Original balkan sobronie cigarettes
Finally done with my bounty hunter guy!! (Bot link in the description for if anyone wants to try him out)
2024.06.01 10:31 sylllllv Finally done with my bounty hunter guy!! (Bot link in the description for if anyone wants to try him out)
 | submitted by sylllllv to JanitorAI_Official [link] [comments] |
2024.06.01 09:34 Country_Roads3 What motivated Galactic citizens to join and fight for the previous Sith empires?
In the Galactic Empire of the Original Trilogy Era, the citizens of the galaxy don't know that the Empire is secretly controlled by the Sith. Only a few high-ranking officials and Palpatine's inner circle (inquisitors, red guards, advisors such as Tashu, etc) are aware that Palpatine and Vader are Sith.
The galactic public believes that the evil Sith have been extinct for 1000 years.
The general public who support the Empire believe that Palpatine came to power democratically, after being elected chancellor and then emperor by the Senate.
So it makes sense that lots of citizens throughout the galaxy would support the empire, because they don't know that the Empire is controlled by the Sith, and they are largely unaware that the Empire is evil (at least before Alderaan was destroyed).
It's easy to understand why lots of galactic citizens supported the Empire: they viewed it as the legitimate legal continuation/successor of the old Republic, and they didn't know that the Sith were secretly ruling the Empire.
In contrast, the previous Sith empires were openly ruled by the Sith, and were openly aggressive and totalitarian and basically evil.
What motivated the soldiers, pilots, ship crew members, and other personnel of the old Sith empires?
Why would they want to join and fight for an empire that was ruled by a group (the Sith) who openly treated all non-Sith as expendable trash?
I guess someone could argue: "well, why would anyone fight for Nazi Germany?"
But I don't think it's the same thing. Most of the Europeans, Russians, etc who fought for the Nazis wanted independence for their countries, and/or to be free from communism (another totalitarian system). When they realized that the Nazis weren't going to give them independence and that the Nazis were also totalitarian, a lot of the foreign recruits deserted (and in some cases such as Ukraine and the Balkans, fought against both the Nazis and communists).
But at least in the beginning, the people who fought for the Nazis expected independence and freedom and safety from communism as a reward.
In contrast, the Sith weren't offering independence or freedom to those who joined their empire. The old Sith empires were openly ruled by the Sith, and were openly totalitarian.
Meanwhile, the Republic wasn't imposing Stalin-style oppression on the galaxy. So even if citizens of some planets were upset at Republic policies, it wasn't like the Republic was so oppressive that citizens were desperate enough to embrace the Sith to escape from the Republic.
I guess what I'm asking is, why would people knowingly join and fight for a regime who viewed all non-Sith as disposable cannon fodder?
Were people unaware of what the Sith actually believed, and the teachings of the Sith? Were they deceived into thinking that the Sith were good? That is extremely hard to believe.
Or were most of the soldiers, pilots, etc who fought for the various old Sith empires simply ambitious or opportunists who were hoping to become powerful by fighting for the Sith?
Or were a lot of the the soldiers, pilots, etc simply criminals and mercenaries who liked fighting and killing?
Or were many of the soldiers, pilots, ship crews, etc coerced into joining the Sith military against their will? Or were many of them just poor people who needed money?
I don't understand why so many people would want to fight for the Sith, when the entire Sith ideology is basically narcissism: use everyone else and discard them when they are no longer useful to the Sith.
Why would anyone want to fight for the Sith when they will throw you under the bus the moment they no longer need you?
"Join the Sith military and fight and die as cannon fodder, so the Sith can rule the galaxy" isn't exactly an inspiring recruiting slogan for non-Sith.
As I mentioned above, it's easy to understand why Palpatine's empire had so many hardcore supporters, because the public didn't know he was an evil Sith.
But I don't understand why people would want to join the military of the old Sith empires, which were openly ruled by the Sith.
What do you think?
submitted by Country_Roads3 to MawInstallation [link] [comments]
The galactic public believes that the evil Sith have been extinct for 1000 years.
The general public who support the Empire believe that Palpatine came to power democratically, after being elected chancellor and then emperor by the Senate.
So it makes sense that lots of citizens throughout the galaxy would support the empire, because they don't know that the Empire is controlled by the Sith, and they are largely unaware that the Empire is evil (at least before Alderaan was destroyed).
It's easy to understand why lots of galactic citizens supported the Empire: they viewed it as the legitimate legal continuation/successor of the old Republic, and they didn't know that the Sith were secretly ruling the Empire.
In contrast, the previous Sith empires were openly ruled by the Sith, and were openly aggressive and totalitarian and basically evil.
What motivated the soldiers, pilots, ship crew members, and other personnel of the old Sith empires?
Why would they want to join and fight for an empire that was ruled by a group (the Sith) who openly treated all non-Sith as expendable trash?
I guess someone could argue: "well, why would anyone fight for Nazi Germany?"
But I don't think it's the same thing. Most of the Europeans, Russians, etc who fought for the Nazis wanted independence for their countries, and/or to be free from communism (another totalitarian system). When they realized that the Nazis weren't going to give them independence and that the Nazis were also totalitarian, a lot of the foreign recruits deserted (and in some cases such as Ukraine and the Balkans, fought against both the Nazis and communists).
But at least in the beginning, the people who fought for the Nazis expected independence and freedom and safety from communism as a reward.
In contrast, the Sith weren't offering independence or freedom to those who joined their empire. The old Sith empires were openly ruled by the Sith, and were openly totalitarian.
Meanwhile, the Republic wasn't imposing Stalin-style oppression on the galaxy. So even if citizens of some planets were upset at Republic policies, it wasn't like the Republic was so oppressive that citizens were desperate enough to embrace the Sith to escape from the Republic.
I guess what I'm asking is, why would people knowingly join and fight for a regime who viewed all non-Sith as disposable cannon fodder?
Were people unaware of what the Sith actually believed, and the teachings of the Sith? Were they deceived into thinking that the Sith were good? That is extremely hard to believe.
Or were most of the soldiers, pilots, etc who fought for the various old Sith empires simply ambitious or opportunists who were hoping to become powerful by fighting for the Sith?
Or were a lot of the the soldiers, pilots, etc simply criminals and mercenaries who liked fighting and killing?
Or were many of the soldiers, pilots, ship crews, etc coerced into joining the Sith military against their will? Or were many of them just poor people who needed money?
I don't understand why so many people would want to fight for the Sith, when the entire Sith ideology is basically narcissism: use everyone else and discard them when they are no longer useful to the Sith.
Why would anyone want to fight for the Sith when they will throw you under the bus the moment they no longer need you?
"Join the Sith military and fight and die as cannon fodder, so the Sith can rule the galaxy" isn't exactly an inspiring recruiting slogan for non-Sith.
As I mentioned above, it's easy to understand why Palpatine's empire had so many hardcore supporters, because the public didn't know he was an evil Sith.
But I don't understand why people would want to join the military of the old Sith empires, which were openly ruled by the Sith.
What do you think?
2024.06.01 08:47 Intelligent-Pause510 My very unpopular opinion: Turkey has one of the best if not the best focus trees, and you should give it another go.
Before I begin I must say that I am not a Turkish nationalist by any stretch of the imagination just in case you were wondering.
A ton of people seem to hate the Turkish focus tree online and I think it's well justified from the perspective most people look at it from. If you want to get into the war early with any decent strength you pretty much have to beeline the military focus trees at the expense developing your economy. I've seen many people complain that doing this means it's not a good idea to enter the war until 1942 or 1943.
In my opinion I love that design. I actually think more countries that are minor powers and were struggling to get going should have to choose between getting involved early while weak, or building up and then joining later when you're stronger.
Every time I've played turkey I always spend the first 5 years of the game sucking up to all the different factions and turning my country into an economic powerhouse, going from a measly 16 factories to around 80 most games by 1941. By then I usually have some strong infantry, and fresh modern tank divisions, meanwhile the rest of the world is starting to get a bit exhausted by the fighting.
Joining that late means you can have a decisive impact on the war and turn the tide for any of the major factions. Joining the Soviet invasion while the Germans are already slugging it out and both sides are deeply entrenched lets you completely change the situation very quickly with your new modern military.
Joining the allies in the mid-40s when most of the Balkans has likely been conquered or joined the axis gives you an opportunity strike there exposed flank while they're all busy in Russia.
I actually think the Ottoman empire path is by far the worst path in the game because it's not very original, not very realistic, and not very fun.I bet most people who have played turkey have actually tried this path while ignoring the other ones which are imo a lot cooler.
The balkan path is definitely one of the hardest ones, especially because if you play your cards wrong you could end up fighting both the axis and the Soviets, but it's fun to try to lead a motley crew of nations that historically got pretty shit on during this timeframe against the big bad guys.
The center path is where it's really at though, you get the option to basically buddy up with everyone without actually joining their alliances and get them to give you all sorts of cool stuff. If you maximize your political power gain, you can actually get a lot of factories from the various people of Europe only to turn around and back stab them a few years later for the glory of the Turks!
In my opinion the strongest path is actually the anti-bolshevik Accord where you get a ton of free building slots and some national spirits that upgrade your military. You are of course free to dismantle this faction and join whoever you'd like. The great thing about the middle path is you can actually join most factions as any ideology, which lets you be a little rat and backstab whoever's the weakest. The weakest path is probably the Italian alliance since you're basically just making the discount axis.
The allied path is fun, but in my opinion getting the British land in the Middle East is pretty useless, because it's all non-core land with no resources, factories, or people. I recommend most people who want to do a game with the allies to do the anti-bolshevik Accord, and then just dismantle your faction and join the allies manually.
Joining the axis really lets you go hard on that pan turkism larp, and you get a lot of bonuses to fighting in the cold which can be really useful if you're trying to form turan. I usually don't join the war against the Allies until the comintern is defeated.
I also really like the late game path for trying to form Turan. It makes for a very rewarding story of taking a country that was poor as shit with a terrible military into one of the preeminent powers of the old world.
I think the biggest drawback for turkey is that many other countries that had no business starting major military campaigns that early are able to do so thanks to their focus trees. I personally find the game a lot more interesting when you have countries building up on the sidelines but not quite in the war yet, but when they do join it has a Major impact.
All in all, if you have previously not tried turkey because of all the negative comments about it, or try to and didn't like it because you did the Ottoman empire path or try to get into the war right when it started, consider giving it another try or you take your time to build up a strong economy and the state of the art military that can crush your tired opponents and make even the biggest Turkish ultra nationalist blush.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
submitted by Intelligent-Pause510 to hoi4 [link] [comments]
A ton of people seem to hate the Turkish focus tree online and I think it's well justified from the perspective most people look at it from. If you want to get into the war early with any decent strength you pretty much have to beeline the military focus trees at the expense developing your economy. I've seen many people complain that doing this means it's not a good idea to enter the war until 1942 or 1943.
In my opinion I love that design. I actually think more countries that are minor powers and were struggling to get going should have to choose between getting involved early while weak, or building up and then joining later when you're stronger.
Every time I've played turkey I always spend the first 5 years of the game sucking up to all the different factions and turning my country into an economic powerhouse, going from a measly 16 factories to around 80 most games by 1941. By then I usually have some strong infantry, and fresh modern tank divisions, meanwhile the rest of the world is starting to get a bit exhausted by the fighting.
Joining that late means you can have a decisive impact on the war and turn the tide for any of the major factions. Joining the Soviet invasion while the Germans are already slugging it out and both sides are deeply entrenched lets you completely change the situation very quickly with your new modern military.
Joining the allies in the mid-40s when most of the Balkans has likely been conquered or joined the axis gives you an opportunity strike there exposed flank while they're all busy in Russia.
I actually think the Ottoman empire path is by far the worst path in the game because it's not very original, not very realistic, and not very fun.I bet most people who have played turkey have actually tried this path while ignoring the other ones which are imo a lot cooler.
The balkan path is definitely one of the hardest ones, especially because if you play your cards wrong you could end up fighting both the axis and the Soviets, but it's fun to try to lead a motley crew of nations that historically got pretty shit on during this timeframe against the big bad guys.
The center path is where it's really at though, you get the option to basically buddy up with everyone without actually joining their alliances and get them to give you all sorts of cool stuff. If you maximize your political power gain, you can actually get a lot of factories from the various people of Europe only to turn around and back stab them a few years later for the glory of the Turks!
In my opinion the strongest path is actually the anti-bolshevik Accord where you get a ton of free building slots and some national spirits that upgrade your military. You are of course free to dismantle this faction and join whoever you'd like. The great thing about the middle path is you can actually join most factions as any ideology, which lets you be a little rat and backstab whoever's the weakest. The weakest path is probably the Italian alliance since you're basically just making the discount axis.
The allied path is fun, but in my opinion getting the British land in the Middle East is pretty useless, because it's all non-core land with no resources, factories, or people. I recommend most people who want to do a game with the allies to do the anti-bolshevik Accord, and then just dismantle your faction and join the allies manually.
Joining the axis really lets you go hard on that pan turkism larp, and you get a lot of bonuses to fighting in the cold which can be really useful if you're trying to form turan. I usually don't join the war against the Allies until the comintern is defeated.
I also really like the late game path for trying to form Turan. It makes for a very rewarding story of taking a country that was poor as shit with a terrible military into one of the preeminent powers of the old world.
I think the biggest drawback for turkey is that many other countries that had no business starting major military campaigns that early are able to do so thanks to their focus trees. I personally find the game a lot more interesting when you have countries building up on the sidelines but not quite in the war yet, but when they do join it has a Major impact.
All in all, if you have previously not tried turkey because of all the negative comments about it, or try to and didn't like it because you did the Ottoman empire path or try to get into the war right when it started, consider giving it another try or you take your time to build up a strong economy and the state of the art military that can crush your tired opponents and make even the biggest Turkish ultra nationalist blush.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
2024.06.01 08:19 Winter_hammer Resources on Kurdish History
Silav!
I am a Bosnian living in the US and I have been learning a lot about the Kurds and I have to say, I’m quite fascinated by your history and culture! Idk why but I greatly admire the Kurds and find you all inspiring (even though I’m just some random dude from the balkans haha)
I’ve been trying to expand my knowledge of Kurdish people though unfortunately I do not know anyone personally who identifies as Kurdish (or at least no one where I’m living). Do any of you have suggestions on good books or resources that can provide a comprehensive history of the Kurdish people including origins, cultural practices, religious diversity, and even politics? I appreciate any advice or suggestions.
Spas!
And obligatory: FREE KURDISTAN
submitted by Winter_hammer to kurdistan [link] [comments]
I am a Bosnian living in the US and I have been learning a lot about the Kurds and I have to say, I’m quite fascinated by your history and culture! Idk why but I greatly admire the Kurds and find you all inspiring (even though I’m just some random dude from the balkans haha)
I’ve been trying to expand my knowledge of Kurdish people though unfortunately I do not know anyone personally who identifies as Kurdish (or at least no one where I’m living). Do any of you have suggestions on good books or resources that can provide a comprehensive history of the Kurdish people including origins, cultural practices, religious diversity, and even politics? I appreciate any advice or suggestions.
Spas!
And obligatory: FREE KURDISTAN
2024.06.01 08:14 HughEhhoule Bait Dog: Part 3
For anyone who wants to see how things began.
https://www.reddit.com/HFY/s/S97b2fqIjx
“In what universe would I ever do you a favor? “ I say, sweeping the floor of the reinforced barn.
“It’s not a favor, it’s a trade, bud.
What do you want in return? “ Trenchcoat asks from within the coffin-like cage.
“To be back home, 8 months ago. “ I reply.
Over the past few weeks I’ve managed to integrate myself into the day to day life on the farm. Things are still a grim, horrifying slog, but with every day it gets a bit easier to deal with.
“Give me something I can do. “ The creature pleads.
“Why, so I can wind up on the end of another ‘ Gotcha’ moment? I’m good. “ is my answer.
A few minutes of silence go by, Augustus breaks it.
“I don’t know many secrets of the universe. Facts, not really my bag. But I know a couple.
How about I share one with you?
No one, not the pope, not my brother, not the shit-bird perched on the highest branch of my twisted family tree, knows what happens when you die.
Some of us never will, of course. Others have ways of avoiding it, but at the end of the day, when the lights truly go out, we know next to nothing.
We do know one thing though. There is judgement, by who? Who knows? Why? Not important.
But at the end of the day, if your battery can’t be recharged, you really want to be thinking about how many marks are on each side of the ledger. “
I don’t reply, and for the next hour or so I ignore the pleading and hinting Trenchcoat does.
But that night, as I sip acidic tea, and try to get a handle on how in the fuck old televisions function, his offer is at the forefront of my mind.
He wants to kill, specifically 6 teenagers who, according to him, have been murdering classmates yearly in a twisted ritual.
He wants me to think this is some kind of noble act, he frames it as almost superheroic. The evil prick knows how I feel, knows that I see the blood on my hands every day, and would kill ( possibly literally) for some way to atone.
Is it a play? I honestly don’t think so, something about how eager the twisted thing is, about how he’s treating the situation as a buyer’s market makes me think something about this makes it important to him.
He offers me everything besides safety and protection. I’m desperate for help, but I have no way to hold him to any agreement.
So the thought rolls around in my mind, staving off the few hours of sleep I get.
“Okay, so, I have it on good authority that tea is supposed to taste better over here. What the hell is wrong with this? “ I say, sitting around an outside table with Sylvia, Dafydd and Colin.
Sylvia smiles, “ Barium, calcium, and a touch of castor oil. “
I look at the brew, then at her.
“If I had told you when you got here you need to drink that to mitigate the effects of working with void touched objects and creatures, you’d have assumed the worst, and found a way to avoid drinking it.
Good to see you becoming more perceptive though. “ Sylvia explains.
“That’s called paranoia, Syl. “ I reply.
She laughs, lighting a cigarette.
“Do you know why I’ve let you figure things out on your own? “ The ancient woman asks.
“Accepted? Yes. Understood, not in the slightest. “ I answer, wondering what sadist invented the scone.
“It’s because I need a leader. Someone who can understand, not a boy who puts his head down and listens to orders.
Someone who can make their own decisions when the time comes.
And I think that time is coming soon. “ Her statement feels like a question.
“If I chose to be here I’d be honored.” I counter.
“That attitude on the other hand… needs work.
Nikolas, today, we talk about what’s really going on.
We play a role in a much larger organization, us, and other families like us, are the ‘boots on the ground’ so to speak.
Our job is not to capture creatures, or horde esoteric goods. We do not foil the schemes of demons, nor blind those who look too deeply into the abyss.
We’re given information about events that could steer the path of humanity into a brick wall. And our job is to make sure they don’t happen. “ Sylvia reveals.
“Something is happening with these fights? “ I ask.
“As I said, perceptive.
Yes, it could be next week, it could be in a decade or two. Right now, we know very little about it, other than when it happens, it would be in our best interests to be of a high standing in the pits. “ She replies.
I absorb the information, and t drug laced tea in equal measure. As I do, I feel something, I feel I’m a part of what’s going on.
This is going to sound dumb as hell, but up until this point I hadn’t been taking things seriously. Don’t get me wrong, death is on the table, and I was trying to avoid that. But I was just treading water, hoping something or someone came by and to get me out of this situation.
But as Syl lays things out, I start to think of my place here, what I can be doing to better my state.
“Here is the part where you avoid telling me why you couldn’t have used anyone around here. “ I prod.
I keep her gaze, Colin and Dafydd shift uncomfortably.
“Augustus, he’s a tricky one. But a very lucky find for us.
I’ve tried 2 others. A boy and a girl, both I practically raised.
Marco, he was a warrior. But the demon got in his head. There was nothing that could be done beyond end his suffering.
Zelma, I won’t talk about.
That thing, it has a way of turning someone’s best traits against them. You, are a blank slate, but you’re family. You’re my best guess as to how we can use him to our advantage.
And this is why I need you, not to listen, but to understand. To see what’s happening, and make your own decisions. If I were to give you my knowledge, if I were to arm you with the best weapons, and the most powerful esoteric objects I know. He’d just have more to turn against you. “ Sylvia’s revelation scares me and puts a massive weight on my shoulders all at the same time.
Confidence and fear are both dangerous emotions. The two of them are almost like drugs in a way.
After eight months of mainlining fear, the tiny line of confidence Sylvia gave me, went straight to my head.
Trenchcoat told me where to find a video file. And after a couple of weeks of running it through every possible test I could, to check for any kind of manipulation, supernatural or otherwise, I watched it.
I was confident that the world would be much better off without the people committing the vicious acts contained in those twenty minutes of footage.
A teenage view of morality, I admit. But what do you want, I’m a teenager.
We watch the abandoned house from across the street. It’s a dingy, urban blight affected suburb, that being said, how no one seems to notice the seven foot freak with me, I have no idea.
The kid inside smoking stolen cigarettes and illegally supplied booze is a husky young guy of about 14. The half dozen kids that show up a couple hours later look closer to my age, last couple of years of high school I’m guessing.
The way they get into the house tells me they’ve done this before. The backpacks they all carry tell me they’re there for a purpose.
“How fucking funny would it be if I just killed you here and took off? “ Trenchcoat says, looming behind me.
I tense.
“It’s a joke. Out of my whole rotten family, Art and I, are close. I’m not going anywhere.
Unfortunately for you. “ Trenchcoat shoves me to the ground as he walks toward the house.
We get in through a basement window, I fit easily, Trenchcoat contorts his body to fit through the thin opening, somehow doing so silently.
I keep hearing Sylvia in my head. Telling me how she needs someone that can make his own decisions.
As I stand in the litter strewn basement, beside a creature with child murder on it’s mind I question the decision that I made.
At first the illumination is dim, nothing more than scraps of moonlight filtered through splintered wood. But with an industrial click, suddenly a half dozen lightbulbs bathe the basement in harsh, yellowish light.
Harsh, but not harsh enough to cause the reaction I see from Trenchcoat.
He squints and tries, unsuccessfully to turn away from the lights. Something about them is causing him discomfort. I get my hopes up for a moment he’s going to burst into flame or turn into dust or something, but no dice.
The sight of the walking nightmare looking pained and confused makes me panic. But before I can think of how I fucked up, I hear a voice.
The room, by the sounds of it, the entire house, has been rigged with speakers. Cleverly recessed in sconces and corners.
“Augi, long time no see. And I see you brought a little Renfield fella with you. “ The voice is modulated, Trenchcoat looks curious for a moment.
“Who, is this? You that clown that’s been fucking with Art?” He guesses.
The voice laughs, “Nope.
Who I am, is a guy who managed to find a few boxes of lightbulbs from ’93.
Then again, with eBay, that could make me just about anyone. “
Trenchcoat turns and looks toward the window we came in. He reaches a hand toward it, stopping a few inches away.
“That’s fucking interesting. “ He says, eyes darting around the room.
“Isn’t it though? “ The voice replies, clearly hearing the creature’s whisper, “ Tonight you get the pay for centuries of the worst shit committed by man or beast. I’ve made sure of that. No one in this house is going anywhere for the next 8 hours.
I’m sure the rest of the houseguests are pretty confused as to what’s going on. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so let me give you the Cliff’s notes.
You kids have been killing a monster a year for half a decade. You were the perfect bait, and I have faith you’ll be able to outwit Augi long enough to make it out of here.
If not, you’ll still have helped kill one of the worst things to walk the face of the earth. “
“What the hell is he talking about? “ I ask, a sinking feeling in my gut.
“That’s what you’re worried about right now?
Yeah, these kids are more Scooby gang than Manson family. Don’t blame me for the fact it only took an out of context exorcism video and some promises of making things right with the universe to get you on board with killing them. “ Trenchcoat spits.
I feel afraid, stupid and small. Which is to say, lately, business as usual.
I begin to break lightbulbs, I notice no runes, or anything else that would indicate they have any kind of supernatural origin.
As the basement dims, Trenchcoat starts to breathe easier.
“What’s going on, what stopped you from leaving? “ I ask.
“This little shit is playing The Game. “ Trenchcoat says to himself as much as to me. He looks deep in thought, inspecting the glass from the bulbs.
“What are you talking about? “ I say, my voice cracking slightly.
I hear noises upstairs, frantic foot falls. Indecipherable shouting.
Trenchcoat turns to me, exasperated and filled with anger.
“You’ve heard of ‘Rules’ right? All that ‘Don’t turn left on East street at 3:24 am kind of shit? “ The creature starts, “More and more of them popping up lately. Can’t miss the things.
Well, your kind seems great at finding them, but fucking awful at figuring out what they are. It’s not someone’s new job, or creepy school. The answer is so damned simple, but all of you’ve missed it.
It's a game. It’s, The Game.
It’s ran by the thickest branches of my family tree, and the stakes are high enough even I don’t really understand.
And whoever has us here, he’s weaponized it. The crazy fuck. “
“Call on your family for help then. “ I say, starting to deal with the fear and confusion.
“You first. “ Is Trenchcoat’s reply.
I get his point, and for a twisted, shitty moment, I find myself relating to the murderous thing I’ve been saddled with.
“So what’s the plan? “ I ask.
“Get my hands on whoever’s been stalking me. Between A and B, probably kill those little do-gooders upstairs out of spite.
I need you to circumvent rules we come across. Humans need to agree to follow the rules, it’s why people encounter them in jobs and schools so much. I’m not human, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t get a choice. “ I’m shaking my head as Augustus relates his plan.
“We’re not hurting those kids. “ I say defiantly.
“I’m sure you’ll have no problem with that.
But I’m a God damned child killing monster, bud! How long is that going to take to sink the fuck in?
Me not doing what I do, isn’t like giving up smokes. Think of it like not having a slash for months on end. Sooner or later, like it or not, I’m either finding a bathroom or pissing my pants. “ the rant scares me, but it makes me think.
Something about Augustus, it seems very, 90’s. Whoever was on the speakers was talking about the lightbulbs being from ’93. I’m picking up on a very distinct pattern.
I file that information with the rest of the disconnected lore I’ve managed to find on Trenchcoat as I follow him up the steep, narrow set of stairs.
He whips the thin wood door open, taking an aggressive, lurching step into the livingroom beyond. Surely ready to dispense too far quips and limitless violence, as per usual.
But that doesn’t happen, his rage filled scowl turns into a look of resignation, “Fuck”, is the monster’s last word before he disappears.
I cautiously walk up the loose splinter ridden stairs, expecting Augustus to be waiting around the corner, or engaged in combat with some other horror.
But once I get to the top, there’s nothing more sinister than a livingroom covered in dust and graffiti strewn with old bottles and new stains.
I know my chance when I see it. The particle board sealing the bay window is rotten, the glass long since broken.
No monster, no crazy family, I’ll take my chances with the streets of the U. K.
I tap the crumbling wood with a foot, it rattles, it won’t take much to make a hole.
I line up a kick, freedom no more than a quarter inch of rotten wood away.
“I wouldn’t do that. “ Says a voice behind me, male, around my age I’d guess, but with a confidence that makes me listen, “ Rigged with a load of C4 in the window frame.
Don’t take my word for it, guy wasn’t very subtle. ”
Sure enough, I see small wires running along the edges of the frame and embedded in the particle board.
I turn around, the six people standing in front of me have a vibe I can only describe as severe.
“Are we going to have issues? “ a slight, dark skinned guy asks.
“You making threats? “ I reply.
“No, he isn’t. “ it’s the same voice that warned me about the explosives. It belongs to a squared jawed kid with short black hair, he’s wearing a grey hoodie, and separates himself from the group. “ Call me Kent, and I’m in charge of making threats.
Sid, he’s our people person, he’s just trying to see if you’re someone we need to worry about. “
“We don’t have time to figure this kid out, leave him. “ a short, ginger girl says.
“Ami, why don’t I stay out of equipment, and you and Kent let me figure this kid out?” Sid says.
“I’m Nik. “ I volunteer.
“Good to meet you Nik. “ Sid says, walking around Kent, “Didn’t mean to start things off on the wrong foot.
We’ve just gotten used to doing these kinds of things in our own way over the past bit. We get a little… weird around this time of year if I’m being honest. “
I nod, apprehensive at giving any kind of detailed response.
“Derik” says a tall, pale guy, “ Research. “
“Liam. “ a tanned boy in a flannel shirt and deep blue jeans tells me, “ Oxford doesn’t talk, accident a couple of years back. I’m logistics, he figures spooky shit out. “
Oxford is thin and bald, his face looks much older than it should. Like he’s the victim of some kind of wasting disease.
Telling these kids the truth would be, complicated. And something about their war vet demeanor, makes me want to keep things simple.
So I give them a version of the truth. One where I was plucked from my room by Trenchcoat, and brought here for a slow death.
They buy it. I think.
“Well, I don’t know what this Jigsaw wannabe has planned, but trust me when I say, it can’t be much worse than the things we’ve went through. “ Kent says, trying to be reassuring.
“Just, one more thing. “ Sid begins, “ Why all the scars? “
I know I’ve won most of the group over, but I don’t like the look Sid is giving me.
“Work on a farm, on top of that, the family owns an auction. Lots of bent steel and splinters, what can I say? “ I say, trying to sound casual.
“Fair enough, that accent though. “ Sid’s look becomes almost predatory as he talks.
“Immigration my guy. What’s with the third degree? “ I reply.
“We’ve just met and I’ve only asked three questions.
Humor me here though.
You get taken in the night by that thing that winked out of existence.
Seems pretty nice of him to let you put on shoes. “ Sid lets his statement hang.
Kent turns, I don’t like where this is going. Panic and fear start to well up.
“What’re you thinking Sid? “ Kent asks.
“Kid’s lying. But he’s good at it. “ Sid answers.
“You saying this has turned into a, me, situation? “ Kent’s question starts a deep pit in my stomach.
“I don’t know if we need to go that far. But I don’t like the idea of him having seen our faces. I think this is a Liam situation. “ As Sid says this I look to Liam, who already seems deep in thought.
“Local cops will back our story, but he could go beyond them.
We tie him up until all of this is done, and we get some video of him putting a blade into the body upstairs. He goes telling any stories, it’s us and the locals versus some Yank on video stabbing the kid. “ Liam suggests.
I tried to fight, it went, embarrassingly. Kent had me on the ground in some kind of arm lock in about a second.
I’m bound to an old wooden chair with electrical cords, dragged into a room on the second floor where the chubby kid from before lays face down in a coagulated pool of his own blood. Surrounded by the trappings of misspent youth.
The door locks, and I stare at the corpse, wondering what in the hell went on up here, and in what universe are these psychopaths anything other than what they seemed on screen.
Time becomes almost malleable. I’m terrified to the point where every moment seems to stretch out forever.
Then, I hear it. A wet, organic noise. It starts below the body, and slowly starts to spread.
After a minute or two, the body starts to jerk and twitch. The room is dim as hell, but some kind of ropey, flesh-like substance, is sealing off the door.
I watch as the corpse clumsily gets to it’s feet. It’s skin pale, it’s throat slit to the point of near decapitation.
The head falls backward, obscenely with a small spurt of thick blood.
I scream, I thought I’d been getting used to being face to face with monsters. But fully bound, inches away from a kid that seems to be filled with a twisting mass of barbed, writhing, intestine like tentacles, I realize I’m not used to shit.
The ropey mass forms the barest suggestion of features, a shifting, lumpen mass of ever moving tendrils coming from what used to be the kid’s neck.
The sound spreads more, cracks in the floorboards and walls begin to show hints of the tendrils filling them in like spray foam.
No one is hearing my screams, or if they are, they have no interest in helping.
Ever wonder how you’d handle torture? I think if you’re the kind of person to be reading this, it’s likely you have.
I started by pissing myself.
The second the thin tendril touches my hand, I feel a blinding, flensing pain. I can do nothing but watch, as thousands of nearly hair thin spines tear and consume my flesh. As it slowly, almost, curiously makes it’s way up my arm, it leaves a bloodless, scarred furrow about an eighth of an inch deep.
My second reaction was to lose any pretense at defiance or dignity. I thrash and scream, beg and offer. All of this turning into choked sobs as the thing starts to do much of the same with another tendril.
It felt like I was in hell, every inch of me nothing more than a canvas for this artist of misery.
But pain, it can only go so far. Whether we’re talking about my tolerance, or this thing’s interest.
Mutilation, the brutal wedding of pain and loss. That was it’s next step.
A thick, almost centipede like tendril sits on my pinky like a hot iron. I can only watch in horror as I see fat, then muscle, then bone, then, nothing.
My voice shreds, I tear my wrists and ankles trying desperately to break the expertly tied wires.
My mind is at the breaking point, the creature in front of my makes a terrible, high pitched keening I assume is laughter.
My body is a roadmap of scarred pits and lines. My hand sports a cleanly severed finger. Fuck me, I wish things ended there.
Of all the important parts of the human body, the eye, tends to feel the least pain. Which isn’t to say, as I watched the greedy, grasping claws slowly take pieces of one of mine, it didn’t hurt, but the worst part, was knowing what was happening.
The vision in my left eye begins to distort at first, the edges getting blurry, then going dark. Bit by bit, chunk by irreplaceable chunk, the creature takes half my vision.
I can feel the shifting air on the bare socket, to call what I’m doing screaming, would be understating things to the point of absurdity.
My brain reels at what has just happened. I can feel my grip on reality begin to loosen, pain, worse than can bare, loss of half my sight, it’s too much.
My brain feels filled with static, for a few brief moments I swear, I can hear someone, a voice, trying to tell me something.
But then, a smell hits me. Something so foul, so alien, it yanks me back from the brink of disassociation. I gag and choke, as the air becomes thick with the rotten, chemical reek.
Then, I see it, I see, him.
As randomly as he disappeared, in an instant Trenchcoat is in the room.
He’s torn apart, wounds so deep and ragged, I can see the door on the other side of the room through the worst of them.
One arm is a twisted, broken mess, the flesh jacket torn to shreds of necrotic tissue.
The look on his face is panic, paranoia. A rictus grin of someone that has been kept on his toes for entirely too long.
He trembles and heaves, looking like he could fall over at any second.
He points his good arm at the tendril creature, who I notice has a too familiar eye suspended in it’s shifting features.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the motherfucker who just made me kill my favorite cousin, would you? “ Trenchcoat asks, his voice cracked, and strained.
He gets a confused keening in response.
“Bad day for you then. “ Augustus says.
There is no style to his violence, Trenchcoat grabs the shifting mass, his wicked, claw tipped fingers angling themselves in tendrils. As he lifts the thing, floorboards break, and it’s torn free from the root-like system it was creating in the room.
Three brutal slams cover me in ichor and pieces of creature. Trenchcoat tosses the mewling, twitching pile in a corner and looks at me with disgust.
“You let that thing do this to you? Fuckin’ pathetic, bud.
And who tied you up? “ The nightmare I’ve been cursed with chides me.
“The kids downstairs. “ I say only now realizing I’ve still been sobbing.
One handed, Trenchcoat snaps the wires, then stumbles backward, slowly sliding down the wall.
He coughs, grey, bloody phlegm hitting the ground.
“So, what’s the play here? If this shit broke you, I could use the spare parts, if not, well, you know what the Bible says.
An eye for an eye. “ Trenchcoat grins as he talks, nearly on the brink of death.
And that’s where I think I’m going to leave things. Because, honestly I don’t know what I’m choosing.
I’m mutilated, half blind, using too much of my energy typing to strangers online about things because, I’m so fucking alone here.
If you hear from me again, I hope I made the right move. If not, take this as a lesson on what happens when you screw around with the occult.
submitted by HughEhhoule to HFY [link] [comments]
https://www.reddit.com/HFY/s/S97b2fqIjx
“In what universe would I ever do you a favor? “ I say, sweeping the floor of the reinforced barn.
“It’s not a favor, it’s a trade, bud.
What do you want in return? “ Trenchcoat asks from within the coffin-like cage.
“To be back home, 8 months ago. “ I reply.
Over the past few weeks I’ve managed to integrate myself into the day to day life on the farm. Things are still a grim, horrifying slog, but with every day it gets a bit easier to deal with.
“Give me something I can do. “ The creature pleads.
“Why, so I can wind up on the end of another ‘ Gotcha’ moment? I’m good. “ is my answer.
A few minutes of silence go by, Augustus breaks it.
“I don’t know many secrets of the universe. Facts, not really my bag. But I know a couple.
How about I share one with you?
No one, not the pope, not my brother, not the shit-bird perched on the highest branch of my twisted family tree, knows what happens when you die.
Some of us never will, of course. Others have ways of avoiding it, but at the end of the day, when the lights truly go out, we know next to nothing.
We do know one thing though. There is judgement, by who? Who knows? Why? Not important.
But at the end of the day, if your battery can’t be recharged, you really want to be thinking about how many marks are on each side of the ledger. “
I don’t reply, and for the next hour or so I ignore the pleading and hinting Trenchcoat does.
But that night, as I sip acidic tea, and try to get a handle on how in the fuck old televisions function, his offer is at the forefront of my mind.
He wants to kill, specifically 6 teenagers who, according to him, have been murdering classmates yearly in a twisted ritual.
He wants me to think this is some kind of noble act, he frames it as almost superheroic. The evil prick knows how I feel, knows that I see the blood on my hands every day, and would kill ( possibly literally) for some way to atone.
Is it a play? I honestly don’t think so, something about how eager the twisted thing is, about how he’s treating the situation as a buyer’s market makes me think something about this makes it important to him.
He offers me everything besides safety and protection. I’m desperate for help, but I have no way to hold him to any agreement.
So the thought rolls around in my mind, staving off the few hours of sleep I get.
“Okay, so, I have it on good authority that tea is supposed to taste better over here. What the hell is wrong with this? “ I say, sitting around an outside table with Sylvia, Dafydd and Colin.
Sylvia smiles, “ Barium, calcium, and a touch of castor oil. “
I look at the brew, then at her.
“If I had told you when you got here you need to drink that to mitigate the effects of working with void touched objects and creatures, you’d have assumed the worst, and found a way to avoid drinking it.
Good to see you becoming more perceptive though. “ Sylvia explains.
“That’s called paranoia, Syl. “ I reply.
She laughs, lighting a cigarette.
“Do you know why I’ve let you figure things out on your own? “ The ancient woman asks.
“Accepted? Yes. Understood, not in the slightest. “ I answer, wondering what sadist invented the scone.
“It’s because I need a leader. Someone who can understand, not a boy who puts his head down and listens to orders.
Someone who can make their own decisions when the time comes.
And I think that time is coming soon. “ Her statement feels like a question.
“If I chose to be here I’d be honored.” I counter.
“That attitude on the other hand… needs work.
Nikolas, today, we talk about what’s really going on.
We play a role in a much larger organization, us, and other families like us, are the ‘boots on the ground’ so to speak.
Our job is not to capture creatures, or horde esoteric goods. We do not foil the schemes of demons, nor blind those who look too deeply into the abyss.
We’re given information about events that could steer the path of humanity into a brick wall. And our job is to make sure they don’t happen. “ Sylvia reveals.
“Something is happening with these fights? “ I ask.
“As I said, perceptive.
Yes, it could be next week, it could be in a decade or two. Right now, we know very little about it, other than when it happens, it would be in our best interests to be of a high standing in the pits. “ She replies.
I absorb the information, and t drug laced tea in equal measure. As I do, I feel something, I feel I’m a part of what’s going on.
This is going to sound dumb as hell, but up until this point I hadn’t been taking things seriously. Don’t get me wrong, death is on the table, and I was trying to avoid that. But I was just treading water, hoping something or someone came by and to get me out of this situation.
But as Syl lays things out, I start to think of my place here, what I can be doing to better my state.
“Here is the part where you avoid telling me why you couldn’t have used anyone around here. “ I prod.
I keep her gaze, Colin and Dafydd shift uncomfortably.
“Augustus, he’s a tricky one. But a very lucky find for us.
I’ve tried 2 others. A boy and a girl, both I practically raised.
Marco, he was a warrior. But the demon got in his head. There was nothing that could be done beyond end his suffering.
Zelma, I won’t talk about.
That thing, it has a way of turning someone’s best traits against them. You, are a blank slate, but you’re family. You’re my best guess as to how we can use him to our advantage.
And this is why I need you, not to listen, but to understand. To see what’s happening, and make your own decisions. If I were to give you my knowledge, if I were to arm you with the best weapons, and the most powerful esoteric objects I know. He’d just have more to turn against you. “ Sylvia’s revelation scares me and puts a massive weight on my shoulders all at the same time.
Confidence and fear are both dangerous emotions. The two of them are almost like drugs in a way.
After eight months of mainlining fear, the tiny line of confidence Sylvia gave me, went straight to my head.
Trenchcoat told me where to find a video file. And after a couple of weeks of running it through every possible test I could, to check for any kind of manipulation, supernatural or otherwise, I watched it.
I was confident that the world would be much better off without the people committing the vicious acts contained in those twenty minutes of footage.
A teenage view of morality, I admit. But what do you want, I’m a teenager.
We watch the abandoned house from across the street. It’s a dingy, urban blight affected suburb, that being said, how no one seems to notice the seven foot freak with me, I have no idea.
The kid inside smoking stolen cigarettes and illegally supplied booze is a husky young guy of about 14. The half dozen kids that show up a couple hours later look closer to my age, last couple of years of high school I’m guessing.
The way they get into the house tells me they’ve done this before. The backpacks they all carry tell me they’re there for a purpose.
“How fucking funny would it be if I just killed you here and took off? “ Trenchcoat says, looming behind me.
I tense.
“It’s a joke. Out of my whole rotten family, Art and I, are close. I’m not going anywhere.
Unfortunately for you. “ Trenchcoat shoves me to the ground as he walks toward the house.
We get in through a basement window, I fit easily, Trenchcoat contorts his body to fit through the thin opening, somehow doing so silently.
I keep hearing Sylvia in my head. Telling me how she needs someone that can make his own decisions.
As I stand in the litter strewn basement, beside a creature with child murder on it’s mind I question the decision that I made.
At first the illumination is dim, nothing more than scraps of moonlight filtered through splintered wood. But with an industrial click, suddenly a half dozen lightbulbs bathe the basement in harsh, yellowish light.
Harsh, but not harsh enough to cause the reaction I see from Trenchcoat.
He squints and tries, unsuccessfully to turn away from the lights. Something about them is causing him discomfort. I get my hopes up for a moment he’s going to burst into flame or turn into dust or something, but no dice.
The sight of the walking nightmare looking pained and confused makes me panic. But before I can think of how I fucked up, I hear a voice.
The room, by the sounds of it, the entire house, has been rigged with speakers. Cleverly recessed in sconces and corners.
“Augi, long time no see. And I see you brought a little Renfield fella with you. “ The voice is modulated, Trenchcoat looks curious for a moment.
“Who, is this? You that clown that’s been fucking with Art?” He guesses.
The voice laughs, “Nope.
Who I am, is a guy who managed to find a few boxes of lightbulbs from ’93.
Then again, with eBay, that could make me just about anyone. “
Trenchcoat turns and looks toward the window we came in. He reaches a hand toward it, stopping a few inches away.
“That’s fucking interesting. “ He says, eyes darting around the room.
“Isn’t it though? “ The voice replies, clearly hearing the creature’s whisper, “ Tonight you get the pay for centuries of the worst shit committed by man or beast. I’ve made sure of that. No one in this house is going anywhere for the next 8 hours.
I’m sure the rest of the houseguests are pretty confused as to what’s going on. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so let me give you the Cliff’s notes.
You kids have been killing a monster a year for half a decade. You were the perfect bait, and I have faith you’ll be able to outwit Augi long enough to make it out of here.
If not, you’ll still have helped kill one of the worst things to walk the face of the earth. “
“What the hell is he talking about? “ I ask, a sinking feeling in my gut.
“That’s what you’re worried about right now?
Yeah, these kids are more Scooby gang than Manson family. Don’t blame me for the fact it only took an out of context exorcism video and some promises of making things right with the universe to get you on board with killing them. “ Trenchcoat spits.
I feel afraid, stupid and small. Which is to say, lately, business as usual.
I begin to break lightbulbs, I notice no runes, or anything else that would indicate they have any kind of supernatural origin.
As the basement dims, Trenchcoat starts to breathe easier.
“What’s going on, what stopped you from leaving? “ I ask.
“This little shit is playing The Game. “ Trenchcoat says to himself as much as to me. He looks deep in thought, inspecting the glass from the bulbs.
“What are you talking about? “ I say, my voice cracking slightly.
I hear noises upstairs, frantic foot falls. Indecipherable shouting.
Trenchcoat turns to me, exasperated and filled with anger.
“You’ve heard of ‘Rules’ right? All that ‘Don’t turn left on East street at 3:24 am kind of shit? “ The creature starts, “More and more of them popping up lately. Can’t miss the things.
Well, your kind seems great at finding them, but fucking awful at figuring out what they are. It’s not someone’s new job, or creepy school. The answer is so damned simple, but all of you’ve missed it.
It's a game. It’s, The Game.
It’s ran by the thickest branches of my family tree, and the stakes are high enough even I don’t really understand.
And whoever has us here, he’s weaponized it. The crazy fuck. “
“Call on your family for help then. “ I say, starting to deal with the fear and confusion.
“You first. “ Is Trenchcoat’s reply.
I get his point, and for a twisted, shitty moment, I find myself relating to the murderous thing I’ve been saddled with.
“So what’s the plan? “ I ask.
“Get my hands on whoever’s been stalking me. Between A and B, probably kill those little do-gooders upstairs out of spite.
I need you to circumvent rules we come across. Humans need to agree to follow the rules, it’s why people encounter them in jobs and schools so much. I’m not human, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t get a choice. “ I’m shaking my head as Augustus relates his plan.
“We’re not hurting those kids. “ I say defiantly.
“I’m sure you’ll have no problem with that.
But I’m a God damned child killing monster, bud! How long is that going to take to sink the fuck in?
Me not doing what I do, isn’t like giving up smokes. Think of it like not having a slash for months on end. Sooner or later, like it or not, I’m either finding a bathroom or pissing my pants. “ the rant scares me, but it makes me think.
Something about Augustus, it seems very, 90’s. Whoever was on the speakers was talking about the lightbulbs being from ’93. I’m picking up on a very distinct pattern.
I file that information with the rest of the disconnected lore I’ve managed to find on Trenchcoat as I follow him up the steep, narrow set of stairs.
He whips the thin wood door open, taking an aggressive, lurching step into the livingroom beyond. Surely ready to dispense too far quips and limitless violence, as per usual.
But that doesn’t happen, his rage filled scowl turns into a look of resignation, “Fuck”, is the monster’s last word before he disappears.
I cautiously walk up the loose splinter ridden stairs, expecting Augustus to be waiting around the corner, or engaged in combat with some other horror.
But once I get to the top, there’s nothing more sinister than a livingroom covered in dust and graffiti strewn with old bottles and new stains.
I know my chance when I see it. The particle board sealing the bay window is rotten, the glass long since broken.
No monster, no crazy family, I’ll take my chances with the streets of the U. K.
I tap the crumbling wood with a foot, it rattles, it won’t take much to make a hole.
I line up a kick, freedom no more than a quarter inch of rotten wood away.
“I wouldn’t do that. “ Says a voice behind me, male, around my age I’d guess, but with a confidence that makes me listen, “ Rigged with a load of C4 in the window frame.
Don’t take my word for it, guy wasn’t very subtle. ”
Sure enough, I see small wires running along the edges of the frame and embedded in the particle board.
I turn around, the six people standing in front of me have a vibe I can only describe as severe.
“Are we going to have issues? “ a slight, dark skinned guy asks.
“You making threats? “ I reply.
“No, he isn’t. “ it’s the same voice that warned me about the explosives. It belongs to a squared jawed kid with short black hair, he’s wearing a grey hoodie, and separates himself from the group. “ Call me Kent, and I’m in charge of making threats.
Sid, he’s our people person, he’s just trying to see if you’re someone we need to worry about. “
“We don’t have time to figure this kid out, leave him. “ a short, ginger girl says.
“Ami, why don’t I stay out of equipment, and you and Kent let me figure this kid out?” Sid says.
“I’m Nik. “ I volunteer.
“Good to meet you Nik. “ Sid says, walking around Kent, “Didn’t mean to start things off on the wrong foot.
We’ve just gotten used to doing these kinds of things in our own way over the past bit. We get a little… weird around this time of year if I’m being honest. “
I nod, apprehensive at giving any kind of detailed response.
“Derik” says a tall, pale guy, “ Research. “
“Liam. “ a tanned boy in a flannel shirt and deep blue jeans tells me, “ Oxford doesn’t talk, accident a couple of years back. I’m logistics, he figures spooky shit out. “
Oxford is thin and bald, his face looks much older than it should. Like he’s the victim of some kind of wasting disease.
Telling these kids the truth would be, complicated. And something about their war vet demeanor, makes me want to keep things simple.
So I give them a version of the truth. One where I was plucked from my room by Trenchcoat, and brought here for a slow death.
They buy it. I think.
“Well, I don’t know what this Jigsaw wannabe has planned, but trust me when I say, it can’t be much worse than the things we’ve went through. “ Kent says, trying to be reassuring.
“Just, one more thing. “ Sid begins, “ Why all the scars? “
I know I’ve won most of the group over, but I don’t like the look Sid is giving me.
“Work on a farm, on top of that, the family owns an auction. Lots of bent steel and splinters, what can I say? “ I say, trying to sound casual.
“Fair enough, that accent though. “ Sid’s look becomes almost predatory as he talks.
“Immigration my guy. What’s with the third degree? “ I reply.
“We’ve just met and I’ve only asked three questions.
Humor me here though.
You get taken in the night by that thing that winked out of existence.
Seems pretty nice of him to let you put on shoes. “ Sid lets his statement hang.
Kent turns, I don’t like where this is going. Panic and fear start to well up.
“What’re you thinking Sid? “ Kent asks.
“Kid’s lying. But he’s good at it. “ Sid answers.
“You saying this has turned into a, me, situation? “ Kent’s question starts a deep pit in my stomach.
“I don’t know if we need to go that far. But I don’t like the idea of him having seen our faces. I think this is a Liam situation. “ As Sid says this I look to Liam, who already seems deep in thought.
“Local cops will back our story, but he could go beyond them.
We tie him up until all of this is done, and we get some video of him putting a blade into the body upstairs. He goes telling any stories, it’s us and the locals versus some Yank on video stabbing the kid. “ Liam suggests.
I tried to fight, it went, embarrassingly. Kent had me on the ground in some kind of arm lock in about a second.
I’m bound to an old wooden chair with electrical cords, dragged into a room on the second floor where the chubby kid from before lays face down in a coagulated pool of his own blood. Surrounded by the trappings of misspent youth.
The door locks, and I stare at the corpse, wondering what in the hell went on up here, and in what universe are these psychopaths anything other than what they seemed on screen.
Time becomes almost malleable. I’m terrified to the point where every moment seems to stretch out forever.
Then, I hear it. A wet, organic noise. It starts below the body, and slowly starts to spread.
After a minute or two, the body starts to jerk and twitch. The room is dim as hell, but some kind of ropey, flesh-like substance, is sealing off the door.
I watch as the corpse clumsily gets to it’s feet. It’s skin pale, it’s throat slit to the point of near decapitation.
The head falls backward, obscenely with a small spurt of thick blood.
I scream, I thought I’d been getting used to being face to face with monsters. But fully bound, inches away from a kid that seems to be filled with a twisting mass of barbed, writhing, intestine like tentacles, I realize I’m not used to shit.
The ropey mass forms the barest suggestion of features, a shifting, lumpen mass of ever moving tendrils coming from what used to be the kid’s neck.
The sound spreads more, cracks in the floorboards and walls begin to show hints of the tendrils filling them in like spray foam.
No one is hearing my screams, or if they are, they have no interest in helping.
Ever wonder how you’d handle torture? I think if you’re the kind of person to be reading this, it’s likely you have.
I started by pissing myself.
The second the thin tendril touches my hand, I feel a blinding, flensing pain. I can do nothing but watch, as thousands of nearly hair thin spines tear and consume my flesh. As it slowly, almost, curiously makes it’s way up my arm, it leaves a bloodless, scarred furrow about an eighth of an inch deep.
My second reaction was to lose any pretense at defiance or dignity. I thrash and scream, beg and offer. All of this turning into choked sobs as the thing starts to do much of the same with another tendril.
It felt like I was in hell, every inch of me nothing more than a canvas for this artist of misery.
But pain, it can only go so far. Whether we’re talking about my tolerance, or this thing’s interest.
Mutilation, the brutal wedding of pain and loss. That was it’s next step.
A thick, almost centipede like tendril sits on my pinky like a hot iron. I can only watch in horror as I see fat, then muscle, then bone, then, nothing.
My voice shreds, I tear my wrists and ankles trying desperately to break the expertly tied wires.
My mind is at the breaking point, the creature in front of my makes a terrible, high pitched keening I assume is laughter.
My body is a roadmap of scarred pits and lines. My hand sports a cleanly severed finger. Fuck me, I wish things ended there.
Of all the important parts of the human body, the eye, tends to feel the least pain. Which isn’t to say, as I watched the greedy, grasping claws slowly take pieces of one of mine, it didn’t hurt, but the worst part, was knowing what was happening.
The vision in my left eye begins to distort at first, the edges getting blurry, then going dark. Bit by bit, chunk by irreplaceable chunk, the creature takes half my vision.
I can feel the shifting air on the bare socket, to call what I’m doing screaming, would be understating things to the point of absurdity.
My brain reels at what has just happened. I can feel my grip on reality begin to loosen, pain, worse than can bare, loss of half my sight, it’s too much.
My brain feels filled with static, for a few brief moments I swear, I can hear someone, a voice, trying to tell me something.
But then, a smell hits me. Something so foul, so alien, it yanks me back from the brink of disassociation. I gag and choke, as the air becomes thick with the rotten, chemical reek.
Then, I see it, I see, him.
As randomly as he disappeared, in an instant Trenchcoat is in the room.
He’s torn apart, wounds so deep and ragged, I can see the door on the other side of the room through the worst of them.
One arm is a twisted, broken mess, the flesh jacket torn to shreds of necrotic tissue.
The look on his face is panic, paranoia. A rictus grin of someone that has been kept on his toes for entirely too long.
He trembles and heaves, looking like he could fall over at any second.
He points his good arm at the tendril creature, who I notice has a too familiar eye suspended in it’s shifting features.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the motherfucker who just made me kill my favorite cousin, would you? “ Trenchcoat asks, his voice cracked, and strained.
He gets a confused keening in response.
“Bad day for you then. “ Augustus says.
There is no style to his violence, Trenchcoat grabs the shifting mass, his wicked, claw tipped fingers angling themselves in tendrils. As he lifts the thing, floorboards break, and it’s torn free from the root-like system it was creating in the room.
Three brutal slams cover me in ichor and pieces of creature. Trenchcoat tosses the mewling, twitching pile in a corner and looks at me with disgust.
“You let that thing do this to you? Fuckin’ pathetic, bud.
And who tied you up? “ The nightmare I’ve been cursed with chides me.
“The kids downstairs. “ I say only now realizing I’ve still been sobbing.
One handed, Trenchcoat snaps the wires, then stumbles backward, slowly sliding down the wall.
He coughs, grey, bloody phlegm hitting the ground.
“So, what’s the play here? If this shit broke you, I could use the spare parts, if not, well, you know what the Bible says.
An eye for an eye. “ Trenchcoat grins as he talks, nearly on the brink of death.
And that’s where I think I’m going to leave things. Because, honestly I don’t know what I’m choosing.
I’m mutilated, half blind, using too much of my energy typing to strangers online about things because, I’m so fucking alone here.
If you hear from me again, I hope I made the right move. If not, take this as a lesson on what happens when you screw around with the occult.
2024.06.01 08:11 HughEhhoule Bait Dog: Part 3
For anyone who wants to see how I got into this situation.
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/s/R0DAycoVIm
“In what universe would I ever do you a favor? “ I say, sweeping the floor of the reinforced barn.
“It’s not a favor, it’s a trade, bud.
What do you want in return? “ Trenchcoat asks from within the coffin-like cage.
“To be back home, 8 months ago. “ I reply.
Over the past few weeks I’ve managed to integrate myself into the day to day life on the farm. Things are still a grim, horrifying slog, but with every day it gets a bit easier to deal with.
“Give me something I can do. “ The creature pleads.
“Why, so I can wind up on the end of another ‘ Gotcha’ moment? I’m good. “ is my answer.
A few minutes of silence go by, Augustus breaks it.
“I don’t know many secrets of the universe. Facts, not really my bag. But I know a couple.
How about I share one with you?
No one, not the pope, not my brother, not the shit-bird perched on the highest branch of my twisted family tree, knows what happens when you die.
Some of us never will, of course. Others have ways of avoiding it, but at the end of the day, when the lights truly go out, we know next to nothing.
We do know one thing though. There is judgement, by who? Who knows? Why? Not important.
But at the end of the day, if your battery can’t be recharged, you really want to be thinking about how many marks are on each side of the ledger. “
I don’t reply, and for the next hour or so I ignore the pleading and hinting Trenchcoat does.
But that night, as I sip acidic tea, and try to get a handle on how in the fuck old televisions function, his offer is at the forefront of my mind.
He wants to kill, specifically 6 teenagers who, according to him, have been murdering classmates yearly in a twisted ritual.
He wants me to think this is some kind of noble act, he frames it as almost superheroic. The evil prick knows how I feel, knows that I see the blood on my hands every day, and would kill ( possibly literally) for some way to atone.
Is it a play? I honestly don’t think so, something about how eager the twisted thing is, about how he’s treating the situation as a buyer’s market makes me think something about this makes it important to him.
He offers me everything besides safety and protection. I’m desperate for help, but I have no way to hold him to any agreement.
So the thought rolls around in my mind, staving off the few hours of sleep I get.
“Okay, so, I have it on good authority that tea is supposed to taste better over here. What the hell is wrong with this? “ I say, sitting around an outside table with Sylvia, Dafydd and Colin.
Sylvia smiles, “ Barium, calcium, and a touch of castor oil. “
I look at the brew, then at her.
“If I had told you when you got here you need to drink that to mitigate the effects of working with void touched objects and creatures, you’d have assumed the worst, and found a way to avoid drinking it.
Good to see you becoming more perceptive though. “ Sylvia explains.
“That’s called paranoia, Syl. “ I reply.
She laughs, lighting a cigarette.
“Do you know why I’ve let you figure things out on your own? “ The ancient woman asks.
“Accepted? Yes. Understood, not in the slightest. “ I answer, wondering what sadist invented the scone.
“It’s because I need a leader. Someone who can understand, not a boy who puts his head down and listens to orders.
Someone who can make their own decisions when the time comes.
And I think that time is coming soon. “ Her statement feels like a question.
“If I chose to be here I’d be honored.” I counter.
“That attitude on the other hand… needs work.
Nikolas, today, we talk about what’s really going on.
We play a role in a much larger organization, us, and other families like us, are the ‘boots on the ground’ so to speak.
Our job is not to capture creatures, or horde esoteric goods. We do not foil the schemes of demons, nor blind those who look too deeply into the abyss.
We’re given information about events that could steer the path of humanity into a brick wall. And our job is to make sure they don’t happen. “ Sylvia reveals.
“Something is happening with these fights? “ I ask.
“As I said, perceptive.
Yes, it could be next week, it could be in a decade or two. Right now, we know very little about it, other than when it happens, it would be in our best interests to be of a high standing in the pits. “ She replies.
I absorb the information, and t drug laced tea in equal measure. As I do, I feel something, I feel I’m a part of what’s going on.
This is going to sound dumb as hell, but up until this point I hadn’t been taking things seriously. Don’t get me wrong, death is on the table, and I was trying to avoid that. But I was just treading water, hoping something or someone came by and to get me out of this situation.
But as Syl lays things out, I start to think of my place here, what I can be doing to better my state.
“Here is the part where you avoid telling me why you couldn’t have used anyone around here. “ I prod.
I keep her gaze, Colin and Dafydd shift uncomfortably.
“Augustus, he’s a tricky one. But a very lucky find for us.
I’ve tried 2 others. A boy and a girl, both I practically raised.
Marco, he was a warrior. But the demon got in his head. There was nothing that could be done beyond end his suffering.
Zelma, I won’t talk about.
That thing, it has a way of turning someone’s best traits against them. You, are a blank slate, but you’re family. You’re my best guess as to how we can use him to our advantage.
And this is why I need you, not to listen, but to understand. To see what’s happening, and make your own decisions. If I were to give you my knowledge, if I were to arm you with the best weapons, and the most powerful esoteric objects I know. He’d just have more to turn against you. “ Sylvia’s revelation scares me and puts a massive weight on my shoulders all at the same time.
Confidence and fear are both dangerous emotions. The two of them are almost like drugs in a way.
After eight months of mainlining fear, the tiny line of confidence Sylvia gave me, went straight to my head.
Trenchcoat told me where to find a video file. And after a couple of weeks of running it through every possible test I could, to check for any kind of manipulation, supernatural or otherwise, I watched it.
I was confident that the world would be much better off without the people committing the vicious acts contained in those twenty minutes of footage.
A teenage view of morality, I admit. But what do you want, I’m a teenager.
We watch the abandoned house from across the street. It’s a dingy, urban blight affected suburb, that being said, how no one seems to notice the seven foot freak with me, I have no idea.
The kid inside smoking stolen cigarettes and illegally supplied booze is a husky young guy of about 14. The half dozen kids that show up a couple hours later look closer to my age, last couple of years of high school I’m guessing.
The way they get into the house tells me they’ve done this before. The backpacks they all carry tell me they’re there for a purpose.
“How fucking funny would it be if I just killed you here and took off? “ Trenchcoat says, looming behind me.
I tense.
“It’s a joke. Out of my whole rotten family, Art and I, are close. I’m not going anywhere.
Unfortunately for you. “ Trenchcoat shoves me to the ground as he walks toward the house.
We get in through a basement window, I fit easily, Trenchcoat contorts his body to fit through the thin opening, somehow doing so silently.
I keep hearing Sylvia in my head. Telling me how she needs someone that can make his own decisions.
As I stand in the litter strewn basement, beside a creature with child murder on it’s mind I question the decision that I made.
At first the illumination is dim, nothing more than scraps of moonlight filtered through splintered wood. But with an industrial click, suddenly a half dozen lightbulbs bathe the basement in harsh, yellowish light.
Harsh, but not harsh enough to cause the reaction I see from Trenchcoat.
He squints and tries, unsuccessfully to turn away from the lights. Something about them is causing him discomfort. I get my hopes up for a moment he’s going to burst into flame or turn into dust or something, but no dice.
The sight of the walking nightmare looking pained and confused makes me panic. But before I can think of how I fucked up, I hear a voice.
The room, by the sounds of it, the entire house, has been rigged with speakers. Cleverly recessed in sconces and corners.
“Augi, long time no see. And I see you brought a little Renfield fella with you. “ The voice is modulated, Trenchcoat looks curious for a moment.
“Who, is this? You that clown that’s been fucking with Art?” He guesses.
The voice laughs, “Nope.
Who I am, is a guy who managed to find a few boxes of lightbulbs from ’93.
Then again, with eBay, that could make me just about anyone. “
Trenchcoat turns and looks toward the window we came in. He reaches a hand toward it, stopping a few inches away.
“That’s fucking interesting. “ He says, eyes darting around the room.
“Isn’t it though? “ The voice replies, clearly hearing the creature’s whisper, “ Tonight you get the pay for centuries of the worst shit committed by man or beast. I’ve made sure of that. No one in this house is going anywhere for the next 8 hours.
I’m sure the rest of the houseguests are pretty confused as to what’s going on. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so let me give you the Cliff’s notes.
You kids have been killing a monster a year for half a decade. You were the perfect bait, and I have faith you’ll be able to outwit Augi long enough to make it out of here.
If not, you’ll still have helped kill one of the worst things to walk the face of the earth. “
“What the hell is he talking about? “ I ask, a sinking feeling in my gut.
“That’s what you’re worried about right now?
Yeah, these kids are more Scooby gang than Manson family. Don’t blame me for the fact it only took an out of context exorcism video and some promises of making things right with the universe to get you on board with killing them. “ Trenchcoat spits.
I feel afraid, stupid and small. Which is to say, lately, business as usual.
I begin to break lightbulbs, I notice no runes, or anything else that would indicate they have any kind of supernatural origin.
As the basement dims, Trenchcoat starts to breathe easier.
“What’s going on, what stopped you from leaving? “ I ask.
“This little shit is playing The Game. “ Trenchcoat says to himself as much as to me. He looks deep in thought, inspecting the glass from the bulbs.
“What are you talking about? “ I say, my voice cracking slightly.
I hear noises upstairs, frantic foot falls. Indecipherable shouting.
Trenchcoat turns to me, exasperated and filled with anger.
“You’ve heard of ‘Rules’ right? All that ‘Don’t turn left on East street at 3:24 am kind of shit? “ The creature starts, “More and more of them popping up lately. Can’t miss the things.
Well, your kind seems great at finding them, but fucking awful at figuring out what they are. It’s not someone’s new job, or creepy school. The answer is so damned simple, but all of you’ve missed it.
It's a game. It’s, The Game.
It’s ran by the thickest branches of my family tree, and the stakes are high enough even I don’t really understand.
And whoever has us here, he’s weaponized it. The crazy fuck. “
“Call on your family for help then. “ I say, starting to deal with the fear and confusion.
“You first. “ Is Trenchcoat’s reply.
I get his point, and for a twisted, shitty moment, I find myself relating to the murderous thing I’ve been saddled with.
“So what’s the plan? “ I ask.
“Get my hands on whoever’s been stalking me. Between A and B, probably kill those little do-gooders upstairs out of spite.
I need you to circumvent rules we come across. Humans need to agree to follow the rules, it’s why people encounter them in jobs and schools so much. I’m not human, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t get a choice. “ I’m shaking my head as Augustus relates his plan.
“We’re not hurting those kids. “ I say defiantly.
“I’m sure you’ll have no problem with that.
But I’m a God damned child killing monster, bud! How long is that going to take to sink the fuck in?
Me not doing what I do, isn’t like giving up smokes. Think of it like not having a slash for months on end. Sooner or later, like it or not, I’m either finding a bathroom or pissing my pants. “ the rant scares me, but it makes me think.
Something about Augustus, it seems very, 90’s. Whoever was on the speakers was talking about the lightbulbs being from ’93. I’m picking up on a very distinct pattern.
I file that information with the rest of the disconnected lore I’ve managed to find on Trenchcoat as I follow him up the steep, narrow set of stairs.
He whips the thin wood door open, taking an aggressive, lurching step into the livingroom beyond. Surely ready to dispense too far quips and limitless violence, as per usual.
But that doesn’t happen, his rage filled scowl turns into a look of resignation, “Fuck”, is the monster’s last word before he disappears.
I cautiously walk up the loose splinter ridden stairs, expecting Augustus to be waiting around the corner, or engaged in combat with some other horror.
But once I get to the top, there’s nothing more sinister than a livingroom covered in dust and graffiti strewn with old bottles and new stains.
I know my chance when I see it. The particle board sealing the bay window is rotten, the glass long since broken.
No monster, no crazy family, I’ll take my chances with the streets of the U. K.
I tap the crumbling wood with a foot, it rattles, it won’t take much to make a hole.
I line up a kick, freedom no more than a quarter inch of rotten wood away.
“I wouldn’t do that. “ Says a voice behind me, male, around my age I’d guess, but with a confidence that makes me listen, “ Rigged with a load of C4 in the window frame.
Don’t take my word for it, guy wasn’t very subtle. ”
Sure enough, I see small wires running along the edges of the frame and embedded in the particle board.
I turn around, the six people standing in front of me have a vibe I can only describe as severe.
“Are we going to have issues? “ a slight, dark skinned guy asks.
“You making threats? “ I reply.
“No, he isn’t. “ it’s the same voice that warned me about the explosives. It belongs to a squared jawed kid with short black hair, he’s wearing a grey hoodie, and separates himself from the group. “ Call me Kent, and I’m in charge of making threats.
Sid, he’s our people person, he’s just trying to see if you’re someone we need to worry about. “
“We don’t have time to figure this kid out, leave him. “ a short, ginger girl says.
“Ami, why don’t I stay out of equipment, and you and Kent let me figure this kid out?” Sid says.
“I’m Nik. “ I volunteer.
“Good to meet you Nik. “ Sid says, walking around Kent, “Didn’t mean to start things off on the wrong foot.
We’ve just gotten used to doing these kinds of things in our own way over the past bit. We get a little… weird around this time of year if I’m being honest. “
I nod, apprehensive at giving any kind of detailed response.
“Derik” says a tall, pale guy, “ Research. “
“Liam. “ a tanned boy in a flannel shirt and deep blue jeans tells me, “ Oxford doesn’t talk, accident a couple of years back. I’m logistics, he figures spooky shit out. “
Oxford is thin and bald, his face looks much older than it should. Like he’s the victim of some kind of wasting disease.
Telling these kids the truth would be, complicated. And something about their war vet demeanor, makes me want to keep things simple.
So I give them a version of the truth. One where I was plucked from my room by Trenchcoat, and brought here for a slow death.
They buy it. I think.
“Well, I don’t know what this Jigsaw wannabe has planned, but trust me when I say, it can’t be much worse than the things we’ve went through. “ Kent says, trying to be reassuring.
“Just, one more thing. “ Sid begins, “ Why all the scars? “
I know I’ve won most of the group over, but I don’t like the look Sid is giving me.
“Work on a farm, on top of that, the family owns an auction. Lots of bent steel and splinters, what can I say? “ I say, trying to sound casual.
“Fair enough, that accent though. “ Sid’s look becomes almost predatory as he talks.
“Immigration my guy. What’s with the third degree? “ I reply.
“We’ve just met and I’ve only asked three questions.
Humor me here though.
You get taken in the night by that thing that winked out of existence.
Seems pretty nice of him to let you put on shoes. “ Sid lets his statement hang.
Kent turns, I don’t like where this is going. Panic and fear start to well up.
“What’re you thinking Sid? “ Kent asks.
“Kid’s lying. But he’s good at it. “ Sid answers.
“You saying this has turned into a, me, situation? “ Kent’s question starts a deep pit in my stomach.
“I don’t know if we need to go that far. But I don’t like the idea of him having seen our faces. I think this is a Liam situation. “ As Sid says this I look to Liam, who already seems deep in thought.
“Local cops will back our story, but he could go beyond them.
We tie him up until all of this is done, and we get some video of him putting a blade into the body upstairs. He goes telling any stories, it’s us and the locals versus some Yank on video stabbing the kid. “ Liam suggests.
I tried to fight, it went, embarrassingly. Kent had me on the ground in some kind of arm lock in about a second.
I’m bound to an old wooden chair with electrical cords, dragged into a room on the second floor where the chubby kid from before lays face down in a coagulated pool of his own blood. Surrounded by the trappings of misspent youth.
The door locks, and I stare at the corpse, wondering what in the hell went on up here, and in what universe are these psychopaths anything other than what they seemed on screen.
Time becomes almost malleable. I’m terrified to the point where every moment seems to stretch out forever.
Then, I hear it. A wet, organic noise. It starts below the body, and slowly starts to spread.
After a minute or two, the body starts to jerk and twitch. The room is dim as hell, but some kind of ropey, flesh-like substance, is sealing off the door.
I watch as the corpse clumsily gets to it’s feet. It’s skin pale, it’s throat slit to the point of near decapitation.
The head falls backward, obscenely with a small spurt of thick blood.
I scream, I thought I’d been getting used to being face to face with monsters. But fully bound, inches away from a kid that seems to be filled with a twisting mass of barbed, writhing, intestine like tentacles, I realize I’m not used to shit.
The ropey mass forms the barest suggestion of features, a shifting, lumpen mass of ever moving tendrils coming from what used to be the kid’s neck.
The sound spreads more, cracks in the floorboards and walls begin to show hints of the tendrils filling them in like spray foam.
No one is hearing my screams, or if they are, they have no interest in helping.
Ever wonder how you’d handle torture? I think if you’re the kind of person to be reading this, it’s likely you have.
I started by pissing myself.
The second the thin tendril touches my hand, I feel a blinding, flensing pain. I can do nothing but watch, as thousands of nearly hair thin spines tear and consume my flesh. As it slowly, almost, curiously makes it’s way up my arm, it leaves a bloodless, scarred furrow about an eighth of an inch deep.
My second reaction was to lose any pretense at defiance or dignity. I thrash and scream, beg and offer. All of this turning into choked sobs as the thing starts to do much of the same with another tendril.
It felt like I was in hell, every inch of me nothing more than a canvas for this artist of misery.
But pain, it can only go so far. Whether we’re talking about my tolerance, or this thing’s interest.
Mutilation, the brutal wedding of pain and loss. That was it’s next step.
A thick, almost centipede like tendril sits on my pinky like a hot iron. I can only watch in horror as I see fat, then muscle, then bone, then, nothing.
My voice shreds, I tear my wrists and ankles trying desperately to break the expertly tied wires.
My mind is at the breaking point, the creature in front of my makes a terrible, high pitched keening I assume is laughter.
My body is a roadmap of scarred pits and lines. My hand sports a cleanly severed finger. Fuck me, I wish things ended there.
Of all the important parts of the human body, the eye, tends to feel the least pain. Which isn’t to say, as I watched the greedy, grasping claws slowly take pieces of one of mine, it didn’t hurt, but the worst part, was knowing what was happening.
The vision in my left eye begins to distort at first, the edges getting blurry, then going dark. Bit by bit, chunk by irreplaceable chunk, the creature takes half my vision.
I can feel the shifting air on the bare socket, to call what I’m doing screaming, would be understating things to the point of absurdity.
My brain reels at what has just happened. I can feel my grip on reality begin to loosen, pain, worse than can bare, loss of half my sight, it’s too much.
My brain feels filled with static, for a few brief moments I swear, I can hear someone, a voice, trying to tell me something.
But then, a smell hits me. Something so foul, so alien, it yanks me back from the brink of disassociation. I gag and choke, as the air becomes thick with the rotten, chemical reek.
Then, I see it, I see, him.
As randomly as he disappeared, in an instant Trenchcoat is in the room.
He’s torn apart, wounds so deep and ragged, I can see the door on the other side of the room through the worst of them.
One arm is a twisted, broken mess, the flesh jacket torn to shreds of necrotic tissue.
The look on his face is panic, paranoia. A rictus grin of someone that has been kept on his toes for entirely too long.
He trembles and heaves, looking like he could fall over at any second.
He points his good arm at the tendril creature, who I notice has a too familiar eye suspended in it’s shifting features.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the motherfucker who just made me kill my favorite cousin, would you? “ Trenchcoat asks, his voice cracked, and strained.
He gets a confused keening in response.
“Bad day for you then. “ Augustus says.
There is no style to his violence, Trenchcoat grabs the shifting mass, his wicked, claw tipped fingers angling themselves in tendrils. As he lifts the thing, floorboards break, and it’s torn free from the root-like system it was creating in the room.
Three brutal slams cover me in ichor and pieces of creature. Trenchcoat tosses the mewling, twitching pile in a corner and looks at me with disgust.
“You let that thing do this to you? Fuckin’ pathetic, bud.
And who tied you up? “ The nightmare I’ve been cursed with chides me.
“The kids downstairs. “ I say only now realizing I’ve still been sobbing.
One handed, Trenchcoat snaps the wires, then stumbles backward, slowly sliding down the wall.
He coughs, grey, bloody phlegm hitting the ground.
“So, what’s the play here? If this shit broke you, I could use the spare parts, if not, well, you know what the Bible says.
An eye for an eye. “ Trenchcoat grins as he talks, nearly on the brink of death.
And that’s where I think I’m going to leave things. Because, honestly I don’t know what I’m choosing.
I’m mutilated, half blind, using too much of my energy typing to strangers online about things because, I’m so fucking alone here.
If you hear from me again, I hope I made the right move. If not, take this as a lesson on what happens when you screw around with the occult.
submitted by HughEhhoule to nosleep [link] [comments]
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/s/R0DAycoVIm
“In what universe would I ever do you a favor? “ I say, sweeping the floor of the reinforced barn.
“It’s not a favor, it’s a trade, bud.
What do you want in return? “ Trenchcoat asks from within the coffin-like cage.
“To be back home, 8 months ago. “ I reply.
Over the past few weeks I’ve managed to integrate myself into the day to day life on the farm. Things are still a grim, horrifying slog, but with every day it gets a bit easier to deal with.
“Give me something I can do. “ The creature pleads.
“Why, so I can wind up on the end of another ‘ Gotcha’ moment? I’m good. “ is my answer.
A few minutes of silence go by, Augustus breaks it.
“I don’t know many secrets of the universe. Facts, not really my bag. But I know a couple.
How about I share one with you?
No one, not the pope, not my brother, not the shit-bird perched on the highest branch of my twisted family tree, knows what happens when you die.
Some of us never will, of course. Others have ways of avoiding it, but at the end of the day, when the lights truly go out, we know next to nothing.
We do know one thing though. There is judgement, by who? Who knows? Why? Not important.
But at the end of the day, if your battery can’t be recharged, you really want to be thinking about how many marks are on each side of the ledger. “
I don’t reply, and for the next hour or so I ignore the pleading and hinting Trenchcoat does.
But that night, as I sip acidic tea, and try to get a handle on how in the fuck old televisions function, his offer is at the forefront of my mind.
He wants to kill, specifically 6 teenagers who, according to him, have been murdering classmates yearly in a twisted ritual.
He wants me to think this is some kind of noble act, he frames it as almost superheroic. The evil prick knows how I feel, knows that I see the blood on my hands every day, and would kill ( possibly literally) for some way to atone.
Is it a play? I honestly don’t think so, something about how eager the twisted thing is, about how he’s treating the situation as a buyer’s market makes me think something about this makes it important to him.
He offers me everything besides safety and protection. I’m desperate for help, but I have no way to hold him to any agreement.
So the thought rolls around in my mind, staving off the few hours of sleep I get.
“Okay, so, I have it on good authority that tea is supposed to taste better over here. What the hell is wrong with this? “ I say, sitting around an outside table with Sylvia, Dafydd and Colin.
Sylvia smiles, “ Barium, calcium, and a touch of castor oil. “
I look at the brew, then at her.
“If I had told you when you got here you need to drink that to mitigate the effects of working with void touched objects and creatures, you’d have assumed the worst, and found a way to avoid drinking it.
Good to see you becoming more perceptive though. “ Sylvia explains.
“That’s called paranoia, Syl. “ I reply.
She laughs, lighting a cigarette.
“Do you know why I’ve let you figure things out on your own? “ The ancient woman asks.
“Accepted? Yes. Understood, not in the slightest. “ I answer, wondering what sadist invented the scone.
“It’s because I need a leader. Someone who can understand, not a boy who puts his head down and listens to orders.
Someone who can make their own decisions when the time comes.
And I think that time is coming soon. “ Her statement feels like a question.
“If I chose to be here I’d be honored.” I counter.
“That attitude on the other hand… needs work.
Nikolas, today, we talk about what’s really going on.
We play a role in a much larger organization, us, and other families like us, are the ‘boots on the ground’ so to speak.
Our job is not to capture creatures, or horde esoteric goods. We do not foil the schemes of demons, nor blind those who look too deeply into the abyss.
We’re given information about events that could steer the path of humanity into a brick wall. And our job is to make sure they don’t happen. “ Sylvia reveals.
“Something is happening with these fights? “ I ask.
“As I said, perceptive.
Yes, it could be next week, it could be in a decade or two. Right now, we know very little about it, other than when it happens, it would be in our best interests to be of a high standing in the pits. “ She replies.
I absorb the information, and t drug laced tea in equal measure. As I do, I feel something, I feel I’m a part of what’s going on.
This is going to sound dumb as hell, but up until this point I hadn’t been taking things seriously. Don’t get me wrong, death is on the table, and I was trying to avoid that. But I was just treading water, hoping something or someone came by and to get me out of this situation.
But as Syl lays things out, I start to think of my place here, what I can be doing to better my state.
“Here is the part where you avoid telling me why you couldn’t have used anyone around here. “ I prod.
I keep her gaze, Colin and Dafydd shift uncomfortably.
“Augustus, he’s a tricky one. But a very lucky find for us.
I’ve tried 2 others. A boy and a girl, both I practically raised.
Marco, he was a warrior. But the demon got in his head. There was nothing that could be done beyond end his suffering.
Zelma, I won’t talk about.
That thing, it has a way of turning someone’s best traits against them. You, are a blank slate, but you’re family. You’re my best guess as to how we can use him to our advantage.
And this is why I need you, not to listen, but to understand. To see what’s happening, and make your own decisions. If I were to give you my knowledge, if I were to arm you with the best weapons, and the most powerful esoteric objects I know. He’d just have more to turn against you. “ Sylvia’s revelation scares me and puts a massive weight on my shoulders all at the same time.
Confidence and fear are both dangerous emotions. The two of them are almost like drugs in a way.
After eight months of mainlining fear, the tiny line of confidence Sylvia gave me, went straight to my head.
Trenchcoat told me where to find a video file. And after a couple of weeks of running it through every possible test I could, to check for any kind of manipulation, supernatural or otherwise, I watched it.
I was confident that the world would be much better off without the people committing the vicious acts contained in those twenty minutes of footage.
A teenage view of morality, I admit. But what do you want, I’m a teenager.
We watch the abandoned house from across the street. It’s a dingy, urban blight affected suburb, that being said, how no one seems to notice the seven foot freak with me, I have no idea.
The kid inside smoking stolen cigarettes and illegally supplied booze is a husky young guy of about 14. The half dozen kids that show up a couple hours later look closer to my age, last couple of years of high school I’m guessing.
The way they get into the house tells me they’ve done this before. The backpacks they all carry tell me they’re there for a purpose.
“How fucking funny would it be if I just killed you here and took off? “ Trenchcoat says, looming behind me.
I tense.
“It’s a joke. Out of my whole rotten family, Art and I, are close. I’m not going anywhere.
Unfortunately for you. “ Trenchcoat shoves me to the ground as he walks toward the house.
We get in through a basement window, I fit easily, Trenchcoat contorts his body to fit through the thin opening, somehow doing so silently.
I keep hearing Sylvia in my head. Telling me how she needs someone that can make his own decisions.
As I stand in the litter strewn basement, beside a creature with child murder on it’s mind I question the decision that I made.
At first the illumination is dim, nothing more than scraps of moonlight filtered through splintered wood. But with an industrial click, suddenly a half dozen lightbulbs bathe the basement in harsh, yellowish light.
Harsh, but not harsh enough to cause the reaction I see from Trenchcoat.
He squints and tries, unsuccessfully to turn away from the lights. Something about them is causing him discomfort. I get my hopes up for a moment he’s going to burst into flame or turn into dust or something, but no dice.
The sight of the walking nightmare looking pained and confused makes me panic. But before I can think of how I fucked up, I hear a voice.
The room, by the sounds of it, the entire house, has been rigged with speakers. Cleverly recessed in sconces and corners.
“Augi, long time no see. And I see you brought a little Renfield fella with you. “ The voice is modulated, Trenchcoat looks curious for a moment.
“Who, is this? You that clown that’s been fucking with Art?” He guesses.
The voice laughs, “Nope.
Who I am, is a guy who managed to find a few boxes of lightbulbs from ’93.
Then again, with eBay, that could make me just about anyone. “
Trenchcoat turns and looks toward the window we came in. He reaches a hand toward it, stopping a few inches away.
“That’s fucking interesting. “ He says, eyes darting around the room.
“Isn’t it though? “ The voice replies, clearly hearing the creature’s whisper, “ Tonight you get the pay for centuries of the worst shit committed by man or beast. I’ve made sure of that. No one in this house is going anywhere for the next 8 hours.
I’m sure the rest of the houseguests are pretty confused as to what’s going on. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so let me give you the Cliff’s notes.
You kids have been killing a monster a year for half a decade. You were the perfect bait, and I have faith you’ll be able to outwit Augi long enough to make it out of here.
If not, you’ll still have helped kill one of the worst things to walk the face of the earth. “
“What the hell is he talking about? “ I ask, a sinking feeling in my gut.
“That’s what you’re worried about right now?
Yeah, these kids are more Scooby gang than Manson family. Don’t blame me for the fact it only took an out of context exorcism video and some promises of making things right with the universe to get you on board with killing them. “ Trenchcoat spits.
I feel afraid, stupid and small. Which is to say, lately, business as usual.
I begin to break lightbulbs, I notice no runes, or anything else that would indicate they have any kind of supernatural origin.
As the basement dims, Trenchcoat starts to breathe easier.
“What’s going on, what stopped you from leaving? “ I ask.
“This little shit is playing The Game. “ Trenchcoat says to himself as much as to me. He looks deep in thought, inspecting the glass from the bulbs.
“What are you talking about? “ I say, my voice cracking slightly.
I hear noises upstairs, frantic foot falls. Indecipherable shouting.
Trenchcoat turns to me, exasperated and filled with anger.
“You’ve heard of ‘Rules’ right? All that ‘Don’t turn left on East street at 3:24 am kind of shit? “ The creature starts, “More and more of them popping up lately. Can’t miss the things.
Well, your kind seems great at finding them, but fucking awful at figuring out what they are. It’s not someone’s new job, or creepy school. The answer is so damned simple, but all of you’ve missed it.
It's a game. It’s, The Game.
It’s ran by the thickest branches of my family tree, and the stakes are high enough even I don’t really understand.
And whoever has us here, he’s weaponized it. The crazy fuck. “
“Call on your family for help then. “ I say, starting to deal with the fear and confusion.
“You first. “ Is Trenchcoat’s reply.
I get his point, and for a twisted, shitty moment, I find myself relating to the murderous thing I’ve been saddled with.
“So what’s the plan? “ I ask.
“Get my hands on whoever’s been stalking me. Between A and B, probably kill those little do-gooders upstairs out of spite.
I need you to circumvent rules we come across. Humans need to agree to follow the rules, it’s why people encounter them in jobs and schools so much. I’m not human, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t get a choice. “ I’m shaking my head as Augustus relates his plan.
“We’re not hurting those kids. “ I say defiantly.
“I’m sure you’ll have no problem with that.
But I’m a God damned child killing monster, bud! How long is that going to take to sink the fuck in?
Me not doing what I do, isn’t like giving up smokes. Think of it like not having a slash for months on end. Sooner or later, like it or not, I’m either finding a bathroom or pissing my pants. “ the rant scares me, but it makes me think.
Something about Augustus, it seems very, 90’s. Whoever was on the speakers was talking about the lightbulbs being from ’93. I’m picking up on a very distinct pattern.
I file that information with the rest of the disconnected lore I’ve managed to find on Trenchcoat as I follow him up the steep, narrow set of stairs.
He whips the thin wood door open, taking an aggressive, lurching step into the livingroom beyond. Surely ready to dispense too far quips and limitless violence, as per usual.
But that doesn’t happen, his rage filled scowl turns into a look of resignation, “Fuck”, is the monster’s last word before he disappears.
I cautiously walk up the loose splinter ridden stairs, expecting Augustus to be waiting around the corner, or engaged in combat with some other horror.
But once I get to the top, there’s nothing more sinister than a livingroom covered in dust and graffiti strewn with old bottles and new stains.
I know my chance when I see it. The particle board sealing the bay window is rotten, the glass long since broken.
No monster, no crazy family, I’ll take my chances with the streets of the U. K.
I tap the crumbling wood with a foot, it rattles, it won’t take much to make a hole.
I line up a kick, freedom no more than a quarter inch of rotten wood away.
“I wouldn’t do that. “ Says a voice behind me, male, around my age I’d guess, but with a confidence that makes me listen, “ Rigged with a load of C4 in the window frame.
Don’t take my word for it, guy wasn’t very subtle. ”
Sure enough, I see small wires running along the edges of the frame and embedded in the particle board.
I turn around, the six people standing in front of me have a vibe I can only describe as severe.
“Are we going to have issues? “ a slight, dark skinned guy asks.
“You making threats? “ I reply.
“No, he isn’t. “ it’s the same voice that warned me about the explosives. It belongs to a squared jawed kid with short black hair, he’s wearing a grey hoodie, and separates himself from the group. “ Call me Kent, and I’m in charge of making threats.
Sid, he’s our people person, he’s just trying to see if you’re someone we need to worry about. “
“We don’t have time to figure this kid out, leave him. “ a short, ginger girl says.
“Ami, why don’t I stay out of equipment, and you and Kent let me figure this kid out?” Sid says.
“I’m Nik. “ I volunteer.
“Good to meet you Nik. “ Sid says, walking around Kent, “Didn’t mean to start things off on the wrong foot.
We’ve just gotten used to doing these kinds of things in our own way over the past bit. We get a little… weird around this time of year if I’m being honest. “
I nod, apprehensive at giving any kind of detailed response.
“Derik” says a tall, pale guy, “ Research. “
“Liam. “ a tanned boy in a flannel shirt and deep blue jeans tells me, “ Oxford doesn’t talk, accident a couple of years back. I’m logistics, he figures spooky shit out. “
Oxford is thin and bald, his face looks much older than it should. Like he’s the victim of some kind of wasting disease.
Telling these kids the truth would be, complicated. And something about their war vet demeanor, makes me want to keep things simple.
So I give them a version of the truth. One where I was plucked from my room by Trenchcoat, and brought here for a slow death.
They buy it. I think.
“Well, I don’t know what this Jigsaw wannabe has planned, but trust me when I say, it can’t be much worse than the things we’ve went through. “ Kent says, trying to be reassuring.
“Just, one more thing. “ Sid begins, “ Why all the scars? “
I know I’ve won most of the group over, but I don’t like the look Sid is giving me.
“Work on a farm, on top of that, the family owns an auction. Lots of bent steel and splinters, what can I say? “ I say, trying to sound casual.
“Fair enough, that accent though. “ Sid’s look becomes almost predatory as he talks.
“Immigration my guy. What’s with the third degree? “ I reply.
“We’ve just met and I’ve only asked three questions.
Humor me here though.
You get taken in the night by that thing that winked out of existence.
Seems pretty nice of him to let you put on shoes. “ Sid lets his statement hang.
Kent turns, I don’t like where this is going. Panic and fear start to well up.
“What’re you thinking Sid? “ Kent asks.
“Kid’s lying. But he’s good at it. “ Sid answers.
“You saying this has turned into a, me, situation? “ Kent’s question starts a deep pit in my stomach.
“I don’t know if we need to go that far. But I don’t like the idea of him having seen our faces. I think this is a Liam situation. “ As Sid says this I look to Liam, who already seems deep in thought.
“Local cops will back our story, but he could go beyond them.
We tie him up until all of this is done, and we get some video of him putting a blade into the body upstairs. He goes telling any stories, it’s us and the locals versus some Yank on video stabbing the kid. “ Liam suggests.
I tried to fight, it went, embarrassingly. Kent had me on the ground in some kind of arm lock in about a second.
I’m bound to an old wooden chair with electrical cords, dragged into a room on the second floor where the chubby kid from before lays face down in a coagulated pool of his own blood. Surrounded by the trappings of misspent youth.
The door locks, and I stare at the corpse, wondering what in the hell went on up here, and in what universe are these psychopaths anything other than what they seemed on screen.
Time becomes almost malleable. I’m terrified to the point where every moment seems to stretch out forever.
Then, I hear it. A wet, organic noise. It starts below the body, and slowly starts to spread.
After a minute or two, the body starts to jerk and twitch. The room is dim as hell, but some kind of ropey, flesh-like substance, is sealing off the door.
I watch as the corpse clumsily gets to it’s feet. It’s skin pale, it’s throat slit to the point of near decapitation.
The head falls backward, obscenely with a small spurt of thick blood.
I scream, I thought I’d been getting used to being face to face with monsters. But fully bound, inches away from a kid that seems to be filled with a twisting mass of barbed, writhing, intestine like tentacles, I realize I’m not used to shit.
The ropey mass forms the barest suggestion of features, a shifting, lumpen mass of ever moving tendrils coming from what used to be the kid’s neck.
The sound spreads more, cracks in the floorboards and walls begin to show hints of the tendrils filling them in like spray foam.
No one is hearing my screams, or if they are, they have no interest in helping.
Ever wonder how you’d handle torture? I think if you’re the kind of person to be reading this, it’s likely you have.
I started by pissing myself.
The second the thin tendril touches my hand, I feel a blinding, flensing pain. I can do nothing but watch, as thousands of nearly hair thin spines tear and consume my flesh. As it slowly, almost, curiously makes it’s way up my arm, it leaves a bloodless, scarred furrow about an eighth of an inch deep.
My second reaction was to lose any pretense at defiance or dignity. I thrash and scream, beg and offer. All of this turning into choked sobs as the thing starts to do much of the same with another tendril.
It felt like I was in hell, every inch of me nothing more than a canvas for this artist of misery.
But pain, it can only go so far. Whether we’re talking about my tolerance, or this thing’s interest.
Mutilation, the brutal wedding of pain and loss. That was it’s next step.
A thick, almost centipede like tendril sits on my pinky like a hot iron. I can only watch in horror as I see fat, then muscle, then bone, then, nothing.
My voice shreds, I tear my wrists and ankles trying desperately to break the expertly tied wires.
My mind is at the breaking point, the creature in front of my makes a terrible, high pitched keening I assume is laughter.
My body is a roadmap of scarred pits and lines. My hand sports a cleanly severed finger. Fuck me, I wish things ended there.
Of all the important parts of the human body, the eye, tends to feel the least pain. Which isn’t to say, as I watched the greedy, grasping claws slowly take pieces of one of mine, it didn’t hurt, but the worst part, was knowing what was happening.
The vision in my left eye begins to distort at first, the edges getting blurry, then going dark. Bit by bit, chunk by irreplaceable chunk, the creature takes half my vision.
I can feel the shifting air on the bare socket, to call what I’m doing screaming, would be understating things to the point of absurdity.
My brain reels at what has just happened. I can feel my grip on reality begin to loosen, pain, worse than can bare, loss of half my sight, it’s too much.
My brain feels filled with static, for a few brief moments I swear, I can hear someone, a voice, trying to tell me something.
But then, a smell hits me. Something so foul, so alien, it yanks me back from the brink of disassociation. I gag and choke, as the air becomes thick with the rotten, chemical reek.
Then, I see it, I see, him.
As randomly as he disappeared, in an instant Trenchcoat is in the room.
He’s torn apart, wounds so deep and ragged, I can see the door on the other side of the room through the worst of them.
One arm is a twisted, broken mess, the flesh jacket torn to shreds of necrotic tissue.
The look on his face is panic, paranoia. A rictus grin of someone that has been kept on his toes for entirely too long.
He trembles and heaves, looking like he could fall over at any second.
He points his good arm at the tendril creature, who I notice has a too familiar eye suspended in it’s shifting features.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the motherfucker who just made me kill my favorite cousin, would you? “ Trenchcoat asks, his voice cracked, and strained.
He gets a confused keening in response.
“Bad day for you then. “ Augustus says.
There is no style to his violence, Trenchcoat grabs the shifting mass, his wicked, claw tipped fingers angling themselves in tendrils. As he lifts the thing, floorboards break, and it’s torn free from the root-like system it was creating in the room.
Three brutal slams cover me in ichor and pieces of creature. Trenchcoat tosses the mewling, twitching pile in a corner and looks at me with disgust.
“You let that thing do this to you? Fuckin’ pathetic, bud.
And who tied you up? “ The nightmare I’ve been cursed with chides me.
“The kids downstairs. “ I say only now realizing I’ve still been sobbing.
One handed, Trenchcoat snaps the wires, then stumbles backward, slowly sliding down the wall.
He coughs, grey, bloody phlegm hitting the ground.
“So, what’s the play here? If this shit broke you, I could use the spare parts, if not, well, you know what the Bible says.
An eye for an eye. “ Trenchcoat grins as he talks, nearly on the brink of death.
And that’s where I think I’m going to leave things. Because, honestly I don’t know what I’m choosing.
I’m mutilated, half blind, using too much of my energy typing to strangers online about things because, I’m so fucking alone here.
If you hear from me again, I hope I made the right move. If not, take this as a lesson on what happens when you screw around with the occult.
2024.06.01 06:33 ArmyTop3456 L’eau D’issey Pour Homme Intense is better than the original
Recently, I got LDPHI and it’s a gem that i’m sure not many have discovered yet. And so I am here to spread the gospel.
As not many people have found this fragrance, I’ll try to describe it as best as possible. It has quite a strong smoky background, but not quite cigarette smoke, more like cigarette smoke without the bad qualities of it, just, a soothing incense smoke. Paired with the smoke is a smell similar to the original, but not identical. The original smells like bright citrussy yuzu, while this smells like the same yuzu, but not as bright and overpowering, more dried, wet and floral. Floral in the way of, the smell you smell when standing in a flower field, not a feminine floral kind of scent.
As it starts to dry down, it maintains most of what has been described, but gradually, hints of the smell of wet paper starts to appear, until in the dry down, it is the star of the show, pushing the smoke and citrus aside. This wet paper combined with a sort of wet burnt yuzu and incense smoke makes a very unique but appealing fragrance that grows on you like mold growing on bread.
The only downside (to some people) is that it doesn’t project as long as you’d want, but for me, I’m perfectly okay with that as i wear fragrances for myself, and would rather have my fragrance be discovered, not announced.
This fragrance appeals to people ALOT, as people i know who would smell this on me would ask what im wearing, and in one instance, one of my close friends went in for seconds, thirds, and even a fourth time, smelling my shirt furiously and saying that he fucks with it hard.
LDPHI can be used in the office, dates sometimes even outings, and especially rainy days. Anyone who has their shit together or wants to smell like they’re nonchalant and rich, this is for you. LDPHI can be used in the summer, spring, and autumn, unlike LDPH, which only feels great on really hot summer days. You may find some uses in winter but an insense-y wet citrus scent wouldn’t really suit winter as far as I’m aware.
In conclusion, I feel like everyone should try this fragrance out atleast once, it doesn’t matter what your opinion on the original is, because this fragrance is appealing to both sides of the spectrum, It’s just a much more refined and interesting fragrance than the citrus blast that we all know as the original L’eau D’issey Pour Homme.
submitted by ArmyTop3456 to fragrance [link] [comments]
As not many people have found this fragrance, I’ll try to describe it as best as possible. It has quite a strong smoky background, but not quite cigarette smoke, more like cigarette smoke without the bad qualities of it, just, a soothing incense smoke. Paired with the smoke is a smell similar to the original, but not identical. The original smells like bright citrussy yuzu, while this smells like the same yuzu, but not as bright and overpowering, more dried, wet and floral. Floral in the way of, the smell you smell when standing in a flower field, not a feminine floral kind of scent.
As it starts to dry down, it maintains most of what has been described, but gradually, hints of the smell of wet paper starts to appear, until in the dry down, it is the star of the show, pushing the smoke and citrus aside. This wet paper combined with a sort of wet burnt yuzu and incense smoke makes a very unique but appealing fragrance that grows on you like mold growing on bread.
The only downside (to some people) is that it doesn’t project as long as you’d want, but for me, I’m perfectly okay with that as i wear fragrances for myself, and would rather have my fragrance be discovered, not announced.
This fragrance appeals to people ALOT, as people i know who would smell this on me would ask what im wearing, and in one instance, one of my close friends went in for seconds, thirds, and even a fourth time, smelling my shirt furiously and saying that he fucks with it hard.
LDPHI can be used in the office, dates sometimes even outings, and especially rainy days. Anyone who has their shit together or wants to smell like they’re nonchalant and rich, this is for you. LDPHI can be used in the summer, spring, and autumn, unlike LDPH, which only feels great on really hot summer days. You may find some uses in winter but an insense-y wet citrus scent wouldn’t really suit winter as far as I’m aware.
In conclusion, I feel like everyone should try this fragrance out atleast once, it doesn’t matter what your opinion on the original is, because this fragrance is appealing to both sides of the spectrum, It’s just a much more refined and interesting fragrance than the citrus blast that we all know as the original L’eau D’issey Pour Homme.
2024.06.01 05:10 cosmicgyal Trip Review of Milan-->Venice-->Rome as a South Asian family!
Just got back from our mini tour of the three cities and we packed a lot in 7 days but it was worth it! So we are originally from NYC.
Milan
Bullet trains, trains from the airport, etc are pretty straightforward although I couldn't figure out the Rome's public transportation metro card thing.
Some helpful tips:
submitted by cosmicgyal to ItalyTravel [link] [comments]
Milan
- It was almost comparable to NYC honestly LOL
- We just saw the Duomo and the Galleria, nothing crazy going on in the city TBH
- It was super dreamy, I loved it. We stayed on the main island and took the 4L bus to Venice St. Lucia.
- So here you have to worry about the pick pocketers esp on the Rialto bridge. I called one out and she cursed me out LOL. Then she went behind me near a corner and smoked a cigarette while she had her fake pregnant belly?!! There were a few men that looked sus and I thought they could be pick pocketers too.
- We did our trip super budgeted so we didn't get on any of the gondola rides but its okay you're not missing out much. We did take the water taxis!! Don't be afraid to use them!!
- Food scene was great
- There are TONS of things to see, if you want to stick to just touristy things def give yourself 3-4 days.
- There was tons of police presence near the Trevi fountain and throughout the busy areas honestly I wouldn't worry about the pick pocketers here. In general ppl were nice to let ppl in and take pictures so don't get scared of the crowd when you see it near the fountain.
- Food scene also really great! Don't be afraid to try the seafood!
- Yes the colosseum is as magnificent and grand as you hear. The hype is REAL.
- We stayed at a hotel kind of far from the main attractions, we stayed near Villa Borghese and honestly it was kind of hard. Not too many taxis are around and it was hard calling for them. I personally had a hard time with taxis in Rome.
- Speaking of, since we were so deep into the suburbs of Rome, all restaurants close from like 3-almost 9-10PM, which is normal so just be prepared for that.
Bullet trains, trains from the airport, etc are pretty straightforward although I couldn't figure out the Rome's public transportation metro card thing.
Some helpful tips:
- Have some euros on hand
- Use a phone strap. Honestly most places take apple pay/ digital card so you can just travel with your phone you will be fine.
- The street sellers can get aggressive just stand your ground
- Travel light omg why were some ppl traveling with big a$$ suitcases?!!
- Def learn basic italian, like good morning, how are you, if you eat vegetarian, thank you, etc.
2024.06.01 04:44 OrganizationFalse668 [WTS] 50 cent premiums $100 dollar mystery boxes 📦
Shipping and Payment
USPS priority box /envelope $10
USPS 1st class $6 up to 7 oz
“ Risky “ 1st class 🫧 envelope non-machinable $2 -
I take Zelle , Venmo , Cash App
No notes ! emoji okay
I also accept Mailed Cash and trades for gold, goldbacks , maybe platinum and palladium.
I make excellent packages but after I drop it off its the responsibility of USPS.
Date proof:
https://imgur.com/a/eJoX0OT
Head or Tails nude 1oz silver round $70
$1 fv 50c 90% $22
$100 random 3 oz lot , could be anything .999 and 1 oz
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Star Wars beskar bar 1oz $40
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1oz silver 5 mark Germania “ witchcraft “ - $65
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Simpson family Christmas $60
1oz silver Superman Samoa 🇼🇸 $5 coin $31
Spider-Man 1oz $38
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Batman 1oz $70
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Grogu Star Wars 1oz silver $31
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Bar 1
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SWAMP THING 1oz colorized- $50 📷
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ET 🪐 Niue 1oz 2 dollar movie poster bar $40
1 oz trump wanted rounds $31
Beavis and butthead 🔥 🧻 1 oz silver
$90
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Donald Duck $45
1oz Silver Camel Cigarettes Joe Camel 🐪 - $65
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1 oz proof ablum
https://imgur.com/a/tYA9NDZ
Silver $1 commemorative
Capsule only
Baseball $1 proof $27
Lewis and Clark proof $27
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D-day $1 bu $27
Wright brothers $1 $27
Capsule proof:
https://imgur.com/a/9sCzhiP
In original mint packaging 📷
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1996 Smithsonian $1 proof $28
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2006 San Francisco old Mint $1 proof $28
Benjamin Franklin founding father proof $28 Comm proof:
https://imgur.com/a/iaF31xI
Silver Dollars 💵
1883 o $100
Nicer 1921 Morgan in cap $33
1926 D peace dollar $29
1887 $1 - $70
1921 Morgan plastic flip $35
1886 $1 $70
Proof:
https://imgur.com/a/fBk2WiY
1921 Morgan MS $60
1896 Morgan $65
1885 Morgan $90
1878 CC $1 $170
1897 $1 $85
1890 O $1 $80
1921 MS $60
Open to offers on multiple morgans.
Proof;
https://imgur.com/a/jJbdBJa
Fallout New Vegas
Lucky 38 1oz silver “ platinum chip “ $45
Vintage 1977 Coca-Cola 1oz silver bar
Nashville TN $65
Norfolk Va $65
Atlanta $65
Contemporary Coca-Cola 1oz silver bar $40
Contemporary Coca-Cola 1oz silver round $31
Coca-Cola Christmas 2019 Fiji Santa Clause 1oz - $50 🎅
Fiji 🇫🇯 1oz coca-cola bottle cap $149 📷
10k gold coca-cola pin 📌 $150 📷 tx
7.5 oz 1:1 scale .999 silver derringer - $400 ⭐️
3oz M4 carbine 🐆 $170
1oz army man $90
Sunshine 1oz $140
Cyborg 1oz $140
Smurf 1 oz $31
Art cola Proof ;
https://imgur.com/a/mlUyEQZ
HALF DOLLARS and more 💵
1822 Bust half dollar $75
1825 bust half dollar $70
1876 seated half $50
Proof
https://imgur.com/a/PhO1Bhq
SETS 📺 📷
Silver war nickel set $7
Dimes of the 20th century $5
Bill of rights silver 50c young collector set
$14
Jewelry 💍
Check back soon
Rarities 🦜 📷
1/4 oz art bar gilded Halloween $35
1/4 oz art bar gilded Pug $35
I don’t know where I put these.
COPPER 📣
Copper Cannabis Leaf 🍁 Round $1.50
2023 year of the Dragon 🐉 copper round $1.50
Lincoln Wheat Cent 1oz COPPER $1.50
Copper proof;
https://imgur.com/a/b6dcW1Y
🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 GOLD 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
0 - 2021 New Hampshire 1 GoldBack $5 each - free ihp with purchase and ground shipping limit 4 ihp
I’m out of these, sell me or trade for cheap.
https://imgur.com/a/JBEAJ4j
Bank of America 10k pendant with seed pearls , I think it’s 3.6 grams. $100
Bank of America 10k pin 📌 no pearls, $60
📷
Fractional silver
1 gram silver in card or loose $2
📷 https://imgur.com/a/x4CsSMR
CANADA SILVER 🇨🇦 🍁
Canada 1955 50c $20 📷
Canada $1 1987 proof $20 📷
Superman $20 silver $25
Batman vs Superman Canada $20 silver coin $29
Bugs Bunny $20 silver $35
Star trek 2016 silver $20 coin. $35
2016 Canada $20 silver T-Rex $25
2014 Canada $20 Snowman $22 2014 Canada $20 silver summer swimming coin $22
Canada proof
https://imgur.com/a/bUSuicI
Bank bag assortment :
Futurama Shut up and take my money 1oz - $45
vintage coke bar 1oz $65
2014 icg panda $old
Trump wanted $31
https://imgur.com/a/q8pR7c3
USPS priority box /envelope $10
USPS 1st class $6 up to 7 oz
Risky envelope shipping $2
I take Zelle and Venmo Cash App and Mailed Cash and small gold or 1 goldbacks @4 each
I make excellent packages but after I drop it off it is the responsibility of USPS
Don’t give me or anyone your password or sensitive information beyond what is required to complete the transaction. Mods will never ask.
Please read Safety guide:
https://imgur.com/a/I2Dz45q
Proof:
https://imgur.com/a/eJoX0OT
submitted by OrganizationFalse668 to CoinSales [link] [comments]
USPS priority box /envelope $10
USPS 1st class $6 up to 7 oz
“ Risky “ 1st class 🫧 envelope non-machinable $2 -
I take Zelle , Venmo , Cash App
No notes ! emoji okay
I also accept Mailed Cash and trades for gold, goldbacks , maybe platinum and palladium.
I make excellent packages but after I drop it off its the responsibility of USPS.
Date proof:
https://imgur.com/a/eJoX0OT
Head or Tails nude 1oz silver round $70
$1 fv 50c 90% $22
$100 random 3 oz lot , could be anything .999 and 1 oz
SILVER COINS AND ROUNDS 🕰️
Star Wars beskar bar 1oz $40
Niue 1oz silver Aerosmith 1 oz $31
1oz silver 5 mark Germania “ witchcraft “ - $65
Homer Simpson 2019 donut $70
Simpson family Christmas $60
1oz silver Superman Samoa 🇼🇸 $5 coin $31
Spider-Man 1oz $38
2021 Wonder Woman 1oz $70
Batman 1oz $70
Scarface movie 🍿 .999 1 oz $45
🥤 Coca-Cola 1 oz silver round 1 oz $31
Grogu Star Wars 1oz silver $31
🇺🇸 Army 1 oz silver bar $31 🔥
Bar 1
Bar 2 digital camouflage
Street fighter chun lee 1oz 🇯🇵 - $31
Wolverine 1oz 🇨🇦 $50
The Godfather 1oz silver $43
Silver Bart Simpson 1 oz $60 🛹
2023 Homer Simpson carded 1 oz $60 📷
SWAMP THING 1oz colorized- $50 📷
2024 silver shield 1oz silver cannabis round $40
ET 🪐 Niue 1oz 2 dollar movie poster bar $40
1 oz trump wanted rounds $31
Beavis and butthead 🔥 🧻 1 oz silver
$90
Intaglio Mint 1oz “ the 4 seasons “ nude art 🖼️ round $65
Donald Duck $45
1oz Silver Camel Cigarettes Joe Camel 🐪 - $65
Disneys snow White doc 1 oz $70
1 oz proof ablum
https://imgur.com/a/tYA9NDZ
Silver $1 commemorative
Capsule only
Baseball $1 proof $27
Lewis and Clark proof $27
1992 Columbus $1 - $27
D-day $1 bu $27
Wright brothers $1 $27
Capsule proof:
https://imgur.com/a/9sCzhiP
In original mint packaging 📷
1993 WW2 2 coin set $1 - $33
1996 national community service proof $28
1996 Smithsonian $1 proof $28
1998 Robert f Kennedy $1 proof - $35
1999 Yellow stone national park $28
2003 wright brothers first flight $1 proof - $28
2006 San Francisco old Mint $1 proof $28
Benjamin Franklin founding father proof $28 Comm proof:
https://imgur.com/a/iaF31xI
Silver Dollars 💵
1883 o $100
Nicer 1921 Morgan in cap $33
1926 D peace dollar $29
1887 $1 - $70
1921 Morgan plastic flip $35
1886 $1 $70
Proof:
https://imgur.com/a/fBk2WiY
1921 Morgan MS $60
1896 Morgan $65
1885 Morgan $90
1878 CC $1 $170
1897 $1 $85
1890 O $1 $80
1921 MS $60
Open to offers on multiple morgans.
Proof;
https://imgur.com/a/jJbdBJa
Fallout New Vegas
Lucky 38 1oz silver “ platinum chip “ $45
Vintage 1977 Coca-Cola 1oz silver bar
Nashville TN $65
Norfolk Va $65
Atlanta $65
Contemporary Coca-Cola 1oz silver bar $40
Contemporary Coca-Cola 1oz silver round $31
Coca-Cola Christmas 2019 Fiji Santa Clause 1oz - $50 🎅
Fiji 🇫🇯 1oz coca-cola bottle cap $149 📷
10k gold coca-cola pin 📌 $150 📷 tx
7.5 oz 1:1 scale .999 silver derringer - $400 ⭐️
3oz M4 carbine 🐆 $170
1oz army man $90
Sunshine 1oz $140
Cyborg 1oz $140
Smurf 1 oz $31
Art cola Proof ;
https://imgur.com/a/mlUyEQZ
HALF DOLLARS and more 💵
1822 Bust half dollar $75
1825 bust half dollar $70
1876 seated half $50
Proof
https://imgur.com/a/PhO1Bhq
SETS 📺 📷
Silver war nickel set $7
Dimes of the 20th century $5
Bill of rights silver 50c young collector set
$14
Jewelry 💍
Check back soon
Rarities 🦜 📷
1/4 oz art bar gilded Halloween $35
1/4 oz art bar gilded Pug $35
I don’t know where I put these.
COPPER 📣
Copper Cannabis Leaf 🍁 Round $1.50
2023 year of the Dragon 🐉 copper round $1.50
Lincoln Wheat Cent 1oz COPPER $1.50
Copper proof;
https://imgur.com/a/b6dcW1Y
🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 GOLD 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
0 - 2021 New Hampshire 1 GoldBack $5 each - free ihp with purchase and ground shipping limit 4 ihp
I’m out of these, sell me or trade for cheap.
https://imgur.com/a/JBEAJ4j
Bank of America 10k pendant with seed pearls , I think it’s 3.6 grams. $100
Bank of America 10k pin 📌 no pearls, $60
📷
Fractional silver
1 gram silver in card or loose $2
📷 https://imgur.com/a/x4CsSMR
CANADA SILVER 🇨🇦 🍁
Canada 1955 50c $20 📷
Canada $1 1987 proof $20 📷
Superman $20 silver $25
Batman vs Superman Canada $20 silver coin $29
Bugs Bunny $20 silver $35
Star trek 2016 silver $20 coin. $35
2016 Canada $20 silver T-Rex $25
2014 Canada $20 Snowman $22 2014 Canada $20 silver summer swimming coin $22
Canada proof
https://imgur.com/a/bUSuicI
Bank bag assortment :
Futurama Shut up and take my money 1oz - $45
vintage coke bar 1oz $65
2014 icg panda $old
Trump wanted $31
https://imgur.com/a/q8pR7c3
USPS priority box /envelope $10
USPS 1st class $6 up to 7 oz
Risky envelope shipping $2
I take Zelle and Venmo Cash App and Mailed Cash and small gold or 1 goldbacks @4 each
I make excellent packages but after I drop it off it is the responsibility of USPS
Don’t give me or anyone your password or sensitive information beyond what is required to complete the transaction. Mods will never ask.
Please read Safety guide:
https://imgur.com/a/I2Dz45q
Proof:
https://imgur.com/a/eJoX0OT
2024.06.01 04:43 OrganizationFalse668 [WTS] 50 cent premiums.
Shipping and Payment
USPS priority box /envelope $10
USPS 1st class $6 up to 7 oz
“ Risky “ 1st class 🫧 envelope non-machinable $2 -
I take Zelle , Venmo , Cash App
No notes ! emoji okay
I also accept Mailed Cash and trades for gold, goldbacks , maybe platinum and palladium.
I make excellent packages but after I drop it off its the responsibility of USPS.
Date proof:
https://imgur.com/a/eJoX0OT
Head or Tails nude 1oz silver round $70
$1 fv 50c 90% $22
$100 random 3 oz lot , could be anything .999 and 1 oz
SILVER COINS AND ROUNDS 🕰️
Star Wars beskar bar 1oz $40
Niue 1oz silver Aerosmith 1 oz $31
1oz silver 5 mark Germania “ witchcraft “ - $65
Homer Simpson 2019 donut $70
Simpson family Christmas $60
1oz silver Superman Samoa 🇼🇸 $5 coin $31
Spider-Man 1oz $38
2021 Wonder Woman 1oz $70
Batman 1oz $70
Scarface movie 🍿 .999 1 oz $45
🥤 Coca-Cola 1 oz silver round 1 oz $31
Grogu Star Wars 1oz silver $31
🇺🇸 Army 1 oz silver bar $31 🔥
Bar 1
Bar 2 digital camouflage
Street fighter chun lee 1oz 🇯🇵 - $31
Wolverine 1oz 🇨🇦 $50
The Godfather 1oz silver $43
Silver Bart Simpson 1 oz $60 🛹
2023 Homer Simpson carded 1 oz $60 📷
SWAMP THING 1oz colorized- $50 📷
2024 silver shield 1oz silver cannabis round $40
ET 🪐 Niue 1oz 2 dollar movie poster bar $40
1 oz trump wanted rounds $31
Beavis and butthead 🔥 🧻 1 oz silver
$90
Intaglio Mint 1oz “ the 4 seasons “ nude art 🖼️ round $65
Donald Duck $45
1oz Silver Camel Cigarettes Joe Camel 🐪 - $65
Disneys snow White doc 1 oz $70
1 oz proof ablum
https://imgur.com/a/tYA9NDZ
Silver $1 commemorative
Capsule only
Baseball $1 proof $27
Lewis and Clark proof $27
1992 Columbus $1 - $27
D-day $1 bu $27
Wright brothers $1 $27
Capsule proof:
https://imgur.com/a/9sCzhiP
In original mint packaging 📷
1993 WW2 2 coin set $1 - $33
1996 national community service proof $28
1996 Smithsonian $1 proof $28
1998 Robert f Kennedy $1 proof - $35
1999 Yellow stone national park $28
2003 wright brothers first flight $1 proof - $28
2006 San Francisco old Mint $1 proof $28
Benjamin Franklin founding father proof $28 Comm proof:
https://imgur.com/a/iaF31xI
Silver Dollars 💵
1883 o $100
Nicer 1921 Morgan in cap $33
1926 D peace dollar $29
1887 $1 - $70
1921 Morgan plastic flip $35
1886 $1 $70
Proof:
https://imgur.com/a/fBk2WiY
1921 Morgan MS $60
1896 Morgan $65
1885 Morgan $90
1878 CC $1 $170
1897 $1 $85
1890 O $1 $80
1921 MS $60
Open to offers on multiple morgans.
Proof;
https://imgur.com/a/jJbdBJa
Fallout New Vegas
Lucky 38 1oz silver “ platinum chip “ $45
Vintage 1977 Coca-Cola 1oz silver bar
Nashville TN $65
Norfolk Va $65
Atlanta $65
Contemporary Coca-Cola 1oz silver bar $40
Contemporary Coca-Cola 1oz silver round $31
Coca-Cola Christmas 2019 Fiji Santa Clause 1oz - $50 🎅
Fiji 🇫🇯 1oz coca-cola bottle cap $149 📷
10k gold coca-cola pin 📌 $150 📷 tx
7.5 oz 1:1 scale .999 silver derringer - $400 ⭐️
3oz M4 carbine 🐆 $170
1oz army man $90
Sunshine 1oz $140
Cyborg 1oz $140
Smurf 1 oz $31
Art cola Proof ;
https://imgur.com/a/mlUyEQZ
HALF DOLLARS and more 💵
1822 Bust half dollar $75
1825 bust half dollar $70
1876 seated half $50
Proof
https://imgur.com/a/PhO1Bhq
SETS 📺 📷
Silver war nickel set $7
Dimes of the 20th century $5
Bill of rights silver 50c young collector set
$14
Jewelry 💍
Check back soon
Rarities 🦜 📷
1/4 oz art bar gilded Halloween $35
1/4 oz art bar gilded Pug $35
I don’t know where I put these.
COPPER 📣
Copper Cannabis Leaf 🍁 Round $1.50
2023 year of the Dragon 🐉 copper round $1.50
Lincoln Wheat Cent 1oz COPPER $1.50
Copper proof;
https://imgur.com/a/b6dcW1Y
🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 GOLD 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
0 - 2021 New Hampshire 1 GoldBack $5 each - free ihp with purchase and ground shipping limit 4 ihp
I’m out of these, sell me or trade for cheap.
https://imgur.com/a/JBEAJ4j
Bank of America 10k pendant with seed pearls , I think it’s 3.6 grams. $100
Bank of America 10k pin 📌 no pearls, $60
📷
Fractional silver
1 gram silver in card or loose $2
📷 https://imgur.com/a/x4CsSMR
CANADA SILVER 🇨🇦 🍁
Canada 1955 50c $20 📷
Canada $1 1987 proof $20 📷
Superman $20 silver $25
Batman vs Superman Canada $20 silver coin $29
Bugs Bunny $20 silver $35
Star trek 2016 silver $20 coin. $35
2016 Canada $20 silver T-Rex $25
2014 Canada $20 Snowman $22 2014 Canada $20 silver summer swimming coin $22
Canada proof
https://imgur.com/a/bUSuicI
Bank bag assortment :
Futurama Shut up and take my money 1oz - $45
vintage coke bar 1oz $65
2014 icg panda $old
Trump wanted $31
https://imgur.com/a/q8pR7c3
USPS priority box /envelope $10
USPS 1st class $6 up to 7 oz
Risky envelope shipping $2
I take Zelle and Venmo Cash App and Mailed Cash and small gold or 1 goldbacks @4 each
I make excellent packages but after I drop it off it is the responsibility of USPS
Don’t give me or anyone your password or sensitive information beyond what is required to complete the transaction. Mods will never ask.
Please read Safety guide:
https://imgur.com/a/I2Dz45q
Proof:
https://imgur.com/a/eJoX0OT
submitted by OrganizationFalse668 to Pmsforsale [link] [comments]
USPS priority box /envelope $10
USPS 1st class $6 up to 7 oz
“ Risky “ 1st class 🫧 envelope non-machinable $2 -
I take Zelle , Venmo , Cash App
No notes ! emoji okay
I also accept Mailed Cash and trades for gold, goldbacks , maybe platinum and palladium.
I make excellent packages but after I drop it off its the responsibility of USPS.
Date proof:
https://imgur.com/a/eJoX0OT
Head or Tails nude 1oz silver round $70
$1 fv 50c 90% $22
$100 random 3 oz lot , could be anything .999 and 1 oz
SILVER COINS AND ROUNDS 🕰️
Star Wars beskar bar 1oz $40
Niue 1oz silver Aerosmith 1 oz $31
1oz silver 5 mark Germania “ witchcraft “ - $65
Homer Simpson 2019 donut $70
Simpson family Christmas $60
1oz silver Superman Samoa 🇼🇸 $5 coin $31
Spider-Man 1oz $38
2021 Wonder Woman 1oz $70
Batman 1oz $70
Scarface movie 🍿 .999 1 oz $45
🥤 Coca-Cola 1 oz silver round 1 oz $31
Grogu Star Wars 1oz silver $31
🇺🇸 Army 1 oz silver bar $31 🔥
Bar 1
Bar 2 digital camouflage
Street fighter chun lee 1oz 🇯🇵 - $31
Wolverine 1oz 🇨🇦 $50
The Godfather 1oz silver $43
Silver Bart Simpson 1 oz $60 🛹
2023 Homer Simpson carded 1 oz $60 📷
SWAMP THING 1oz colorized- $50 📷
2024 silver shield 1oz silver cannabis round $40
ET 🪐 Niue 1oz 2 dollar movie poster bar $40
1 oz trump wanted rounds $31
Beavis and butthead 🔥 🧻 1 oz silver
$90
Intaglio Mint 1oz “ the 4 seasons “ nude art 🖼️ round $65
Donald Duck $45
1oz Silver Camel Cigarettes Joe Camel 🐪 - $65
Disneys snow White doc 1 oz $70
1 oz proof ablum
https://imgur.com/a/tYA9NDZ
Silver $1 commemorative
Capsule only
Baseball $1 proof $27
Lewis and Clark proof $27
1992 Columbus $1 - $27
D-day $1 bu $27
Wright brothers $1 $27
Capsule proof:
https://imgur.com/a/9sCzhiP
In original mint packaging 📷
1993 WW2 2 coin set $1 - $33
1996 national community service proof $28
1996 Smithsonian $1 proof $28
1998 Robert f Kennedy $1 proof - $35
1999 Yellow stone national park $28
2003 wright brothers first flight $1 proof - $28
2006 San Francisco old Mint $1 proof $28
Benjamin Franklin founding father proof $28 Comm proof:
https://imgur.com/a/iaF31xI
Silver Dollars 💵
1883 o $100
Nicer 1921 Morgan in cap $33
1926 D peace dollar $29
1887 $1 - $70
1921 Morgan plastic flip $35
1886 $1 $70
Proof:
https://imgur.com/a/fBk2WiY
1921 Morgan MS $60
1896 Morgan $65
1885 Morgan $90
1878 CC $1 $170
1897 $1 $85
1890 O $1 $80
1921 MS $60
Open to offers on multiple morgans.
Proof;
https://imgur.com/a/jJbdBJa
Fallout New Vegas
Lucky 38 1oz silver “ platinum chip “ $45
Vintage 1977 Coca-Cola 1oz silver bar
Nashville TN $65
Norfolk Va $65
Atlanta $65
Contemporary Coca-Cola 1oz silver bar $40
Contemporary Coca-Cola 1oz silver round $31
Coca-Cola Christmas 2019 Fiji Santa Clause 1oz - $50 🎅
Fiji 🇫🇯 1oz coca-cola bottle cap $149 📷
10k gold coca-cola pin 📌 $150 📷 tx
7.5 oz 1:1 scale .999 silver derringer - $400 ⭐️
3oz M4 carbine 🐆 $170
1oz army man $90
Sunshine 1oz $140
Cyborg 1oz $140
Smurf 1 oz $31
Art cola Proof ;
https://imgur.com/a/mlUyEQZ
HALF DOLLARS and more 💵
1822 Bust half dollar $75
1825 bust half dollar $70
1876 seated half $50
Proof
https://imgur.com/a/PhO1Bhq
SETS 📺 📷
Silver war nickel set $7
Dimes of the 20th century $5
Bill of rights silver 50c young collector set
$14
Jewelry 💍
Check back soon
Rarities 🦜 📷
1/4 oz art bar gilded Halloween $35
1/4 oz art bar gilded Pug $35
I don’t know where I put these.
COPPER 📣
Copper Cannabis Leaf 🍁 Round $1.50
2023 year of the Dragon 🐉 copper round $1.50
Lincoln Wheat Cent 1oz COPPER $1.50
Copper proof;
https://imgur.com/a/b6dcW1Y
🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 GOLD 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
0 - 2021 New Hampshire 1 GoldBack $5 each - free ihp with purchase and ground shipping limit 4 ihp
I’m out of these, sell me or trade for cheap.
https://imgur.com/a/JBEAJ4j
Bank of America 10k pendant with seed pearls , I think it’s 3.6 grams. $100
Bank of America 10k pin 📌 no pearls, $60
📷
Fractional silver
1 gram silver in card or loose $2
📷 https://imgur.com/a/x4CsSMR
CANADA SILVER 🇨🇦 🍁
Canada 1955 50c $20 📷
Canada $1 1987 proof $20 📷
Superman $20 silver $25
Batman vs Superman Canada $20 silver coin $29
Bugs Bunny $20 silver $35
Star trek 2016 silver $20 coin. $35
2016 Canada $20 silver T-Rex $25
2014 Canada $20 Snowman $22 2014 Canada $20 silver summer swimming coin $22
Canada proof
https://imgur.com/a/bUSuicI
Bank bag assortment :
Futurama Shut up and take my money 1oz - $45
vintage coke bar 1oz $65
2014 icg panda $old
Trump wanted $31
https://imgur.com/a/q8pR7c3
USPS priority box /envelope $10
USPS 1st class $6 up to 7 oz
Risky envelope shipping $2
I take Zelle and Venmo Cash App and Mailed Cash and small gold or 1 goldbacks @4 each
I make excellent packages but after I drop it off it is the responsibility of USPS
Don’t give me or anyone your password or sensitive information beyond what is required to complete the transaction. Mods will never ask.
Please read Safety guide:
https://imgur.com/a/I2Dz45q
Proof:
https://imgur.com/a/eJoX0OT
2024.06.01 04:01 SpinMeAYarnDude Feel like I use my friend’s death as an excuse to ignore the things that are really making me sad
Context first, feelings after: There was this girl back in high school, we’ll call her Jay for sake of privacy, that was friends with some of the people I went to school with. We didn’t know each other at the time, but at one point she had been interested in my ex boyfriend, and because of that alone I was jealous of her (even though it never went anywhere lol). Funnily enough, we ended up becoming friends— mostly online. Once I got my license, I drove out to see her a couple of times… we clicked so hard it was insane. We spoke for hours and hours, the conversation never slowed. She even convinced me not to let my anxiety (over being seen as weird) hold me back from trying out tarot, and now those cards are an essential part of my life. I didn’t go back to see her after the second time because I was stupidly worried that my mom wouldn’t like her (to be fair, my mother had a bad habit of openly judging my friends) even though she was an incredible, sweet, vivacious person, and almost everyone she met loved her (or hated her, though i’ll never understand why). Jay was an enigma, and even though I held myself back, I texted and called her for EVERYTHING. I honestly felt, even back then, that she was my best friend, even though we’d only hung out twice. The way I felt about her, it was almost like a platonic obsession, if only because she was just so infectiously fun to be around and talk to. Even when she still lived I clung to her as if she were a lifeboat. I never shut up about her, and as some who has always been lonely and atypical, the fact that she made me feel so understood was like heroine to me. We discussed our personal lives witch each other frequently (especially our respective on-and-off boyfriends), though I’ll admit I certainly hogged those conversations, and she never failed to make me laugh. She was crazy and fun and flawed in the most perfect way. So I constantly leaned on her for advice an vented to her incessantly. I rarely asked about her, even though I wanted to know her better.
I wish I had— I wish I knew more about her now, in hindsight.
We’d only been close for maybe a year, or maybe a half? We only saw each other twice, and it was entirely my fault. Because of that, and because of what some people were saying behind my back at the time, shortly after she died, I often find myself thinking things like: “I don’t have the right to grieve her” or “I’m just faking my grief or exaggerating the extent of it because most of the time I feel fine” (most of the time I feel nothing at all) or “I just use her death whenever I’m sad.” Often when something is upsetting me, even if it’s entirely unrelated to her [especially when I start feeling lonely or rejected], my mind drifts to her and I find that my focus shifts entirely from the things that had originally upset me to her, and it makes me feel like I must be using her death to keep myself from thinking about the things that “actually” make me sad; but then I think, surely I wouldn’t do that? I don’t get why I think like that or what’s wrong with me.
It’s been three years and that feeling (nothingness followed closely by loneliness and unidentifiable stubbornness) hasn’t really changed. Do I even have the right to grieve her? What if I’m not really as hurt by her being gone as I tell myself and others I am? Am I a shitty friend who’s just using her memory to write myself a sob story? These are all questions, ones I’ve never once uttered out loud. One day I feel ashamed of myself, and empty, and like there’s a gaping hole in my chest, but then the next few weeks she won’t even cross my mind. How messed up is that? And to top it all off, it’s like I glorify the idea of being loyal to the bitter end, even though I wasn’t a good enough friend to her back when she was still alive. I show up to the wreck site twice a year with flowers and a cigarette to share as if that’ll make up for my own negligence and selfishness. I cling to her memory. Even my best friend now used to be her best friend, and sometimes I think the reason why I’m so damn extra attached to my best friend is because she got to have more time with Jay than I let myself. I go about my life as if no one else matters nearly as much as they do, even though I know that if the people I care for outside of that circle were to die, I’d be just as regretful and ashamed as I am right now.
What the hell, anyways? Is it normal to feel this way or to go about it like this? I feel like there must be something wrong with the way I’m wired. Why can’t I just let it go? Why do I treat her like something to obsess over, even though I hardly ever cry or feel anything? Who am I to act as though the way I carry her grief makes me a better friend that I actually was? It’s arrogant, yeah?
submitted by SpinMeAYarnDude to GriefSupport [link] [comments]
I wish I had— I wish I knew more about her now, in hindsight.
We’d only been close for maybe a year, or maybe a half? We only saw each other twice, and it was entirely my fault. Because of that, and because of what some people were saying behind my back at the time, shortly after she died, I often find myself thinking things like: “I don’t have the right to grieve her” or “I’m just faking my grief or exaggerating the extent of it because most of the time I feel fine” (most of the time I feel nothing at all) or “I just use her death whenever I’m sad.” Often when something is upsetting me, even if it’s entirely unrelated to her [especially when I start feeling lonely or rejected], my mind drifts to her and I find that my focus shifts entirely from the things that had originally upset me to her, and it makes me feel like I must be using her death to keep myself from thinking about the things that “actually” make me sad; but then I think, surely I wouldn’t do that? I don’t get why I think like that or what’s wrong with me.
It’s been three years and that feeling (nothingness followed closely by loneliness and unidentifiable stubbornness) hasn’t really changed. Do I even have the right to grieve her? What if I’m not really as hurt by her being gone as I tell myself and others I am? Am I a shitty friend who’s just using her memory to write myself a sob story? These are all questions, ones I’ve never once uttered out loud. One day I feel ashamed of myself, and empty, and like there’s a gaping hole in my chest, but then the next few weeks she won’t even cross my mind. How messed up is that? And to top it all off, it’s like I glorify the idea of being loyal to the bitter end, even though I wasn’t a good enough friend to her back when she was still alive. I show up to the wreck site twice a year with flowers and a cigarette to share as if that’ll make up for my own negligence and selfishness. I cling to her memory. Even my best friend now used to be her best friend, and sometimes I think the reason why I’m so damn extra attached to my best friend is because she got to have more time with Jay than I let myself. I go about my life as if no one else matters nearly as much as they do, even though I know that if the people I care for outside of that circle were to die, I’d be just as regretful and ashamed as I am right now.
What the hell, anyways? Is it normal to feel this way or to go about it like this? I feel like there must be something wrong with the way I’m wired. Why can’t I just let it go? Why do I treat her like something to obsess over, even though I hardly ever cry or feel anything? Who am I to act as though the way I carry her grief makes me a better friend that I actually was? It’s arrogant, yeah?
2024.05.31 15:56 Apprehensive-Book776 sick of the one wording culture we live in whereby you cannot criticise female dominated online dating
if you stand to criticise women on dating apps you are somehow the biggest pos on the planet, and get every one word synonym thrown at you by every unhinged twitter user imaginable.
let’s go through some profiles i have seen recently on hinge:
“bringing me for food, liking hard techno as much as me, and being able to handle me 😁”
okay so the first statement is my own pet peeve, im sick of this shit where women just want to be taken by the hand and led, this is a recurring theme in OLD profiles and im so fed up of it, oh you want me to bring you for food? you want me to create spontaneous plans for you? you want me to make plans, create ideas, do everything, take initiative, you want to be sprung into adventure by external forces??
this all basically means that whether men like it or not, we have to fulfil a role of making the vast majority of effort, and women just have to show up and not reciprocate? did you ever think that maybe i want to be sprung into adventure by external forces? that i like spontaneous plans brought to me? why does everything have to be done in offer to the girl and nothing done for me? why does my feelings, my personality, who i am as a person not matter to you? you only want macho men who are gonna be decisive for you and make it so you don’t have to think.
i genuinely hate this entire thought process in f women on OLD, so many are so riddled with fucking narcissism because of how social media gives them this god complex that they think men have to do all this for them and more and be thankful for the opportunity? if men acted the way women do the human race would die out because women would start complaining about the “ick” of overconfident men.
liking hard techno, that’s an each to their own thing. if you’re into that in your late 20’s / early 30’s by all means do you. i’m trying to find love however and i think the chances of a long lasting relationship with someone at this age that wants that lifestyle are slim as fuck. isn’t that just code for you wanna be on a buzz from gear or drink all the time? whatever idrc about that one cause it’s not my type anyway.
being able to handle me, like why ? why even say this and what’s wrong with you to say this? this is serious narc personality disorder shit. it’s like yes i am admitting i am fucked up, i am doing nothing to better myself or correct it, but you are going to have to be an emotionally balanced individual that can manage my mood swings, poor temperament and arguments probably starting over fuck all squared not to mention the possibility of bpd. i just don’t even know man.
profile 2. not much here other than the incredibly common theme of wanting to travel, and yes i want to as well. but unfortunately i’m from a working class background, im not some posh rich person from a rich family that has went on 3 holidays a year since i was a child, travelling is chronically expensive and a plaything of the upper classes, im sorry i don’t want to put myself into debt to travel, especially when i’m trying to put myself in a position to earn good money so that i have a better life for myself and if i’m fortunate will have some expendable income left over. women have such ridiculous expectations with regards to travel, they don’t realise how narcisstic it makes them look along with how out of touch from the real world. granted hinge seems to draw in all the posh rich folk, they wouldn’t wanna slum it with a working class boy like me.
various profiles after this are a continuous stream of wanting to travel.
next profile, must be 6ft + and have big arms, ok even under ordinary circumstances this is annoying if an attractive girl says this, but the girl who had this in her profile is literally 5’2 and fat???? like how the fuck does that compute. you’re hardly the cream of the crop yourseld and yet you’re laying out conditionals for a boyfriend based on appearance? mental if you ask me, but again, narc.
next profile, girl has children, but also says she does not want children. that’s fair enough and tbh i’m not super bothered by this, it’s moreso just like, oh so you want me to come be a father to your kids but i can’t have kids of my own? and yeah, i know the cope seems to be that “i don’t want you to be their daddy they already got one!” then why isn’t he there? just a ridiculous statement to make.
next profile, convert a van and travel around, again this is funny cause this is another case of upper middle class white women making things whose origins started from you know, people living out of vans because they couldn’t afford to live in a home to, omggg this is so photogenic, or this is a mood!! like yeah hold on till i just up and leave everything to go and convert a van into a space we can live in which will likely cost a small fortune, and then travel around for an extended period of time with no income. what planet do these people live on.
smaller one and more of a pet peeve, “make me laugh” why don’t you make me laugh?? again with this shit of me having to take you by the hand and spring adventure upon you! why does the girl always have to take the back seat and be initiated upon? i actually resent this theme to my very core.
more travelling profiles, south east asia yada yada, “i’m a legend” “dating me is like heaven” yeah that’s why we’re in the bargain bucket aisle of the relationship world trying to find someone heading into our 30’s. narcissistic assholes.
another profile, flew to france on a whim to visit a friend, the time between the idea and arriving was around half a week. still living on another planet and clearly insinuation for, if you’re gonna be my boyfriend, you had better plan and book chronically expensive holidays at the last minute for us!
“moustache mullet combo” like this kinda shit shows jisy how impressionable women nowadays are, idk who or what decides a trend but women’s ability to jump on said trend is fucking uncontested. like i remember before it was “beards and tattoos”
wonder what the next thing will be, i just look to see if you’re conventionally attractive, who gives a fuck about shit like that? it doesn’t matter at all as long as the person looks after themselves. narcissism.
speaking of which, i matched a girl on hinge two days ago, i said i once grew a moustache and my mates all called me freddy mercury taking the piss out of me and i vowed to never grow a moustache again, her reaction? safe to say she went twitter more and wrote a paragraph about why that wasn’t a funny joke, why my friends aren’t funny and that she has a freddy mercury tattoo? i jisy replied ok. but like, is this women now? so invested in the lives of strangers and celebrities they can’t take joke or a laugh? everything has to be taken so seriously now? fucking hell.
another profile, naming a time and a place, why don’t you name a time and a place? you need me to do all the work for you and show all the interest.
travel travel travel travel travel and more travel.
then the women with politically charged profiles, like yeah you seem like really good fun to be around making politics your whole personality.
theatre kids, art, film etc. okay i get it you’re from rich families and i’m not upper class enough to be around you, go take your shitty greyed out photo will smoking a cigarette you probably put out straight after the photo because you don’t smoke but needed the “aesthetic”
my most irrational fear, sassy men, what does that even mean? a man who defends himself? makes any remarks? is passive aggressive? like what
plethora of profiles talking about honesty, like we get it you’ve been cheated on. if anythjng saying you want honesty is a warning signal because you will have serious trust issues that will be a mountain to overcome.
spontaneous spontaneous spontaneous profile after profile. why don’t be spontaneous toward me?
countless profiles of women in a million and one different countries before they’re 25.
trying to do the 30 countries before 30 challenge. what challenge?? is this just something that exists within tbe upper middle class because i’ve never heard of this shit before online dating?
do women not see the problem with this? or is it just the case of you’ve got it too good and don’t want it to change? if some twitter user sees this they’ll quote it like “i don’t want my date to murder me” a handy little sentence to disregard everything i just mentioned without having to address it. like yes i know that happens but that’s such a stupid thing to say, like you know you’re trying to deflect by saying that. that’s why no real discourse happens on twitter and you just want to change the conversation into a hate train on men on start talking about something entirely different.
this isn’t healthy for men and probably women too. but it’s just too convenient to have all the options there in front of you clambering for your attention. going onto your phone and seeing your likes at 99+ and getting that little hit of dopamine. who’s rich enough, handsome enough and is able to meet your expectations of a lifestyle along with meeting all your criteria. whereas for him it was likely just a case of, is she conventionally attractive? yes, does she have kids? no, does she have a job? yes.
men have to be so much less picky in order to find someone. that’s a reality men and women have to face.
submitted by Apprehensive-Book776 to rant [link] [comments]
let’s go through some profiles i have seen recently on hinge:
“bringing me for food, liking hard techno as much as me, and being able to handle me 😁”
okay so the first statement is my own pet peeve, im sick of this shit where women just want to be taken by the hand and led, this is a recurring theme in OLD profiles and im so fed up of it, oh you want me to bring you for food? you want me to create spontaneous plans for you? you want me to make plans, create ideas, do everything, take initiative, you want to be sprung into adventure by external forces??
this all basically means that whether men like it or not, we have to fulfil a role of making the vast majority of effort, and women just have to show up and not reciprocate? did you ever think that maybe i want to be sprung into adventure by external forces? that i like spontaneous plans brought to me? why does everything have to be done in offer to the girl and nothing done for me? why does my feelings, my personality, who i am as a person not matter to you? you only want macho men who are gonna be decisive for you and make it so you don’t have to think.
i genuinely hate this entire thought process in f women on OLD, so many are so riddled with fucking narcissism because of how social media gives them this god complex that they think men have to do all this for them and more and be thankful for the opportunity? if men acted the way women do the human race would die out because women would start complaining about the “ick” of overconfident men.
liking hard techno, that’s an each to their own thing. if you’re into that in your late 20’s / early 30’s by all means do you. i’m trying to find love however and i think the chances of a long lasting relationship with someone at this age that wants that lifestyle are slim as fuck. isn’t that just code for you wanna be on a buzz from gear or drink all the time? whatever idrc about that one cause it’s not my type anyway.
being able to handle me, like why ? why even say this and what’s wrong with you to say this? this is serious narc personality disorder shit. it’s like yes i am admitting i am fucked up, i am doing nothing to better myself or correct it, but you are going to have to be an emotionally balanced individual that can manage my mood swings, poor temperament and arguments probably starting over fuck all squared not to mention the possibility of bpd. i just don’t even know man.
profile 2. not much here other than the incredibly common theme of wanting to travel, and yes i want to as well. but unfortunately i’m from a working class background, im not some posh rich person from a rich family that has went on 3 holidays a year since i was a child, travelling is chronically expensive and a plaything of the upper classes, im sorry i don’t want to put myself into debt to travel, especially when i’m trying to put myself in a position to earn good money so that i have a better life for myself and if i’m fortunate will have some expendable income left over. women have such ridiculous expectations with regards to travel, they don’t realise how narcisstic it makes them look along with how out of touch from the real world. granted hinge seems to draw in all the posh rich folk, they wouldn’t wanna slum it with a working class boy like me.
various profiles after this are a continuous stream of wanting to travel.
next profile, must be 6ft + and have big arms, ok even under ordinary circumstances this is annoying if an attractive girl says this, but the girl who had this in her profile is literally 5’2 and fat???? like how the fuck does that compute. you’re hardly the cream of the crop yourseld and yet you’re laying out conditionals for a boyfriend based on appearance? mental if you ask me, but again, narc.
next profile, girl has children, but also says she does not want children. that’s fair enough and tbh i’m not super bothered by this, it’s moreso just like, oh so you want me to come be a father to your kids but i can’t have kids of my own? and yeah, i know the cope seems to be that “i don’t want you to be their daddy they already got one!” then why isn’t he there? just a ridiculous statement to make.
next profile, convert a van and travel around, again this is funny cause this is another case of upper middle class white women making things whose origins started from you know, people living out of vans because they couldn’t afford to live in a home to, omggg this is so photogenic, or this is a mood!! like yeah hold on till i just up and leave everything to go and convert a van into a space we can live in which will likely cost a small fortune, and then travel around for an extended period of time with no income. what planet do these people live on.
smaller one and more of a pet peeve, “make me laugh” why don’t you make me laugh?? again with this shit of me having to take you by the hand and spring adventure upon you! why does the girl always have to take the back seat and be initiated upon? i actually resent this theme to my very core.
more travelling profiles, south east asia yada yada, “i’m a legend” “dating me is like heaven” yeah that’s why we’re in the bargain bucket aisle of the relationship world trying to find someone heading into our 30’s. narcissistic assholes.
another profile, flew to france on a whim to visit a friend, the time between the idea and arriving was around half a week. still living on another planet and clearly insinuation for, if you’re gonna be my boyfriend, you had better plan and book chronically expensive holidays at the last minute for us!
“moustache mullet combo” like this kinda shit shows jisy how impressionable women nowadays are, idk who or what decides a trend but women’s ability to jump on said trend is fucking uncontested. like i remember before it was “beards and tattoos”
wonder what the next thing will be, i just look to see if you’re conventionally attractive, who gives a fuck about shit like that? it doesn’t matter at all as long as the person looks after themselves. narcissism.
speaking of which, i matched a girl on hinge two days ago, i said i once grew a moustache and my mates all called me freddy mercury taking the piss out of me and i vowed to never grow a moustache again, her reaction? safe to say she went twitter more and wrote a paragraph about why that wasn’t a funny joke, why my friends aren’t funny and that she has a freddy mercury tattoo? i jisy replied ok. but like, is this women now? so invested in the lives of strangers and celebrities they can’t take joke or a laugh? everything has to be taken so seriously now? fucking hell.
another profile, naming a time and a place, why don’t you name a time and a place? you need me to do all the work for you and show all the interest.
travel travel travel travel travel and more travel.
then the women with politically charged profiles, like yeah you seem like really good fun to be around making politics your whole personality.
theatre kids, art, film etc. okay i get it you’re from rich families and i’m not upper class enough to be around you, go take your shitty greyed out photo will smoking a cigarette you probably put out straight after the photo because you don’t smoke but needed the “aesthetic”
my most irrational fear, sassy men, what does that even mean? a man who defends himself? makes any remarks? is passive aggressive? like what
plethora of profiles talking about honesty, like we get it you’ve been cheated on. if anythjng saying you want honesty is a warning signal because you will have serious trust issues that will be a mountain to overcome.
spontaneous spontaneous spontaneous profile after profile. why don’t be spontaneous toward me?
countless profiles of women in a million and one different countries before they’re 25.
trying to do the 30 countries before 30 challenge. what challenge?? is this just something that exists within tbe upper middle class because i’ve never heard of this shit before online dating?
do women not see the problem with this? or is it just the case of you’ve got it too good and don’t want it to change? if some twitter user sees this they’ll quote it like “i don’t want my date to murder me” a handy little sentence to disregard everything i just mentioned without having to address it. like yes i know that happens but that’s such a stupid thing to say, like you know you’re trying to deflect by saying that. that’s why no real discourse happens on twitter and you just want to change the conversation into a hate train on men on start talking about something entirely different.
this isn’t healthy for men and probably women too. but it’s just too convenient to have all the options there in front of you clambering for your attention. going onto your phone and seeing your likes at 99+ and getting that little hit of dopamine. who’s rich enough, handsome enough and is able to meet your expectations of a lifestyle along with meeting all your criteria. whereas for him it was likely just a case of, is she conventionally attractive? yes, does she have kids? no, does she have a job? yes.
men have to be so much less picky in order to find someone. that’s a reality men and women have to face.
2024.05.31 15:53 GodakDS Secrets of the Obscure - An Experiment in Need of Refinement
ASSUME POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR ALL GUILD WARS 2 EXPANSIONS/LIVING WORLD SEASONS
Intro
For some time during and after the launch period, I was ambivalent about Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure. There were aspects I enjoyed: the Wizard’s Vault was a fantastic choose-your-own-reward system that combined the benefits of the prior daily system and the log-in rewards while avoiding the occasional stinker – hello single, solitary Tome of Knowledge - you’d receive from the old system, the new elite specialization-agnostic weapons were a welcome addition to build variety, the upgraded Skyscale and Griffon were great fun. I was much less impressed by the story, the maps, and the metas. Which, as you may note, is kinda like telling Queen Jennah that you like her feet, but hate her hair, face, eyes, and personality; some of you might disagree, but I think that scale is pretty unbalanced.
Vault
So, I was kinda lukewarm on the Wizard’s Vault at first. The dailies and weeklies that facilitated these rewards were...hit or miss at launch. There was nothing quite so enjoyable as trying to do Spirit Vestibule in an orderly fashion, and people just come in and slaughter the spirit your group was going to kill next, so now you’re just stuck waiting. They’ve since been streamlined and much improved, but variety is still a bit of a weak point. It might have been a technical limitation, but I do often wonder why the old dailies weren’t retained, with the daily reward being a bolus of Astral Acclaim equal to completing all of the current daily objectives – there would have been so much more variety! We’d be able to mix together some strange, arcane concoction of PvE, WvW, and PvP objectives together however we desired. Who’s to blame? Spaghetti code? Ravioli code? Only ArenaNet knows the starchy truth behind their pasta patches. Ultimately, I really enjoy picking what I want, when I want. I am now the dopamine, the syringe, and the injector. My veins floweth over with happy juice, and my doctor is getting really worried.
Weapons
The weapons were mostly an instant hit. Yeah, yeah, I know some of them are more stinker than stoker. Some disrupt the established meta too much, some are too weak compared to existing options...but I’m a filthy casual, so if something has an enjoyable playstyle and doesn’t end up with my twitching corpse wracking up hundreds of gold in waypoint fees, I count that as a win. Variety, meet spiciness. Spiciness, meet life. However, my casualness doesn’t mean that I don’t value some semblance of balance – ArenaNet should strive to optimize these weapons for their intended purpose whether that involves buffing them, debuffing them, or altering their skills. They should maintain or increase the fun-factor where needed. Honestly, the fact that Engie’s shortbow isn’t just flinging Green Arrow/Hawkeye-style trick arrows across the battlefield to help or hinder is a sin that no god can cleanse.
Mounts
The increased freedom and mobility brought to the Skyscale and Griffon makes me giggle when I hop on an updraft in Verdant Brink or zip across the skies on a ley-line in Bloodstone Fen. The amount of airplane noises I make while playing has doubled, which is a clear sign of success. But don’t think I’m letting everyone off Scott-free! The guy who decided that the Ley-line Acclimation mastery should always be on? You owe me some hemorrhoid cream! I know you patched it, but that does nothing for all of the doctor visits from the numerous times my asshole has friction-sealed from clenching as a ley-line yanked my mount from five feet away and drove off like I was a kid and the ley-line was a candy salesman in a windowless van. Still...still, the quality of life upgrades here are obvious and meaningful across all open world zones. Steps were also taken in subsequent releases to remedy the broken elements, and, honestly, I think these upgrades solidify Skyscale and Griffon as the best mounts in the game.
Story
I have created an obscure narrative theory called “Delayed Shatification.” Originally formed in relation to the story started in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and resolved in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, but can be applied to any narrative where the media that enthusiastically starts numerous plot threads with the promise of an awesome, exciting, thrilling conclusion...but in a later installment. While this often allows for a lot of upfront “cool shit” to occur, hooking the audience and increasing anticipation for the continuation, this often necessitates that these plot threads are all hastily resolved or even outright dropped due to production limitations. When the “cool shit” plot threads are wrapped up in an unsatisfactory manner, or not at all, this has the effect of the audience now being able to look at the plot in its entirety and going “wait, that shit wasn’t actually cool! It was just the potential of ending up in an awesome place that made it seem cool, but the difficulty of a successful execution caused it to just shit itself and die.” By dropping the ball on resolving these threads, we have retroactively made the piece of media that introduced those plot threads lesser.
The prime instance of this from SOTO is our resident vascularity viceroy, Mabon. “Whoa!” I said. “Whoa.” A living mursaat? A nice mursaat? A mursaat I could writeerotica very compelling and intellectual fan fic about? Tell me more! ...Oh, he disappears after completing the story on the first map? Okay, okay. They wanna save some cool stuff for later. I get it. Oh, he is promptly killed before completing the story on the second map? Well, fuck. Bro got ass-Vlasted in record time. Sure, we get journals and magical hologram memories involving Mabon, but that isn’t character development or direct interaction – it’s lore. Nor does it give us a reason to care when he gets emotionally suicide-bombed by Karlo Kryptis. It just leaves numerous could-haves and should-haves.
Mabon is really just the most prominent of these, given how early he is introduced in SOTO. He is, sadly, not the only one. Eparch? The cool guy bad bro of epic evilness? Let’s just build him up with so many nonsense vagueries and superlatives that it is impossible for him to measure up. Yet, we still kind of want him to, right? He is so nasty, so cruel, so deceptive, so...late? I tell myself that they had to know that introducing Eparch at the end of the penultimate act would guarantee that he would be a lame duck villain with no personality and no ability to influence anything narratively. He is introduced to die. We kill him. Could have been real cool if he wasn’t so sucky.
Pretty much the entire supporting cast from SOTO’s launch? Gladium, R’tchikk, The Artist Formerly Known as Vegetable, Dagda, Lyhr, Zizel, Narcisse; all of these side characters are just discarded for new, “exciting” alternatives when we swing on over to Nayos. This decision is baffling. We just got a whole cast of characters introduced – any game would struggle to flesh out so many in the length this mini expansion is dealing with – and then we replace them all with a new cast of Kryptis characters who need to be developed. I suppose that they are physically so fleshy that the writers don’t have to worry about their character development.
Much like the developers, I’ll be leaving the characters behind and moving on to something else equally forgettable: the overall plot. See, we spent a decade dealing with the Elder Dragons and their threat to Tyria, and there were times when things still felt a little rushed. Now, over the course of a year and one mini-expansion, we save both Tyria and Nayos. Maybe next expansion we’ll really amp things up and save three worlds while working two jobs, going to community college, and being a single parent.
The temptation to increase the stakes ever-higher is a well-known trap that ArenaNet has fallen into with more gusto than an American GI into a Vietnamese punji pit. Simply put, they tried to do way too much too fast, and the whiplash from, “TyriaisindangerTyriaissavedNayosisindangerNayosissaved” has put a permanent Peitha-shaped kink in my neck that only dommy-mommy kisses can mend. If mini expansions are the way of the future, give us a consistent, rotating cast of supporting characters to develop over time as we tackle small-scale, local problems, with small-scale, local solutions. No world-eaters. No world-saving. Gene Simmons once formed a business based on a simple axiom that ArenaNet should treat as gospel going forward: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Maps
“Asset flip” got thrown around so much when discussion of Skywatch started, but I really think that’s a disservice to a pretty cool map. It is heavily aerial based, with distinct locales based on alternate-history versions of places we’ve been. Sweet! Something new with a dash of nostalgia. There is also a good variety of events, with some simple minigames (“Dip it in some bluuhd!”), and self-contained (i.e., Elona does not effect Maguuma) event chains for each region. There was a lot here that reminded me of classic GW2 zones, and I can appreciate that.
The Wizard’s Tower is actually one of my favorite hubs, though it is also one of the more intensive. I think it is one of the only zones that can cause my CPU and GPU fans to start becoming audible, but it actually hosts some mini-games and adventures, while acting as a Strike hub, a Convergence hub, and it is a regional hub with connections to all of this expansion’s maps. It also hosts numerous side-quests and bits of lore. It’s biggest downside is that it shares architecture with…
Amnytas. God save us all. The events are mostly fine, mediocre, middle-of-the-road. But the architecture, man! The white-and-gold wouldn’t kill me if it was used for, say, a single Bastion. Using it for all Bastions makes everything so monolithic, and I don’t think that everything needed to look exactly like the Wizard’s Tower. We know that this all belongs to the wizards, we can see them. Give me some variety, dammit! Maybe make Celestial and the World Tower have the white-and-gold since they rise above everything else – it also just seems fitting for Celestial to be white-and-gold, whereas I don’t think it fits as much for the others. Make the Natural covered in flora and fauna – COVERED! This place needs to be a zoo, with no barrier between the observers and the observed. Knowledge has one puny little library? I think the entire thing shoulda been books – high towers with shelves of books on the walkways, corridors with shelves of books along them, buildings with bookshelves for walls; why would they have a single library when the entire Bastion is a repository of knowledge? Strength should have been training grounds and barracks. Meditation circles for honing your mind. Training grounds for learning and crafting spells and weapons to hone the body. Medical tents for quick healing to get people back to training ASAP. The comfiest beds around for meaningful R&R before waking up to do it all again the next day. I don’t have the firmest idea on what to do with Balance, but the fact that it isn’t a symmetrical mirror image of itself is a fucking crime. Oh, and why, WHY can just anyone see the Bastion of the Obscure? Surely this should be hidden under another Bastion, or somehow decentralized in various Pueblo-esque cliff dwellings? Do we really want a central, easily accessible repository for all of the arcane, esoteric, downright heretical shit we don’t want people to know about? I mean, I do, but that doesn’t mean a bunch of secretive wizards would!
Well, well, well. Inner Nayos. First, let me say I love the gray-reddish-purple theme. It is appropriately alien and foreboding. Seriously, I love this map's visuals. The event density might actually be too high, so there is definitely a balancing act that ArenaNet needs to manage. When I am doing an event, I sometimes get directed to a different event a few feet away (this seems particularly common with the Free the Kryptis event) while I am still working on completing a separate event. The added Skirmisher events have really only compounded this problem – it is like someone gave the event designer a challenge to have no inch of the map untouched by an orange circle.
Metas
Skywatch had such potential. The numerous zones and the conflicts that caused each zone to differ from their actual Tyrian counterparts has so much potential for an interesting meta, and could have done wonders to demonstrate the sheer danger of creating these fractals, as well as the hubris of Isgarren and the wizards. Why are we stuck fighting generic Karen Kryptis when we could split up into the different zones to fight God-Emperor Balthazar, some sort of horrific chak mutated by Rata Novan experiments, a Jade Mech recreation of Shiro, the king of the Stone Summit dwarves mounted upon a wyvern, and the remains of the Garenhoff Wizard’s Tower reformed into a golem. The possibilities for an awe-inspiring introductory meta were near limitless! But we beat up some boogers and make a key.
Now, that’s really just looking at the narrative aspects of Skywatch’s meta – fear not, the actual gameplay mechanics are equally disappointing. We alternate between rounding up more balls than Liberace hiding all his lovers in his closet, fighting groups of generic legacy enemies, killing a few larger (but still generic) kryptis, before culminating in a thousand players blasting Lyhr’s corneas with the power of heart.
Amnytas tries so, so hard. Narratively, I think it’s fine. We get a massive enemy that menaces over the entire map, and this big boy is properly visually threatening. The first time I entered Amnytas, the meta was active, and I saw Cthulhu’s bastard son taking his abandonment issues out on us. I held off on completing the meta until I completed the initial SOTO story, but I was itching to reenact my favorite hentai scenes.
The fight’s kinda bad. We have to spread out and deal with various threats, slowly closing in on Charles Nourys’ position. But, the encounters are largely the same as what we got in Skywatch, just in different locales – generic kryptis, generic champs, everyone cupping more balls than Freddy Mercury at Live Aid. Chuck himself is, well...many a meme has been made about beating him with yoga. As much as I like going into Downward Dagda pose, the finale with what could have been an awesome, memorable encounter is cheapened to be a large-scale quick-time event. I am gonna assume this was a time constraint, because I do not believe that anyone thought we’d be thrilled waiting to fight this monstrous creature in its current incarnation. We spend some time mindlessly zerging his face, spreading out, mindlessly zerging his face, and counting on our numpad. While this is appropriate for my room temperature in Celsius IQ, I think players would have preferred that Nourys actually plop down onto the platform and become a proper boss. (6 7 8 9 0 7 8 9)
Inner Nayos is difficult to discuss since there are three disparate metas – yes, Zakiros needs the first two metas to be completed to begin, but it is not directly connected in the way that, say, the three lanes of Dragon Stand are connected. Ignaxious’ meta is probably my favorite of the three – we have a lot of movement on the map, with some variance in objectives. Once the community was collectively able to convince people to just bring their Griffon or Skyscale down the chasm and directly to the beacon (instead of 80% of people at launch looping between a minor-beacon and the southern beacon), things progressed quickly. No, cleaning up emotional residue like a therapist moonlighting as a janitor isn’t thrilling, but in both instances it’s quick, snappy, and there is momentum to the next event. Sieging down the gate isn’t great fun, but it gives me a reason to hop on a turtle and hum the TMNT theme. Ignaxious himself is dynamic – other than his bullshit fire AoEs that he can drop while you HAVE to be behind a pillar to not die (so quick death by fire, or even quicker death by a localized nuclear explosion), you can deftly avoid a lot of his attacks, there isn’t too much visual noise, and you can actually sight-read a lot of his attacks. Even in a swarm of equally important Wayfinders, I feel like I am doing something more than gormlessly drooling while mining nostril gold.
Knaebelag, oh Knaebelag. The escorts to begin the fight are fine. Nothing offensive, but also nothing that will get your blood flowing and finally let you kick your Viagra addiction. I am a little baffled that we have two burly, manly-men norn as our NPC chaperones, though I suppose we need to show the Kryptis that Tyrians ain’t lacking in the meat department.
NowBeLag himself is just a dick, though. Too much health, too many breaks from the fight (the 75% and 50% interludes are also just the same thing, which is unfathomably lame), and OH MY GOD I AM SO FAR BEHIND YOU HOW DID YOU SUCK ME IN AND BLOW ME LIKE NANCY REAGAN. I am not sure what it is about this fight, but I always feel like I get hit no matter where I am in relation to AoEs. There have been plenty of times where I make it through the fight unscathed, and other fights where I feel like I am constantly downed. I am not sure how to improve readability with such a big enemy performing numerous large AoEs, but surely something can be refined.
My impressions of the Eparch meta are pretty mixed, and I’ve only done it four times (three wins, one loss w/ a nice cutscene). Between uncertainty as to what are and are not bugs, don’t expect a firm judgment here, just my initial impressions. The pylon destruction is quick, kinda fun, and we get to cosplay Lance Armstrong as we dangle our single explosive ball in the air. Destroying the nodes feels weird, and possibly bugged – taking down the membrane and fireballing them works fine, but on many occasions the node just immediately respawned. That isn’t necessarily an issue since the meta still progresses, but I don’t think it’s working as intended. The fight with a generic kryptis also seems like filler. It doesn’t take too long, so I’ll allow it. The two spire descents feel identically unremarkable – I honestly struggle to recall the differences. After killing Kevin Kryptis, we enter the central spire via portal to fight Eparch, who is in a much crabbier mood than his story-mode counterpart. Now, I am utterly unsure of what this fight is supposed to be – buff yourself with the pools, close rifts, dodge AoEs, stack on Eparch seems to be the intended rhythm, but I cannot for the life of me deal with attacks that seem to blip in and out of existence. The static electricity wave seems to be the worst culprit, but just about every one of Eparch’s attacks has suddenly disappeared from my life like a dad running out to buy cigarettes. Kinda makes it hard to know where to stand, so I just do a jittery side-step that seems to work.
Outro
Guild Wars 2 is one of my favorite games, full stop. It truly pains me to write that I think Secrets of the Obscure contains some of the worst content this series has ever seen. This franchise deserves better, and it is within ArenaNet’s capabilities to do better. I understand that this is a new format for content delivery, but they are also a studio that has delivered superior content for free for over a decade. If the Expansion-Living World Season cycle is not sustainable, and this is the hard limit of what a mini expansion can deliver, I would actually prefer more expensive, meatier expansions every two years instead of the current method. I got my money’s worth, I won’t deny it, but there were times where I was treading dangerously close to, “Man, I actually wish I didn’t spend money on this.” Even in the deepest depths ofdespair Gyala, I had never come close to regretting any of my expansion purchases. SOTO changed that; with sadness, I must give it a 6/10. If you buy it, get it for the upgrades to the core Guild Wars 2 experience – the actual content it adds is lacking. ArenaNet needs to focus on a more modest but better realized expansion; let's see what next Tuesday brings.
submitted by GodakDS to Guildwars2 [link] [comments]
Intro
For some time during and after the launch period, I was ambivalent about Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure. There were aspects I enjoyed: the Wizard’s Vault was a fantastic choose-your-own-reward system that combined the benefits of the prior daily system and the log-in rewards while avoiding the occasional stinker – hello single, solitary Tome of Knowledge - you’d receive from the old system, the new elite specialization-agnostic weapons were a welcome addition to build variety, the upgraded Skyscale and Griffon were great fun. I was much less impressed by the story, the maps, and the metas. Which, as you may note, is kinda like telling Queen Jennah that you like her feet, but hate her hair, face, eyes, and personality; some of you might disagree, but I think that scale is pretty unbalanced.
Vault
So, I was kinda lukewarm on the Wizard’s Vault at first. The dailies and weeklies that facilitated these rewards were...hit or miss at launch. There was nothing quite so enjoyable as trying to do Spirit Vestibule in an orderly fashion, and people just come in and slaughter the spirit your group was going to kill next, so now you’re just stuck waiting. They’ve since been streamlined and much improved, but variety is still a bit of a weak point. It might have been a technical limitation, but I do often wonder why the old dailies weren’t retained, with the daily reward being a bolus of Astral Acclaim equal to completing all of the current daily objectives – there would have been so much more variety! We’d be able to mix together some strange, arcane concoction of PvE, WvW, and PvP objectives together however we desired. Who’s to blame? Spaghetti code? Ravioli code? Only ArenaNet knows the starchy truth behind their pasta patches. Ultimately, I really enjoy picking what I want, when I want. I am now the dopamine, the syringe, and the injector. My veins floweth over with happy juice, and my doctor is getting really worried.
Weapons
The weapons were mostly an instant hit. Yeah, yeah, I know some of them are more stinker than stoker. Some disrupt the established meta too much, some are too weak compared to existing options...but I’m a filthy casual, so if something has an enjoyable playstyle and doesn’t end up with my twitching corpse wracking up hundreds of gold in waypoint fees, I count that as a win. Variety, meet spiciness. Spiciness, meet life. However, my casualness doesn’t mean that I don’t value some semblance of balance – ArenaNet should strive to optimize these weapons for their intended purpose whether that involves buffing them, debuffing them, or altering their skills. They should maintain or increase the fun-factor where needed. Honestly, the fact that Engie’s shortbow isn’t just flinging Green Arrow/Hawkeye-style trick arrows across the battlefield to help or hinder is a sin that no god can cleanse.
Mounts
The increased freedom and mobility brought to the Skyscale and Griffon makes me giggle when I hop on an updraft in Verdant Brink or zip across the skies on a ley-line in Bloodstone Fen. The amount of airplane noises I make while playing has doubled, which is a clear sign of success. But don’t think I’m letting everyone off Scott-free! The guy who decided that the Ley-line Acclimation mastery should always be on? You owe me some hemorrhoid cream! I know you patched it, but that does nothing for all of the doctor visits from the numerous times my asshole has friction-sealed from clenching as a ley-line yanked my mount from five feet away and drove off like I was a kid and the ley-line was a candy salesman in a windowless van. Still...still, the quality of life upgrades here are obvious and meaningful across all open world zones. Steps were also taken in subsequent releases to remedy the broken elements, and, honestly, I think these upgrades solidify Skyscale and Griffon as the best mounts in the game.
Story
I have created an obscure narrative theory called “Delayed Shatification.” Originally formed in relation to the story started in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and resolved in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, but can be applied to any narrative where the media that enthusiastically starts numerous plot threads with the promise of an awesome, exciting, thrilling conclusion...but in a later installment. While this often allows for a lot of upfront “cool shit” to occur, hooking the audience and increasing anticipation for the continuation, this often necessitates that these plot threads are all hastily resolved or even outright dropped due to production limitations. When the “cool shit” plot threads are wrapped up in an unsatisfactory manner, or not at all, this has the effect of the audience now being able to look at the plot in its entirety and going “wait, that shit wasn’t actually cool! It was just the potential of ending up in an awesome place that made it seem cool, but the difficulty of a successful execution caused it to just shit itself and die.” By dropping the ball on resolving these threads, we have retroactively made the piece of media that introduced those plot threads lesser.
The prime instance of this from SOTO is our resident vascularity viceroy, Mabon. “Whoa!” I said. “Whoa.” A living mursaat? A nice mursaat? A mursaat I could write
Mabon is really just the most prominent of these, given how early he is introduced in SOTO. He is, sadly, not the only one. Eparch? The cool guy bad bro of epic evilness? Let’s just build him up with so many nonsense vagueries and superlatives that it is impossible for him to measure up. Yet, we still kind of want him to, right? He is so nasty, so cruel, so deceptive, so...late? I tell myself that they had to know that introducing Eparch at the end of the penultimate act would guarantee that he would be a lame duck villain with no personality and no ability to influence anything narratively. He is introduced to die. We kill him. Could have been real cool if he wasn’t so sucky.
Pretty much the entire supporting cast from SOTO’s launch? Gladium, R’tchikk, The Artist Formerly Known as Vegetable, Dagda, Lyhr, Zizel, Narcisse; all of these side characters are just discarded for new, “exciting” alternatives when we swing on over to Nayos. This decision is baffling. We just got a whole cast of characters introduced – any game would struggle to flesh out so many in the length this mini expansion is dealing with – and then we replace them all with a new cast of Kryptis characters who need to be developed. I suppose that they are physically so fleshy that the writers don’t have to worry about their character development.
Much like the developers, I’ll be leaving the characters behind and moving on to something else equally forgettable: the overall plot. See, we spent a decade dealing with the Elder Dragons and their threat to Tyria, and there were times when things still felt a little rushed. Now, over the course of a year and one mini-expansion, we save both Tyria and Nayos. Maybe next expansion we’ll really amp things up and save three worlds while working two jobs, going to community college, and being a single parent.
The temptation to increase the stakes ever-higher is a well-known trap that ArenaNet has fallen into with more gusto than an American GI into a Vietnamese punji pit. Simply put, they tried to do way too much too fast, and the whiplash from, “TyriaisindangerTyriaissavedNayosisindangerNayosissaved” has put a permanent Peitha-shaped kink in my neck that only dommy-mommy kisses can mend. If mini expansions are the way of the future, give us a consistent, rotating cast of supporting characters to develop over time as we tackle small-scale, local problems, with small-scale, local solutions. No world-eaters. No world-saving. Gene Simmons once formed a business based on a simple axiom that ArenaNet should treat as gospel going forward: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Maps
“Asset flip” got thrown around so much when discussion of Skywatch started, but I really think that’s a disservice to a pretty cool map. It is heavily aerial based, with distinct locales based on alternate-history versions of places we’ve been. Sweet! Something new with a dash of nostalgia. There is also a good variety of events, with some simple minigames (“Dip it in some bluuhd!”), and self-contained (i.e., Elona does not effect Maguuma) event chains for each region. There was a lot here that reminded me of classic GW2 zones, and I can appreciate that.
The Wizard’s Tower is actually one of my favorite hubs, though it is also one of the more intensive. I think it is one of the only zones that can cause my CPU and GPU fans to start becoming audible, but it actually hosts some mini-games and adventures, while acting as a Strike hub, a Convergence hub, and it is a regional hub with connections to all of this expansion’s maps. It also hosts numerous side-quests and bits of lore. It’s biggest downside is that it shares architecture with…
Amnytas. God save us all. The events are mostly fine, mediocre, middle-of-the-road. But the architecture, man! The white-and-gold wouldn’t kill me if it was used for, say, a single Bastion. Using it for all Bastions makes everything so monolithic, and I don’t think that everything needed to look exactly like the Wizard’s Tower. We know that this all belongs to the wizards, we can see them. Give me some variety, dammit! Maybe make Celestial and the World Tower have the white-and-gold since they rise above everything else – it also just seems fitting for Celestial to be white-and-gold, whereas I don’t think it fits as much for the others. Make the Natural covered in flora and fauna – COVERED! This place needs to be a zoo, with no barrier between the observers and the observed. Knowledge has one puny little library? I think the entire thing shoulda been books – high towers with shelves of books on the walkways, corridors with shelves of books along them, buildings with bookshelves for walls; why would they have a single library when the entire Bastion is a repository of knowledge? Strength should have been training grounds and barracks. Meditation circles for honing your mind. Training grounds for learning and crafting spells and weapons to hone the body. Medical tents for quick healing to get people back to training ASAP. The comfiest beds around for meaningful R&R before waking up to do it all again the next day. I don’t have the firmest idea on what to do with Balance, but the fact that it isn’t a symmetrical mirror image of itself is a fucking crime. Oh, and why, WHY can just anyone see the Bastion of the Obscure? Surely this should be hidden under another Bastion, or somehow decentralized in various Pueblo-esque cliff dwellings? Do we really want a central, easily accessible repository for all of the arcane, esoteric, downright heretical shit we don’t want people to know about? I mean, I do, but that doesn’t mean a bunch of secretive wizards would!
Well, well, well. Inner Nayos. First, let me say I love the gray-reddish-purple theme. It is appropriately alien and foreboding. Seriously, I love this map's visuals. The event density might actually be too high, so there is definitely a balancing act that ArenaNet needs to manage. When I am doing an event, I sometimes get directed to a different event a few feet away (this seems particularly common with the Free the Kryptis event) while I am still working on completing a separate event. The added Skirmisher events have really only compounded this problem – it is like someone gave the event designer a challenge to have no inch of the map untouched by an orange circle.
Metas
Skywatch had such potential. The numerous zones and the conflicts that caused each zone to differ from their actual Tyrian counterparts has so much potential for an interesting meta, and could have done wonders to demonstrate the sheer danger of creating these fractals, as well as the hubris of Isgarren and the wizards. Why are we stuck fighting generic Karen Kryptis when we could split up into the different zones to fight God-Emperor Balthazar, some sort of horrific chak mutated by Rata Novan experiments, a Jade Mech recreation of Shiro, the king of the Stone Summit dwarves mounted upon a wyvern, and the remains of the Garenhoff Wizard’s Tower reformed into a golem. The possibilities for an awe-inspiring introductory meta were near limitless! But we beat up some boogers and make a key.
Now, that’s really just looking at the narrative aspects of Skywatch’s meta – fear not, the actual gameplay mechanics are equally disappointing. We alternate between rounding up more balls than Liberace hiding all his lovers in his closet, fighting groups of generic legacy enemies, killing a few larger (but still generic) kryptis, before culminating in a thousand players blasting Lyhr’s corneas with the power of heart.
Amnytas tries so, so hard. Narratively, I think it’s fine. We get a massive enemy that menaces over the entire map, and this big boy is properly visually threatening. The first time I entered Amnytas, the meta was active, and I saw Cthulhu’s bastard son taking his abandonment issues out on us. I held off on completing the meta until I completed the initial SOTO story, but I was itching to reenact my favorite hentai scenes.
The fight’s kinda bad. We have to spread out and deal with various threats, slowly closing in on Charles Nourys’ position. But, the encounters are largely the same as what we got in Skywatch, just in different locales – generic kryptis, generic champs, everyone cupping more balls than Freddy Mercury at Live Aid. Chuck himself is, well...many a meme has been made about beating him with yoga. As much as I like going into Downward Dagda pose, the finale with what could have been an awesome, memorable encounter is cheapened to be a large-scale quick-time event. I am gonna assume this was a time constraint, because I do not believe that anyone thought we’d be thrilled waiting to fight this monstrous creature in its current incarnation. We spend some time mindlessly zerging his face, spreading out, mindlessly zerging his face, and counting on our numpad. While this is appropriate for my room temperature in Celsius IQ, I think players would have preferred that Nourys actually plop down onto the platform and become a proper boss. (6 7 8 9 0 7 8 9)
Inner Nayos is difficult to discuss since there are three disparate metas – yes, Zakiros needs the first two metas to be completed to begin, but it is not directly connected in the way that, say, the three lanes of Dragon Stand are connected. Ignaxious’ meta is probably my favorite of the three – we have a lot of movement on the map, with some variance in objectives. Once the community was collectively able to convince people to just bring their Griffon or Skyscale down the chasm and directly to the beacon (instead of 80% of people at launch looping between a minor-beacon and the southern beacon), things progressed quickly. No, cleaning up emotional residue like a therapist moonlighting as a janitor isn’t thrilling, but in both instances it’s quick, snappy, and there is momentum to the next event. Sieging down the gate isn’t great fun, but it gives me a reason to hop on a turtle and hum the TMNT theme. Ignaxious himself is dynamic – other than his bullshit fire AoEs that he can drop while you HAVE to be behind a pillar to not die (so quick death by fire, or even quicker death by a localized nuclear explosion), you can deftly avoid a lot of his attacks, there isn’t too much visual noise, and you can actually sight-read a lot of his attacks. Even in a swarm of equally important Wayfinders, I feel like I am doing something more than gormlessly drooling while mining nostril gold.
Knaebelag, oh Knaebelag. The escorts to begin the fight are fine. Nothing offensive, but also nothing that will get your blood flowing and finally let you kick your Viagra addiction. I am a little baffled that we have two burly, manly-men norn as our NPC chaperones, though I suppose we need to show the Kryptis that Tyrians ain’t lacking in the meat department.
NowBeLag himself is just a dick, though. Too much health, too many breaks from the fight (the 75% and 50% interludes are also just the same thing, which is unfathomably lame), and OH MY GOD I AM SO FAR BEHIND YOU HOW DID YOU SUCK ME IN AND BLOW ME LIKE NANCY REAGAN. I am not sure what it is about this fight, but I always feel like I get hit no matter where I am in relation to AoEs. There have been plenty of times where I make it through the fight unscathed, and other fights where I feel like I am constantly downed. I am not sure how to improve readability with such a big enemy performing numerous large AoEs, but surely something can be refined.
My impressions of the Eparch meta are pretty mixed, and I’ve only done it four times (three wins, one loss w/ a nice cutscene). Between uncertainty as to what are and are not bugs, don’t expect a firm judgment here, just my initial impressions. The pylon destruction is quick, kinda fun, and we get to cosplay Lance Armstrong as we dangle our single explosive ball in the air. Destroying the nodes feels weird, and possibly bugged – taking down the membrane and fireballing them works fine, but on many occasions the node just immediately respawned. That isn’t necessarily an issue since the meta still progresses, but I don’t think it’s working as intended. The fight with a generic kryptis also seems like filler. It doesn’t take too long, so I’ll allow it. The two spire descents feel identically unremarkable – I honestly struggle to recall the differences. After killing Kevin Kryptis, we enter the central spire via portal to fight Eparch, who is in a much crabbier mood than his story-mode counterpart. Now, I am utterly unsure of what this fight is supposed to be – buff yourself with the pools, close rifts, dodge AoEs, stack on Eparch seems to be the intended rhythm, but I cannot for the life of me deal with attacks that seem to blip in and out of existence. The static electricity wave seems to be the worst culprit, but just about every one of Eparch’s attacks has suddenly disappeared from my life like a dad running out to buy cigarettes. Kinda makes it hard to know where to stand, so I just do a jittery side-step that seems to work.
Outro
Guild Wars 2 is one of my favorite games, full stop. It truly pains me to write that I think Secrets of the Obscure contains some of the worst content this series has ever seen. This franchise deserves better, and it is within ArenaNet’s capabilities to do better. I understand that this is a new format for content delivery, but they are also a studio that has delivered superior content for free for over a decade. If the Expansion-Living World Season cycle is not sustainable, and this is the hard limit of what a mini expansion can deliver, I would actually prefer more expensive, meatier expansions every two years instead of the current method. I got my money’s worth, I won’t deny it, but there were times where I was treading dangerously close to, “Man, I actually wish I didn’t spend money on this.” Even in the deepest depths of
2024.05.31 15:37 thelansis Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OPSCC) – Market Outlook, Epidemiology, Competitive Landscape, and Market Forecast Report – 2023 To 2033
 | https://preview.redd.it/xtffeq6rlr3d1.jpg?width=1275&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1bc52a8da30c89352e7784db4228d095eaa0397b submitted by thelansis to u/thelansis [link] [comments] Oropharyngeal cancer is a condition where cancerous cells develop in the tissues of the oropharynx, which constitutes the middle part of the pharynx. This area encompasses the tonsils, the back of the tongue, and the posterior throat walls. The pharynx serves as a passage for both air and food. Oropharyngeal cancers are commonly associated with HPV, and a positive HPV-16 polymerase chain reaction test of a biopsy or fine-needle aspiration is suggestive of oropharyngeal origin. Most oropharyngeal cancers are squamous cell carcinomas, thin, flat cells that line the interior of the oropharynx. Oropharyngeal cancer is relatively rare and typically afflicts individuals aged 50 to 80. The primary risk factors are smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. However, there has been a rise in cases among younger people infected with human papillomavirus (HPV). The signs and symptoms of oropharyngeal cancer can vary depending on the specific location, type, stage of cancer, and the individual genetic makeup of the tumor. These symptoms may include A lump in the neck or throat, Difficulty chewing or swallowing, along with pain, Sore throat, Unexplained ear pain, A persistent sore or ulcer lasting more than two weeks, Difficulty in mouth opening or tongue movement, A persistent white patch on the tongue or the lining of the mouth, Coughing up blood. Risk factors for oropharyngeal cancer can be attributed to environmental, behavioral, or genetic factors and include Tobacco use (cigarettes, pipes, cigars, chewing tobacco), Alcohol consumption, Exposure to human papillomavirus (HPV), including HPV type 16, A prior history of head and neck cancer.
KOLs insights of Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OPSCC) across 8 MM market from the centre of Excellence/ Public/ Private hospitals participated in the study. Insights around current treatment landscape, epidemiology, clinical characteristics, future treatment paradigm, and Unmet needs. Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OPSCC) Market Forecast Patient Based Forecast Model (MS. Excel Based Automated Dashboard), which Data Inputs with sourcing, Market Event, and Product Event, Country specific Forecast Model, Market uptake and patient share uptake, Attribute Analysis, Analog Analysis, Disease burden, and pricing scenario, Summary, and Insights. Thelansis Competitive Intelligence (CI) practice has been established based on a deep understanding of the pharma/biotech business environment to provide an optimized support system to all levels of the decision-making process. It enables business leaders in forward-thinking and proactive decision-making. Thelansis supports scientific and commercial teams in seamless CI support by creating an AI/ ML-based technology-driven platform that manages the data flow from primary and secondary sources. Read more: Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OPSCC) – Market Outlook, Epidemiology, Competitive Landscape, and Market Forecast Report – 2023 To 2033 |
2024.05.31 09:31 Misaka__Misaka The harshest truth I've learned. My commitment to fixing this broken world.
Okie-dokes, so when I comment on someone else's stuff, I cover up semi-relevant text as a courtesy to people who have any neurodivergence that makes reading more tedious. A lot of info is lost if they skip the covered-up parts, but since I'm usually tryna help somebody, I'd rather they skim it than skip it.
This is a post on my own account (not a subreddit), so I wouldn't normally do that, but it was originally a comment. The post got comment locked before I finished it. I just copy/pasted it. And you gotta add HTML stuff to cover up the text. It's a pain in the ass (worth it if I'm catering to someone else, but this is my own post and it's important to me) so I'm not gonna go through it and remove all that stuff.
So basically some is gonna be stuff covered up but there's no significance to it.
NOT in a nutshell -
The fire refers to suffering. So many people being harmed and dying from the most easily avoidable things. The heat scorches. The fumes choke. But the light illuminates, and that's supposed to be a good thing. But with this world in its current state, the light is considered bad.
Toxic minds refers mostly to the Dark Tetrad (the four darkest most harmful traits a person can possibly have) Psychopathy, Machiavellism, narcissism, and sadism. But it encompasses all harmful thought processes. Everything that's bad for the world as whole.
To clarify, when I say sadism, I don't mean "Find a masochist and hit them", sadism. That's harmless. It isn't true suffering if the person likes it. BDSM never hurt anyone. People who use the practices in harmful ways hurt people. In the Dark Tetrad, sadism refers to taking pleasure in causing/witnessing true suffering. To someone who's like this, BDSM does nothing. It has to be real. Crying isn't enough when they know the person likes to cry. Bleeding isn't enough if they know person likes to bleed, etc. True suffering cannot be simulated without the placebo effect. If someone gets off on "torturing" people who they know enjoy it, that's kinky sadism. Not true sadism. Don't demonize that person. They're doing nothing wrong. Don't tell them they're not a sadist, because gatekeeping is wrong and they may like the word, but don't rope them in with people who cause true suffering.
To clarify, when I say "narcissism", I don't mean the kind of shit you hear about on social media. That's narcissistic tendencies. There's a significant of difference. Stop throwing that word around like it's nothing. Narcissistic tendencies are very common (that doesn't make them okay. Far from it.) Actual diagnosed textbook narcissism is not. To make it relatable to a lot of people, for example if you step on a cockroach just hard enough to kill it and then throw it in the trash, that's what most people do. But if you stomp it like it's a crawling zombie's head and smear it all over the floor like a rag when you clean the floor, someone might say "That seemed sadistic." and they would have a point. From the outside in it looked more like you hated it than you just wanted to get rid of it. But even if for whatever reason you hated cockroaches that much, yes it was a sadistic thing to do, but that wouldn't make you a sadist. A sadistic tendency is not the same as sadism. Narcissistic tendencies are toxic but they are different from narcissism. This applies to all negative traits. You can do something that (bad type of person) would do, but that doesn't make you one of them. To be one of them you have to be like that all the time.
Okay done clarifying words and continuing with the metaphor.
Still on toxic minds
Most people only care about those they know and like. If they think someone is not in a position to help or harm them, they just don't matter. It doesn't matter if they live or die. And yes, it's true that with enough effort anyone can harm anyone, and anyone can help anyone. But it is often clear when the effort level required would be impractical, and that most people wouldn't want the result enough to try that hard.
Most people don't know what morality is. They never did. And if they do know, they don't care. They still pretend they don't, because being honest would undermine their hateful endeavors. They would have to look at themselves in the mirror and acknowledge who they really are. It would be devastating. The purpose of morality is supposed to be the wellbeing of all living things. But the way it's being used is as a smokescreen to obscure actions being taken out of sheer hatred.
Most people are more upset by things they consider gross or cringe than things that legitimately cause quantifiable harm. All it takes to overlook genocide is "They attacked first. It's a war." War crimes are ignored and forgotten. Most people don't know what a war crime is. Most people don't even know there are rules in all warfare. Including international. They don't know what the Geneva Convention is. And they won't look into it.
But if they see anything that makes them feel uncomfortable enough, they consider it evil. It doesn't matter that there is no harm whatsoever being done to any living thing. All it has to be is freaky. Eat an eyeball or drink blood that came from someone who's already dead and gone (when you didn't kill them) That's evil. Why? How? Don't ask why or how. You shouldn't need to be told. You shouldn't even be able to ask that question. You're evil just for asking. You're evil for even wondering. Evil. Translation 👉 "I just don't like it, and evil is the most intense-sounding negative word I know. I'd rather make someone else feel like a monster than let myself feel awkward."
Incendiary actions represents destructive behavior.
Incendiary refers to fire. Fire doesn't just hit your target. Fire spreads. It causes collateral damage. Collateral damage means harm is being caused to people who have nothing to do with your conflict. That's not fair. You may have a legitimate reason hate a specific individual. There are things a person can do that are bad enough that it would be understandable to say "I don't care what happens to this person. If they died, I wouldn't care". But you should never stop caring about the world. Everyone in this world is connected, and the butterfly effect is indescribably powerful. When people are harmed, they become unhappy. Unhappy people cause harm. When you lash out at an individual, you don't just burn them. You burn everyone they're gonna be interacting with afterward. Technically it will be that person who burns the other people, but effectively it's you. "You are technically right. And that's the best kind of correct." is a belief held by people who care about arguments. Effective truth is more relevant than technical truth almost 100% of the time. That person spreads the fire. That's their decision. It may not have been on purpose, but they did it. But you set them on fire. And the more cruelty you showed them, the more they're sufferong, and the bigger the blaze is. At a certain point a person can't really move without that fire hitting something. There's too much. There wouldn't be any fire to spread if you hadn't done it. And the fire you spread to them probably came from someone else being cruel to you, so they are at fault too, but so are you. You should have snuffed the fire out.
A TRUE protector would consider that to be unacceptable. Inexcusable. A protector has only one true enemy. That enemy is danger itself. A protector understands that nothing in this world is wrong except harm. Whatever nullifies the danger and prevents further harm without collateral damage is the ideal method. No, it's not always that simple. It's usually not. We don't live in candy land. Sometimes you have to cause some harm to prevent a lot of harm. But if there is a method with no collateral damage, THAT'S the one a protector uses. A protector does not hate. A protector loves. A protector only harms if it will prevent a greater degree of harm. A protector PROTECTS.
A true protector understands that protecting the innocent is a higher priority than punishing the guilty. This is because the purpose of punishing the guilty is supposed to be protection of the innocent. It's supposed to be a deterrent so that that person will want to avoid being punished again, so they'll stop what they're doing. When done publicly, it is also a deterrent to people who only care about themselves. It's to show them that their emotional independence doesn't mean they can just do whatever they want, because harming others will lead to them being harmed themselves. And if they haven't done anything wrong yet, they had better continue to not do anything wrong. The purpose of punishment is not spite.
If you harm someone because of your negative feelings toward them (regardless of how legitimate your feelings are, or what they did to make you feel that way) that is spite. If it stops them from doing something harmful (to a living thing), that's protection. But if the only benefit that came from that harm is that it felt satisfying, you did not protect anyone. That was out of self-interest. You are not a protector. You are spiteful. Now, I'm no saint, and imo there are contexts where spite is understandable. Even excusable. But it's important to call things what they are. You can tell yourself that the situation warranted spite, but don't tell yourself you were being protective. That was for you. Nobody else.
Back to the metaphor.
Heat is the symptoms of the incendiary behavior. It's covered in the explanation of incendiary.
Fumes are the symptoms of the toxic minds. Like the heat, already explained.
Those two things are what should be considered the bad parts of the fire that's burning the world. This next part is what's being treated as the bad part.
THE LIGHT is family- UNfriendly truths. A family-unfriendly truth is knowledge born from tragedy that is bulletproof to a true protector, because they prioritize safety among everything else. But there are very few true protectors in this world. What most people call protection is just a facade. It's a charade. It's fake. It's how they get their conscience to take a smoke break at just the right moment for them to cause massive collateral damage out of sheer hatred, then get back to business as usual before the cigarette's out, and act like nothing happened.
To everyone else, THE LIGHT, these truths, are the worst thing in the world. They are completely unapproachable. They cannot even be looked at. Because they're just too upsetting to bear. A person would be putting themselves in harm's way just by acknowledging that any of it has merit. That's more trouble than most people are willing to go to to solve a problem that's society-wide and not exclusively their own. Everyone has their own people to worry about. Groups smaller than society, like their family. And like I said, fire spreads.
So if one person dares to come out of the dark and say "Are we SURE that this is evil? And even if it is, are we SURE we're handling this the right way? How much collateral damage are we causing? Are we only destroying the evil, or are we also destroying all the ground it touches? What if we're destroying the ground but not the evil? Do any of us even know how much evil we've destroyed? Or even how much there is? What the fuck are we doing??"
That person might get set on fire. And who's gonna be near them when they go home? The people they care about more than society. They're not being heartless by looking the other way. They're just being practical. If someone throws a brick at your car, you don't shield it with your baby. That's why most people won't speak up. Society is considered important to an extent to all people, but priorities must be kept in order. As long as there's that much risk in it, keep your head down. But if everyone who cared stepped into the light all at once, they'd find out that their ideas are not so weird. That the popular stuff they've wanted to call out is actually not very popular at all.
So yes, family unfriendly truths can be horrifically disgusting. But ya know what??? Nausea's not death. Our stomach is not our heart. Sometimes you need some pretty disgusting information to solve a disgusting problem. And if you can't even withstand THAT much discomfort yourself, forget about protecting anyone else. Stay in the shadows.
Hating is easier than asking. Harming is easier than understanding. The world is cruel and life is hard, and we can each only withstand so much. So sometimes doing what's easy is all we can manage. That's not evil. It's just a limitation of ability. There are more important things in the world than ability. Be that as it may, I'll tell you where I stand. (Bear in mind this is a new policy. Like right now new. If someone Scooby-Doo's me, my post/comment history will show what looks like hypocrisy)
From now on, (Friday, May 31st, 2024) I refuse to hate, and I refuse to harm. I have the best partner in the world by my side. That person is this world's redemption, and as long as I have that person, I'm indestructible. I will never retaliate against a personal attack again, as long as it is only personal. Because I know exactly who I am, and I love who I am. I am not insecure. I am unanimously loved among people who have enough information to make educated judgment. If I'm loved by those who know me, I shouldn't need to be liked by those who don't. Starting today, I no longer do. I am fulfilled. I am at peace. I am indestructible.
I am indestructible, but the world is on fire. If someone displays ideology that's causing collateral damage, I will attack the ideology. Not the person. And I won't be more impolite than I need to. Because no matter how bad that person is when they're doing that to me, if I make them even more unhappy, that fire will spread. It will spread to people who are more vulnerable than me. People who have done nothing to me. I'm never gonna contribute to this problem again.
One of my favorite quotes, that ive lived by since I first saw it, and now I'll adhere to it more than ever is this one.
submitted by Misaka__Misaka to u/Misaka__Misaka [link] [comments]
This is a post on my own account (not a subreddit), so I wouldn't normally do that, but it was originally a comment. The post got comment locked before I finished it. I just copy/pasted it. And you gotta add HTML stuff to cover up the text. It's a pain in the ass (worth it if I'm catering to someone else, but this is my own post and it's important to me) so I'm not gonna go through it and remove all that stuff.
So basically some is gonna be stuff covered up but there's no significance to it.
This is the harshest truth I've learned in life. Learning it didn't make me stronger. Learning it made my heart bleed. Acknowledging that if I want to do good, I have to adapt to it. That is what made me strong.
In a nutshell, and in my own words -This world is on fire. But most people's minds are so toxic, and their actions are so incendiary that the heat and fumes flourish. Only the light is considered a problem.
If anyone doesn't get it, it's a metaphor.NOT in a nutshell -
The fire refers to suffering. So many people being harmed and dying from the most easily avoidable things. The heat scorches. The fumes choke. But the light illuminates, and that's supposed to be a good thing. But with this world in its current state, the light is considered bad.
Toxic minds refers mostly to the Dark Tetrad (the four darkest most harmful traits a person can possibly have) Psychopathy, Machiavellism, narcissism, and sadism. But it encompasses all harmful thought processes. Everything that's bad for the world as whole.
To clarify, when I say sadism, I don't mean "Find a masochist and hit them", sadism. That's harmless. It isn't true suffering if the person likes it. BDSM never hurt anyone. People who use the practices in harmful ways hurt people. In the Dark Tetrad, sadism refers to taking pleasure in causing/witnessing true suffering. To someone who's like this, BDSM does nothing. It has to be real. Crying isn't enough when they know the person likes to cry. Bleeding isn't enough if they know person likes to bleed, etc. True suffering cannot be simulated without the placebo effect. If someone gets off on "torturing" people who they know enjoy it, that's kinky sadism. Not true sadism. Don't demonize that person. They're doing nothing wrong. Don't tell them they're not a sadist, because gatekeeping is wrong and they may like the word, but don't rope them in with people who cause true suffering.
To clarify, when I say "narcissism", I don't mean the kind of shit you hear about on social media. That's narcissistic tendencies. There's a significant of difference. Stop throwing that word around like it's nothing. Narcissistic tendencies are very common (that doesn't make them okay. Far from it.) Actual diagnosed textbook narcissism is not. To make it relatable to a lot of people, for example if you step on a cockroach just hard enough to kill it and then throw it in the trash, that's what most people do. But if you stomp it like it's a crawling zombie's head and smear it all over the floor like a rag when you clean the floor, someone might say "That seemed sadistic." and they would have a point. From the outside in it looked more like you hated it than you just wanted to get rid of it. But even if for whatever reason you hated cockroaches that much, yes it was a sadistic thing to do, but that wouldn't make you a sadist. A sadistic tendency is not the same as sadism. Narcissistic tendencies are toxic but they are different from narcissism. This applies to all negative traits. You can do something that (bad type of person) would do, but that doesn't make you one of them. To be one of them you have to be like that all the time.
Okay done clarifying words and continuing with the metaphor.
Still on toxic minds
Most people only care about those they know and like. If they think someone is not in a position to help or harm them, they just don't matter. It doesn't matter if they live or die. And yes, it's true that with enough effort anyone can harm anyone, and anyone can help anyone. But it is often clear when the effort level required would be impractical, and that most people wouldn't want the result enough to try that hard.
Most people don't know what morality is. They never did. And if they do know, they don't care. They still pretend they don't, because being honest would undermine their hateful endeavors. They would have to look at themselves in the mirror and acknowledge who they really are. It would be devastating. The purpose of morality is supposed to be the wellbeing of all living things. But the way it's being used is as a smokescreen to obscure actions being taken out of sheer hatred.
Most people are more upset by things they consider gross or cringe than things that legitimately cause quantifiable harm. All it takes to overlook genocide is "They attacked first. It's a war." War crimes are ignored and forgotten. Most people don't know what a war crime is. Most people don't even know there are rules in all warfare. Including international. They don't know what the Geneva Convention is. And they won't look into it.
But if they see anything that makes them feel uncomfortable enough, they consider it evil. It doesn't matter that there is no harm whatsoever being done to any living thing. All it has to be is freaky. Eat an eyeball or drink blood that came from someone who's already dead and gone (when you didn't kill them) That's evil. Why? How? Don't ask why or how. You shouldn't need to be told. You shouldn't even be able to ask that question. You're evil just for asking. You're evil for even wondering. Evil. Translation 👉 "I just don't like it, and evil is the most intense-sounding negative word I know. I'd rather make someone else feel like a monster than let myself feel awkward."
Incendiary actions represents destructive behavior.
Incendiary refers to fire. Fire doesn't just hit your target. Fire spreads. It causes collateral damage. Collateral damage means harm is being caused to people who have nothing to do with your conflict. That's not fair. You may have a legitimate reason hate a specific individual. There are things a person can do that are bad enough that it would be understandable to say "I don't care what happens to this person. If they died, I wouldn't care". But you should never stop caring about the world. Everyone in this world is connected, and the butterfly effect is indescribably powerful. When people are harmed, they become unhappy. Unhappy people cause harm. When you lash out at an individual, you don't just burn them. You burn everyone they're gonna be interacting with afterward. Technically it will be that person who burns the other people, but effectively it's you. "You are technically right. And that's the best kind of correct." is a belief held by people who care about arguments. Effective truth is more relevant than technical truth almost 100% of the time. That person spreads the fire. That's their decision. It may not have been on purpose, but they did it. But you set them on fire. And the more cruelty you showed them, the more they're sufferong, and the bigger the blaze is. At a certain point a person can't really move without that fire hitting something. There's too much. There wouldn't be any fire to spread if you hadn't done it. And the fire you spread to them probably came from someone else being cruel to you, so they are at fault too, but so are you. You should have snuffed the fire out.
A TRUE protector would consider that to be unacceptable. Inexcusable. A protector has only one true enemy. That enemy is danger itself. A protector understands that nothing in this world is wrong except harm. Whatever nullifies the danger and prevents further harm without collateral damage is the ideal method. No, it's not always that simple. It's usually not. We don't live in candy land. Sometimes you have to cause some harm to prevent a lot of harm. But if there is a method with no collateral damage, THAT'S the one a protector uses. A protector does not hate. A protector loves. A protector only harms if it will prevent a greater degree of harm. A protector PROTECTS.
A true protector understands that protecting the innocent is a higher priority than punishing the guilty. This is because the purpose of punishing the guilty is supposed to be protection of the innocent. It's supposed to be a deterrent so that that person will want to avoid being punished again, so they'll stop what they're doing. When done publicly, it is also a deterrent to people who only care about themselves. It's to show them that their emotional independence doesn't mean they can just do whatever they want, because harming others will lead to them being harmed themselves. And if they haven't done anything wrong yet, they had better continue to not do anything wrong. The purpose of punishment is not spite.
If you harm someone because of your negative feelings toward them (regardless of how legitimate your feelings are, or what they did to make you feel that way) that is spite. If it stops them from doing something harmful (to a living thing), that's protection. But if the only benefit that came from that harm is that it felt satisfying, you did not protect anyone. That was out of self-interest. You are not a protector. You are spiteful. Now, I'm no saint, and imo there are contexts where spite is understandable. Even excusable. But it's important to call things what they are. You can tell yourself that the situation warranted spite, but don't tell yourself you were being protective. That was for you. Nobody else.
Back to the metaphor.
Heat is the symptoms of the incendiary behavior. It's covered in the explanation of incendiary.
Fumes are the symptoms of the toxic minds. Like the heat, already explained.
Those two things are what should be considered the bad parts of the fire that's burning the world. This next part is what's being treated as the bad part.
THE LIGHT is family- UNfriendly truths. A family-unfriendly truth is knowledge born from tragedy that is bulletproof to a true protector, because they prioritize safety among everything else. But there are very few true protectors in this world. What most people call protection is just a facade. It's a charade. It's fake. It's how they get their conscience to take a smoke break at just the right moment for them to cause massive collateral damage out of sheer hatred, then get back to business as usual before the cigarette's out, and act like nothing happened.
To everyone else, THE LIGHT, these truths, are the worst thing in the world. They are completely unapproachable. They cannot even be looked at. Because they're just too upsetting to bear. A person would be putting themselves in harm's way just by acknowledging that any of it has merit. That's more trouble than most people are willing to go to to solve a problem that's society-wide and not exclusively their own. Everyone has their own people to worry about. Groups smaller than society, like their family. And like I said, fire spreads.
So if one person dares to come out of the dark and say "Are we SURE that this is evil? And even if it is, are we SURE we're handling this the right way? How much collateral damage are we causing? Are we only destroying the evil, or are we also destroying all the ground it touches? What if we're destroying the ground but not the evil? Do any of us even know how much evil we've destroyed? Or even how much there is? What the fuck are we doing??"
That person might get set on fire. And who's gonna be near them when they go home? The people they care about more than society. They're not being heartless by looking the other way. They're just being practical. If someone throws a brick at your car, you don't shield it with your baby. That's why most people won't speak up. Society is considered important to an extent to all people, but priorities must be kept in order. As long as there's that much risk in it, keep your head down. But if everyone who cared stepped into the light all at once, they'd find out that their ideas are not so weird. That the popular stuff they've wanted to call out is actually not very popular at all.
So yes, family unfriendly truths can be horrifically disgusting. But ya know what??? Nausea's not death. Our stomach is not our heart. Sometimes you need some pretty disgusting information to solve a disgusting problem. And if you can't even withstand THAT much discomfort yourself, forget about protecting anyone else. Stay in the shadows.
Hating is easier than asking. Harming is easier than understanding. The world is cruel and life is hard, and we can each only withstand so much. So sometimes doing what's easy is all we can manage. That's not evil. It's just a limitation of ability. There are more important things in the world than ability. Be that as it may, I'll tell you where I stand. (Bear in mind this is a new policy. Like right now new. If someone Scooby-Doo's me, my post/comment history will show what looks like hypocrisy)
From now on, (Friday, May 31st, 2024) I refuse to hate, and I refuse to harm. I have the best partner in the world by my side. That person is this world's redemption, and as long as I have that person, I'm indestructible. I will never retaliate against a personal attack again, as long as it is only personal. Because I know exactly who I am, and I love who I am. I am not insecure. I am unanimously loved among people who have enough information to make educated judgment. If I'm loved by those who know me, I shouldn't need to be liked by those who don't. Starting today, I no longer do. I am fulfilled. I am at peace. I am indestructible.
I am indestructible, but the world is on fire. If someone displays ideology that's causing collateral damage, I will attack the ideology. Not the person. And I won't be more impolite than I need to. Because no matter how bad that person is when they're doing that to me, if I make them even more unhappy, that fire will spread. It will spread to people who are more vulnerable than me. People who have done nothing to me. I'm never gonna contribute to this problem again.
One of my favorite quotes, that ive lived by since I first saw it, and now I'll adhere to it more than ever is this one.
"BE the change you wish to see in the world."
2024.05.31 08:12 newmusicrls VA - Examination of Theory Chapter I THRYX026
https://minimalfreaks.co/2024/05/va-examination-of-theory-chapter-i-thryx026/
GENRE Melodic, Indie Dance
submitted by newmusicrls to HypeTracks [link] [comments]
GENRE Melodic, Indie Dance
- LERM, ĀEMYGDALA – Inside the Sight feat. Jonatan Bäckelie (Original Mix) 06:34 120bpm 7A
- Cafius – Lost Suburbia (Original Mix) 04:34 123bpm 4B
- Headwaters – Midnight Reflection (Original Mix) 06:45 124bpm 7A
- KOBAIEN, Ohm Vision – Balkan Dance (Original Mix) 06:00 123bpm 3B
- Noissier – Trigger (Original Mix) 08:23 124bpm 1A
- Øntold, Patrick Ruprecht – Eileithyia (Original Mix) 05:25 122bpm 3A
2024.05.31 08:07 theconstellinguist An Analysis of Global Sex Trafficking
An Analysis of Global Sex Trafficking
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/40117819/OBrien_sex_trafficking_article-libre.pdf?1447801679=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DAn_Analysis_of_Global_Sex_Trafficking.pdf&Expires=1717037463&Signature=ZzQCsaResXGz0OZoNH69cLPKD7MFIDYFW1tDB1XzncCRmUggI~dcf4NnS-f3shVsSd0clCNc-Yd8GlSqjU~bv8~DY~IVWJoppNX71DIGXrVpWIzcpUXuOi1iH31INISiDg~DjNy~CmV5hH~susI~ENdImAxt2E-j6ApYG5nnvmtetC~6yUlUHJ-mzjPysQHLX2UamYjpHDyw-wXzYZkp8VJmxlGgwL0rDprUzpNdpVyl4VzIeLgBXIel-I3ShFhz0H9-zzTs5Xcewf7WnuY3iW0~cNHbYakOzWI2Yg4oAv55eKG7ZCN-YJvDBG86t6tUiPz5BiUng~ZmLakHeOh1jA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
Globalization has caused collective economic devastation that has stripped whole countries of their non-sexual assets forcing young women into prostitution, often on purpose.
submitted by theconstellinguist to economicabuse [link] [comments]
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/40117819/OBrien_sex_trafficking_article-libre.pdf?1447801679=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DAn_Analysis_of_Global_Sex_Trafficking.pdf&Expires=1717037463&Signature=ZzQCsaResXGz0OZoNH69cLPKD7MFIDYFW1tDB1XzncCRmUggI~dcf4NnS-f3shVsSd0clCNc-Yd8GlSqjU~bv8~DY~IVWJoppNX71DIGXrVpWIzcpUXuOi1iH31INISiDg~DjNy~CmV5hH~susI~ENdImAxt2E-j6ApYG5nnvmtetC~6yUlUHJ-mzjPysQHLX2UamYjpHDyw-wXzYZkp8VJmxlGgwL0rDprUzpNdpVyl4VzIeLgBXIel-I3ShFhz0H9-zzTs5Xcewf7WnuY3iW0~cNHbYakOzWI2Yg4oAv55eKG7ZCN-YJvDBG86t6tUiPz5BiUng~ZmLakHeOh1jA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
Globalization has caused collective economic devastation that has stripped whole countries of their non-sexual assets forcing young women into prostitution, often on purpose.
- Globalization’s neoliberal market economy, transnational movement, consumerist agenda, and feminization of poverty have created a breeding ground for sex trafficking. I posit that globalization’s effects on (particularly “developing”) economies, such as Thailand, and the environment has created a supply and easy movement of trafficked women and children; that Western-dominated and patriarchal approaches contribute to a feminization of poverty and gendered division of labor, which includes sexual services; and that the commodification of the female (and child) body through the mass media has increased a demand for sex trafficking.
- Finally, I argue that Sweden’s approach represents the best practice toward ameliorating sex trafficking by targeting the demand.
- Sex trafficking victims suffer physical, psychological, and economic abuse in this modern-day slavery; traffickers use violence, threats, coercion, and murder to instill fear in victims. Why have an increasing number of women and children (mostly girls) fallen victims to sex trafficking? This article analyzes sex trafficking and its connections with globalization, and then considers what policy approach best serves to deter this gender-based crime.
- “[W]e can see where the true problem lies—it lies with the buyers, the customers, the men” (Torrey, 2004; 74). In short, inclusion of controls on demand for the sex trade is the keystone to drafting improved legislation to combat sex trafficking.
- Primarily victimizing females, sex trafficking is a form of violence against women, and feminist theory calls for an examination of all violence against women and girls
- Why has demand for the sex industry been afforded a near invisibility in policy and research (Salter 2003; 4, 76)? Since heteropatriarchy “privileges heterosexual, promiscuous masculinity,” feminist theory can challenge the demand for sexual services of women and children (Kempadoo, 2004; 9).
- Socialist feminism can critique the commodification of the female body that supports this demand; Third World feminism can bring insight into sex trafficking as a continuance of colonial industry that exploits females on the basis of race, class, and nationality.
- I utilize an abolitionist feminist perspective toward the sex industry, which profits from a demand for sexual services supplied mostly by women, who face an imbalance of power within a patriarchal system. This demand for sexual services fuels sex trafficking
- Globalization’s international trade with a neoliberal market economy, its transnational movement through outsourcing and processing zones, its consumerist agenda, and its feminization of poverty (especially in developing nations) and labor (particularly exploiting women of color) 3 have created a breeding ground for sex trafficking.
- effects on (particularly “developing”) economies and the environment has created a supply of women and children to be trafficked, and an easy movement of people by traffickers, who benefit from corrupt authorities
- commodification of the female (and child) body through the mass media and the Internet has increased a “demand” by men for sexual commodities at the expense of “others,” especially “foreign, exotic” women.
- While the feminization of poverty and gender-based violence exist worldwide, environmental injustice and unfair economic policies disproportionately harm poor women and girls in developing nations. A system favoring developed nations in the name of globalization, which promotes “free” trade, contributes to global sex trafficking by increasing economic inequality and disadvantaging the “poorest of the poor.”
- One may examine Thailand’s environmental destruction to understand globalization’s increase in migration and urbanization, which contribute to sex trafficking. Transnational corporations in need of land for fast-growing trees (like rubber and eucalyptus) or industrial shrimp farms for their own harvesting have been displacing indigenous Thai people (who typically lack land titles) from their homelands, causing deforestation, flooding from soil erosion, and a lack of food and resources (such as mushrooms and fish) to sell for the local people’s income
- One elder Thai woman explained how the market economy encroached upon villages, creating a consumer culture, luring the youth to the city, and creating a loan and debt cycle for people who wanted more market economy goods as propelled by the media (Usher, 1994; 16). After the military presence during the Vietnam War and the resulting sex tourism industry, more young women and girls left their villages to sell their bodies (all they had left to sell in the market economy) to support their poor families back home, because they could no longer produce sufficient food from the environmentally damaged lands and they were forcefully removed from other lands,
- In addition to environmental injustice that disadvantages people within developing nations, such as Thailand, globalization’s “opening” of borders for goods and “products” includes people, thereby increasing opportunities for sex trafficking through lax controls and checks. Traffickers easily move victims across borders into and out of Thailand, a supplier and user of sex trafficking victims. In China, for instance, women and children are trafficked across regional borders into Thailand, Myanmar, Macau, and Vietnam, as well as from Thailand to Western nations for the sex trade. Statistics vary on Thailand’s sex industry, but they range from 86,000 to two million women and children prostituting in this global sex market (Usher, 2004; 18).
- some, while harming the interests of many local people. In 1997, the Contagion (part of the Asian financial crisis) first struck Thailand, forcing the Thai government to devalue their currency, causing a rapid decline in salaries, job losses, and setting the scene for an IMF loan, which imposed policies and a debt upon the Thai government.5
- This neocolonialism destabilized their economies, made them poorer, devalued their currencies, forced them to borrow and become indebted, thereby allowing the IMF and other lenders to control their national policies. In December 1997, the Contagion reached Korea, which turned to the IMF when it neared default on Japanese and U.S. loans. Due to pressure, the banks rolled over their loans and Korea received the largest loan, $55 billion, in world history from the U.S.
- “Countries as diverse as Vietnam, Cuba, and those in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union—all beset by acute financial crises while becoming market economies in varying degrees—are witnessing a tremendous increase in trafficking and prostitution”
- By not fairly including developing nations in the global economy and essentially closing markets to them in the guise of IMF-World Bank-WTO policies, we fail to ameliorate an economic cause of global sex trafficking. Prostitution through sex tourism has become one of Thailand’s major financial resources as it helps the government pay off debts, which form a part of the cycle of economic abuse in globalization. Indeed, Saskia Sassen states, “Debt and debt servicing problems have become a systemic feature of the developing world since the 1980s” causing the creation of “shadow” or illicit economies of globalization (Saunders, 2004; 94). In order to combat sex trafficking, the global community should eliminate economic policies that create conditions ripe for an illicit sex trade.
- 6 corruption among law enforcement officials and government agencies plays a key role in the successful operation of the criminal networks that traffic in human slave labor (King, 2004; 20). Officials can be bought off, laws against trafficking are weak in many countries, and attitudes7 toward violence against women are indifferent at best in many places. In Vietnam, “70% of those caught in brothels are reported to be state officials” (Enriquez, 2006; 4). Corruption exists within all nations, but rather than placing full blame on local officials, we must also hold non-locals colluding in sex trafficking accountable. For instance, “[f]ormer Australian diplomat Robert Michael Scoble was arrested March 2004 in Thailand in a joint operation conducted by the Royal Thai Police and Australian Federal Police…charged for promoting Thailand for sex tourism, child pornography, and trafficking of boys” (Cullen, 2004).
- Sold at the age of fourteen to a brothel, Siri was “initiated” into the sex industry by a pimp raping her.8 She was now a prostitute—a sex slave. Though she escaped and sought help, a policeman returned Siri to the brothel owner, who beat her; brothel owners pay police to ignore sex trafficking. Physically enslaved and sexually servicing about three hundred men per month, Siri also suffered psychological abuse. “It did not take long for the pimp to convince Siri of her worthlessness, and for Siri to accept the view of herself as a mere female who deserved her fate” (King, 2004; 26). Like Siri, trafficked women and girls are victims of a modern slavery, aided by corrupt authorities, including government workers, and the new global economy’s circuits and movement of money and people.
- d a push for sex tourism to fulfill the demand of a hypermasculine and market-driven ideology that permeates globalization. Despite an increased supply of women drawn into the sex industry due to economic conditions under globalization, “this ‘supply’ would never be used for sex trafficking purposes without the creation of demand” (Nikolic-Ristanovic, no date; 1). In general, men in armed forces (whether “armies, militias, or groups of bandits”) either “attract commercial sex workers to their barracks, kidnap women [and girls] from villages to provide sexual services in their camps, or harass women serving in their own ranks” (Silliman, 1999; 96). The Balkans, for example, reveals a rise in sex trafficking due to the military presence during and after the ethnic conflicts, and calls attention to the corruption involved in the sex trade, as United Nations and NATO 9 forces committed sex trafficking crimes in the Balkans.
- The presence of a military base in a region, regardless of war, expands prostitution, thereby creating a larger demand for sex trafficking as evidenced in the Philippines and Korea.
- During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Department of Defense had a contract with the Thai government to provide "Recreation & Relaxation" [R&R or “rest and relaxation”] for U.S. soldiers. With money from the U.S. government, local Thai prostitution organized and expanded into a major industry
- Hypermasculine denotes a sense of entitlement to women, the “Other” (Beauvoir, 1949), and a violent masculinity (like militaries) aimed at controlling others.10 Enriquez (2006) critiques the framework of globalization as masculinist based “on the gender division of labour, with women subsidizing reproductive work, and with neo-liberalism basing itself on the idea of competitiveness and domination” (Enriquez, 2006; 1). Heteropatriarchy encourages a viewpoint of masculinity that endorses men’s domination over and entitlement to women’s bodies, and certain groups of women fare worse due to race or other factors.
- While recognizing a greater impoverishment in the global South, Enriquez links patriarchy, capitalism, and economic inequality in the North and South, stressing that in both hemispheres women are disadvantaged economically and are harmed by globalization more than their male counterparts
- “In Western industrialized societies, hegemonic masculinity is characterized by work in the paid labor market, the subordination of women and girls, heterosexism and the driven and uncontrollable sexuality of men” (NikolicRistanovic, no date; 4). Further connecting “hegemonic masculinity” to a demand for women’s sexual services, Robert Connell stresses that “emphasized femininity complements hegemonic masculinity,” which emphasizes the “sexual receptivity” of “younger women” (Nikolic-Ristanovic, no date; 4).
- Male demand, female inequality, and economies in crisis—among other factors—lie at the nexus of sex trafficking” (Hynes, 2002; 197). Governments, depending on the illicit economy of the sex trade, profit from the pimping of women (Saunders, 2004; 91).
- The increasing demand for the global sex industry. The governments of Australia and the Netherlands have benefited from the lucrative sex trafficking economy by legalizing prostitution, which creates a demand for the illegal recruitment of women from the global South.
- In Australia, where prostitution has been legalized, the government seeks to maintain its new “taxpaying, profitable sex industry,” by denying sex trafficking and saying they have only a problem with illegal immigration (Torrey, 2004; 71). In 1999, a brothel owner in Australia profited “at least $1.2 million from the services of” 40 trafficked Thai women, and licensed brothels in Victoria, Australia, reportedly “earned around $1 million a week from the sex slave trade” (Cwikel, 2005; 315). Within “Japan, the world’s second largest economy, the sex trade brings in $400 million per year” (King, 2004; 21).
- Yet, sex tourism is incredibly profitable for governments that unofficially accept or legalize prostitution, and “criminal groups are turning to women as a high-profit, low-risk ‘commodity’” (Weiss, 2002; 2).
- Globalization’s commodification of the female (and child) body through the mass media, pornography, and the Internet has increased a demand for sexual commodities at the expense of the “Other,” especially “foreign, exotic” women. Within a market-driven, masculinist economy, sex trafficking thrives by treating women and girls as cold-cash commodities, which unlike drugs, can be sold for many years at a high profit to criminal networks. Yet, due to a large supply of poor women, trafficking victims are disposable products. If a woman complains too much, she is killed or sold to another brothel, and some women, particularly women of color, are raped and killed in “snuff” videos.
- “The more the subjects were exposed to pornography, the more they showed callousness towards women, the less they believed in the women’s liberation movement, and the less time they thought rapists should spend in jail” (Torrey, 2004; addendum 4). Some feminists argue that pornography objectifies women and increases the demand for the sex industry, which then uses sex trafficking to satisfy the increased demand (MacKinnon, 2005).
- In a photo by Kimberlee Acquaro for a sex trafficking article (Landesman, 2004; 24-35), a young girl stands outside a hotel in Mexico, surrounded by a circle of men of various occupations, deciding whether or not they want to purchase her body. Such a sex “auction” presents this girl as a commodity to fulfill a heteropatriarchal demand
- Reflecting a sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, this neo-colonialist mentality of johns permits sexual violence similar to that perpetrated by colonial slave owners, who viewed purchased women as promiscuous products to sexually satisfy them (Eisenstein, 2004; 88).
- “Ninety-nine per cent of clients in the sex trade are male. Boys are trained to be offenders and girls to be victims” (Seabrook, 2001; 168).
- Many have participated in the sex industry at some point, so examining demand leads many to question their own involvement in or indifference to the sexual exploitation of women and children.12 The resistance to examining the demand side of the sex industry is evident in Peter Landesman’s testimony. At a human trafficking conference at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Landesman (2004) stated that his sex trafficking article (published in the The New York Times Magazine in 2004) was greatly criticized by men, including four prominent journalists “whose names most Americans would recognize.” It took three weeks of fact-checking his article rather than the regular one week maximum fact-check typically required. Lastly, he was told by the (male) editors that he could not research and write an article about the “demand side” for their magazine. Demand, of course, would focus on the men who demand sexual services from women and children (mostly girls). This refusal by editors to consider publishing the demand side of sex trafficking exemplifies the lack of questioning regarding the demand that contributes to a profitable, gender-based crime within a masculinist economy
- The majority of global sex trafficking victims are from Third World countries, and Western johns create a demand for sex workers during business, military, or tourist trips. One U.S. john says of his trips to Thailand, “These girls gotta eat, don’t they? I’m putting bread on their plate…They’d starve to death unless they whored” (Torrey, 2004; 31).
- While poverty is certainly part of the supply side, poor men in Third World nations are not trafficked for sexual purposes as women are, and most men who prostitute do not have pimps as opposed to most women prostitutes.
- While Russian “Natashas” and white eastern European women garner the “highest profits” for traffickers, “[g]lobally, prostitution and sex trafficking victims are overwhelmingly female, overwhelmingly women of color, and overwhelmingly poor” (Torrey, 2004; 27). Racism and economic inequality exist between who supplies the majority of “sexual services” and who demands them (Kempadoo, 2007; 138-139). Many johns believe that “what you do to a foreign woman is different, it doesn’t count” (Seabrook, 2001; 89).
- Globalization creates a growing competition within the sex industry that demands an “import” of “younger and younger women from more ‘exotic’ backgrounds, thus victimizing our indigenous or aboriginal girls” (Enriquez, no date; 4). While living and working in Ethiopia (2005), I learned that indigenous girls from a southern Ethiopian tribe had been abducted and found in brothels. Based on my observations, several tourism billboards and posters throughout the capital and large towns seem to sexualize these culturally bare-breasted girls, whose poses or looks at times could appear to men as sexually inviting—yet, I did not see posters of this tribe’s women or males, cultural icons in their own right.14
- In the colonization of the Caribbean, white slave owners had the “right to total sexual access to slaves…and concubinage and prostitution were institutionalized”; such sexual arrangements indicated an “inferiority” of “the conquered and colonized non-Western Others” (Kempadoo, 2004; 30-31). Similarly, prostitutes are the sex trade’s inferior “Other.”16
- Instead of criminalizing the prostitute, Sweden utilizes a “trafficking paradigm,” in which the johns, “pimps, brothel owners, recruiters, [and] transporters” are criminalized as “the ones who demand services, are enriched by the proceeds of commercial sex, and are the ones who control, and often even enslave, the women providers” (Schauer, 2006; 159).
- Seeking a “democratic society where full gender equality is the norm,” Sweden has a history of activism “against prostitution and trafficking” (Ekberg, 2004; 1188). Moreover, there is a history of collaboration between the public and private sectors: the government, including the Division for Gender Equality, public authorities, the women’s and shelter movements, and other NGOs (Ekberg, 2004; 1190).
- While traffickers may hide women in clandestine locations, “Sweden no longer is an attractive market for traffickers” due to its abolitionist policy against the demand for prostitution, which relies on the sex trade (Ekberg, 2004; 1200).
- “Neocolonialist” policies imposed on developing nations have created debt and contributed to the feminization of poverty associated with global sex trafficking. U.S. media “accounts have generally lacked an analysis of the structures that account for women being trafficked into prostitution, namely, the global sex industry, the subordination of women, the gendered labor market, and the multiple economic crises and inequalities that underlie women’s lives” (Hynes, 2002; 200). Further, increased immigration controls in a global economy that demands migration will contribute to a reliance on “traffickers to cross the border,” thereby increasing women’s chances of becoming sexual slaves (Saunders, 2004; 99).
- Western “powers” like the United States rank23 developing nations in a paternalistic, “unilateral” fashion regarding their efforts to reduce sex trafficking. Yet, the U.S. does not fairly rank certain (militarily or economically strategic) nations, such as Saudi Arabia, nor the U.S. itself, for their part in creating and continuing sex trafficking, and until 2005, the U.S. did not significantly address demand, such as whether or not a country “encourag[es] sex tourism” (Tiefenbrun, 2006-2007; 270-271).
- . Lastly, I acknowledge that some women may choose to enter sex work, but based on research, the majority of "consenting" sex workers do so for economic survival and/or based on past abuse (Cwikel, 2005; 307-308). Childhood sexual abuse is common for females in the sex industry. OJJDP (2003) reports that a large percentage of prostitutes ran away from sexual abuse. While many poor and/or abused women do not choose sex work, others may view it as their only or best choice given their circumstances/experiences that socially construct their identities and options within a patriarchal system.
- Many assume that prostitutes choose to prostitute and can leave whenever they want. Based on my experience with Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (H.I.P.S.) in Washington, D.C. (1996-1997) and other social work (domestic and international), I disagree with that assumption, because many prostitutes are trafficked from their hometowns, coerced/ forced to prostitute, abused, threatened, and killed if they try to leave. Domestic trafficking may include strippers who are forced to have sexual relations with customers/owners, or runaways who enter an abusive relationship with a recruiter, who first "breaks her in" for prostitution through rape and/or stripping. Moreover, since the sex industry is gendered in terms of supply and demand, it presents its exceptions of women who enjoy sex work
- King (2004; 9) writes, "The profit potential of forced slavery is at its greatest when there are weak economies and war in destabilized regions."
- improve enforcement of prostitution/ trafficking laws. In Sweden, police (mostly men) were "being asked to enforce a [new anti-prostitution] law that seriously threatens traditional male values" (Ekberg, 2004; 1196). Thus, police representatives were initially "critical of the law, suggesting that it would be difficult to enforce" (1196). Yet, after receiving education on prostitution and trafficking, including its violence, their attitudes changed and the "initial criticism of the law as being difficult to enforce has ceased" (1196). In contrast to the norms or attitudes promoted by Sweden's Law, "[i]n countries where prostitution is legalized or tolerated, the idea that women are objects for male sexual pleasure and, therefore, can be sold and bought, is normalized" (1197). Tiefenbrun (2006; 270) agrees that "cultural attitudes" are important and "can be changed."
- 8 Based on my experience with H.I.P.S., raping girls is a common initiation by pimps and traffickers to "break" the girls, and pimps often deliberately father children, so the children can be used to keep the prostituted mothers in line. Initiation rapes or forced sexual services are often videotaped to blackmail the girl into servitude. She must "work off' her debt through prostitution until the pimp/traffickers are finished with her body; she is often traded from city to city to ensure that she does not become familiar with her surroundings or people who may enable her escape.
- UN peacekeepers have "engag[ed] in sexual misconduct while deployed" in Cambodia, East Timor, W. Africa, Bosnia-Herzegovina; NATO's Stabilization Force included soldiers involved in "actually ‘buying' trafficked women and actively participating in the trafficking of women into prostitution by forging documents, recruiting, and selling women to brothel owners" (Alfred, 2006; 6-7). Dismally, the UN "reportedly responded to Bosnian abuses of the late 1990s with something akin to denial... [I]nvestigators experienced an astonishing cover-up attempt...None of the peacekeepers involved in these offenses suffered any punishment greater than repatriation" (7). NATO has since implemented a weak policy that allows troops to buy "prostitutes as long as it is unclear that the prostitutes have been trafficked" (15). In May 2002, U.S. Forces Korea was accused of "protecting" "establishments that employed trafficked women" through "courtesy patrols" (12). Resultant U.S. military "off-limits" policy for sexual services "has been effective in dissuading businesses from engaging in these practices" due to the negative economic impact of policies that forbid soldiers from frequenting such places (13).
- Prostituted women in Germany are "frequently subjected to immediate detention and deportation, denied health services, and are viewed as illegal immigrants who have committed a crime, rather than individuals in need of support" (1954). Here, legalized prostitution does not adequately provide health benefits to prostituted women.
- In the Philippines, "[t]he Internet is the main recruitment tool for the sex tourist industry to bring in rich western tourists to the impoverished South. It is the advertising arm of this sex industry" (Cullen, 2004).
- Luxemburg argues that capitalism destroys natural resources, so people will become impoverished and will depend on capitalism as workers.
- The competition among women in streetwalker districts...leads to low prices for sex services, unprotected sex, violence from the side of the clients, and fights among women" (49)
2024.05.31 03:38 djicecoldmilk Lives with us
Here to vent… My wife 25 and I 29 M originally agreed to allow her 54 y/o divorced mother to live with us nearly 3 years ago when we started a family in a new state her and I could afford where we had already found jobs. MIL + us agreed that it didn’t make sense for her to stay in her 3 bedroom rental alone, (we did live with her for a year during COVID). and we agreed an extra set of hands would not hurt with the baby. Everything was coming from a place of agreement and we were in lockstep heading down south where we knew nobody and had no immediate family.
The original plan was to spend one year together in our new home while she found a job (travel nursing) and her own place to live that worked for her down here (1-2 BR rental apt, condo, townhouse).
Let’s just say she’s not good at saving $/ making sound decisions and we also thought having literally no bills for the time she’s here (yes she lives w/ us for free) could improve her financial situation.
Fast forward to today:
MIL has gone through not only 3 travel nursing jobs at local hospitals due to violations and negligence around her daily practice, but a 4th job as a school nurse because she failed to report the issues on her record from the past 3 hospitals.
In between each job, she has filed for unemployment and taken nearly a month each which eventually depleted her unemployment benefits, leaving her with $5k in savings to her name due to spending problems + addiction revolving Amazon, CVS, clothes, gifts for our 2 kids, cigarettes, and more. She filed for bankruptcy last year since her CCdebt got pretty bad.
To make it clear since this is still hard for me to believe - she has NO bills besides bankruptcy (includes car payment) and her phone bill. My wife and I have never asked her for a dime nor allowed her to pay for much more than groceries she’ll chip in for ~once a month.
After some long and patient discussions over the years (away from the kids Ofcourse) she claims she’ll be gone and on her own by July 1, but I’m having a hard time believing it. She would be living out of her car if she doesn’t travel back to where her family is. While her small family knows she’s financially unstable, none of them know the severity of the situation and she’s embarrassed to tell them the whole story / ask for them to take her in. She has become so depressed that she sleeps most of the days she’s supposed to be looking for a job or place to live and at night time her only escape from the nightmare her choices caused is to play with our kids and give them a tub, so we allow it.
My wife and I set ourselves on fire to keep her warm, and it’s backfiring since we are afraid she would literally be on the street without us.
And lastly- I read this group quite a bit and feel confidently this situation is just as bad if not worse than most MIL from hell. I do however have an incredible amount of patience and love for my wife and would rather hold on to the hope that my wife and her mom will handle the July 1 exit plan which seems near impossible at this point but I love her and our kids and relationship between us too much to step over and get her out myself in a forceful way.
submitted by djicecoldmilk to motherinlawsfromhell [link] [comments]
The original plan was to spend one year together in our new home while she found a job (travel nursing) and her own place to live that worked for her down here (1-2 BR rental apt, condo, townhouse).
Let’s just say she’s not good at saving $/ making sound decisions and we also thought having literally no bills for the time she’s here (yes she lives w/ us for free) could improve her financial situation.
Fast forward to today:
MIL has gone through not only 3 travel nursing jobs at local hospitals due to violations and negligence around her daily practice, but a 4th job as a school nurse because she failed to report the issues on her record from the past 3 hospitals.
In between each job, she has filed for unemployment and taken nearly a month each which eventually depleted her unemployment benefits, leaving her with $5k in savings to her name due to spending problems + addiction revolving Amazon, CVS, clothes, gifts for our 2 kids, cigarettes, and more. She filed for bankruptcy last year since her CCdebt got pretty bad.
To make it clear since this is still hard for me to believe - she has NO bills besides bankruptcy (includes car payment) and her phone bill. My wife and I have never asked her for a dime nor allowed her to pay for much more than groceries she’ll chip in for ~once a month.
After some long and patient discussions over the years (away from the kids Ofcourse) she claims she’ll be gone and on her own by July 1, but I’m having a hard time believing it. She would be living out of her car if she doesn’t travel back to where her family is. While her small family knows she’s financially unstable, none of them know the severity of the situation and she’s embarrassed to tell them the whole story / ask for them to take her in. She has become so depressed that she sleeps most of the days she’s supposed to be looking for a job or place to live and at night time her only escape from the nightmare her choices caused is to play with our kids and give them a tub, so we allow it.
My wife and I set ourselves on fire to keep her warm, and it’s backfiring since we are afraid she would literally be on the street without us.
And lastly- I read this group quite a bit and feel confidently this situation is just as bad if not worse than most MIL from hell. I do however have an incredible amount of patience and love for my wife and would rather hold on to the hope that my wife and her mom will handle the July 1 exit plan which seems near impossible at this point but I love her and our kids and relationship between us too much to step over and get her out myself in a forceful way.
2024.05.30 22:40 Cladest Introducing Aevum Lupi Bicipitis - An Alt-History Mod Dev Diary [0]
![Introducing Aevum Lupi Bicipitis - An Alt-History Mod Dev Diary [0]](https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/9RC1xl9UTr4fV5r4GzoT3gCtzELc9WHxtPjjwlARdZ8.jpg "Introducing Aevum Lupi Bicipitis - An Alt-History Mod Dev Diary [0]") | Hello EU4 players, and welcome to the showcase of the mod Aevum Lupi Bicipitis. This mod has been a work-in-progress for almost 2 years now, with an (old) alpha version on Steam right now. However, we wanted to bring the whole mod up to standard and have spent the last year completely reworking it from the ground up. submitted by Cladest to eu4 [link] [comments] The mod is based off of a map/timeline made by u/ilcuboesperantista : https://www.reddit.com/imaginarymaps/comments/xdz7u3/the_realms_of_a_different_europe_in_1315_aevum/ , but set in 1444 instead of 1315. Here's an overview: Most of the Vanilla Map has been changed, Africa is mostly unchanged except Northern Africa, South East Asia has already some work been done to it and now Religions: Indictian, Impotians and Catholics are the main Christian religions. and Cultures: Culture Groups are the main difference as the entire mod timeline is based on alternate migrations To give a brief overview of the divergences from real-life history (and why the Byzantines are Muslim), it all began with Rome. When they fell, the kingdom of Soissons happened to survive, turning into the Empire of Soxony, or the Empire of the Romons. They are culturally Gallo-Roman and are of the Impotian religion, a western schism of Christianity. In 1444, most nations in Gallia are vassals under Soxony, but the situation is unstable. The Byzantines There were no arabic conquests, as Muhammad dies after conquering the Hejaz, and as such the Byzantines survived long into the medieval era. They are known more as Rhomania. In the 900s, they converted to Islam. https://preview.redd.it/2e94ch4gjm3d1.png?width=1241&format=png&auto=webp&s=d16ac755f1b073af84ffd781cd8c53db793e90ea Africa In the same vein, North Africa is still culturally berber-romance, following the Indictian faith, an Iconoclast heresy. The Red Legion is a state of crusaders looking to take Egypt back for Christanity. The Roman convention of calling north africa 'Africa' and the rest of africa 'Lybia' stuck. Italia and the Balkans Italia was never conquered by the ostrogoths, leading to Odoacer founding the Holy Italian Empire (ingame HRE). The ostrogoths settled in Austria on the map. In Italy, the emperor in Molise must contend with the electors of Rasna, Aquileia, Padania, Calabria, Erulia, and Sicania to keep the empire stable. Meanwhile, the turks in this timeline settled in mainland Greece. https://preview.redd.it/khhdk5yqjm3d1.png?width=584&format=png&auto=webp&s=7908e89ff638a10f2d05c78d06ebf26d4249a2e1 https://preview.redd.it/oxgyxeyrjm3d1.png?width=760&format=png&auto=webp&s=418d5c773f917b65ac35ab5558cc952a85856407 Zimmska Scandinavia, or Zimmska in this timeline, is inhabited by Slavs (also known as Windelics). After Attila the Hun destroyed the original slavic homeland, they fled to Central Asia and Scandinavia, driving out the Norse in the process. The petty kingdoms of Zimmska have warred for centuries, but now the time is right for one to rise above and claim the mantle of Zimmska, empire of the north. https://preview.redd.it/iz6u0qg2km3d1.png?width=791&format=png&auto=webp&s=7c61f2541fc1db89fb125e8caa6d874f19221d83 About those Norse. . . The Norse, fleeing Scandinavia, saw that Ragnarok had come. They barely managed to claim the verdant lands of Biono (britain) as their own. Now they shall build a thriving culture, worshipping the reincarnated Baldr as their chief god. https://preview.redd.it/iz14rqa5km3d1.png?width=660&format=png&auto=webp&s=a5875be72aa6a51584a340bf00b23de1fe522705 Germania Germania is dominated by the German confederation, led by Pruthia in a sort of vassal swarm. Meanwhile, the bavarians settled a little farther north and the Lombards never made it south. https://preview.redd.it/36luzv1dkm3d1.png?width=610&format=png&auto=webp&s=a48db3d0c0376f1422670e904785ad882914ff5d https://preview.redd.it/1pupb8edkm3d1.png?width=599&format=png&auto=webp&s=0818d0fd191e1c66ca0a819ccb364661c4fd9f36 Wait, What about Content? A mod cannot be setting alone, it needs content, and boy, we have a lot of that. Below is the mission tree of Soxony: https://preview.redd.it/zevx2gmgkm3d1.png?width=529&format=png&auto=webp&s=d09d2f2a0d539fca7b5f51f0033c5f0344c83ace We also have a variety of Government Mechanics, feature below for Soxony and Rhomania respectively: https://preview.redd.it/a1m6eetkkm3d1.png?width=354&format=png&auto=webp&s=86ae6e64f033044fb49cc1d8316bf5a3f697f953 https://preview.redd.it/agaq8m4lkm3d1.png?width=299&format=png&auto=webp&s=55a071e6f5472073e8f0708594b68597bf3f4ed6 Even some unique estates, too! These guys can be found in Saxony. Getting with the trend of custom religious mechanics ala Post Finem, the Arian religion has fully custom mechanics! That's all I have to share with you today. I hope you are at least somewhat interested in this mod, because the 1.0 version will be released JULY 17th. Below is a link to our discord if you want to keep up with the mod! By the way, the mod will be released as a separate mod from the alpha on steam. Discord Link: https://discord.gg/xArbRVpw2n |
2024.05.30 16:46 NoPiano7688 Post was removed because of a commie lmao
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2024.05.30 16:44 AlienNationSSB Alien-Nation Chapter 203: Mission Accomplished
Alien-Nation Chapter 203: Mission Accomplished
All Chapters of Alien-NationFirst Chapter of Alien-Nation Previous Chapter [Next]
Chapter Summary:
Amilita and Morsh square off in the hallway. Elias gets comforted by NatalieNo Visitors
The bodyguard slammed the door to the room shut in the stunned nurse's face, and heard heavyset footsteps approaching fast. "Amilita," she greeted the officer, already knowing who it was before she'd even turned to look."Is he awake?" She asked as a greeting, pulling up just short.
"He is," Morsh said shortly.
"I need to see him."
The bodyguard just raised an eyebrow. "What, now? You're kidding me, right?"
Amilita looked pained, before finally confessing. "I need to tell him I'm sorry."
"Yeah, you can wait."
Amilita shuffled from foot to foot uneasily, like a mountain trembling from an earthquake deep underneath. There was a lot of pent up emotion threatening to come spilling down from the top. "I let him down."
"You can say that all you want to him when he's calmed down in there." If that was meant to defuse Amilita, it failed, for the Giantess's shuffling only grew quicker and on an uneven keel. "General, you're acting far too agitated."
"I am agitated," she confessed, though without backing off even an inch.
"You're in a Marine Officer's uniform. What was the last person he saw in one of those doing to him? Do you want him to associate you with that?" Morsh finally let the old family friend have a clue as to why she wouldn't be seeing Elias, beyond Nataliska's quite clear orders.
"No, I-" Amilita came up short, her shuffling thrown off as she was rocked by the realization, breaking whatever the officer had quietly been building herself up to saying.
"I get it. You want him to associate the uniform with you as opposed to Goshen, before the memory sets into scar tissue. That's it, isn't it?"
She managed a quiet 'yes.'
"Then wait for him to calm down." Noticing that Amilita seemed to get agitated at the confirmation that Elias was not calm, Morsh decided she may have misunderstood just how much Amilita cared. "Boys can panic. You have to ease them back into being normal, just like how you don't just dump veterans back into civilian life, right? They're doing peace and wind-down rotations on Mars and Venus, I hear." There, that would be familiar ground, and sure enough Amilita nodded thoughtfully.
"Titan, Luna, and Europa, too," the officer confirmed. "It's for them to unwind, slowly forget whatever they went through on Earth, and start receiving good news from Earth. It makes them feel like..."
"Like their service mattered, that it wasn't just a waste of time watching the planet slowly turn red, I get it," Morsh finished for her. "Ya probably feed them the same news that goes out-system, helps the stories line up with the official narrative. They feel like things must have started going better once they rotated out, and then you slip in that they helped turn the tide, give them a medal, and ship them off somewhere else, with a reminder that what happens on Earth is all 'classified', except the good parts. Bet I've got that right, too, huh?"
Amilita must have lost a lot of money on the games soldiers played when phasing between systems. "I haven't really been involved with it or the decision-making on rotating troops out of the system, so I can't really comment."
"Alright, I'm not pressing. I gotta ask, though: Is what's going on in there with him and Nataliska really making you more nervous than everything else going on in your state? With all the Governesses and the generals-"
"They each govern a few million, and each has their own responsibilities that they can leave me out of. Anything to do with me has already been seen to by my office and orders. At this point I've done all I can, except let them yell at me again for something that I never ordered. So yes, frankly, Elias is more important. Even leaving aside my own feelings, we need him. So please, Morsh, I need you to step aside."
Morsh had been nodding along before that last part. She drew in a breath and finally squared off to face Amilita head-on and stared her in the eyes.* So it is going to be like this, is it?*
"Yeah, I'm not letting you near him."
"What?" Amilita seemed to finally have an outlet for all her pent up frustration and anger. As much as Morsh felt she could handle herself, getting into a fist fight with an Officer and an old family friend in a hospital hallway wasn't exactly smart, even if it would probably help both of them feel better afterward.
"The boy's been a pawn for a long time, Amilita, and let me tell you from experience, he doesn't like it. Tends to lash out when cornered," she tapped her forearm, where he'd surprised her with the knife. "Seriously. He didn't take it well when he found out about himself on the datanet, either. Pretty sure he and Nataliska had a little falling out over that, you know. Young love, ups and downs," she chuckled. "She came back after dropping him off and barely came out of her room, whatever he said musta been pretty harsh. He got over it, but I'm pretty sure he blames us for it."
"He should. And you have him in there, with the person he blames for making him a public figure, after you just mentioned he hates it? You have him cornered, and say that leads to bad things? Aren't you the girl's bodyguard?"
Morsh knew better than to take the bait and mention how he was in no shape to fight. Amilita would then claim to be a concerned mother-figure and charge in.
"What, like you didn't play a part in making him famous?" Morsh poked a finger right into Amilita's chest. "I hear he asked you to make sure there was no media at the award ceremony. Instead, there're pictures everywhere of us leaving, practically carrying a sick Nataliska to the car at the event that's supposed to help introduce her to the galaxy. Nive's pretty upset about that. Now, if there's any more shouting, I'll pull Nataliska out of there myself and then you can try explaining what happened."
"Thank you." Her voice carried anything but gratitude, and Amilita seemed ready to press her case the moment any noise went off, and it all rubbed Morsh the wrong way.
"Yeah, you'll get to go on about how everything that happened to him doesn't mean anything or reflect on you, and how you're totally blameless about what your subordinate did. Maybe even promise to find some way to make it all up to him. I dunno, what's above a Service Moon Medal?"
Her words seemed to finally set something off in the Officer, and she stepped up into Morsh's face, who didn't even flinch. "I did what I did out of both a sense of caring and duty!" She snarled. "Your family pushed for a punishment for that private when the boy was hurt, and then Nataliska used that favor he owed for her petition to get him to sell perfumes with her. I only followed through because you were right- one of our own had stepped out of line. When your daughter got rescued by him later, I repaid that favor to you by elevating the award." She finally took a half-step back, as if she realized the words that slipped past her tusks before starting again, this time a bit calmer. "If you say I'm just using him, I want you to bear in mind that while I have been put in a very difficult position and have done my best to do the right thing, your family has only used him to advance yourselves." She finally seemed to finish venting her anger, before turning to frustration. "Do you know how hard it has been to respect his wishes for privacy against needing to provide him security?"
Morsh stared, unimpressed. She'd faced knives that arced closer to her face than Amilita was now pressing hers.
"What's your point?"
"That we both have to accept some blame for Elias's status."
"Fair point," Morsh granted the old family friend a little slack and decided not to rub it in Amilita's face that she'd just made her original point for her. Amilita was definitely being run too ragged. "I'm still not letting you in there, especially with that uniform on. Not until Nataliska and him both say it's okay. I know you wanna charge in there and tell him you had nothing to do with what happened to him. Maybe your heart's even in the right place. But I know she's the one he wants to see right now. Maybe it's a bit storybook-ish, but all her work that went into finding the boy and saving his life oughta count for something in gratitude and him being happy to see her." There weren't any screams or things being smashed against the wall or door, so Morsh figured things between the two had to be going at least somewhat well.
"I went in there and beat his kidnapper senseless! If I'd been even a minute later..." her words sounded tough, but the true fight had already gone out of Amilita. Now she was just being stubborn.
"Something I'm sure she'll explain," Morsh waved a hand. "He wasn't awake for any of that, though, and I've still got my orders to guard this door, and not let anyone through. Clear?"
The giant woman instead changed her angle of approach. "Will the two of them be okay in there?" She was the picture of motherly concern over a son's virtue when left in a room with a girl, and it was enough to make Morsh forget her forbidden desire for a cigarette.
"Oh for Empress's sake, I'm not gonna stand here and touch-tits with you and spend time arguing over whether mine are bigger and which of us cares more about a boy. That's some real schoolgirl stuff. You're angry that this happened, and I get that. You want to protect him, especially now that his luck ran out. That's good and all, but you have a lot of important things you're neglecting by even being here."
"What?" Amilita seemed unsure, and Morsh felt a sudden, almost nostalgic exasperation she thought she'd left behind. Stubborn officers sometimes had to be dragged to see what was right in front of her.
"Look, it's been a while since my time serving on the front, and even longer since I helped put down an insurrection, but a leader disappearing after she's ordered everyone on both sides to lay down arms for a ceasefire tends to get the enemy's backs up. They start expecting a double-cross. So go on back out there, and be seen doing your part. We'll do ours here. You want to show you really care? Make sure he has a home worth going back to, one that hasn't burned itself down thinking you're plotting some way to kick off another mass-arrest of suspects."
Amilita started to say something else before deciding better of it, and finally straightened. "You'll tell him, right? That I was there. That I helped. And that I- that I'm sorry."
Morsh gave a slight, sympathetic smile. "Yeah. Look, the Raktens are sorry, you're sorry. Everyone's sorry, except me, and yet you were ready to pick a fight with me. You know what I think? I think the part he'll need to hear is that when it mattered, you dropped everything and came running. And I'll make sure he gets that."
Amilita let go at last of whatever kept her here, and deflated.
"Thank you."
"We can talk about everything later."
"Let me know if he decides to take some visitors before I finish wrapping up the things I started doing here?"
"Of course," Morsh smiled, and then watched Amilita turn on her heel and march back down the hall.
Morsh flexed her hand, and imagined with regret what Amilita's next words to her would probably be, and what she'd almost certainly be asked to do between then and now.
Mission Accomplished
"Hey, hey..." Natalie was speaking as if to a frightened, wounded animal, which he might as well have been. Humans supposedly awoke in a rather confused stupor. Certainly, he had when he'd fallen asleep in her room in what now felt like years ago. "Elias?""Natalie?" He asked again, voice raw. "Is that you? Is this real?"
Natalie hesitated. She should project a calm confidence, right? Not ask exactly what he meant. "Yes, I'm real."
His eyes narrowed, as if she'd failed some sort of test, and his whole body tensed, and then shivered and quaked. "Prove it." He sounded frightened. Cornered.
She reached down to her bag, and slowly opened it, revealing the bloody shirt- and then held a finger to her lips., a human gesture for a secret, then added a wink for good measure, then stuffing it back down into the bag with one hand, making a show of crossing her fingers with the other. Some of the nuance might have been lost, but he seemed to understand the meaning of her gestures just the same, even as his stare went a little unfocused. "That could be a few things. My imagination playing tricks on me. Them using the machine to...I don't know, scrape away at my mind, so it fills in what I want to see, what I want to hear."
"If you could imagine anywhere in the galaxy, why would you want to see here?" She broke eye contact, and then looked up at the blue light tube and plastic flooring. "It's pretty...uh..." 'primitive' or 'inhospitable' didn't do it justice, and she wondered how a word 'hospitable' shared anything with this place. She wondered how 'hospitable' came from hospitals, if these places were so unwelcoming to guests. The ill-fitted clothing he was dressed in was like wax paper, the bedsheet equally thin, and the staff were decidedly rude, even to noblewomen.
"Perhaps, I am being shown here because I expect to be here."
"You think you're imagining everything? Would you expect to see me here, too?" It had been the longest they'd gone without seeing each other all year.
He shook his head slowly, then closed his eyes, bracing himself as if for some invisible blow. His jaw was set and he spoke without looking at her. "I don't know? Maybe wishful thinking. Or someone's given me someone pleasant I'll talk to and confess everything to." He shivered and shook. "And if you are real, you'd know things. And if you're some sort of mirage, a stand in for some horror invading my mind, then you probably also know or at least I'd hear you say the things I'd expect to hear, so-"
"We don't have to talk about anything right now," she had to keep him from being swallowed by his own paranoia.
Elias didn't quite answer her, instead giving a silent, slow nod almost as if resigned to whatever fate she had in mind for him, though she didn't miss the way his gaze flitted over her shoulder and to the door again. Can't take my eyes off you for even a moment, can I?
The two rose together and she patted on the top of the thin mattress for him to sit. He slowly set his hips against its edge, hands down as if ready to push off from it and take his odds trying to run.
"Assuming you're really here, now what?" His voice shook before he swallowed before wincing, as if the action was painful. He still tried to put on a brave face.
"Uh, well, I guess...I don't know?"
"Why are you here?" For a moment he seemed almost as if he wanted to say more, but for once he held his tongue, though she could tell it strained him.
His tone was so far from the at-least-initial gratitude she had subconsciously hyped herself up to expect that she was taken completely aback.
Because I love you, you idiot sprang to mind. Instead of saying that though, she blinked and reconsidered if she'd done something wrong.
Of course, Elias couldn't know about all the things she'd done to find him, though he'd be furious if he did. She'd gone into his room alone, dug around his most prized things, and worst of all tracked his omni-pad after swearing to him she never would. All self-justifications aside about how it wasn't hard to imagine what would have happened to him if she hadn't done all that, he had no way of knowing those things. Then what is with his hostile tone?
There was no joy, just a wariness. Then again, I suppose the last I saw him, I ran away. She'd forgotten that, somehow, he might not expect their next meeting to be anything but with him in custody.
"It's okay," she tried. "Everything's going to be fine." There. That had to be a little reassuring, at least, and true. She could protect him now that they were together again.
Slowly, she turned and tried to embrace him. He tensed up when she reached out, and her hands worked their way around his head, pulling him closer. He seemed like he was on the verge of pushing her off of him until he came to rest on her shoulder. At last, he accepted as neglected fingernails explored and worked their way through his dirt-flecked hair. The response was sudden and a little sad, when he started letting out little breaths that hitched and then took a shaky breath back in. Slowly, he relaxed and settled more weight onto the edge of the bed, and leaned in just a bit more into her.
There weren't words for the validation that the young noblewoman hadn't made some grand mistake, and been played for a fool by an alien mastermind's impossibly manipulative and scheming plot.
Natalie couldn't tell how long it took before his breathing finally started coming easier, but when it at last did she pulled back and tried to get some measure of how awake and alert her alien boyfriend was. She noted first just how tired he looked. Still, from under those ringed eyes, wary green eyes searched hers back. If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you, she'd heard him say once. Whatever Elias saw in hers, he didn't even try to object when she lowered her hand to his shoulder and gently urged him to lie on the semi-reclined bed.
From where she stood over him, he looked so small. The bed was *much *broader than he was, like it was built for a shil'vati. He seemed so small and vulnerable, with his slender frame, damaged with bruises, scrapes, and bits of smudged-in mud half-hidden by the paper-thin outfit he wore. He was the picture of helplessness, set against an enormous plain-white and sterile canvas without so much as a bed sheet or blanket to hide under.
"Natalie?" He finally broke the silence, voice a vulnerable tremor. "It's really you, right?"
"Of course it is," she cooed. "There, I've got you." He seemed to tense up, until she added: "No one's going to hurt you. Morsh is guarding the door, so let's just take a minute. The rest of the world can wait."
Something seemed to get through to him that he wasn't going to be pressed for information or interrogated further, and at last he seemed to relax a bit, though not completely. "No listening devices?"
"None," Natalie promised. "Amilita didn't even finish setting up her own little temporary office by the time we showed up. We were right behind the ambulance."
With her free hand she rearranged his hair back to the lazy, windswept look he usually wore after hopping off his bicycle and then backed off. He didn't look okay, though, not at all. He just looked distressed, lost, and tired.
Right then, he needed her to be calm and unflustered, and so she resolved she would be.
"Shhh," she tried, before wondering if this counted as 'silencing a victim.' Too late to take the sentiment back, though. She stretched to reach down to the floor, pulling the bedsheet up onto the bed and over his shins. "It's alright," she reassured herself as much as him, ignoring the way her heart pounded in her chest. "You don't have to talk or say anything right now," she reassured him. "Just focus on getting better, okay?" She could do her part on focusing on his health by not relishing the warmth under her fingertips when he shuffled around slightly from where she was touching. What a strange temptation- a shoulder was hardly anything to be excited about. It wasn't a chest, or a thigh, or the taper of a man's narrow hips, and yet...she forced her mind back to the business of caring for him. "There," she tried. "Is this okay?"
He just nodded and yawned so wide it stretched his odd pink lips, but he clearly wasn't quite ready to 'throw in the towel' on staying awake just yet, not even as the circles under his eyes deepened. Instead he laboriously managed to push himself up just slightly. "What did they do to me?" He finally asked, and Natalie forced herself to not make any kind of motion to put him back to where he'd just been so nicely settled just a moment ago. Besides, she had to answer him, as it certainly seemed important.
"Nothing bad, I promise. Amilita's given me the only medical record they have of your visit here. So far, they assessed you with a...well, it's a 'doc bot' like the Nurse at Talay had, and when Amilita had you healed up like, a year ago when you got hit by that private. Uh..." she tried to remember the details. "Oh, there were some fancy words for bruising and scrapes, but not much else." It had been a humbling reminder that her grasp of English was far from perfect. "Oh, and they put you under to keep you from attacking the ambulance technicians."
Green eyes searched hers warily. "No mind wiper?"
"No mind wiper," she confirmed, trying her best to sound earnest. "I'd never let that happen."
Whatever tension was animating him at last seemed to snap and start some sort of shutdown sequence. His energy was failing, and he yawned again, settling down into the bed, and glancing at the now vacant half of where he lay before meeting her eyes, gaze full of unspoken meaning.
She sucked in a breath and did what her heart told her was right.
She kicked off her white human shoes without untying the complicated knot she'd mastered only a few months ago, and heard their rubber-like bottoms land with a 'flop' against the strange shiny floor. With a deep breath the girl from half a galaxy away slowly brought one leg over the hospital bed's high steel-tube railing, balancing on a shaky tiptoe and hesitating. She had to test if the wide bed would suddenly roll away on her. Natalie had seen technicians guiding patients down the wide, winding corridors by the same plastic handle she was holding to balance herself, and was glad when she didn't accidentally engage some kind of control panel button and send both herself and Elias crashing through the far wall and into the hallway.
What a nightmare of an explanation that would be...
Relieved that there was no sudden disaster, she refocused her attention on the boy she'd basically pushed into bed and then climbed in after, hoping to hold him. Her face was close, she realized, and he was staring at her in confusion. His green eyes kept flicking back and forth between meeting her gaze and trying to guess her intentions by her expression. She hadn't meant to- imply– hadn't he meant-?
If her heart was pounding before, now the rush of blood in her ears was going to make her dizzy.
Natalie propped herself up on an elbow and away from his face, looking down from where her black tee shirt ended against faint purple skin, and contrasted against his alien hues. He similarly got up on one elbow.
Feeling she should make her intentions plain, she slowly slid one arm through the gap, inviting him to lie in her arms so she could hold him the way he'd held her, back when she was so sick.
She experimentally wrapped one hand over his far shoulder until she rested against him in a way that felt protective, though she worried it might also be a bit possessive. At least he can't take off on me again- though that thought lasted only a half second until he decided to start shuffling around.
Natalie backed off, worried she'd taken things way too far until he grabbed hold of her and pulled himself in close, stopping just short of kissing her. She froze up, completely unsure of what to do, even as his arm curled around. She was supposed to be holding him- and instead, now he was holding her! Except her arm was now pinned between his arm, the bed, and his back.
She had to admit the moment was still nice, even intimate for all of a second before a painful throbbing started from where her arm had its blood flow choked off at the . She wasn't sure what to do about it. She tried tugging her arm free but his torso was surprisingly solid and had her pinned. She finally gave up, resting her head on his shoulder.
The Shil'vati girl lifted a knee to carry the sheets that she'd managed to halfway slip under, using a foot until the fabric met with her free hand. She pulled the soft fabric up and over his paper shirt, tucking it over his shoulder. There, that was better- and she pitied how cold he must be, even if he was radiating warmth.
She was close to his chest, she realized, and a long ear pressed against his shoulder could still make out his own heartbeat. This wasn't comfortable, though, and her arm began to grow sore. How could she tell him that she was when all of this was her own doing? It wasn't natural. She was supposed to be holding him, after all!
Natalie was just about to beg him to sit up, when he unknowingly showed mercy by tossing and turning a bit, perhaps not finding the position comfortable either. Either way her numb hand was freed for just a blissful moment.
Then his hand moved from where he'd left it to around her upper back, pulling himself up against her neck. This was her opportunity! She tried to find a spot to quickly hold him, something that felt natural, only to immediately draw a blank. What was natural, exactly? She'd never held anyone! Still by just the comfort of the proximity, she felt a warmth travel up her body fuse with where he was pressed into her, and she quickly felt herself flushing blue. She kept her mind focused on helping him- what was a good position? Everything about this was awkward!
She could only hope it wasn't too obvious she had never done anything like this before and couldn't find a comfortable spot to put her arm to where it ran behind his back. None of this was going the way she'd imagined. Perhaps it was the stupid design of the bed- there was no depression for her arm to sneak under and wrap itself around him. An obvious design oversight, really.
Has anyone ever been so bad at this? It's supposed to come naturally! She could hardly imagine the humiliation at even asking the DataNet: 'How do I do the most natural thing a girl is supposed to be able to do: Comforting a hurt boy? Am I too weak to even snuggle correctly?'
Natalie decided instead to shuffle higher on the bed, and when he stirred, she pulled his head into the crook of her neck, holding down the sigh of relief as sensation and blood flowed back into her freed arm. Sure, it was trapped between their bodies, but at least it wasn't choked off from blood flow anymore. She thought about trying to find something to do with it before giving up after several agonizingly amateurish attempts.
All her fears of failure slowly faded as his breathing grew deeper and steadier, and he relaxed into her.
The sensation of closeness sent warm tingles up from the base of her spine that turned to shocks when his thumb hooked and slowly ran over the back of the hand she'd given up on doing anything with. She struggled to stay still as he repeated the motion, again and again. She had to give reassurance and hide any hint of shameful excitement at being welcome to stay by his side. She could have jumped for joy if it didn't mean interrupting the moment, but she'd need something to work the nervous energy off.
At last an idea came, and she started to rock him, trying to remember the cadence he'd used back when she was sick in bed. Back and forth, back and forth. She worried she had gotten either it or the angle wrong, because he soon gave her a squeeze around the middle, holding her tight.
She traced her nails experimentally down the back of his neck, and was greeted with a sound that set every nerve on fire when he gasped, and felt him sink into her shoulder just a little more, his hot breath deepening and slowing, until he clenched her back, and his arm released her.
He didn't quite scream, nor did he try to push away the way she feared he might. Instead, he had gone quite still.
"Like that?" She asked softly.
He just nodded, the pressure not at all unpleasant. "'M sorry," he mumbled. "It just...it feels..." he didn't have the word for it, apparently, because he trailed off. "nice. Relaxing..."
She gently ran her long, paint-chipped nails back over the same spot, and she felt the sigh of warm breath against her neck.
Minutes passed, and she quietly whispered his name, slowing down her gentle rocking.
No response aside from his head slowly rubbing against her shoulder, and she smiled to herself.
He was fast asleep in her arms.
She'd done it.
Mission accomplished. She'd rescued the boy, she'd comforted him when he woke up, and now he was fast asleep in her arms, recovering.
Everything would be okay.
First Chapter of Alien-Nation Previous Chapter [Next]
[A/N]
This seemed like a good place to pause the chapter due to it being ~30k in length out of the max of 40k that reddit allows, and the chapter being just plain too long. The next chunks are mostly ready. The new job starts roughly in the next week or two, when my paperwork goes through, and I'm sick, all of which has left me with lots of free time.
Archive Of Our Own/"AO3" contains the latest version of Alien-Nation with a lot of added scenes, flow improvements, and so on. (You can also download the story as an ePub for reading on your personal device, if you feel like doing so, though I recommend waiting until Book One is truly finished.)
Link to Archive Version here:
2024.05.30 15:55 tBraak Idk if this was pointed out yet but it seems like you can't check the killers power if you don't own them. The other way was to press F1 in the killer selection screen but that's also not a thing anymore. Is going to the wiki now the only way to know how a killer's power works?
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