earthlings do not have the technology for immortality now. But death does not exist. Because the soul is the information, the fluctuation of space. All movements in the universe are repeatedly and constantly unfolding. Unfolding all the possibilities. That is why death does not exist. People will keep reincarnating, but they will lose the memories of their previous lives. Because memories are stored in the physical body.

Why did the aliens abduct him?

He claims to have been abducted at the age of 19. The aliens thought he was young and strong. It seems to be used to improve their entertainment program. The details, which Chang did not write very specifically due to Chinese legal restrictions against publication.
(In my opinion, this may explain why aliens like to appear in America: maybe because Americans are physically strong and like to exercise, or they like the American look. Maybe aliens come to Earth mostly without any big purpose, just to abduct a few girls/boys to get some fun, as hooligans.)
The book introduces a virtual game about Earthlings on the planet Gok. The Americans are described as Hercules, with strong upper bodies and legs like steel forks. In this game, the Japanese are described as enjoying killing people, both foreigners and their own people. The Chinese, on the other hand, are described as having dreadlocks. Like to chop off heads. Europeans are described as philosophers with pipes.

What happens to abducted Earthlings

Not every abducted Earthling is sent back. Some never make it back.

"Some were sent back; some were not physically strong and died on the spot while doing experiments; some could not stand the abuse of our women and died; some were abandoned and left to fend for themselves on our planet ... Why? you may ask," Santos shook his head and said with a smile, "Because we are lazy too!"

But the aliens assured him that they would send him back to Earth because Chang was of special value.

Will aliens help humans?

Some aliens will help humans pass, but not on a large scale. Just as the Americans will not help Africa on a large scale. Aliens don't care about human society; they just come to Earth to find what is useful.
They also have no love for us Earthlings, but they also have no intention of harming Earthlings.
They had more contact with Earthlings to guide their development in ancient times. The aliens do not want to pass on their technology to the Earthlings now because they believe that the level of technology of the Earthlings is not very different from their current level of technology, and they fear that it would not be in their interest to make the Earthlings too powerful.
The aliens are reluctant to contact the Earthlings directly, mainly because they are worried that the Earthlings will endlessly ask them for scientific theories and technology. It's like when you visit a primitive tribe, the shorts might disappear.
If the Earthlings go too far, they might occasionally help. They claim to have stopped Germany from developing the atomic bomb, but they don't say how.
If Earthlings are facing extinction and can easily solve it, they may help Earthlings because Earthlings have a lot of research value. They are unlikely to help Earthlings if they require enormous resources and burden them greatly.
Generally speaking, they are arrogant to the Earthlings.
They also abducted some people from advanced planets, but they were treated much better than the Earthlings because they were afraid of retaliation.

Are Aliens Moral?

No. Most aliens have nothing to do but have fun all day. Morality is in some ways worse than earthlings - in fact, according to his description, the aliens seem to be lecherous and sexually abusive.
One thing, though, is that because technology is so advanced, most goods and services are free. Very few aliens are working and researching. So, they have abundant resources, and they don't need to fight for money. Therefore, they do not like to fight and kill like Earthlings do.

Are Aliens Smart?

Like earthlings, aliens are severely polarized in terms of intelligence, some are very smart, and some are very stupid.
Zhang asked them, "Your planet is very advanced, the technology is amazing, and the people on your planet are very smart, right?"
"No, a few of us are indeed smart, most of us are ordinary, and many others are stupid, even more, stupid than you Earthlings. The development of our planet is because a few smart people prevailed and became the mainstream of society. If the opposite happens, the result is quite bad. Society develops, smart people become smarter, stupid people become dumber, and not all people become smart."

What do aliens look like?

Many kinds. He claims to have seen the aliens were short, with smooth, pale pink skin, but with a hard bite inside.
About 1 meter tall; pinkish-white skin; no visible bones; thick hands; very smooth skin; large eyes with deep sockets; very thin waists and exaggerated over-curves with the hips in women; women's breasts that bulge like horns; skin that can change color depending on mood; clothes that look like they are painted on; their bodies are made with cloning technology and can be changed at any time; women's hair looks like curly tubes; men's hair sticks to their scalp like a piece of rubber; small noses and ears; more protruding mouths; and faces that lack dimensionality.

Alien Politics

Alien planets have no leaders, no countries. It is negotiated and managed by experts in various fields. Sort of like academic organizations on Earth, and with computers and algorithms to assist. According to him, computers and algorithms are even the main decision-makers.

Oxygen content and gravity on an alien planet

The oxygen content of that alien planet is 23.1%, which their scientists claim is the best for them. They could control the oxygen content of the planet.
The gravity of the alien planet is greater than that of Earth, and it will be more difficult for Earthlings to live on that planet. But the aliens have field control technology that can eliminate this problem.

Alien Planet Environment

The alien planet does a good job of environmental protection. The air is very pure. The sun is very bright, but it doesn't seem to be warm enough. The reason for this seems to be the distance of the stars in the gok system. The plants on gok are relatively tall compared to Earth, and the leaves are darker green in color than on Earth. There is a lack of tiny plants.

Policing on the alien planet

He said that field control technology is widely used on the alien planet, and there is a system called Global Motion Network that monitors and protects everyone at all times and violent crimes are impossible.

Alien Money

Most alien goods and services are free. But money doesn't go away. Everyone has access to a certain amount of virtual currency regularly. They personally spend money mainly to get services from others.
They also say that money has not disappeared even in more advanced alien civilization societies.
So if you want to live a more exciting life. You also need to try to earn money. But most of their planet's products and services are free. It's not easy to make more money.

Alien Fashion

Compared to Earth, aliens have relatively simple clothing. Almost every alien has a virtual imageboard in the back of their head that shows some image or character that does nothing but make them look cool. (I think this should be called 3D physical emotion icon)

Is the Universe Full of Life?

The aliens answer that there is life on many planets, but mostly simple viruses or bacteria, and not much advanced intelligent life like Earth. Less than one has advanced lifeforms of the 100 million planets with life（or 1/10000. not very clear here).

Aliens don't have Families.

They have no family, no parents, no brothers, and sisters, but they have partners.
Their people are very selfish. Even if they are close partners, many of them do not live together and are too lazy to serve each other. They rarely have permanent partners. They usually last for a while and tend to break up.
Of course, not all of them don't have families. There are some natural people in their primary star, but only a few.

Alien Computer Technology

Computers on Earth use electrons as carriers, and while electronic computers are slow due to Coulomb forces, an alien computer uses a vacuum as a carrier. It runs much faster than the computers on Earth.

Alien Sexuality

From an Earthling perspective, alien sexuality is rampant, pervert, violent, cruel, and aggressive.
They are popular remote virtual sex more than real sex. Or virtual reality sex.
Many of them hijack earthlings to be virtual playmates. They force you to perform various actions while scanning various data that is very valuable to them. From this data, they create virtual playmates.
They use colloidal material to create virtual people, and when the material is filled with data, they become lifelike virtual people. They use the same data set to create thousands of virtual playmates to satisfy the curious needs of alien men and women.
Aliens have even created many combined species of insects/animals and humans.
They say that in material wealth they have no interest, coupled with immortality. So they spend 99% of their time seeking new experiences and sensual stimulation.

Alien Translation Technology

Aliens have two vast networks, the Global Public Motion Network and the Global Public Information Network. An artificial field is used to scan a person's consciousness and translate it into sounds, images or thoughts that are transmitted to another person's brain or ears. As a result, they do not need to open their mouths to speak. Their lung function is degraded and they can only produce hoarse sounds.

How Many People are on Their Planet?

Tens of billions of people. There are also many pets and virtual people of all kinds. Far more than on Earth. And this is just the population of his home planet. Many other planets with large populations nearby, and the total number could be very large. Zhang did not ask how many people were nearby.

Will Aliens Make Formal Contact with Earth?

There is a default rule in the universe where they say that once a civilization has a light-speed ship, they will initiate contact. Because spaceships with the speed of light can travel everywhere, it is best to make contact and establish a relationship early.

The Universe is like an Onion

The universe seems infinite in space, and galaxies and planets can still be found in the trillions of light-years that aliens have explored. Layer after layer, each layer is separated by a very distant space. Even alien exploration of outer space is limited. The same is true of the microscopic world. Nor can aliens answer what the outermost universe is like.
Even though alien flying saucers can reach any corner of the universe instantly, aliens still cannot find the edge of the universe. Therefore, they believe that the universe seems to be infinite.

Mind Control

They are proficient in mind-control technology. They scan and alter the minds and memories of those around them, which is their weapon. They change the minds of those who are aggressive towards them.

They don't need to Eat

They don't eat; Zhang says they rely on artificial fields to transmit nutrients to their bodies, so they don't need to eat like Earthlings. Occasionally, they drink some liquid beverages.
"We don't need to eat," the aliens say, "and our teeth may degrade, but eating should be no problem."

Are there Aliens on Earth?

Yes, there are. But not in large numbers. And there are more than one kind of aliens. They use at least two techniques to disguise themselves on Earth. 1. they infiltrate some earthlings with an intelligent metallic liquid and replace it with their own consciousness. When their bodies age, they repeat the same trick. The old earthlings will become vegetative. 2. They artificially create a earthlings body on their planet and put their own consciousness on it.

Is Earth a technologically backward planet?

The aliens say that Earth technology is obviously backward compared to them. But it is more advanced than most planets with civilizations.

Interstellar Accord Alliance

The aliens didn't tell him the location or the name of their planet. (I guess it should be about 50 light years, because when the aliens introduced the principle of the ship, they said 50 light years. This may have been subconscious) The aliens don't allow him to bring back anything, including memories. They use a depth detection device that probes the human brain. If there is a residue. Then the memories in question must be deleted. But this technique does not seem to be 100% effective. With the help of alien scientists, He escapes the scanning of the people of the Interstellar Accord Alliance.
The Interstellar Accord Alliance controls the transfer of alien technology to backward planets. They fear that advanced technology entering the backward planets will lead to mass slaughter.

A few days ago, I read a book Adventures on the Alien Planet Gok in 1985.
The book is basically about a Chinese farmer who claims he was abducted to an alien planet for a month in 1985.
The content is so outrageous that it could be considered unheard of.
But, I found the story very enlightening. There are a lot of new ideas. The logical explanation of the reasons for many of the aliens' strange behavior.
There is also a lot of physics. I am not an expert in physics. So it's not good to comment.

The Alien Mass-energy Formula

Alien scientists explained to,

"Your momentum on Earth is mass multiplied by velocity; our concept of momentum on the planet Gok is the vector speed of light minus the velocity of the object's motion multiplied by its mass. The direction of the vector speed of light can change.
"Why does our concept of momentum have an additional vector speed of light than Earth concept of momentum? You earthlings do not realize that the space around an object is always moving at the vector speed of light in all directions.

Alien Scientist Teaches Unified Field Formula

"Taking the derivative of this momentum equation with respect to time (a direct translation of their words is to find the variables) yields 4 forces, the first is the change in mass over time multiplied by the vector speed of light, this electric field force, the second is the force of the mass of the object over time multiplied by the speed of motion, this is the magnetic field force, the third is the force of the vector speed of light over time multiplied by the mass, this is the nuclear force, and the fourth is the force of the speed of motion over time multiplied by the mass, this force is the universal force of gravity and the inertial force of your Newtonian mechanics.
"This is the grand unified equation that your earthly scientist Albert Einstein struggled to write the 4 forces of the universe in one equation. He worked hard for decades without success."

What is Time?

Alien scientists explained to,

"Time is just the feeling given by the light-speed emission motion of space around a person. Without human, there would be no time.
"The core secret of the universe is actually hidden in space, the essence of the field is the space of movement, so it can also be said that the core secret of the universe is hidden in the field.
"Any object in the universe, including our body as an observer, with the space around the object as the center, with the speed of light to disperse the movement around. This motion of space gives us, as observers, a sense of time.

The principle of UFO flight

Chang introduced that UFOs (flying saucers) use anti-mass field engines. It can reduce the mass of the UFO to zero or very small, so the UFO can run at the speed of light. Since the passenger mass is zero, the acceleration felt is also zero. they will not be killed by acceleration. (About G-force is shocking to me. Even Hollywood writers could only come up with something like 'damping system'. And the theory of zero mass and 0 G-force perfectly explains the high speed maneuvering of the UFOs and the survival of the passenger. If he made up this story - a Chinese farmer, it's unbelievable!)
Spacecraft can travel at the speed of light. It can reach any corner of the universe instantly without consuming time. Because at the speed of light, the distance ahead has been compressed to zero. But a trip usually takes several hours because the reduction to zero mass takes time to get into and out of the speed of light.
The principle of the engine is not very complicated. It is a ring-shaped particle accelerator that uses high-speed spinning particles to create an anti-mass field.
The spacecraft cannot carry much energy. It relies on an external power source from the base to obtain its initial state at takeoff and consumes very little energy during flight.

The structure of the UFO

On the outside is a torus and on the inside is a tube for particle acceleration. In the center of the spacecraft is a cylindrical tube that seems to be where the fuel (a kind of particles) and the engine are stored. The passengers stay in the middle annular area. The diameter of the ring area (segment) is about ten meters, which is still relatively spacious. It is a small flying saucer.
Due to the zero mass, the dust of interstellar space does not damage the spacecraft. But if the volume is too large, like a planet, it can cause damage to the machine. So they need computers to plan their route.
In short, their spacecraft are not invulnerable.
The aliens explained that their spacecraft could also have accidents. But certain more advanced alien civilizations have ships that can do so with zero accidents.

The principle of flying in the atmosphere

Reach the planet's atmosphere, ship well slight increase a bit weight. Floating in the air. When it needs to move on the planet, reduce its mass to zero in a very short period, travel a short distance at the speed of light, and then exit. Repeat over and over again. In this way, the flying saucer can move on planet at less than the speed of light, but at a very high speed and with amazing maneuverability.

UFOs can reach tens of light-years away in a few hours

The aliens explain that time is a relative concept. They depart from within an artificial field that alters the speed of time passing locally. So a round trip to explore other planets takes only a few hours, not decades.

No interstellar wars between advanced alien civilizations

The aliens explain that advanced alien civilizations are extremely productive. They can easily convert matter, and they are not interested in plundering material resources. They will have some intellectual competitions(mathematics), but they will not fight and kill each other as the Earthlings do.

Alien's artificial field technology

The aliens seem to have mastered an artificial field technology manipulating space. This technology is very powerful and is the basis of alien civilization. Space can be used to calculate, store, and analyze information. That it can perform amazing functions such as teleporting objects, recording information from the brain without loss, physical construction, and communication without delay.

A two-dimensional universe

Aliens say that the universe has only three dimensions. Information travels at the speed of light, and in the case of an object moving at the speed of light, the distance along the direction of motion is zero, so the universe is relatively two-dimensional. Therefore, the universe is two-dimensional as far as information is concerned. Any point in space contains all the information about the past, present and future of the universe.

Aliens can live forever

Aliens use artificial field technology to record human consciousness. It is then installed in artificially bred body mentions to achieve immortality.
The largest industry on their planet is the manufacture of bodies.
They study the bodies of various races. If you like, you can change one. But earthlings cannot be replaced. They explained that alien species have not been studied to replace their bodies. Maybe some research institutes have.
The aliens showed him many types of bodies. Different materials, combinations of different species. It was also said that most of them would be eliminated, and only a few might become popular.
Chang said to the alien, "There can't be two of me in the universe. Your replicated human bodies cannot be considered original humans. When people arrive at your human replication factory, they are actually killed and burned by you, and then select a random person comes out and says, 'The human body has been replicated successfully!'"
The alien seemed outraged by this comment. But the alien put a helmet-like device on him. He experiences two consciousnesses alternating in different places simultaneously, and the total experience time is twice as long as the actual time. Hence, he believes the alien's immortality technology is real.

How long will it take for Earth to develop immortality technology?

Alien scientists explained to,

"One is a matter of confidence. If you earthlings have this confidence, understand that the core of human is the consciousness, and the consciousness is just the form of movement of charged particles in the human brain, which belongs to information. If you earthlings have mastered the scanning technology of artificial fields, it only takes a few decades to do it," Gapon replied. ... "However, the most crucial thing is that you earthlings have to know what the nature of the field is. Only after mastering the nature of the field, you can use the field to penetrate deep inside the human brain and record the information of human consciousness. ... "It's also important to recognize that the direction of the problem," Norton said.
"At the core of the human being is the consciousness of the mind. Thought-consciousness activity can create perturbations in the surrounding space, causing it to fluctuate, which is space itself. The speed of fluctuation is the speed of light. It is important to record the fluctuating forms of space as recording the forms of motion of charged particles in the human brain.

Life on Earth began on land

The alien scientist told him that you Earthling scientists say that life on Earth originated in the oceans. This is wrong. Life on Earth originated on land a billion years ago. In small pools of water on land, to be exact. The environment of the ocean was not suitable for the evolution of primitive life.

All aliens characteristics are not very different from human

Alien scientists say that the appearance of all terrestrial evolved intelligent life is not very different from that of Earthlings. Because this is the optimal solution for the evolution of life.

Death does not exist

The alien scientists told him that the earthlings do not have the technology for immortality now. But death does not exist. Because the soul is the information, the fluctuation of space. All movements in the universe are repeatedly and constantly unfolding. Unfolding all the possibilities. That is why death does not exist. People will keep reincarnating, but they will lose the memories of their previous lives. Because memories are stored in the physical body.

Why did the aliens abduct him?

He claims to have been abducted at the age of 19. The aliens thought he was young and strong. It seems to be used to improve their entertainment program. The details, which Chang did not write very specifically due to Chinese legal restrictions against publication.
(In my opinion, this may explain why aliens like to appear in America: maybe because Americans are physically strong and like to exercise, or they like the American look. Maybe aliens come to Earth mostly without any big purpose, just to abduct a few girls/boys to get some fun, as hooligans.)
The book introduces a virtual game about Earthlings on the planet Gok. The Americans are described as Hercules, with strong upper bodies and legs like steel forks. In this game, the Japanese are described as enjoying killing people, both foreigners and their own people. The Chinese, on the other hand, are described as having dreadlocks. Like to chop off heads. Europeans are described as philosophers with pipes.

What happens to abducted Earthlings

Not every abducted Earthling is sent back. Some never make it back.

"Some were sent back; some were not physically strong and died on the spot while doing experiments; some could not stand the abuse of our women and died; some were abandoned and left to fend for themselves on our planet ... Why? you may ask," Santos shook his head and said with a smile, "Because we are lazy too!"

But the aliens assured him that they would send him back to Earth because Chang was of special value.

Will aliens help humans?

Some aliens will help humans pass, but not on a large scale. Just as the Americans will not help Africa on a large scale. Aliens don't care about human society; they just come to Earth to find what is useful.
They also have no love for us Earthlings, but they also have no intention of harming Earthlings.
They had more contact with Earthlings to guide their development in ancient times. The aliens do not want to pass on their technology to the Earthlings now because they believe that the level of technology of the Earthlings is not very different from their current level of technology, and they fear that it would not be in their interest to make the Earthlings too powerful.
The aliens are reluctant to contact the Earthlings directly, mainly because they are worried that the Earthlings will endlessly ask them for scientific theories and technology. It's like when you visit a primitive tribe, the shorts might disappear.
If the Earthlings go too far, they might occasionally help. They claim to have stopped Germany from developing the atomic bomb, but they don't say how.
If Earthlings are facing extinction and can easily solve it, they may help Earthlings because Earthlings have a lot of research value. They are unlikely to help Earthlings if they require enormous resources and burden them greatly.
Generally speaking, they are arrogant to the Earthlings.
They also abducted some people from advanced planets, but they were treated much better than the Earthlings because they were afraid of retaliation.

Are Aliens Moral?

No. Most aliens have nothing to do but have fun all day. Morality is in some ways worse than earthlings - in fact, according to his description, the aliens seem to be lecherous and sexually abusive.
One thing, though, is that because technology is so advanced, most goods and services are free. Very few aliens are working and researching. So, they have abundant resources, and they don't need to fight for money. Therefore, they do not like to fight and kill like Earthlings do.

Are Aliens Smart?

Like earthlings, aliens are severely polarized in terms of intelligence, some are very smart, and some are very stupid.
Zhang asked them, "Your planet is very advanced, the technology is amazing, and the people on your planet are very smart, right?"
"No, a few of us are indeed smart, most of us are ordinary, and many others are stupid, even more, stupid than you Earthlings. The development of our planet is because a few smart people prevailed and became the mainstream of society. If the opposite happens, the result is quite bad. Society develops, smart people become smarter, stupid people become dumber, and not all people become smart."

What do aliens look like?

Many kinds. He claims to have seen the aliens were short, with smooth, pale pink skin, but with a hard bite inside.
About 1 meter tall; pinkish-white skin; no visible bones; thick hands; very smooth skin; large eyes with deep sockets; very thin waists and exaggerated over-curves with the hips in women; women's breasts that bulge like horns; skin that can change color depending on mood; clothes that look like they are painted on; their bodies are made with cloning technology and can be changed at any time; women's hair looks like curly tubes; men's hair sticks to their scalp like a piece of rubber; small noses and ears; more protruding mouths; and faces that lack dimensionality.

Alien Politics

Alien planets have no leaders, no countries. It is negotiated and managed by experts in various fields. Sort of like academic organizations on Earth, and with computers and algorithms to assist. According to him, computers and algorithms are even the main decision-makers.

Oxygen content and gravity on an alien planet

The oxygen content of that alien planet is 23.1%, which their scientists claim is the best for them. They could control the oxygen content of the planet.
The gravity of the alien planet is greater than that of Earth, and it will be more difficult for Earthlings to live on that planet. But the aliens have field control technology that can eliminate this problem.

Policing on the alien planet

He said that field control technology is widely used on the alien planet, and there is a system called Global Motion Network that monitors and protects everyone at all times and violent crimes are impossible.

Alien Money

Most alien goods and services are free. But money doesn't go away. Everyone has access to a certain amount of virtual currency regularly. They personally spend money mainly to get services from others.
They also say that money has not disappeared even in more advanced alien civilization societies.
So if you want to live a more exciting life. You also need to try to earn money. But most of their planet's products and services are free. It's not easy to make more money.

Alien Fashion

Compared to Earth, aliens have relatively simple clothing. Almost every alien has a virtual imageboard in the back of their head that shows some image or character that does nothing but make them look cool. (I think this should be called 3D physical emotion icon)

Is the Universe Full of Life?

The aliens answer that there is life on many planets, but mostly simple viruses or bacteria, and not much advanced intelligent life like Earth. Less than one has advanced lifeforms of the 100 million planets with life（or 1/10000. not very clear here).

Aliens don't have Families.

They have no family, no parents, no brothers, and sisters, but they have partners.
Their people are very selfish. Even if they are close partners, many of them do not live together and are too lazy to serve each other. They rarely have permanent partners. They usually last for a while and tend to break up.
Of course, not all of them don't have families. There are some natural people in their primary star, but only a few.

Alien Computer Technology

Computers on Earth use electrons as carriers, and while electronic computers are slow due to Coulomb forces, an alien computer uses a vacuum as a carrier. It runs much faster than the computers on Earth.

Alien Sexuality

From an Earthling perspective, alien sexuality is rampant, pervert, violent, cruel, and aggressive.
They are popular remote virtual sex more than real sex. Or virtual reality sex.
Many of them hijack earthlings to be virtual playmates. They force you to perform various actions while scanning various data that is very valuable to them. From this data, they create virtual playmates.
They use colloidal material to create virtual people, and when the material is filled with data, they become lifelike virtual people. They use the same data set to create thousands of virtual playmates to satisfy the curious needs of alien men and women.
Aliens have even created many combined species of insects/animals and humans. And commonly have sex with animals. They say that these are very bad things in the eyes of earthlings. But it is very common on their planet.
They say that in material wealth they have no interest, coupled with immortality. So they spend 99% of their time seeking new experiences and sensual stimulation.
In fact, the book says that the aliens directly introduce their planet as a 'lewd' one, and are not ashamed of it at all. (Of course, this could be an error in alien translation technology).

Alien Translation Technology

Aliens have two vast networks, the Global Public Motion Network and the Global Public Information Network. An artificial field is used to scan a person's consciousness and translate it into sounds, images or thoughts that are transmitted to another person's brain or ears. As a result, they do not need to open their mouths to speak. Their lung function is degraded and they can only produce hoarse sounds.

How Many People are on Their Planet?

Tens of billions of people. There are also many pets and virtual people of all kinds. Far more than on Earth. And this is just the population of his home planet. Many other planets with large populations nearby, and the total number could be very large. Zhang did not ask how many people were nearby.

Will Aliens Make Formal Contact with Earth?

There is a default rule in the universe where they say that once a civilization has a light-speed ship, they will initiate contact. Because spaceships with the speed of light can travel everywhere, it is best to make contact and establish a relationship early.

The Universe is like an Onion

The universe seems infinite in space, and galaxies and planets can still be found in the trillions of light-years that aliens have explored. Layer after layer, each layer is separated by a very distant space. Even alien exploration of outer space is limited. The same is true of the microscopic world. Nor can aliens answer what the outermost universe is like.
Even though alien flying saucers can reach any corner of the universe instantly, aliens still cannot find the edge of the universe. Therefore, they believe that the universe seems to be infinite.

Mind Control

They are proficient in mind-control technology. They scan and alter the minds and memories of those around them, which is their weapon. They change the minds of those who are aggressive towards them.

They don't need to Eat

They don't eat; Zhang says they rely on artificial fields to transmit nutrients to their bodies, so they don't need to eat like Earthlings. Occasionally, they drink some liquid beverages.
"We don't need to eat," the aliens say, "and our teeth may degrade, but eating should be no problem."

Are there Aliens on Earth?

Yes, there are. But not in large numbers. And there are more than one kind of aliens. They use at least two techniques to disguise themselves on Earth. 1. they infiltrate some earthlings with an intelligent metallic liquid and replace it with their own consciousness. When their bodies age, they repeat the same trick. The old earthlings will become vegetative. 2. They artificially create a earthlings body on their planet and put their own consciousness on it.

Is Earth a technologically backward planet?

The aliens say that Earth technology is obviously backward compared to them. But it is more advanced than most planets with civilizations.

Interstellar Accord Alliance

The aliens didn't tell him the location or the name of their planet. (I guess it should be about 50 light years, because when the aliens introduced the principle of the ship, they said 50 light years. This may have been subconscious) The aliens don't allow him to bring back anything, including memories. They use a depth detection device that probes the human brain. If there is a residue. Then the memories in question must be deleted. But this technique does not seem to be 100% effective. With the help of alien scientists, He escapes the scanning of the people of the Interstellar Accord Alliance.
The Interstellar Accord Alliance controls the transfer of alien technology to backward planets. They fear that advanced technology entering the backward planets will lead to mass slaughter.