To start - the photo album - https://photos.app.goo.gl/m816j6qm54nRQ5uw8
I'm a little bit late writing this up, some things won't be relevant any more, apologies. This itinerary is for someone who likes to be out doing stuff all day every day, most people will find it way too full on. If you are also like this, though, I'd say it was well-planned, I never felt overly rushed, though I could've maybe done with an extra half hour here and there (this is more a problem with Paris' need to book everything a month in advance with a specific timeslot than my planning). I found the people to be very friendly, and never had any trouble communicating - though my French is passable, most people switched to English quite quickly, and not just customer-facing staff but even people I stopped to ask for directions from.
Wednesday 25th October Finished work slightly early to get the Eurostar at 18:01 from London St Pancras. 2.5 hour train (and lose an hour to time zones). The hotel was near Place de la Republique, so walkable from Gare du Nord (Hotel Mimosa - cheapest hotel available when we booked. No complaints, nice staff, really clean, didn't try the breakfast). Only had time to check into our hotel and have a quick drink nearby (the end of the PSG game was on).
Thursday 26th October Disney! I wasn't sure about it since it was the middle of French school holidays, and there were certainly some long queues, but my friend insisted and I'm glad we did (although only because I went twice as a kid, if you don't have the nostalgia I don't think it's worth it on a busy day - one year I spent Christmas eve/day here with my mam and had Christmas dinner at the Cinderella inn). We went to Gare du Nord early to buy Navigo Decouverte passes (even though the week runs Mon-Sun and we arrived midweek it's still the best option, no faff with the little paper ticket booklets, covers as far as Disney/Versailles, and is pretty cheap), got the metro over and made it for almost gates opening. Got really lucky and managed to book a table for 2 at Bistrot Chez Remy (the Ratatouille themed restaurant) for the evening whilst on the train there (do this on the Disneyland app), even then the restaurant is only about a 6.5/10 but it's amazing compared to your walk-up options, I'd suggest trying to book one of the better ones a few weeks in advance (be aware of prices though!). The main park is exactly as I remember with one or two Star Wars things shoehorned in, the Studios park is completely different though - before it was all "behind-the-scenes" type stuff, now it's "everything we own that isn't Disney" (so half the park is painted Marvel, half of it is painted Pixar). Particularly sad the Armageddon experience is gone, as well as the statue of Mickey holding Walt Disney's hand. Last time I was here, Crush's Coaster had just opened so was 2 hour queues and I never got to ride it, and somehow 17 years later they haven't shortened. Maybe next time? Rides close at 10 but we stayed for the fireworks, was quite late getting back.
Friday 27th October Slightly later start, easy morning finding somewhere for breakfast, didn't have to be at the Louvre until 11:30. We tried the side entrance that I've seen mentioned on here a few times, don't think it works any more though. The queue to get in even for timed tickets is enormous, thought we'd be stuck there for hours but dead on 11:30 it started moving, and we were past security and into the main hall in about 20 minutes. Made a beeline for the Mona Lisa, having read about a lengthy queue we'd discussed just getting a drive-by/glimpse of it rather than waste the day, but actually there were about 50 people in the pen ahead of us (which is about 10 people wide) and we were at the front in maybe 5 minutes? My photo of it is timestamped 12:02. Saw the Winged Victory, didn't see Liberty Leading the People as it was down for restoration, but it should be back by the time you're reading this. The place is huge and I definitely missed loads (forgot to try and find Napoleon's apartment). I do like art but I found lots of this to be a drag - I like colourful/interesting stuff, but find portraits of old generals and paintings of Jesus incredibly tedious after a while. Glad I went, not sure I'll return though. I budgeted 3 hours which was pretty much perfect for me. Next stop Saint-Chapelle - the windows are as beautiful as you imagine. I've seen a lot of people saying it's a waste of time and money - it is very expensive for what it is, it is just the one room, depending on your budget it might not be for you, but if like me you're happy to chuck money at stuff when on holiday it's absolutely worth the time. I think we stopped at a cafe at this point? One of the typical Parisian ones, where you sit facing out onto the street. Afterwards we walked over to see Notre Dame (still closed due to the fire) and then down into the Latin Quarter. We stumbled upon a free street art exhibition just across from the Pantheon which I really enjoyed, then started looking around for an early dinner - which turns out to be quite challenging in Paris, nowhere opens before 7 it seems, but we did find an Italian place nearby. We needed to get to the Stade de France for 9 so the plan was to be south of the city to make sure we get onto the metro before it gets into the centre and fills up - needn't have bothered though, lots of trains, never got too packed, as organised as any other modern stadium, just aim to be at least 30 minutes early and you can't go wrong. Rugby World Cup 3rd place game - England beat Argentina 26-23, looked like it might be a walkover early on but it turned into a really tight game, great warmup for the main event. Second dinner at Au Pied du Cochon, the 24hr restaurant that gets mentioned on here a lot.
Saturday 28th October Started at Musee d'Orsay, 10:30 entry. This museum is much more to my taste, and a manageable size. The impressionist stuff is all up on the 5th floor and is spectacular, I have never before (and will probably never again) go to a gallery where I instantly recognise so many things! This was a particularly incredible experience as they also had a Van Gogh exhibition on at the time (focused on his works at the end of his life, when he was living in France and his work was becoming very sinister - sadly no longer on) and I'd just recently taken my mam to the immersive Van Gogh experience in Edinburgh as part of her 60th. The other exhibition was Louis Janmot's Poem of the Soul (a really long poem and a load of paintings to accompany each segment) which I can't claim to have heard of before, I wish I'd had a bit more time to enjoy it fully but I had other plans so only had time to look at the pictures. Catacombs were booked for 14:30 - interesting experience, I'd say worth doing but not a must. It's good to have something planned other than museums. Afterwards, had time to see Jardin du Luxembourg and Montparnasse cemetery (didn't take any pictures in here, feels wrong somehow, didn't find anyone famous anyhow), before finding dinner in Montparnasse. Then the World Cup final - South Africa v New Zealand, another very tense game! I seem to have a habit for picking rugby finals with early red cards.
Sunday 29th October Trip to Versailles, 12:00 ticket, full access. This is the one place where, even with a timed ticket, you have a long wait to get in. I got in at 12:40, and I was fairly early so near the front of the queue for my timeslot. The palace itself is fine, bit nicer than my house but not worth the trip on its own, the gardens are stunning though, I spent over 2 hours in them, and still pressed on to see the other areas. My favourite was Marie-Antoinette's hamlet, the pictures don't really do it justice but it felt like I was in a fairytale. I headed back to Paris and got to the Eiffel tower just in time to see it twinkle at 7pm (it does so every hour on the hour after dark). Walked over to Trocadero (the best place to view the Eiffel tower), then along to the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs Elysee. Took the metro up to Montmartre to go into Basilica Sacre-Coeur (free entry, and by this time no queue at all - they ask for no photographs so there's nothing in my album from inside, but there's plenty online). Ate nearby then had tickets for Moulin Rouge at 11.30 - like Saint-Chapelle, it's quite expensive, but a good time if you do decide to go. This was my most tiring day, over 35000 steps.
Monday 30th October Final day in Paris. I'd managed to get a spare ticket for Musee de l'Orangerie on an site called Headout (usually you would have to book this a while in advance, like most things in Paris, I guess someone returned one last minute? Could only get one, don't think my friend particularly wanted one anyway), 12:00 entry. I picked a route to pass a couple of landmarks - Opera Garnier, Madeleine, Obelique du Louxor. Monet's water lillies are, as you'd expect, absolutely gorgeous, and the only reason this museum exists really. There's some good stuff in the permanent collection in the basement though - I think I remember seeing a Picasso down there? I don't remember what the temporary exhibitions were at the time but I remember being unimpressed. Went back to the Eiffel tower to see it in the daylight, and stumbled upon Musee du Quai Branly. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, it's a collection of objects created by humanity when in a loosely "tribal" period? Which happened at vastly different time periods for each continent. And also there's some samurai stuff, even though Japan had a fairly well developed civilisation by the time they came around. The more you think about it the more it falls apart really, basically it's a museum full of really cool stuff. Had to rush this a little bit to catch the Eurostar (train at 17:00), was also panicking because I couldn't make contact with my friend, who had my luggage.

CHAPTER 1
A gloomy rain fell down from the steely grey clouds above England, creating puddles in pot holes and mud pits in mounds of dirt. The small english town of Derry had been flooded before, and the townspeoples fears of another had put everyone on edge. Nobody dared utter the word though, their superstitions wouldn't allow that. People in Derry were well known for their superstitious and cagey behavior, but this was not entirely unwarranted. It wasn't just a flood here and there once in a while in Derry, they had a long and colorful past with all types of disasters, some man made, others acts of god.
There was the great black spot fire of 1979, in which a white supremacist group burnt down a local disco predominantly visited by Derry's small black and latino community, accidentally torching half the town down in the process. In 1952 there was the expansive national ASDF league shoot out, which lasted a total nine hours in the Derry town square before the police finally got the upper hand and killed every gang member on sight. But the most horrific of all was in 1925, when the Derry ironworks exploded, killing all it's workers as well as everyone participating in the annual Derry christmas parade nearby, most of which were children.
These were just a few of the horrific events Derry township had gone through, and bizzarely, no matter how gruesome each event was, none were ever on the news or remembered too well. That was just how Derry worked, despite it's reputation as a sleepy, dreary town where nothing much ever happened, tragedies were rampant. So you couldn't quite blame the people for being superstitious and scared, especially in autumn when the weather was at it's absolute worst. It was late autumn now though, there was only about four more days till winter, and the worries of floods would soon turn into worries for blizzards, and people were certain the worst of the worst had already came and went.
On this fine rainy saturday in a white two story house, Tom Denbrough was sitting upstairs, doing what he did everyday, writing songs. He'd been wrestling with an awful case of influenza the past few days, hocking up phlegm and wiping snot from his nose every few minutes 'til it was rubbed raw. He had not much energy for anything else because of it, all he could muster the strength to do now was lay in his checkered, tissue covered bed sheets, and wait for his mother to bring him chicken noodle soup and sprite to ease his churning tummy.
It wasn't too bad though, a lot of people can't stand being alone, but Tom often thrived in solitude. Ever since he was a kid he'd taken a liking to it, he was "introverted" as some one would like to say, but back then introverts were seen as more of a problem than just a thing you could be. It felt odd for him to say "ever since he was a kid" as if he wasn't still a kid now, but he technically wasn't. He'd bid farewell to such a label by september, and swapped out the childish number twelve to the unlucky number thirteen, and Tom still wasn't so sure if he was happy with that.
He didn't quite feel like an adult, and people still had yet to treat him as such, but Tom had his own suspicions about that. He knew there was more reason than just him still being a minor, because the truth of the matter was that everyone enjoyed babying him because of his condition.
He was disabled, dis-abled, the word making him feel weird even now. Before Tom was called such a thing he had considered the word disabled to exclusively mean people in wheelchairs, missing legs, or some of the really out there stuff like conjoined twins. He never pictured disabled meaning some on like him, a boy with a bad stutter but a healthy body and brain. Perhaps that was closed minded of him, but alas, Tom was only thirteen, and his scope of reference for the world was much smaller than he pretended it to be.
Even the doctors in Derry didn't treat him all that compassionately, insisting to both him and his mother that he must have been "slow" in some way, but just hiding it, no matter what he or his parents said. It took Tom fighting tooth and nail just to get out of special Ed. which was basically just four kids in a classroom asked to do elementary level shit because the teacher did not believe they were capable of more. He still had to go to regular speech therapy though, which Tom loathed since in all his years of going it seemed to have done him no favors.
He still stuttered, barely getting through sentences without stumbling over at least one word, and getting even worse whenever he felt nervous or scared. That was probably the worst part about it, Tom had never liked being emotional or letting people know he was affected by things, especially when kids at school enjoyed getting a rise out of him. His panicked little drawn out "bu-bu-bu-bu-" sounding like sweet music to his tormentors ears. It was nearly possible for him to hide his feelings or keep his cool whenever he was scared, because that stupid god damn stutter was like a built in lie detector.
He didn't know where the stutter had came from, there were theories here and there, but none of them ever made him feel better. The most likely one involved a car rear ending him when he was only a toddler, knocking him into a coma but miraculously not killing him. He was in it for only a few weeks, but emerged with his stutter, which of course young and niave Tom didn't understand would cause him so much trouble later down the line.
Because Tom didn't like to talk much, he spent a lot of time writing music in his room, his lyrics were all very hamfisted and schlocky, but for a thirteen year old boy they were quite good, and would only get better the more with age. He loved music, lived and breathed it, specifically the sounds of motown records, funk, rap, rock and roll, all the sorts. He had to keep that all a secret from his mother though, she was a musical elitist of sorts. She went to a fancy schamncy music school and had been teaching piano to students for years, so she had a hard time enjoying anything that wasn't classical or something their grandma would listen to.
When Tom went out to buy a bass he had to mow a crap ton of lawns and convince his dad to keep it a secret from mom, but it was well worth all the effort. He only got to play it when she was away at work, never daring to smuggle it out of the house and go busk unless some one decided to be an asshole and tell her. But he loved his bass more than anything, he even gave her a name, since Tom figured all rock stars named their instruments. He chose Susan, after the families first and only dog they had when he was little, and it seemed to stick. Ever since then Tom had remained adamant that you couldn't play an intrument with out giving it a name first.
Even though he enjoyed writing music, and it was the thing that made him the most happy, there was still a slight underlying sadness to it whenever he'd play. He'd lwanted to be a rock star ever since he first heard Van Halen and fell in love with the sound, but with that dream also came the knowledge it'd never happen. Afterall, who the hell would wanna hear him on a record? Stuttering all over the place, stumbling over words, heck, people would send in complaints that how their brand new records were scratched and skipping. There was nobody like him on the radio, and that painful truth kept him from ever singing to anybody but a very small and select audience. And by audience, he meant his stuffed teddy bear and little brother, absolutely no one else.
Speaking of which, his very small audience was on his way up stairs, stomping like a clydesdale despite their mothers constant reprimands about it. Jon knocked on Tom's bedroom door, then immediately pushed it open without being invited in. He was only six, so things like boundries and personal space were not so ingrained him. Neither was self conciousness, maliciousness, or the ability to not be incredibly annoying, but Tom tried very hard to not hold that last one against him. He scanned the room with wide and curious eyes, like he had just stumbled upon a new and foreign world despite being in here many times before.
He loved Tom's room, he loved it more than his own. He thought it was so cool and groen up how he had band posters on his walls. There was a ton of other cool stuff too like a nintendo 64 he'd sometimes let him play, a drawing desk, and a heap of awesome clothes he said he could have when he got bigger! It was a lot cooler than his own bedroom, which was fairytale prince themed and had his half finished lego projects strewn all about, but he still liked his room well enough.
Tom looked up from the note book he was currently writing on and wiped his nose with his shirt sleeve. "Whuh-what d-do you want?" Asked Tom, a little curt. He was good at being polite and caring to Jon most of the time, he was only six afterall, he couldn't go around screaming at him, but it was harder to be patient with him when he was working on something.
Jon ran up to Tom, as if right on cue and looked up to him with needy adoring eyes that seemed to soften his attitude. "Toooom, I'm very sad..." Jon complained, and Tom rolled his eyes. He forced a smile and put the pencil he was writing with down "Oh yeah? are you actu-u-ually sad or just buh-bored?". Jon giggled at how blunt he was being "I'm sad and boreeeed.". Tom leaned closer to Jon's face, but not too close since he was still sick and didn't want him to catch it. "Sad peop-puh-puh-ple don't giggle, moron." He said, booping Jon on the nose with his index finger, causing him to erupt into another giggle.
If their mother was here in the room with them she'd no doubt say "Thomas! Stop calling your brother a moron!" Then lightly smack him on the back of the head, not enough to actually hurt but enough to knock some sense into him. Jon didn't mind it at all though, he saw it as just his brother being silly with him, and he'd always call Tom names right back. "You're a cheesehead." Jon said, biting down on his tongue and smiling. "You're a buh-buttbrain." Tom retorted. "You're a cakesniffer!" Jon exclaimed. "You're an A-ho-hole." Jon went silent at that. That was a no no word, well, not quite, but almost. Mom and dad were very strict about no no words, although he heard Tom say them all the time over the phone when he wasn't supposed to be listening.
Suddenly, another wave of laughter came from him, so loud and hearty he had to hold his belly like santa while he laughed. "You're an A-hole!" Jon said, still laughing. The two boys then launched into a big silly argument of who was the bigger A-hole, eventually ending with Tom proclaiming Jon's A-hole was bigger than the entire continent and both the boys giggling like mad. "Now guh-go away puke stuh-stain, i'm sick and I don't want you to catch it." Tom said, smiling and gently shooing his brother away. "Waiiiit! Peas Tommy, play me a song!" Jon begged, putting his hands together like he was praying.
"It's p-puh-please, not peas, Jon. B-besides, I can't sing, my voice is too hoarse and my stuh-stuh-stuh-" Tom closed his eyes and took a moment to collect himself. "I'm terrible singer." He continued. "No you're nawt! you're an amazing singer! Peas, just one song?" Jon pleaded. "Play me the one about the kid who grows up to be a superhero! Peas peas peas peaaaasss?". Tom shook his head "No can do, kid. Go b-buh-bug some one else before you catch my-" he sneezed into his elbow, grossing his little brother out. "Eugh... cold." Tom grumbled.
"There's nothing to do thoooouuugh." Jon complained, crossing his arms in a huff. "Why don't you go bug mom or dad?" "Mommy's practicing piano and daddy's trying to get the electricity back on..." he mumbled, a little sad. The constant rain and thunder had knocked out a lot of the houses in their neighborhood's power and still had yet to kick back on. The Denbrough boys were quite lucky to have their father with them, he was amazing when it came to things that involved a screwdriver or a wrench, and you'd never guess it by looking at him.
He'd hardly wear anything but Hawaiian pineapple shirts and socks with sandals, but he was still a very smart man none the less. He worked for their town's electrical company, and Tom could still remember the look of pride he had during career day in primary school when he told everyone his dad was responsible for keeping the town's power in check. It was quickly dashed when some asshole decided to ruin it by asking if his dad slept on the job and zapped him on accident and that's why he "Couldn't talk right.". The worst part of it was that Tom was pretty sure he didn't mean for it to be an insult, and was just genuinely asking it out of ignorance. He deeply hoped wherever that kid was now, he was in great pain.
Their mothers piano playing should have been obvious to Tom, it was loud and carried it's way all through out the house, even up the stairs, but it seemed to be just background noise at this point. He hadn't noticed it until now, but his mother was playing much faster than usual, she was in the "zone" so to speak, and wanted to hold onto that for as long as she could, so both Jon and Tom were shit out of luck. Tom sighed "Jeez." He leaned back into his pillows and thought for a moment, shoving all the gross snot filled tissues and crumpled up rejected lyrics from his first few failed attemps at writing a new song.
Jon awkwardly shifted around on his feet, swinging his arms side to side as if waiting for further instruction on what to do. "It's a damn sh-shuh-shame that it's raining so bad or else you could play outside." Jon nodded, and sighed, genuinely disappointed by the amount of rain. Suddenly, Tom snapped his fingers and rose up from his bed "H-hold on- I just remembered s-omething.". He quickly grabbed a folded up newspaper that his mom had left on his night stand for him to read, then ripped out one of the pages.
"What are you doing Tom?" Innocently asked Jon. He straightended it out and folded it into a triangle shape, sticking his tongue out like he was hard at work. "I'm muh-makin you a p-puh-puh-aper boat, just like dad taught me how to do when I was s-six." He explained. Jon's face lit up "Wow, really!?" he waddled over to the bed and smiled. "Yep, dad and I used to sail these all the time. Do me f-f-fuh-fav-or and go in the basement and bring back some puh-puh-puh-puh-" Tom paused again and forced another smile. "Paraffin. It's in a little b-box that says gulf." he finished.
"You mean... in the basement?" Jon mumbled, suddenly a little intimidated. "Yes, you're not scared are you?" His brother asked, half amused and half concerned. On one hand, it was very cute that Jon felt the need to impress him and pretend to be tough, on the other, he was barely not a toddler anymore, and Tom didn't wanna scare him on purpose. Jon shook his head "No i'm not scared, being scareds for babies. I can do it.". "O-o-okay, but j-just in case... here." He handed him a walkie-talkie, the kind they'd usually use to communicate whenever they'd pretend to be soldiers on the battlefield together during summer.
"C-cuh-call me if you need me." he instructed, and Jon nodded again. He skipped happily to the door, only stopping whe Tom called out "And remember Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-". "Paraffin, I know!" Jon cheerfully replied, figuring if he didn't say it Tom would be stuck on the p's forever. He shut the door and hopped down the stairs, leaving Tom to his very important task of sitting in bed and sneezing. He only waited 'til after Jon was gone to let his smile drop and chastise himself for not actually saying the word. He'd never show Jon just how much he loathed his stutter, especially since Jon found it cool and Tom didn't wanna ruin the magic of it.
When he first learned how to talk he'd constantly immitate it, which naturally caused their parents some fear that the stutter was genetic or could be "caught" so to speak. Jon had no idea how much Tom hated his stutter, how it made people see him, how it actively dashed his dreams. Sometimes at school he'd get so flustered he'd have to clutch his desk and try so very hard to form a sentence and it still wasn't cohesive.
He was not and never would be just Tom Denbrough to his classmates, or even his teachers, although they'd never admit that. He was Stuttering Tom, Tuh-Tuh-Tuh-Tom to the particularly cruel ones, and Tom hated it. The absolute worst part of being in a situation like Tom's was no doubt the inability to open up about how much you dislike yourself. After all, preteen boys are already closed off, especially so in a small rural town like Derry where the homophobes outnumbered the gay community ten to two, but Tom had it the worst.
Nobody wants to be the guy to come out and say you think stuttering makes you a freak, all you'd really do is bring other disabled people down and raise up the dickheads who instilled that self hatred in him to begin with, but that's how he felt ans he couldn't help that. He was sure that's how his parents felt too, they did love him dearly and saw to almost all his needs 24/7, but they were still eagerly waiting for him to stop the stutter, and had so for a long time.
The doctors told him it'd only stick around for a few years after he got over the shock of the coma, but that date came and went, and still, Tom's stutter remained. You could tell they were both disappointed, and he truly could not blame them, because he was disappointed too. He didn't know what was wrong with him, or why he never got better despite countless visits to the speech therapist, but he began to wonder if there was something incredibly wrong with him. Everyone felt that way, even if they pretended like they didn't, everyone except for Jon that is. Jon adored him with or without the stutter, and Tom was supremely thankful for that.
While Tom continued to chastise himself, Jon hopped down the stairs joyfully. So joyfully, he nearly forgot that he'd be going down to the cellar, where dreams and little boys would surely go to die. He dashed through the house, past his mom's prized women's bowling league trophy's, past the grand piano, and past their big fancy living room he and Tom would solve puzzles in.
He threw open the cellar door and stared down at the abyss in front of him, fianlly letting the fear and anxiety settle in. Rickety, paint chipped stairs with large empty gaps of space between them disappeared off into the darkness of the room, the power still not back on despite their fathers best efforts. The bottom of the basement had been flooded at some point during one of the worse storms of the season, and the smell of soaked moldy wood and muddy water grossed Jon out quite a bit.
He stood there for a moment, a creeping sense of dread tugging at his chest like a dog on your pant leg. He was waiting for something, a large claw or alien tentecale to reach out from the dark and rip him to bits, but there was nothing. He must have been standing there for a while too because suddenly the walkie-talkie blared to life with Tom's voice, and he jumped back in shock.
"What's t-taking so long?" Asked Tom, and Jon nervously swallowed. "I stopped in the kitchen for a snack." He lied, he knew you weren't supposed to do that, lying was probably the worst thing you could do to your family. Well, that's what Jon thought was the worst at least, He was a little bit too young to know about some of the truly awful stuff some people do to their own kin. Familicide, Sexual abuse, beating, his parents and Tom had been working hard to keep his innocence. Derry was a hard place to do that in, it seemed like every couple of years some one went crazy and killed a lot of people. Jon had even heard bits and pieces of such things being whispered by his mom to his uncle over the phone, but for the most part, his childhood had stayed in tact.
"You know if muh-mom sees you snacking before din-din-er she'll have a cow." said Tom. "I know, i'm sorry." Jon mumbled. "It's whatever dude, just hu-hurry, and do-don't forget to grab to some muh-muh-muh-matches and one of those wax burner thingies.". "Okay, i'm doing it now." He said, then stuffed the walkie-talkie back into his pants pocket, but he was not, in fact, doing it now.
He still stood at the top of the stairs, terrified by the prospect of going down below, and still waiting for the inevitable mutated bat creature to emerge and drag him down into the depths of their flooded basement. Then, just as he was thinking about turning back, his own thoughts began to taunt him. "Come oooon Jon, you're not a baby are you? Only babies get scared by stuff like monsters and the dark. Do you want a boat or not?" He thought. "No." He replied and clenched his fists, grumbling into the darkness "I'm not a baby. I can do this.".
He took one step down the creaky stairs, frightening himself by the surprisingly loud noise they made, but calmed himself. He reiterated "I am not a baby." under his breath over and over again, as if it was a powerful spell that could keep all of the monsters away. It reminded him of how, whenever Tom's stutter would get particularly bad, his mom would have him recite these poems that were meant to help him focus and form sentences again. Sometimes they'd help him alot, but they could never make the stutter go away completely.
That was kind of what was happening now to Jon, he was still very much scared, so scared that if something popped out at him right now he may very well wet his pants, but the words coddled him and made him feel like he could press on. He hopped off the last step and into the flood, the water so low it could not even reach the six year old childs ankles. He turned his attention to a large rickety shelf under the cellar stairs and inspected the contents.
There were many items on it, shoepolish, old dish rags, wrenches, flashlights with no batteries, a can of turtle wax. For some reason, out of all those objects the turtle wax was what caught his attention, even more than the Paraffin and matches he came down here to get. The company's logo on the front was what really seemed to draw his eye, it was nothing special really, hardly as interesting of a mascot as a Tony the tiger or even a Ronald Mcdonald, just a tiny albino turtled posing proudly above the words turtle and wax. But Jon just couldn't stop staring at it for some reason. A spontaneous pang of familiarity hit him in the chest, as he racked his brain to try and remember where he had seen a turtle like that before.
Was it a dream? It felt too real to be jusr a dream, but much too distant to be a memory. He'd have to think about that later when he had the time, right now he had a mission to do. He snatched up the box, matches, and wax burner then bolted for the steps as fast as he could. Now that he had gotten what he came for he wasn't gonna waste any time down there. He ran as fast as his little legs could, begging god or whatever diety was listening to please not let anything grab his ankles as he ran back up the stairs.
The damp darkness of the cellar was suffocating and opressive, and Jon feared once he got back to the candle lit parlor room, that would be when the creature laid his slimy hands on him and pulled him back. He had made it though, despite all odds he was alive and still had yet to be digested by some hungry beast living under the stairs. He slammed the door and pressed his back against it, panting from how fast he was running as the fear of the dark slowly disappeared until the next time he had to confront it.
His mother suddenly stopped her piano playing to look up at him from across the room, somewhat worried, but highly annoyed by her son's slamming of the door. "Johnathan Bowley Denbrough, what have I told you about slamming that door?" She scolded, but not too harshly as her son was clearly frightened. He swept his bangs out of his face and panted a little more "Sorry mum." he muttered. She shook her head dismissively and went right back to playing Für Elise, which actually helped ease his anxiety.
He headed back up stairs and quickly placed all the stuff on Tom's night stand, eagerly watching as he melted the wax with such hypnotic glee he couldn't help but bounce a little. Tom dipped his finger in the wax and spread it over the paper boat, turning the boat from a nice white to an odd yellowy brown color. Jon got a little too close for comfort, putting his head over his brother's shoulder and breathing quite heavily on him, and yet, Tom still didn't seem to get annoyed.
The only time he'd really ever get annoyed with Jon's behavior was when he'd repeat stuff and ask incessant questions, which he had slowly learned over the years not to do for his brother's sake. They were seeing to each other needs, and it wasn't wasn't just because Tom didn't wanna get in trouble or Jon didn't wanna get yelled at, but a genuine shared affection for one another.
Jon dipped a finger into the wax and began to spread some on it's side with him, smiling and perfectly content. "C-careful you little cootie, you'll make it too heh-heavy and it'll flop on it's side." Tom gently reprimanded. "Oops.." he said, taking his hand away and letting the rest on his finger dry until he could peel it off. "It's oh-kuh-kuh-kay, just take it easy." He said, giving his brother a reassuring headpat to show there was no hard feelings.
Once the wax was spread, Tom took a sharpie from a Disneyland branded cup he used to store his pens and markers and then uncapped it with his mouth. He wrote "S.S. Jon" on the side in cursive font, and even drew a little stick figure captain waving on top of the boat, which Jon found very silly. He handed it to him, gingerly and carefully like it was a one of a kind art piece that belonged in a museum. "She's all ready Captain." he said, raising his hand to his forehead and doing a two finger salute. Jon giggled, but tilted his head in confusion "She?" he wondered.
"You always call boats a sh-she Jon." He explained, and Jon's mouth fell open like he just learned some amazing untold truth about the universe. He clutched the boat in his hands and grinned, looking up with pure adoration and love for the thirteen year old sitting on the bed. Then, quite randomly, Jon lunged right at him for a big hug, startling Tom.
"Agh! What the heck are you doing?! You're gonna g-geh-get sick!" He shouted. Jon laughed then kissed Tom on the cheek, something he hadn't done since he was three. "Eugh, now you're d-d-definetly gonna get sick. Get off me." He lightly scooched him off and Jon looked back to him, still smiling, and still very thankful. "Thanks Tom Tom, thanks alot." He said, and Tom shrugged.
"It's fine, just don't come crying to me when you get the flu and start vu-vomiting your g-guh-guh-uts out.". Tom paused to loudly cough, momentarily drawing some concern from his brother. "And p-p-put on a rain coat when you go out, I d-don't want you getting soaked." He wheezed, huddling under the covers. "Okay!" Jon cheerfully replied, closing the door and heading to the down stairs closet where they kept all the coats.
He put the small baby blue rain slicker on over the baggy sweater he was wearing and finangled with the buttons for a while, still not all that good at hand eye coordination dude to his young age. When he finally managed to get most of them through the holes, he pumped his fist in celebration, and even did a spin. On his way out the door he stopped to grab a pair of black galoshes that still had some mud left on them. He and Tom had went outside together a week ago and simply neglected to clean them since, then, as if in an act of karma for being so lazy, Tom caught a very bad cold the following day.
Jon waddled out the front door into the cool autumn air, making squeaky squishing noises with each step from the rubber soles of his boots. He took a few steps off the porch, only to be greeted by a sudden but gentle breeze hitting the side of his face and pushing his hair around. The now weaning rain fell down from the sky and onto poor little Jon's head, tapping politely on his hood as if to say "Hello Jon! It's your buddy, the rain! Let me in!". He walked a little bit further until he was at the edge of the driveway, then turned around to look back up at his house. It was a moderately above average two story home, nothing special, but to Jon it might as well had heen a castle. His bedroom was right across from Tom's on the second floor, although his over looked the back yard and Tom's overlooked the drive way.
He was peeking through the bay window his bed was by now, standing up on his knees and peeling back the curtains to watch him walk away. Since the house was still dark from the power outage, Tom was barely visible to him. He looked like a floating disembodied head, something Jon found both silly and a little spooky. He jumped in place and waved wildly at him, as if he thought Tom might possibly be able to miss the toddler dressed in a bright blue rain slicker and boots. Tom smiled then lifted up the walkie-talkir in his hand to his mouth "B-be careful. There's alot of w-weirdos out there.". Jon rolled his eyes, still smiling, but a tiny bit annoyed.
He took out his own walkie-talkie from his back pocket and pressed the button to respond. "You sound like mum." he joked. "C-can it." Tom said, a little flustered, especially since he knew it was true. Depite their differences, Tom had always been more like his mother than his father, and the opposite had been true for Jon. He giggled at his embarrassment, "I'll stay safe, don't be such a cry baby, Tom.". "Hey, I resent that label, I'm a cry man." And now they were both snickering over the radios.
"I'm serious though, stay safe." Tom reiterated. "Ok ok- I will- I love you." Jon said, and Tom went silent for a moment as he did not know how to respond. Jon was lucky enough to still be at the age where you could tell another guy you loved them and no one cared, and Tom desperately wished for him to stay like that and never get to old for saying I love you. Lord knows he was forced to out of it a long time ago, and he'd all but forgotten how to do it.
"I- uh- uhm-" Tom hesitated for a second, even with out all the macho man bullshit he had to go through at school, Tom had a hard time letting others know how he felt. Trying to hock out the words was like trying to hock out a pill you didn't mean to take. He swallowed "I lo-love you too." He spat out, and Jon seemed content with that.
He cheerily skipped down the street with his walkie-talkie in one hand and Paper boat in the other, splashing in rain water with each stomp. Tom fell back down onto his bed and sighed, totally exhausted. He wanted to take a long nap now, and he seemed quite over due for one judging by his throbbing head ache. His mothers constant repitition of Für Elise didn't really help that at all, if anything it made it worse. God, if he could have just a single moment of silence he would be happy as a clam.
What Tom didn't know though was that this song's meaning was about to be forever changed for him, from just an annoyingly pompous piano tune to a song that even twenty seven years later could still send him into a trance. From that day forward, anytime he heard those first few notes he'd always have the exact same haunting thought. "That's it, that's the song. That's the song mom was playing the day Jon passed away.". And as it turned out, that rainy view of Jon from his bedside window would be the last time he'd ever see his brother again.

I know, I've been on a posting spree here quite a bit. As fascinating as this dude is in the long run, we truly don't know how much we know about Daniel, and how much media exists of Daniel out there on the web. The question of lost media is a fascinating one that is usually asked here quite a good bit as there are loads of footage of Daniel that has been deleted, unarchived, privated/gatekeeped, or just hoaxed.
In the recent months, much lost media has been leaked here and unearthed, through either crowdfunding campaigns (such as with u/boodiemonstre managing to unearth what happened on 7/11), searching, or through leaking it on a significant day (I'm referring to you, u/smokesomuch2 as the 3rd anniversary of May 6th approaches).
If you have any lost media that may have not been mentioned here, go ahead and comment it down below!
Enough yapping, here's an entire list of all the DL Lost and Found media that is known.

1. 7/11 Incident (Status: Found) - Following the events of the Dog Arc, Daniel Larson unsurprisingly had a massive freakout at a Walmart, nearby the location where Ween had rescued Zola from Daniel's lack-of iron grip and maltreatment. The freakout was confirmed by Daniel in a phone call after the incident and by police through a livestream he had done in the hours after in an ambulance and hospital room. From the way it was described, Daniel had knocked down a bunch of items, destroyed 2,000$ worth of property, specifically gift cards, and was tackled by a biker. The media itself was eagerly sought after in February of 2024 through the crowdfunding of u/boodiemonstre and after suffering through the bouts of bureaucracy, the police bodycam footage from just around the incident was leaked. You can find it here (thanks LarsonLeak/Flex).
2. The May 6th 2023 Leaks (Status: Found) - In celebration of the first ever major Daniel Larson Incident (and possibly the first ever incident), Flexburger leaked a whole bunch of unseen videos of Daniel during his first housing Era (2020-2021). These videos specifically originated in 2021, during his stay in an oddly pink-colored room. It was during his stay here that we had seen how much of an unsettling and scummy individual he was, with him not only admitting to being a PDF File but also literally destroying a good chunk of the room in fits of rage. This however was only the surface, as Daniel had been making a bunch of NSFW content behind the scenes which was sent to his manager at the time, Flex. I will not be linking the NSFW videos, but I will describe and list them briefly. A. Toothbrush Video: Daniel sticks a toothbrush up where the sun doesn't shine, then brushes his teeth with said Toothbrush B. Pencil Video: Daniel shoves a pencil up where the sun doesn't shine, then jumps around like a baboon with it still inside C. Bottle Video: Daniel shoves a bottle up where the sun doesn't shine. D. Wild Hearts Cover: A professionally studio recorded song of Daniel singing a cover of Wild Hearts by Keith Urban E. Shower Incident: Daniel is seen mostly nude in a shower, but not wet. Along with these, Flexburger leaked some screenshots from his time as a troll and manager of Daniel Larson. Keep at it, Flex!
3. Canned Legs Leaks (Status: Found) - On January 23rd, 2024, u/Canned_Legs leaked some images of Daniel in his yearbook during his stint at Tennyson in ~2017. You can find them here. These leaks came around coincidentally the same time u/FlyingFoxandWings and u/Kramsdae answered questions about Danderson's time in Tennyson, as they claimed to be classmates of his.
4. Liquid Larson (Status: Partially Found) - Now-deleted TikToker green9racer ("You gotta have that root beer") for a short time in September of 2021 comedically impersonated Daniel, similarly to Liquid Chris in the CWCverse. He would be banned around this time for unknown reasons, though some TikTok videos would be recovered, courtesy of a reaction by Papa Gut.
5. The first daniellarsonfans video from TikTok (Status: Found) - A recent find by u/slimjimorrison on the 23rd of March 2024 details the first ever post Daniel made on the account that garnered him the infamy we all see today. Here it is.
6. The "smile" video (Status: Found)- This was a video that was out there for a bit, but no one was initially able to find it until it got leaked in 2022. There isn't too much context that I can find of this video. Here it is.
7. The Spiddlekick Interview (Status: Found)- Technically this was already leaked on KiwiFarms for a few months, but was recorded way back in September of 2022. It was only leaked here a some bit back. Here it is.
8. The Candlestick Poem (Status: Found)- This was one of the first videos posted on DanielLarsonFans after the "Good night everyone" video. Technically, this was already posted but was lost for a bit. In late 2023, this was leaked. Here it is.

There is likely a lot more found media of Daniel that was initially lost and looked after for a good bit that I missed. I might try and edit this post if I even can, since I don't always use this platform.
Now for the interesting stuff: Lost Media of Daniel that is known to exist, and others that have been thrown out and speculated on.

1. General- Daniel's videos from 2020/2021 are lost to time, this includes livestream recordings and posts.
2. General- Likee Media. There's likely a lot more Daniel posted on Likee, besides the meltdown that was unarchived.
3. General- There are likely incidents and freakouts that may or may not have been recorded especially during 2023, possibly by other individuals who happened to witness Daniel, and even other incidents and meltdowns pre-May 6th.
4. Pray 4 Denver- This is probably one of the holy grails of unreleased Daniel Larson Music. This album was hyped by Daniel in the latter part of 2021, but was never released past September of 2021, when it was slated to be released by him and his management. The existence of this album is however, up to question as many people claimed this album was a hoax or just never even existed at all. Nonetheless, this today stands as one of the oldest and most well known DL Music Lost Media.
5. Music's Rescue CCTV-There were likely CCTV cameras in the area of both the Walmart, Good Times, and Petsmart that got a good glimpse of the encounter between Daniel and Ween, as well as the aftermath.
6. Panera Bread Manager's Footage-The footage that the manager recorded of Daniel up-close has not been found, and likely will never be since the manager probably doesn't want to have anything to do with the situation or with Daniel.
7. American Idol Audition- Sometime in late-2020 or early 2021, Flexburger set up a fake American Idol audition where Daniel had sung something in front of numerous "judges". Following the audition, the judges had dissed Daniel and essentially made fun of him and his singing in standard American Idol fashion. Unfortunately, this event was not recorded, or we have yet to see any footage of it.
8. Fire Extinguisher Incident- There is allegedly footage of Daniel throwing a fire extinguisher from the top floor of a group home he was living in circa 2021. Footage has not been found since but was confirmed to exist.
9. Full May 6th and 7th Stream- The full May 6th Stream has not been recorded, and only the footage of Daniel exposing himself has been leaked from the full stream. Additionally, the somewhat unknown May 7th incident, which took place a day later only has a screenshot of Daniel exposing himself, again.
10. July 8th Interview- On July 8th, Daniel conducted an interview where he notably admits to assaulting his mother, who was wheelchair bound. The full interview was not recorded, however. DanielLarsonNewz (combotter) had been the first to publish the interview.
11. The Deleted Brink Videos- 2 videos of Daniel with Briink at an airbnb had been found and posted 7 months back, but were deleted quite recently without being archived. If someone has a link to the 2 videos, comment them here.
12. School of Mines Incident- I believe there is a video of Daniel being confronted, but through my research I somehow can't find it. Some have called this lost media too.
13. u/Monkeyman56783 unreleased footage- He has claimed that there is more unreleased footage apart from the 3 parts he had posted on YouTube. While it would be a blessing to see these, I think it's for the best we save these for last.
14. From u/oceanman9, there is an alleged video of Daniel struggling to button his jacket. Not much is known besides this comment.
15. From DanielLarsonfans, a now-deleted poster claimed that they had a recording of Daniel during his Anaheim stay in 2023 where he did a livestream trying to end it all in Disneyland. The poster claimed that viewership was in the 20s-30s, justifying its obscurity. The user then deleted his post and the account, before the subreddit was permanently deleted as well.
16. Michael Quinn videos- There are likely some unreleased videos of Daniel with Michael Quinn with WOTS in the timeframe that Daniel stayed in New York City.

Finally, the most interesting piece of lost media is actually a form of lostwave music!
The song Southside, produced by Flexburger, and Jay/jayadonna from Party House Records features a sample in the beginning that no one was able to fully identify, making it a piece of lostwave, up there with Blind the Wind and Everyone Knows That.
The first 5 seconds of the song is the unidentified sample in question. If you can identify the sample used or get information on it, feel free to state it! I am surprised this specific piece of media is not talked about in full.
Instrumental version without Daniel's heavenly voice.

Doctor Dahesh and the Miracle of the Red-Skinned Prophet

no copyright.
​
The Noble Spiritual Faith of Daheshism (aka "Daheshist Faith") teaches reincarnation, karma, and that the Christ-Spirit will become flesh seven times on this planet as seven different sinless prophets, all born of seven different women. The first among the Seven Sinless Prophets was Jesus of Nazareth, and the fifth among the seven, they believe, is Salim Musa Al-Ashi (1909-1984), the miracle-worker of Lebanon. In 1909, the Christ-Spirit was born a Man-Child in Jerusalem, and named Salim Musa El-Ashi. He grew up in Beirut Lebanon and Bethlehem (in the Summers). He worked thousands of supernatural miracles, witnessed by thousands. Hundreds wrote eye-witness accounts. We have His birth certificate. We have hundreds of photographs of Him. There are hundreds of newspaper articles about Him written during the time He lived. We have 150 books written by Him under His pen name (Doctor Dahesh). There are several hundred living people today who knew Him personally. We are pretty sure He existed. He founded a new religion in the year 1942 called the Noble Spiritual Faith of Daheshism, in Beirut, Lebanon. His first disciple was Yusuf El-Hajj, the founder of the Grand Orient Arabe. His second disciple was Halim Dammous: the famous Lebanese poet. In his day (c. 1920 to 1950) Halim Dammous was as famous in Lebanon and Egypt as John Lennon ("The Beattles" co-founder) was famous in England and America, in his day (1965 to 1989). In 1942 Halim Dammous was about sixty, but he was not yet retired. He was a Maronite Christian (10% of Lebanese are Maronite Christians). He was wealthy and very famous in Lebanon, but also in Egypt. Although Dammous believed in God and the Afterlife, he was not a fundamentalist. In the West, he would have been considered to be a "Liberal" Christian. Like most Lebanese intellectuals, he became a "Accepted Brother" in the Grand Orient Arabe: a Maonic lodge of Arab men (Muslim, Christian, and Druze) that was affiliated with the Grand Orient of France. That is where Dammous met the Grand Master: Yusuf El-Hajj. Halim Dammous (haw-leem daw-moose) first heard about Dr. Dahesh in 1942, from his friend Yusuf El-Hajj ("The First Daheshist"). Yusuf El-Hajj was a very highly educated engineer, who, while living in Egypt, founded the Grand Orient Arabe: the Arabic chapter of the Grand Orient of France (French Freemason lodge) in 1930. The Grand Orient Arabe attracted many Arab intellectuals: lawyers, poets, artists, politicians, liberal thinkers of the Arab world. The Grand Orient Arabe was also the other fraternal organization in the Arab World which accepted Muslims, Christians, and Druze as "Brothers". Normally, the three did not mix in social settings. The Grand Orient Arabe was the only organization where the contending religions looked upon each others as Brothers of different Mothers, sort to speak. El-Hajj told his friend Dammous that while in Egypt he (El-Hajj) had met a miracle-worker named Salim Musa El-Ashi, who was also from Beirut. He told Dammous about some of the miracle he (El-Hajj) had witnessed El-Ashi (Dahesh) perform. Intrigued, he decided to invite his friend (Yusuf El-Hajj) and Doctor Dahesh to his large beautiful home, overlooking the ocean in Ras Beirut (West Beirut). After dinner they had a long conversation with Dr. Dahesh, and the subject came up regarding if Adam was the first man on Earth, and if he truly existed. Dammous expressed his opinion that he did not think that Adam truly existed, but that the story of Adam and Eve was simply a parable or story invented to make moral points about men and women. At that point Dr. Dahesh walked over to the window, and stared at the Moon. This is from the writings of Haleem Dammous, what he saw and heard that night. This is from The Daheshist Chronicles by Haleem Dammous, a series of 13 volumes, written in Arabic, about 200 pages each. the following is a direct quote from the volume one of "The Daheshist Chronicles" by Dammous: August 1, 1942 – The First Miracle : The Appearance of the Extra- Terrestrial — A Discussion We were three at my home in Ras-Beirut : Doctor Dahesh, Brother Yussef El Hajj, and I. It was ten o'clock at night when Doctor Dahesh rose and approached the window ... and here, he gazed at the moon. That's when we heard a subtle murmur reaching our ears. And, lo and behold, a light mist materialized before us and began to shrink, to compress, and to diminish until it revealed a man whose face was red and whose form was amazing and whose face sparkled as if it was the surface of a mirror. His size was similar to ours. He approached us and began to speak to us at a mind-boggling speed, but in a tongue completely foreign to what we were familiar with. And in our turn, we asked him to express himself in Arabic — we asked if he could do so, because we were unable to understand a single word of what he was saying. That's when Doctor Dahesh approached him, put his hand on his mouth ... he immediately began to express himself in Arabic and in a very clear fashion. And he said: "I am the inhabitant of one of these Worlds that are inaccessible to your human eyes. Once, I was an inhabitant of your planet — and that was thousands of years ago. And — what you refer to as — 'Death' befell me ... but in reality, death is none other than a passage from one World to another, from one condition into another. For as soon as I permanently closed my eyes in your planet, leaving behind my body as food for earthworms, I found myself in a world of sublime beauty. If you ask the question, 'How come we, the living and the inhabitants of this planet are not capable of seeing you — you, who have abandoned your material body and now wear a transparent Spiritual body?' My answer would be that the explanation would require many volumes and that I would have to remain with you for many long hours — which is not possible because, and already, the hour to leave you is almost upon us. Nevertheless, I will explain a fact and supply you with proof. And here is, then, the explanation: Each human being possesses two bodies: One material and the other Spiritual. As for your Material World, it possesses vibrating waves, similarly to the Spiritual World which also possesses vibrating waves that are unique to it. But the difference — from the point of view of the speed of vibration — between the vibrating waves of the Material World and that of the Spiritual World is huge. The speed of the vibrating waves in your Material World is far lesser than the speed of the vibrating waves in the Spiritual Worlds. When (what is commonly referred to as) death occurs in your world, the spiritual body — which represents the second portion of your personal entity— separates from the material body and rises until it reaches the World whose vibrating waves are identical to its own. That is why it is impossible for you to perceive this spiritual body because the organ of sight is under the influence of your material world whose vibrating waves are too slow by comparison to the Spiritual World — and to the speed of the vibrating waves in this spiritual body, thus the impossibility to see anything whatsoever. As for the proof, and in order to simplify the problem, and so that you are in a position to better understand it, I will give you this following example: Imagine you are standing upright, on any street ... and that a car passes right before you, rolling at great speed. It will pass you without your being able to identify the passengers that were inside the car ... and that is due to its staggering speed. But, if it is given to you to climb inside another car, and follow it until you are able to catch up with it — at which point you would be riding side by side, regardless of speed — you would be able to perceive those who are inside the other car ... just as they would be able to see you — since both your speeds are now identical. Likewise, the same can be said about our ethereal world. You will not be in a position to perceive it with your eyes that remain subject to the laws of matter and with these vibrations that are far slower than the waves of our Spiritual World." We asked him a few questions and received — for each question — an adequate answer. He took leave of us and began to dissipate little by little before us until he disappeared completely. His vanishing was as extraordinary as his appearance had been incredible. (from The Daheshist Chronicles volume one by Halim Dammous: excerpt translated from Arabic to English by M.H. Chakkour) Note: the words of Halim Dammous have appeared in bold print while the words of the Red-Skinned Prophet have appeared in bold italic. After witnessing "The Miracle of the Red-Skinned Prophet" Halim Dammous quit his poet career (and the money that came with it) and spent the next 8 years, with Doctor Dahesh every day, and recording His teachings and supernatural miracles. He wrote all this down in a series of 13 volumes titled "The Daheshist Chronicles'': 13 volumes of about 200 pages each, in Arabic. Dammous recounts observing a miracle performed by Doctor Dahesh on almost every page of "The Daheshist Chronicles". In 1950 the Lebanese government convicted Halim Dammous of "promoting Daheshism" and sentenced him to two years imprisonment. Because of his fame, the Prosecutor told Dammous that "if" he renounced Dahesh and Daheshism, he would be freed, and Dammous could retire or continue his career as a poet. Dammous refused to denounce his testimony, and served two years in a 8' by 4' cell, cold in the Winter, blazing hot in the Summer. His health deteriorated during this time. The government of Lebanon offered Dammous "clemency" if he would publicly denounce Dahesh, but he never did. Dammous, his health destroyed, died soon after being released in 1952. In 1950 Lebanon had 9 legal "sects" (Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Presbyterian, Sunni, Shi'ite, Druze, Nusayri (Alawite), and Jewish). All other "sects" were illegal, and to proselyte (trying to get people to convert from one sect to another) was also highly illegal. Haleem Dammous not only sacrificed his career, but also his life, bearing testimony of Doctor Dahesh and the miracles he eye-witnessed: including "The First Miracle" he witnessed in his home, the materialization of the Red-Skinned Prophet. Salim Musa Al-Ashi (Doctor Dahesh) was the fifth incarnation of the Christ-Spirit on this planet. Two more will come. Dahesh worked thousands of supernatural miracles, and hundreds of them are recorded by eye-witnesses, most of whom never become Daheshists. In the year 2005 Dahesh visited my home in Lakewood (near Tacoma) Washington, with lightning but no thunder. He walked on my roof, then came into my house, then my room and sat on the corner of my bed. He had the weight of five men. This was in the afternoon, and I was wide awake. He did this to others. He died in 1984. A true Prophet has come, working all the miracles Jesus did, but much more of them, writing 150 books, collecting fine art. He was born in Jerusalem in 1909. He grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, and Bethlehem, Palestine. In 1975 he moved to New York City, but still traveled widely. On January 21st 1977 he visited Disneyland and then, the next day, the Los Angeles Zoo: where I saw his face for the first time. He died in 1984, but he visited me in the year 2005: in the afternoon. He wrote books under the pen name of "Doctor Dahesh". Adam was not the first "Ish" (human male), but the first "Adom" (Adamite). He came to our world with an astral body, but eating material fruit caused his astral body to become physical and thus subject to death. Adam lived many times on this planet. He "sinned" in the Garden of Maru-Aten, when he was Pharaoh Ay son of Yuya. He had to return to this world, live a sinless and celibate life, and die on the Cross to atone for that sin he committed in the Garden of Meru-Aten in 1320 A.D. The "sin" was not biting into an apple or fig, or some piece of literal fruit, but by partaking of "forbidden fruit" (taboo sex). Doctor Dahesh wrote 150 books: poems, prayers, parables, proze, social commentary, and five books of Revelation: *The Gospel of Love *My Testament *Paradise *The Inferno *The Book of the Divine Guide He also wrote "Memoirs of Jesus of Nazareth" in the first person: because that was His name in a prior life. I saw his face in 1977, and He visited me, in person, in 2005. Hundreds of people are still alive today who knew him and witnessed one or more of his miracles. Halim Dammous witnessed hundreds of them, and wrote of what he saw in The Daheshist Chronicles. Here are some things that Doctor Dahesh taught: *Adam was not the first human male but the first of a new race of men. *The blood of Jesus saves all of us from soul-death: not just Christians. *The Resurrection occurs in the World of Souls not in our world. *YWHW is one of the Elohiym (Mighty Ones) and is not Heavenly Father. *The Holy Spirit is the Heavenly Father *The Heavenly Father has incarnated on this planet as Rama, Krishna, Buddha, and others. *The Christ-Spirit will appear seven times on this planet. *We all have up to 6,000 reincarnations on this and other worlds. *Heaven and Hell are a series of planets *Earth is the highest type of Hell planet *We are judged by our actions not our beliefs *Paradise and the lower Hell worlds are described in detail in two books by Dahesh. *The Christ-Spirit will incarnate two more times on this planet. *The Remz Rite, taught to certain disciples of Dahesh, can cure many diseases. *The Law of Karma is universal and applies to all: even to the Son of God which is why he had to suffer and bleed on the Cross to atone for his great sin in the Garden of Maru-Aten in 1320 B.C. There are about 3,000 Daheshists in the world today: mostly in Lebanon, France, UK, Canada, and USA. There are a few hundred in Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. The Daheshists are awaiting a "benefactor" to come forward to make a film about the life and miracles of Dahesh, and then Faith will be formally organized, and the first Dahesh Temple built.
​

Been reviewing this sub and seen a lot of posts about mellinial parenting with kids and technology. I have to say everyone here is absolutely nuts and almost comically so. "The kids are glued to screens!!!" It's a cliche in the making and it happens everytime. In the past video game consoles were supposed to destroy the children and lead to the violent destabilization of society, before that? Having their own phone!, before that? Television!, before that? Radio! Before that? Jazz music! Before that? Easily accessible alchohol!
I could go on another 100 years but it's all culture war BS here's a new flash that every generation needs to hear. Your kids are not going to grow up to be you or be like the kids you grew up with.
They arent playing with toys because toy stores like toys r us went out of business, they aren't watching Arthur or hey Arnold when they get home from school because it isn't subbed, McDonald's isn't a cheap eat for the whole family filled with playplaces for them to play in and you almost certainly are not taking them to exciting locations like Disneyland every year.
You have to foster the things they are interested in and make their world not yours a wonderful adventure. If you're worried about where society is going then you need to vote.
The us education system isn't cripled by parents or electronics it's crippled by the average American who decided to stay home on election day. Don't want schools dictated by fire arm drills? Then vote and get a godamn weapons ban passed. Don't want teachers fleeing schools in droves? Then vote to get everyone a living wage and to empower unions. Want mom(or dad) to stay home and play with the kids? Then vote and make godamn maternity(paternity)leave, subsidized day care, or a meaningful child tax credit a real thing.
The problems not the parenting it's that too many butts are glued to the fence of apathy.
I'm going to end my rant with a poem by Khalil Gibran

 Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable 

Edit: I don't have time to respond to or read every comment here and there are certainly a lot of rational folks here with reasonable opinions but there is also a lot that concerns me.
I honestly hope this subreddit is not representative of my generation because the amount of you commenting who have learned nothing from the mistakes of the past is shockingly high.
Honestly people commenting here are as out of touch as the previous generations that they complain about. So many are quick to blame technology and change just because things are different from their own childhood.
I have seen many people commenting here certain that children are up a creek because of their access to technology, or because of trans rights, or video games, ECT...
But inequality, lack of healthcare, lack of funding, and easy access to guns just fly right under the radar of most of the people commenting here.
My only take away has been that if the comments of this place are in fact representative of my generation then unfortunately the next generation will inherit all of these issues. All while we whine on the sidelines about how the poor shouldn't be permitted to be parents or that childrens phone usage is turning them braindead and unable to read or that they have become socially stunted and don't use the right bathroom!
The shortsightedness is deafening, I just hope it's isolated.
Second edit
This part I just have to share for irony's sake. The number of people linking studies that they say definitively proves electronics drastically damage learning, reading, socialization, and ECT... When the studies actually do no such thing and go out of their way to say so pointing out they have no causal association and frequently rely on self reporting is really high and it is deliciously funny. The irony of someone linking studies arguing illiteracy that they didn't read...

From https://www.faithnomorefollowers.com/:
I made a spotify playlist with these albums:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4SBCQQO7DIjOxirgsYAo0z?si=a593f57ac1ce4276
"Mike Patton has a love for the sinister macbre side of music, especially from horror movies. So much so that the Fantomas album The Director's Cut pays homage to some of tinsel town's creepiest scores. He has of course lended his composing skills to a few movies now, and his latest horror soundtrack to the Netflix movie 1922 (based on the Stephen King novella) will be available next year. But what scores has he drawn influence from? MIKE PATTON Picks His Favourite Horror Soundtracks Krzysztof Komeda - Rosemary’s Baby "Reminds me of the subtlety of a nursery rhyme, except it will keep you up while laying in bed trying to fall asleep. One of my favorites, it’s haunting." "Simply put, one of the simplest and most haunting themes ever written."
Jerry Goldsmith - The Omen "This bombastic score absolutely MADE the movie. Watch the film with mute on and it won’t have nearly the same impact. Imitated by many, but nobody outside of Penderecki can even come close. Definitely gives you goose bumps."
Oskar Sala — The Birds "An incredible score with no known musical 'notes.' The entire score was produced by an early electronic instrument called the 'mixtrautonium,' and is an amazing example of how sound design and sound effects can be fused with image to great musical effect. Hats off to director Alfred Hitchcock for realizing this and creating a truly terrifying sonic bastard."
Takemitsu Tōru - Kwaidan "Special electronic effects were created for this core by breaking large chunks of wood. If that doesn't convince you, then check out the film: It is one of the most elegant and haunting you may find."
Sounds of Walt Disney’s Haunted Mansion "This is not a 'film score' per se, but it might as well be. The dialogue and cues are so vivid that the listener is immediately transported into the dark recesses of Disneyland. I can't think of a scarier place to be."
Ennio Morricone - Four Flies on Grey Velvet "Incredibly elegant writing and orchestration from the maestro…This music was written for an early Dario Argento film, so there are plenty of slasher elements, but they are handled with the grace and conviction of a modern classical composer. Void of any of the normal musical scare tactics are heard, this is precisely why it is such an effective piece."
Kenny Hopkins / Creed Taylor Orchestra - Shock, Panic and Nightmare "It’s not really a film score but more of a 'tone poem' using horror elements and sound effects. This one requires a close listen."
Louis and Bebe Barron - Forbidden Planet "I wish there were more scores like this. It might not be technically horror but I find it disturbing."
https://bloody-disgusting.com/news/119237/faith-no-mores-mike-patton-shares-his-favorite-horror-music/
https://www.revolvermag.com/music/mike-pattons-5-most-spine-tingling-horror-soundtracks
ESPAÑOL/SPANISH:
https://zemaraim.blogspot.com/2010/04/mike-patton-comparte-sus-favoritas.html

So sorry these are late!!! u/Moose-Maleficent, thank you so much for the Disneyland Paris postcard, I love how shiny and colourful it is! I loved hearing about your favourite rides - I’ve always wanted to go there so I could go on Space Mountain and get photos with the characters! So jealous you got in for free! Also thank you for the old French stamp! u/wasabi_sf, thank you so much for not only the adorable bubble tea postcard but also the super cool National Parks postcard! I also absolutely adored the butterfly envelope you used, and all those colourful stamps - so pretty!!! That was also a really cool fact about Canyonlands :) and your bubble tea order sounds yummy! u/feellikebeingajerk, thank you so much for not only the fashion postcard but also the adorable handmade bee card, and also those cute stickers you enclosed! I love the style of the person on the fashion postcard, and I think it’s so cool that you made your own card, and that fact about honey was really interesting! u/Powerful_Cobbler_215, thank you so much for the Van Gogh postcard! I love Van Gogh’s art. The stickers and stamps you used are so cute, particularly the cat stickers! It’s amazing that you made them! And I love your letters - are they handwritten or stamped? u/queen_4_tsunami, thank you so much for the flower card! It was amazing to hear about your life on a farm - I’m amazed by how many animals you have! And it’s fantastic that they’re all rescues. So sorry to hear about the slaughtered animals though. I hope you have a lovely day <3 u/MondayChild73 or u/MondayCat73 (it said both on the card), thank you so much for the card with the self-care tips, quotes and stickers! I particularly love the sticker selection as there are lots of cat ones and I’m a huge cat person haha. I had never heard of the poem you mentioned, but I looked it up. It’s beautiful. I do know the song you mentioned, I like it! I agree with you about the power of music. Right now, I think my “personal anthem” would have to be Love, Me Normally by Will Wood. Finally, thank you for your message of support! Thank you all, you’re amazing. Have a wonderful day!

Time for another poetry contest!
But first, congratulations to the two winners from the two-line poem contest:

• u/Averinvaler007 won the popular vote with the poem "The Car Ride Home."
• u/prufrock_in_xanadu won the moderator-favorite award with this startling two-line poem

We had a lot of great entries. Go take a look at the whole thread.
Neither of our winners have suggested a theme for this week's poetry contest, so here's what I've chosen: found poetry sonnets.
Here's the prompt: find some text and make a sonnet out of it. You must credit or cite the original text. Taking that text, you can excerpt it, you can rearrange it, you can even do some light editing, but I want the text to preserve at least some of the flavor of its original source. The resulting poem has to be fourteen lines long. It doesn't have to rhyme. It doesn't need meter or uniform line length. It doesn't require a "volta" or turn. It doesn't have to be about love. Stanzas breaks are welcome but not required. Fourteen lines is the only sonnety stricture I'm going to stipulate here.
Full disclosure: I'll probably like it more if it has something like rhyming, some kind of similar line-length feeling, and is in some kind of dialogue with sonnet traditions — examples below will illustrate what I mean. But these characteristics are not a strict requirement for entry. I would love to be surprised by your own spin on the prompt.
So here's where I got the idea.
Recently I read The Reality Street Book of Sonnets, an anthology of contemporary postmodern sonnets. Several that really charmed me were by the poet Juliana Spahr in a series she called "Power Sonnets." They all take various texts and fashion excerpts from them into sonnets, in ways that both celebrate and cheekily undermine sonnet conventions. Here are some examples.
The first one has text taken from what I gather is some kind of stock-trading or futures-trading floor.

after Richard Plum in Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Last Floor Show,” The New Yorker, March 20, 2000   One trades for CBS, take em. One trades for the figure. The figure trades at a tenny, take ‘em. Whatever the stocks trading is the figure.
A thou trades at a teeny. Six hundred trades at a teeny. Four hundred trades at a teeny. Six twice at a
teeny. Cross em all in there. CBS show five thou at two teenies. Figure bid for fifteen thou. CBS figure for fifteen thou at a teeny.
Fifteen thou trades at the figure. Sold. I sold you ten thou at the figure; I’m DOT. Sold.

I love the ersatz rhymes that constitute an ABAB CCCC DEDE FF rhyme scheme. I am also deeply charmed by the use of "thou," which here must be shorthand for a thousand. We even have a concluding couplet gesture with the way "sold" is deployed. Absolutely impishly delightful.
The next example is from an article in Wired magazine. If you're reading this on your phone, turn it sideways because these lines are long.

after Kendra Mayfield "Why Girls Don't Compute," Wired Website, 3:00 a.m., Apr. 20, 2000 PDT   Educators must change the way that they teach to attract girls to technology. With the rise of technology-related jobs, experts fear girls who lack computing skills might be left behind. It's imperative that girls who are under represented, have computer fluency. Girls
have misconceptions of what computer fluency would lead to. Girls are getting a distorted view. Yet there are ways to get girls into computer culture. The report urges educators to teach girls sophisticated technology skills. Teachers can re-engage girls
who might be disinterested in traditional computing courses. Girls are also turned off to technology through computer games. Girls dislike violent video games. But some researchers think girls don't need pink software. But others think software should go straight to girls'
interests. "Software is primarily aimed at boys. To counteract that, we desperately need software out there for girls"; "It's not really violence that turns girls off," repetitious, boring games are more likely to turns girls off than violence. Researchers also stressed educating girls.

Ending every line with "girls" is a clever tweaking of the love-poem origins of the sonnet.
Here's one final example, again toying with the love-poem conventions of the sonnet.

after Mark Hoppins in Riann Smith, "Princes of Punk," YM: Young Miss, May 2000   No matter who you are as a teen, you’re in the same kind of limbo— old enough to do stuff on your own but young enough that people say “you’re just a teen.”
Some dudes are into girls who are all boobed out and made up, but I’m just not with that. I’d rather hang out with a girl who’s supercool to talk to, someone I can joke around with.
A lot of girls try to look hot. But a girl should worry about finding a guy she gets along with rather than a guy who just wants to hook up because she looks hot.
I took my girlfriend to Disneyland Paris while we were vacationing in France. It was supercool. The Space Mountain roller coaster there is much more hard-core than the one in America; it goes upside down three times.

You can find a few more on an archived version of Spahr's website, including this extraordinary piece about "the testicle in contemporary art."
I hope that gives you a sense of what the prompt allows. Don't feel obligated to mimic Spahr's approach directly, though. As long as your sonnet is assembled from someone else's words, it'll be a good entry.
Post your found/assembled/repurposed-text sonnets as comments to this post. The two-feedback requirement is suspended for contest entries. As before, we will have two winners: one selected by popular vote, and one selected by me as my favorite. (Maybe just one if they coincide, who knows?) Winners will be able to choose any or all of the following:

• custom flair
• choosing the next contest
• detailed feedback on a poem of your choice

As with the last contest, I'll allow entries through some time Monday, then lock the post to new entries but allow a few more days of voting.
I hope you have fun with the prompt and I look forward to reading your entries!
And for those who might need it, a last-minute formatting reminder:
On some interfaces (such as desktop) you can make a line break by entering two spaces before a return: space-space-enter. This looks best but doesn't work on some apps.
On all interfaces, you can make a pseudo-line break by making each line its own paragraph, enter-enter, and you can indicate stanza breaks with a "dummy" character such as a period or tilde on its own line (paragraph). This looks somewhat clumsy but it always works.
Advanced formatting: Non-breaking spaces are your friend. If you're able to, entering  , ampersand and semicolon included, several times at the beginning of a new line after a space-space-enter line break will indent the subsequent line:

This is a very long line with space-space-enter line breaks     that aren't "real" line breaks since the line continues     with   character indentation that signifies that     the poetic line is longer than the typographical line.

You can also type each line as a paragraph and then for good-looking stanza breaks add an in-between-paragraph consisting only of an   character to make an extra-big gap. I suspect that's what u/Candid-Astronomer891 did below.

Here is one very long line typed up as a single paragraph, which reddit will break up into lines according to the window of whatever device and window sizes it is viewed in, which is more friendly to people on mobile.
Here is another line-as-paragraph, the end of this stanza, which will be followed by a stanza break.
 
You don't see the characters, but the big gap above is a single paragraph consisting of  , which renders as a single space making a larger gap; a regular space as its own paragraph does not work, due to longstanding HTML-rendering conventions in which paragraph breaks gobble up any regular space characters.

 
Whew! Anyway, have fun with the prompt!

HI everyone, thank you so much to these folks!

• u/onlycompletely for the "I Egret Nothing" postcard! love it. would make a cool/quirky tattoo
• mystery sender (no username) for the vintage St. Anne's Shrine postcard and telling me about your current favorite song/lyrics. super cute labels for to/from addresses!
• u/56thorns thank you for the "hello!" postcard and the "you are magical and rare" sticker! also, thank you for the Totoro pop up card!
• u/bonbilletdoux thank you for the postcard and for telling me about your cherished memory of meditating in the nature reserve. that is a gorgeous memory! One of my favorite memories was when I was 15 and got to go to Disneyland in California. I stood in front of a lit up waterfall at night and just felt very at peace and present in the moment.
• u/bazilrathbone for the adorable llama card!
• u/monetmonkey - thank you for the octopus card with the rabbit envelope! there are many rabbits in my neighborhood this time of year :)
• u/soxgal - thank you for the "think of this as a hug" card! I would love to live in the universe of Peter Pan so I could be a mermaid sunning myself in the lagoon and tempt men to their deaths when I'm feeling spicy ;)
• u/okayflan thank you for the ten years of RAOC postcard! I love the vintage stamps and your adorable return address sticker!
• u/oneiricostrich thank you for the International Women's Day postcard and telling me about yourself! I totally relate to being an introvert and overthinker and more reserved/awkward in group settings
• u/championvilla thank you for the adorable postcard! Happy Early Birthday!
• u/wastingtime1994 thank you for the Rudyard Kipling poem! your handwriting is very nice.
• u/residentcomposer1939 for the polar bear postcard and the Smith poem. I love it although it is brimming with melancholy.

More thank yous to come!

I took wayyy too much time on this. Damn tism. So Goon's video on the CT Iceberg is probably one of my favorites; watched the mega video at least 10 times, listen to it while doing my job. While watching the beginning with my boyfriend, we gave our personal thoughts on some of the theories. So I wanted to share my rating of every theory on each tier. Yes. This is longgg as a giant's arm, BUT... I wanna hear your opinions. What theories would you rank as crazy, true (to you), or somewhere in the middle. List your personal least/most theories.
⭐ = Bullshit Theory ⭐⭐ = Interesting Theory ⭐⭐⭐ = Plausible Theory ⭐⭐⭐⭐ = True Theory (to me) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 1 -Crazyhead-
Big Pharma (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Atlantis (⭐⭐) Nostradamus (⭐⭐) ~More like… Nostra-DUMBASS~ (Get the reference, you get a cookie)
Mandela Effect (⭐⭐) MH 370 (⭐) GMO (⭐) Orbs (⭐⭐) NOW (⭐⭐) Nibriu Cataclysm (⭐⭐) Bilderberg Meetings (⭐⭐) Transhumanism (⭐⭐) Black-Eyed Kids (⭐) Antarctica (⭐⭐) Basement Tapes (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Operation Northwoods (⭐⭐⭐⭐) PSYOPs (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Parents and family are veterans; they have seen/heard things~
The Vela Incident (⭐⭐) GIANTS (⭐⭐) ~The beginning of a beautiful meme~ Padma McCord (⭐⭐) Elisa Lam (⭐⭐⭐) Tara Calico Picture (⭐⭐⭐) The Mad Gasser of Mattoon (⭐⭐⭐) ~Thanks disrupt~ COINTELPRO (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Mao-Yale Theory (⭐) I-70 Killer (⭐⭐⭐) Majestic 12 (⭐⭐⭐) Red Squads (⭐⭐⭐⭐) The “Secret” (⭐) Acupuncture (⭐⭐) Max Headroom Incident (⭐⭐⭐) UN Agenda (⭐⭐) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 2 -Deep Researcher-
Lucid Dreaming (⭐⭐) MKUltra (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Hypnosis (⭐⭐⭐) ~Been hypnotized before~ Fluoride Affects (⭐) Pineal Gland Calcification (⭐) Cicada 3301 (⭐⭐⭐) McFly Code (⭐) Dowsing (⭐⭐) Admiral Byrd (⭐⭐) Agartha (⭐⭐) Weather Control -HAARP- (⭐) Freemasons (⭐⭐⭐) ~Know a friend that is a Mason~ 23 Enigma (⭐⭐) Astral Projections (⭐⭐) Succubi (⭐⭐) Eastern Philosophies (⭐⭐) Nephilim (⭐⭐⭐) ~Iceland: Home of the Nephilim~ The Missing Cosmonauts (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Dyaltov Pass (⭐⭐⭐) Declassified Documents (⭐⭐⭐) Summoning (⭐⭐⭐) Tulpas (⭐⭐⭐) ~I still remember my imaginary friends~ Operation Bluebeam (⭐) Occult Knowledge (⭐⭐⭐) Magicka (⭐⭐) Shelled/Firmament Earth (⭐⭐) Men in Black (⭐⭐⭐) Joseph Augustus Zarelli aka The Boy in the Box (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Reality Simulations (⭐) Clown Sightings (⭐⭐) ~Thought it was marketing for IT (2017)~ Divination (⭐⭐) Space Is Fake (⭐) Pantheism (⭐⭐) Intelligent Design (⭐⭐) LA Oil Rigs (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Theory confirmed true~ Ghost Girl (⭐⭐) Operation Fishbowl (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Archdemons/Archangels (⭐⭐) Philosopher's Stone (⭐⭐⭐) My Red Is Not Your Red (⭐⭐⭐) ~BF: That’s red. Me: It’s scarlet.~ Vampires (⭐⭐⭐)
Aura (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Been told my aura is yellow, which is my favorite color. :3~
Francis Leavy's Handprint (⭐⭐⭐) Bohemian Grove (⭐⭐⭐) Lost Civilizations (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Paranormal Beings (⭐⭐⭐) Professional Sports Scripted (⭐⭐) Snuff Cinema (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~There are monsters in the world~ Gang Stalking (⭐) ~Not a schizo~ Experiments on Humans (⭐⭐⭐⭐) 6th Extinction (⭐⭐⭐) Pseudosciences (⭐⭐) Saturn's Rings (⭐⭐⭐) Polar Shift (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Large Hendron Collider (⭐⭐⭐) Oumuamua (⭐⭐⭐⭐) WWII Black Book (⭐⭐⭐) Fish Rain (⭐⭐⭐) Clinton Body Doubles (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Butterfly Effect (⭐⭐) Ningens (⭐⭐) Patterson-Gimlin Massacre (⭐) Hooton Plan (⭐) Oil Pit Squid (⭐⭐) People of the Mount (⭐⭐) Crystal Skulls (⭐⭐) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 3 starts -Truth Agent-
3.1
Singularity (⭐⭐⭐) ~A.I. is fascinatingly terrifying~ Quantum Suicide and Immorality (⭐⭐) Tree Swastika (⭐⭐) Genocide Denials (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~SOAD is right~ Roko's Basilisk (⭐⭐) Taured (⭐⭐) The Bloop (⭐⭐⭐) Rosicrucianism (⭐⭐) Sinkholes (⭐⭐) Publius Enigma (⭐⭐) Russian Sleep Experiment (⭐⭐) Esoteric Knowledge (⭐⭐⭐) Denver Airport (⭐⭐⭐) ~Been there once; weird~ Archons (⭐⭐) Spirit Science (⭐⭐) The Plain of Jars (⭐⭐⭐) ~GIANTS!~ Beacon of Hate (⭐⭐⭐) Feral Children (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Poor Genie~ Anti-Natalism (⭐⭐) Charles Fort (⭐⭐⭐) Road to Roota (⭐⭐⭐) Mereological Nihilism (⭐⭐) Cagots (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Deep Sea Lab Techs aka Aquanauts (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Hitler Escaped Inside the Earth (⭐) ~B-movie plot~ Illuminati Blood Banks (⭐⭐⭐) ~Blood facials… ew.~ Sacred Geometry (⭐⭐) ~BF believes in this more than I do~ The Black Pope Prophecy (⭐) DMT Beings (⭐⭐) ~BF believes in them since he’s a psyhead~ Missing Children Forest (⭐⭐⭐) Solipsism (⭐⭐) Thule (⭐⭐) Die Glocke (⭐⭐)
3.2
Arnold's Real Height (⭐) ~Why is this here??~ Natural Park Closures (⭐⭐⭐) Lake Baikal (⭐⭐⭐) Dancing Plague (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Panspermia (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Webdriver Torso (⭐⭐⭐) Toxoplasmosis (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Introspection Rundown (⭐⭐⭐⭐) USA Is an Experiment (⭐⭐) Bielefeld PYSOPs (⭐⭐) Online Video Game Monitoring (⭐⭐⭐) ~Looking at you, Overwatch 2 (-_-;)~
John "Babacombe" Lee (⭐⭐) RPG Insanity Training (⭐) Oz Factor (⭐) Extreme Continents (⭐⭐) Shaver's Writings (⭐) Porn Control (⭐) Temporary Autonomy Zone (⭐⭐) ~CHAZ failed though~ Henotheism (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Quantum Jumping (⭐) Fullcaneli (⭐⭐) French Viper Releases (⭐) Grey Goo (⭐) Mach's Principle (⭐⭐) Pokaini (⭐⭐⭐) Deep Ecology Fascism (⭐⭐) Deathworm (⭐⭐) ~Frank Herbert got some inspiration~ Gaydar (⭐⭐⭐⭐) KKK Funded by Governments (⭐⭐⭐) Titanic Didn't Sink (⭐⭐⭐) Smithsonian Suppression (⭐⭐⭐⭐) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 4 -Adept of Secrets-
4.1
Dzopa Tribe/Dropa Stones (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Lord Pakal's Time Machine (⭐⭐) Monsanto (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Vimana (⭐⭐) North Korea Utopia (⭐) L'Enfant (⭐⭐) Grand Unified Conspiracy (⭐) Cybersquatting Time Travelers (⭐) Comic Con Child Recruitment (⭐) Plastic Surgery Runaways (⭐) Lifetide (⭐⭐) Baltic Sea Anomaly (⭐⭐) Planned Extinction/Eco Triage (⭐⭐) Haunted Locations World Map (⭐⭐⭐) Artificial Poisonous Snow (⭐⭐) King Babylon's World Control (⭐) Depopulation Funds (⭐⭐) SCPs Based on Real Life (⭐) ~SCP Foundation is still fun!~ Holotropic Breathwork (⭐) Hermeneutics (⭐⭐) Sea People (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Cryptogeography (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Infrared Laundry Balls (⭐) Negentropy (⭐⭐) Nexus 7 (❌) Black Hope Curse (⭐⭐⭐) Falun Gong (⭐⭐⭐) ~Longtime friend had an interesting encounter with them~
Geometrodynamics (⭐⭐) TOR Owned by Government (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Theory confirmed true~ Cave Dweller Holocaust (⭐⭐) Trilateral Commission (⭐⭐) Dolphin Intelligence (⭐⭐) Meat Showers (⭐⭐) ~…Why would you eat meat off the ground?~ Ro-langs aka Himalayan Zombies (⭐⭐) Deep Philosophies (⭐⭐) Civil War Sightings (⭐⭐⭐)
4.2
MIRL Cults (⭐⭐⭐) Toronto Protocol (⭐⭐) Perestroika Deception (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Presentism (⭐) ~Always be critical~ Bootes Void (⭐⭐) ~Picture is chilling~ Yellow Cuban Balloons (⭐⭐) Driver Killed JFK (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~CIA Minecrafted him~ Fracking Deaths (⭐⭐) Esoteric Hitlerism (⭐) Red Rooms (⭐⭐) Plant Intelligence (⭐⭐) Last Thursdayism aka Omphalos Hypothesis (⭐⭐) Acosmism (⭐) Bouvet Island Lifeboat (⭐⭐⭐) Abiogenic Oil (⭐⭐) Secret Societies Today (⭐⭐) Real Myziam (⭐⭐) Prison Planets (⭐) Malta Catacombs (⭐⭐⭐) Lizardmen in Iraq (⭐⭐) Phantom Kangaroos (⭐⭐⭐) ~We thought the Coelacanth were extinct~
Patomskiy Crater (⭐⭐⭐) ~Listen to the natives~ Thomas Pynchon (⭐⭐⭐) Animism (⭐⭐⭐) Dighton Rock (⭐⭐) Bunkers in Mars (⭐⭐) Triassic Mystery (⭐⭐⭐) Montanism (⭐⭐) Sabinche Tomatovic Tape (⭐) ~I believe in the Cryptid more than this~ Mark Rodin (⭐⭐) Operation Paperclip (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~History is very messed up~ Negative Planck Feedback (⭐⭐) Manichaeism (⭐⭐) VALIS (⭐) ~Still enjoy Philip K. Dick’s work~ IBCM Decoys (⭐⭐⭐) Portoia (⭐⭐) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 5 starts -Animaster-
5.1
Magic of the State (⭐) Crank Incident (⭐⭐⭐) Sycamore Knoll (⭐⭐) Reactionless Drive (⭐⭐) Enneagram (⭐⭐) Cometary Earth (⭐⭐⭐) Rockmen (⭐⭐⭐) Kap Dwa (⭐⭐⭐) ~Giant~ Protodite (❌) Cat Nuns (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Max Spiers (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Acoustic Attacks (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Bloodletting Magic (⭐⭐) Google Earth Blackzones (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Crowd Funded Assassination (⭐⭐) Serpent Seed (⭐) Panopticon (⭐⭐⭐) Inunaki Village (⭐⭐) Prana Release (⭐⭐) ~BF is spiritual and believes in this~ 24 Hour Year (⭐) Corporate Kill List (⭐⭐⭐) ~Very dystopian~ The Man from Earth (⭐) Interdimensional Bigfoot (⭐) Organic Black Helicopters (⭐) Manatees Are Humans (⭐) John Titor Project (⭐⭐) Gulags aka Russian Crime Dungeons (⭐⭐⭐) ~There’s leaked videos showing what happens in them~
Universal Communion (⭐⭐) There Are No Forests (⭐⭐) Asian Blood Types (⭐⭐) ~See Ketsuekigata-kun!~ Ghost Condensate (⭐⭐) Breatharianism (⭐) ~Don’t practice this bullshit; people have died~ Memphis Rap (⭐⭐⭐) Ural Relief Map (⭐⭐) Bitcoin Created by Banks (⭐⭐⭐) Psychotropic Warfare (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Again, veteran family have seen things~
New Chronologies & History Denials (⭐⭐) ~I personally believe that Egypt is way older~
China's Real Population (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~China’s government lies; no surprise here~
5.2
Mental Problems Theory (⭐⭐) Highway Trolls (⭐⭐) OoO aka Object-oriented Ontology (⭐⭐) Arizona Ghost Radios (⭐⭐) Windshield Pitting Epidemic (⭐⭐) North Korea Ghost Ships (⭐⭐⭐) Neodinosaurs (⭐⭐) Human Hunting (⭐⭐) Teeth Implants at Birth (⭐) Stuxnet Revival Studies (⭐⭐) Urine Fasting (⭐) ~*gag* No~ TSUKI (⭐⭐) Accelerationism (⭐⭐) Omphalos (⭐⭐) ~Mythologies are fascinating~ Greek Magnetic Sky (⭐⭐) Quantum Entanglement (⭐⭐) Dr. Robert Morse (⭐⭐) Ethnopsychiatry (⭐⭐) Harmonic Sync (⭐⭐) Report from Iron Mountain (⭐⭐) USSR Never Collapsed (⭐⭐⭐) Kundalini Energy (⭐⭐) Brain in a Jar (⭐⭐) Universe People (⭐⭐) The Ummo Case (⭐⭐) Segregated Internet (⭐⭐) Symbiogenesis (⭐⭐) Antikythera Mechanism (⭐⭐⭐) Gedi Ruins (⭐⭐) Theosophist Geology (⭐⭐) Anatta (⭐⭐) 40th Tithe (⭐⭐) Polywater (⭐⭐) ~Didn’t know that thick water exists~ HGP Defunded (⭐⭐) BDORT (⭐) The Cosmic Butterfly/Rosalind Ballingal (⭐⭐) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 6 -Transcended-
6.1
Bogandoff (⭐⭐) ~Both died from COVID; RIP~ SAiNT Is Angels? (⭐⭐) Human Zoos (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Georgia Guidestones (⭐⭐⭐) ~They’re closed now cause someone bombed them~
Coriander Veins (⭐⭐) Mad Honey (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Famous Ape Man with a podcast tried it~ FWD: 7 (⭐⭐⭐) Animal Spying (⭐⭐⭐) Trepanning (⭐⭐⭐) Coronal Heating (⭐⭐) GGGQEP (⭐⭐) Empty Internet (⭐) Dogon Tribe (⭐⭐⭐) Dark City Non-Fiction (⭐) Microdot.gif (⭐) Oxygen Is Hallucinogenic (⭐) Purple Spheres (⭐⭐) Malbolge Programming (⭐⭐) Subjective Reality (⭐⭐⭐) CAIMEO (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Four Corners Face (⭐) Solar Diet (⭐) ~We’re not plants~ Spiritual Microeconomy (⭐⭐) Stab Wound Penetration (⭐⭐⭐) ~W H Y???~ Michigan Blue Hell (⭐⭐)
6.2
Sherpas of Khandbar (⭐⭐) Q Source (⭐) ~P I Z Z A T I M E!~ Alternate World Ending (⭐) Street Light Interference (⭐⭐) Real Fluoride Dangers (⭐) Futuristic Earthworks (⭐⭐⭐) Conspiracy PSYOPs (⭐⭐⭐) Obscure Video Games (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Sexual Assault Missiles (⭐) Sirkus Real URL (⭐⭐) Singularity Already Happened (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Extreme Conditioning (⭐⭐⭐) Cameraheads (⭐⭐) Algal Biofuel Real Potential (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Layered Cake Theory (⭐⭐) Iraqi Stargates (⭐⭐) Bovine Poisoning (⭐) Synchronicity (⭐⭐) Soul Healing (⭐⭐) CP Soundtracks (⭐⭐) ~With things like pseudoscoprion existing, the world is evil~
ORMUS (⭐⭐) Dream Hacking (⭐⭐) Mars Slave Colonies (⭐) Tolkien Is Real (⭐) ~Still love the man’s work; got me into fantasy in general~
Life on Sun (⭐⭐)
6.3
Hollow Universe (⭐⭐) Atom Bomb Never Created (⭐) Great Electronic Conspiracy (⭐⭐) S EN (❌) Captivity Suburbs (⭐) PRISM (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Multiple Christs Theory (⭐⭐) DNA Formed in Big Bang (⭐⭐) Kali Yuga (⭐⭐⭐⭐) AI in a Box (⭐⭐⭐) Torsion Fields (⭐⭐) Autoganzfeld (⭐⭐⭐) PLoS (⭐⭐⭐) Valley of Headless Men (⭐⭐⭐) Arbutus Crucible (❌) Morphogenic Field (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Malkasian Paradigm (⭐) Brane World (⭐⭐) Gene Pool Financialization (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Flatland UFO Theory (⭐⭐) Incunabula (⭐⭐⭐) Tavistock (⭐⭐) Aetherius Society (⭐⭐) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 7 -Interdimensional Monk-
7.1
Aztec Theogony (⭐⭐⭐) The Parrot (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Real Dowsing/Rhabdomancy (⭐⭐) Faust Non-Fiction (⭐⭐) Hypersigils (⭐⭐) Amazon Rainforest Was Built (⭐⭐⭐) Gatekeeper's Remorse (⭐⭐) Broder's Engine (⭐⭐) Shanyna Isom (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Appendix Monkey Tail (⭐⭐⭐) Concrete Enemas (⭐) ~Just why?? Whyyy?~ Dog Suicide Bridge (⭐⭐⭐) ~Poor doggos…~ Pro-War Buddhism (⭐⭐⭐) Akashic Records (⭐⭐) Cloud Farming (⭐⭐⭐) Limbic Brain (⭐) Emergency Broadcast Neutralizers (⭐⭐) The Simpsons is Real Footage (⭐) Roman Metaphysics (⭐⭐⭐) Prison Earth (⭐) Inorganic Beings (⭐) Sleep Deprivation Lifestyle (⭐⭐) Dinosaurs Helped Build the Pyramids (⭐) Anunnaki Puppet Show (⭐⭐)
7.2
Rapture Already Happened (⭐⭐) Greider's Endgame (⭐⭐) Soy Spraying & Weaponized Soy (⭐⭐⭐) ~Weaponized femboys~ Bicameralism (⭐⭐) Staring Anxiety (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Ancient Structure Purposes (⭐⭐) Real Intentions of Road to Roota (⭐⭐⭐) Most Drugs Are Benevolent (⭐⭐) ~Shrooms and LSD have been known to help people~
Proto-humans (⭐⭐⭐) Doveland, Wisconsin (⭐⭐) Finland Doesn't Exist (⭐) ~It does~ Number Stations (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Everest Cover-Ups (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Towel Conspiracy (⭐⭐) ~Saw a woman destroy one cause she thought there was a camera in it~
All Religions Are the Same (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Just with extra steps~ Valley of Lost Candles (⭐⭐⭐) Advanced Cryptozoology (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~…Still waiting for the video, Papa Goon…~
Asian Overlords Triad (⭐⭐⭐) Looking at Dark Energy (⭐⭐) 2006 Volleyball Incident (⭐⭐) Artificial Aliens (⭐⭐) Secret Mongolian Empire (⭐⭐) Non-space (⭐⭐) New Zealand 8th Continent (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
7.3
Moon Built by Aliens (⭐) Protein QRD 1451 (⭐) 2012 Mayan Prophecy Shift (⭐⭐) Aeromorphist PSYOPs (⭐) ~Funniest theory~ Disneyland Secret Tunnels (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Abaka Alignment (⭐⭐) Bacterial Humanity (⭐⭐) Ancient Glyphs on Saturn's Moons (⭐⭐) ~Terrifyingly cool~ Charley Project (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Grain Situation (⭐⭐) Earth Is Bigger Than the Sun (⭐) ~No~ Ashtar High Command (⭐⭐) Ocean Doesn't Exist (⭐) ~Also no~ Geometric Algorithmic Shortcuts (⭐⭐) Malerei Diespirale (The Spiral) (⭐⭐) ~Junji Ito was onto something~ Bioma Over Genoma (⭐⭐⭐) Hivemind Induction (⭐⭐⭐) Field Consciousness (⭐⭐⭐) Chaos Banking (⭐⭐) Doom Ecology (⭐⭐) ~Doomer logic~ Chim (IRL) (⭐) Tomoki Uemiya (⭐) Nuclear Grid Theory (⭐⭐⭐) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 8 -Reality Hacker-
8.1
De-Patterning (⭐⭐⭐) Illuminati Are the Good Guys (⭐⭐) Demolition Elves (⭐⭐) War Is Fake (⭐) Tesseract Earth/Universe (⭐⭐) JFK Shot Himself (⭐⭐) Moai Statues Were Rapa Nuians (⭐⭐) ~G I A N T S!!~ Mathacker (⭐⭐) Real Meaning of Hybrid RPG (⭐⭐) Deep Soy (⭐⭐⭐) Tibetan Slut Stocks (⭐⭐⭐) Fire Is Alive (⭐) Eating Food Makes You Age (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Duh~ Antarctica Prevarication (⭐⭐⭐)
1800's Technology (⭐⭐) ~Very interesting concept; 4 stars for creativity~
Door Dogs (⭐⭐) Oneworldness (⭐⭐) Fukushima's Gateway (⭐⭐) Lottery Exists to Catch Time Travelers (⭐) PSYOPs Don't Exist (⭐) ~Kratos: No.~ Vertical Universe (⭐⭐) Prophecies Enforcement Agency (⭐⭐) Consciousness Beamed from Moon Base (⭐) Panurgic Men (⭐⭐)
8.2
Human Immortality (⭐) Elite Controls the Population with Their Permission (⭐⭐) Bugsy (⭐⭐) Time Cube (⭐) ~Check out Fredrik Knudsen’s video on it; really good~ Technocracy Theory (⭐⭐⭐) Wetiko (⭐⭐⭐) Bald Society (⭐⭐) Water Is Not from Earth (⭐⭐) Runescape Conspiracies (⭐⭐) Concrete People of Collaguasi (⭐⭐⭐) Codification (⭐⭐⭐) Inverted Humans (⭐⭐) ~Gia-~ Italian Languages (⭐⭐⭐) St. Olvin's Creations (⭐⭐) 90% of Books Written by One Author (⭐) CCA XX1 (⭐⭐) Holy Grail Found Centuries Ago (⭐⭐) Bovine Hormonal Conditioning (⭐) XRA Psyops (⭐) ~Show was weird as hell~ Bugchasing (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Humanity was a mistake~ Hostile Plants (⭐⭐) Upward Causality (⭐) Lithuanian Poems (⭐)
8.3
Aliens Caused Bubonic Plague (⭐) Enchanted Websites (⭐) Sun Collapse (⭐⭐⭐) Microchips Found in Dinosaurs (⭐⭐) Black Snake Prophecy (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Underground Caverns (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Biblical Aliens (⭐⭐⭐) ~Makes sense on why they look the way they do…~
Air Is Poison (⭐) Luna Park Train Fire Demon (⭐⭐⭐) Neanderthal Superiority (⭐⭐⭐) U.F.Os Are Atmospheric Life Forms (⭐⭐) Expanding Earth (⭐⭐) Forest Stairs (⭐⭐) ~Search and Rescue Ranger anyone?~ Nephilim Protocols (⭐⭐⭐) Atomic Renovation (⭐⭐) Senses Programming (⭐⭐⭐) Paradigm Recalescence (⭐⭐) Neolithic's Contraptions (⭐⭐⭐) Erratas (⭐⭐⭐) Diseases Worship (⭐⭐) Animal-Plant Hybrids (⭐⭐) Sky-Snag Theory (⭐⭐) Welteislehre (⭐) Cosmic Censorship Conjecture (⭐⭐⭐) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 9 -Man of the World-
9.1
Despair Codes (⭐⭐) Big Soy (⭐⭐⭐) Dr. Emoto's Water Experiments (⭐) Self-Burying Hoses (⭐⭐⭐) Cigarettes Extreme Health Benefits (⭐) ~Don’t smoke cancer sticks~ Pastimes Iceberg Is Mostly Real (⭐⭐⭐) Secret Human Organs (⭐⭐) Iceberg Knowledge & PSYOPs (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Top of Mountains (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Organs Decalcification (⭐⭐) Solar Plexus Clown Gliders (⭐) Skin Is an Alien Parasite (⭐) ~No~ Anti-Medicine (⭐) Original Earth (⭐⭐) Meat Stations & Meat Tradings -Do Not Research- (⭐⭐⭐⭐) World Wraps (⭐⭐) Smart Dust (⭐) Secret Gates (⭐⭐⭐) Golf Rumors (⭐⭐) Robert Golf Glass Camera (⭐)
9.2
Pyramids Built by the Templars Order (⭐⭐) Endless Elevators (⭐⭐⭐) Divinities Playing Card Game (⭐⭐) ~If they were real, I’d believe it~ Regurgitation Rituals (⭐⭐) Hook Operators (⭐⭐) Regenerative Death Consumption (⭐⭐) Chakra Removal (⭐⭐) Sexual/Erotic Energy (⭐⭐) Trees Are Mammals (⭐⭐) Time/History Moves in Reverse (⭐) Math Vault of Trinidad (⭐⭐) Entity Merging (⭐⭐) Inside-out Earth (⭐⭐) ~Virgin flat & hollow Earth; Chad inside-out Earth~
Human Biocapital (⭐⭐) TCA Greyspacing (⭐⭐) Ocean at Night (⭐⭐⭐) Berry Bushes (⭐⭐⭐) Sky Is Alive (⭐⭐) Volcanoes Real Purpose (⭐⭐) Nano-UFOs and Giga-UFOs (⭐)
9.3
Holistic Tubes (⭐) Cuneiform Language in Technology (⭐⭐) Bhutanese Shadow Market (⭐⭐) Hydrophobia Experiments (⭐⭐⭐) Phantom Time (⭐⭐) Null Compliance Security (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Phlogiston Theory Resurfacing (⭐⭐) Santiago Interference (⭐⭐⭐) Eilean Mor Island (⭐⭐) Sphynx Water Erosion Hypothesis Implications (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Archontic Genetic Engineered Entities (⭐) ~Gnosticism be wildin’ indeed~
OLFMA (⭐⭐) Eggless Travel (⭐⭐) Prolepsis (⭐⭐⭐) Stone Head of Guatemala (⭐⭐⭐) Phone Mafia (⭐⭐⭐) Approaching Stars (⭐⭐) Loveshack (⭐) Retrocausality (⭐⭐) Vaccine Soul Stealing (⭐⭐) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier 10 -The Rebirth-
Bank of Souls (⭐⭐⭐) ~Literal NPCs~ Incorruptible Saints (⭐⭐⭐) The God of the Gaps Never Existed (⭐⭐) Oil/Resources from Humans (⭐⭐) Feelings Auto-Suppression (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Porn Stars Leeching Your Energy (⭐⭐) Virus 23 (⭐⭐) ~Sounds like a SCP~ Pancreas Denial (⭐) Patterns Manipulation (⭐⭐⭐) Ascension Blacklist (⭐⭐) Oikeiosis (⭐⭐) Forced Soul Removal (⭐⭐⭐) ~Could explain serial killers~ Real Humans Died Millenia Ago (⭐⭐) ~GI-~ Artifice Predance (⭐⭐) Hiring a Hitman on Yourself (⭐⭐) Roman Empire Still Rules World (⭐⭐) ~Philip K. Dick was an interesting person~ Fractalization (⭐⭐⭐⭐) ~Tripped thrice and seen them personally; they look really pretty~
Paleolithic Deep State (⭐⭐) Depression Overriding (⭐⭐⭐) Encorings (⭐⭐⭐⭐) Soy Grand Theory (⭐⭐⭐) Golden Rules in Nature (⭐⭐⭐⭐) God's Ego Death (⭐⭐) God's Last Wish (⭐⭐) There Is No Conspiracy (⭐⭐) All Conspiracies Are True (⭐⭐) The Final Understanding (⭐⭐)

u/malozing_running - Thank you for the Happy World Postcard Day card! I also appreciated the quote from Damien Thomas c: Sending you love and peace too! ~
u/thepoppunkqueen - Thank you for the Halloween postcard! I hope you have done some fall activities already! c: Hmm, I am planning to visit my grandparents for Thanksgiving! c:
u/melhen16 - Thank you for the card and stickers! I'm excited to use your stickers in my journals and letters c: I also really appreciate your message! I hope you have an awesome day too c:
u/milesandsmiles123 - Thank you for the postcard! I hope you and your family were safe from the hurricane, and no need to apologize. I'm also late with posting a thank you to you. Life happens, and I hope life has been treating you well c:
u/xmgm33 - Thank you for the Halloween card! I hope you had a great time at the cemetery tour! c:
u/GizmoDOS (2x) - Thank you for the card and stickers! It was fun playing card roulette with you, and I do love the card I picked c: Fall is also my favorite season, because I love the warm weather, I enjoy witnessing the colors changing in nature, and just like you, I find this season as reflective about life c: Wishing you Happy Fall! ~
u/aon_iolair - Thank you for the fish postcard! I enjoyed reading the poem, and I love how you decorated the card with so many cute stickers, hehe ~
u/mileyfryus - Thank you for the World Postcard Day card! I really appreciate your message, and I hope life has been treating you well too c: I also think your stamps are really cool!!
u/Powerful_Cobbler_215 - Thank you so much for the Squirtle card, and bunny stickers!! I love stickers, so I always enjoy getting lots, hehe. Everything is too adorable, and the Squirtle made me smile, hehe! c: Thank you for this handmade card, and making me smile! c:
u/mikepenpal6 - Thank you for the Your Name postcard! c: Yes, Your Name is a beautiful anime, and I'm glad you like it c: I think my favorite would be Studio Ghibli films! c:
u/soft_distortion - Thank you for the Happy World Postcard Day card! When I received your card, the envelope was opened, and so some things may have fallen out, but I'm really happy to receive your postcard c:
u/1398_Days - Thank you for the Halloween card! Yes, this year is flying by fast! It's November already, haha. I didn't do anything special for Halloween, but I ate lots of chocolates, hehe. I hope you treated yourself to candy corn and spooky movies c:
u/not_napolean - Thank you for the World Postcard Day card! I also hope you've been finding peace and joy in this holiday season c:
u/slobber_bones - Thank you for the whale postcard! I love the color blue, and whales are awesome! c: Your beached whale joke made me laugh, haha. Thank you for sharing this beautiful card with me, and making me laugh c:
u/vita_woolf (2x) - Thank you for the postcard! I really like the Japanese-culture art on the front, and I'm glad to meet someone who also finds East Asian history interesting! c: And, thank you for the pokemon postcard! I LOVE pokemon, and the card is so cute hehe ~ Completing a deep cleaning? That's not boring - that's productive! c:
u/Bree867 (2x) - Thank you for the Oregon and Connecticut postcards! c: It was really fun to see all the different aspects on each state's card, and I gotta say, the Oregon one is pretty accurate c:
u/gigi1700gigi - Thank you for the Studio Ghibli postcard! I'm a big fan of Studio Ghibli, and your card made me smile c: I also hope you have a great week!
u/stockman1984 - Thank you for the Winnie the Pooh postcard! Same, hehe ~ I've also been a fan of Winnie since I was a kid, and that's cute you saw Winnie at Disneyland! c:

I am not OP.
Posted by u/0trow on AmItheAsshole
 
Original - October 22, 2021
So I (28f) have a sister (26f) who got married last month
I’m gonna be blunt. My sister has always been one of those people that has to have everything perfect, to the point sometimes it was hard to be around her. But she was my little sister and I have no other siblings, so I always made excuses when she’d hurt me when I was doing things right in her eyes. I was kinda nervous when she asked me and my daughter(4) to be a bridesmaid in February because I knew she was gonna be a massive bridezilla
Over the last few months we have had to practice multiple dances, pay for very expensive dresses and put up with her tantrums. I told her from the start if she was in any way nasty to my child I wouldn’t stand for it. She assured me she’d never be nasty towards her “favourite person in the whole world”
Well her now husband's little cousin(8?) started coming to dance practice with her mom, and my sister started to ask her do little things like show my daughter how to throw the petals. I honestly thought she’d make them both flower girls for a while, but when she started to make my daughter sit out and have the little girl do her poem I knew what was gonna happen. But prayed I was wrong
I invited her out to coffee a few weeks before the wedding and asked her what was going on. She told me she was glad I brought it up because she was looking for the right time. Apparently my four year old wasn’t doing everything right, and she was afraid she was gonna “mess up her version” by saying the wrong thing, or not doing the dance right on the day. I told her she doing a pretty good job and everyone was always praising her
Sister giggled and said it’s not THEIR day now is it, so it’s not up to US what’s good enough for her wedding. I asked her straight up if she though her niece wasn’t good enough to be in her wedding. She replied with not as something big as a flower girl but to attend. I asked her how I was gonna break it to my daughter who’s excited about being in the wedding. She just told me figure it out. I told her I’d give her a day to rethink her decision, if not we wouldn’t be attending and speaking to her ever again before I left
Two days passed. I couldn’t put it off any longer, so I broke the news to my child. Even tho I tried my hardest and sugarcoated it as much as possible the news still broke her heart. She cried herself to sleep (so did I and my husband)
Well after a week when I was a no show for anything my sister started to panic, and started to get everyone to talk to me even drop off gifts for my daughter. When I told them why, a good number of our family including the bridesmaids dropped out
We ended up going for a few weeks away with no phones. When we came back, my sister had sent me multiple letters and emails apologising. Her in-laws and husband have called me an asshole for doing what i did
Edit: fixed some spelling
Edit: my BIL saw this post and told my sister, who cried reading all your comments. How do I know? Because they showed up at my job knowing I wouldn’t want a scene. They begged me to delete the post before people they know see it and kept apologising. Finally, my sister said she might be pregnant.
I told even if she is, pregnancy doesn’t wash away all the shitty things shes done and I hope her husbands siblings never treats her child the way she treated mine because I don’t plan to be apart of her life. She burst into tears, saying she was sorry and she loves my daughter
I told her leave before I called security and her husband tried to talk to me alone because “I was making her so upset” and “everyone was cold towards them because of me”. I told them no, everyone was cold because “Cinderella and Prince Charming forgot that after treating everyone like shit that no one wanted to be in their happy ever after” they didn’t like my mocking tone and raised their voice at me
My boss who knows the situation and has a 5 year old herself told them to leave, so she’s on my side.
My sister's MIL reached out to my parents asking for everyone to meet up on neutral terms so we can all work out our differences. I'm gonna go to this dinner party because I want to hear their story and officially tell them to leave me alone.
I will update you guys
 
Update
My sister's photographer saw this post and reached out to me on here (she knew my full name and she gave me her Instagram to confirm). This goes deeper than my daughter not dancing right. Apparently she overheard my sisters mil and aunt in law talking in the bathroom, they used slurs against my daughter and husband. They called me the black mans wh*re . The photographer said they were both drunk but BIL also made jokes around my sister earlier in the day which she smiled at. She also thinks my family members heard it and it’s the reason they dropped out
So yeah my daughter wasn’t flower girl because unlike me,her aunt or the other flower girl she doesn’t have blue eyes and blonde hair. If you’re reading this, Sarah and Frank, fuck you and your family. My child is too good to be around trash like you both. Stay the fuck away from us and if anyone in my family knew the real story and didn’t tell me, fuck you too.
Edit 4: Thanks everyone for the love and support, but especially thank you to the photographer who came forward. Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention before I let them back into our lives, you’re real one
Edit 5: So I thought I’d answer a lot of questions that keep getting asked because I’m tried and will be going to bed soon
-My parents are fully on my side, so are multiple other family members that haven't been cut off
-My daughter doesn’t know the full story but as treat (for all of us) we plan to take her to Disneyland for Christmas and my parents have said they will join us
-As for my sister, some people have mentioned she might be in an abus***e relationship. Well her husband is from old money and his family is very will connected in England, which is something she always wanted so idk but if she is in a bad relationship and afraid it’s up to my husband to forgive her not me
-You can post this wherever you like please don’t message me again and I will not give up the photographers information because she wants to stay anonymous

• I’ve found out 3 family members knew including a bridesmaid that dropped out knew
  
• I’ve seen a lot of people making fun of the fact me and my husband cried our self too sleep the night my daughter found out. We didn’t cry about her not being a flower nor did we cry while she was awake. we cried because our child was extremely hurt and there’s no feeling wprse than your child thinking they’re not good enough for someone they love. For the commenter who was extremely nasty about my husband crying, a father's love is equal to a mother's, men do and are allowed to have emotions, do better.
  

​

Kyokutei Bakin (1st and 2nd Ascensions)	CV: Serizawa Yuu
Summon	Rider, Kyokutei Bakin! Pleased to make your acquaintance! Perhaps those who know me know solely of The Eight Dog Chronicles! Perhaps those who know me not identically know solely of The Eight Dog Chronicles! My perspicuous novels escaped my hands and gained a life of their own! …Yet, I am the one made a Servant? Outré… Most outré!
Level up 1	Greatly beholden by your palliation.
Level up 2	Aye, congratulatable!
Ascension 1	Oyo, yet another outré hap. So the Ascension of a Saint Graph happens in this fashion. I feel more consolidated in this pristine raiment.
Ascension 2	A successive Ascension? Joyous. By the way, why must I, in the capacity of an elderly man, still bedight these accessories facsimile of a dog's ears and tail? "The ears are to hear better"? R-right, I see the logic in that. "The tail is just because it's cute"? Opprobrious!
Battle Start 1	Survey my metronomic swordsmanship!
Battle Start 2	Without ado, I commence taming the pen!
Battle Start 3	The pen torrentially epitomizes one Kyokutei Bakin! Register that name!
Skill 1	Phew, kuwabara kuwabara.1
Skill 2	Be indefatigably provident.
Skill 3	You posture with such coxcombry.
Skill 4	Crane, tortoise, crane, tortoise.1
Command Card 1	Comprehended!
Command Card 2	Concurred!
Command Card 3	Zounds!
Noble Phantasm Card 1	Confucian academia is the present trend!
Noble Phantasm Card 2	Life is nonpareil!
Noble Phantasm Card 3	Look the ignoramus in the eye!
Noble Phantasm Card 4	Scamper as you may, but abscond you shan't!
Attack 1	Swift as prajna's arrow!
Attack 2	Eih! Ouh! Taken!
Attack 3	Purl like whirlsand!
Attack 4	Shinzen Gejutsu: Mirthful Butterfly.2
Attack 5	Stand abaft, camphor laurel! 3
Attack 6	I quest you to direct your inquiries first at my blade.
Attack 7	Easy as shooting a bird snared in wirework!
Extra Attack 1	My kith, emerge and engage.
Extra Attack 2	Will we earn réclame or obloquy? The answer lies in the dogs' paws.
Extra Attack 3	Zowie, the sinewy came to our assuagement.
Extra Attack 4	Douzetsu, Daikaku, Genpachi, Sousuke, Kobungo, Keno, Shino, and Shinbeeeeeeeei!
Noble Phantasm 1	Justice, Duty, Honor, Knowledge, Loyalty, Faith, Wisdom, and Brotherhood. Eight orbs convene in the sky. Watch the honesty of man split cloud and invoke wind. Moonlight riving the everlasting darkness unfurls our thruway. Nansou Satomi Hakkenden!
Noble Phantasm 2	Justice, Duty, Honor, Knowledge, Loyalty, Faith, Wisdom, and Brotherhood. Eight lights whisk the heavens. Hence my heart is filled with valor. I am as blessed as rain is sodden. Nansou Satomi Hakkenden!
Damage 1	Willow branches never split under the weight of the snow!
Damage 2	Nohah!
Damage 3	I was... mortally heedless.
Damage 4	Nugatory-!
Defeat 1	Fare-thee-well!
Defeat 2	A most infelicitous failure to my duty.
Defeat 3	I have no words to salvage my dignity.
Defeat 4	Good-by. Pardon.
Victory 1	Most honestly redoubtable! Congratulatable, congratulatable!
Victory 2	As such, the case comes to a close! Laughters!
Victory 3	Have you learned? The move of my pen disaffirms the evil ways and divulges righteousness.
Bond 1	To simply describe the Myousenjishou I hourly make mention of: "names and natures do often agree". To rephrase it, it means a person is granted destinies from heaven. Likewise, your name limns your fate, Master. Take the moment to deliberate on its meaning.
Bond 2	I sound categorically toploftical. My punctilious vocabulary is demeritous to casual conversation. I am already used to these barbs spoken behind my back. Mending one's natural disposition is demanding labor! Ha-ha-ha-ha... But I must admonish my faults, lest I'll be presuming on Master's kindliness.
Bond 3	Rustling goes the pen. Yes, this is a journal. I am documenting day-to-day without falter, as a man of the Takizawa family must. As my Master, you are also family to me, meaning your perusing is no bother. Even if you weren't, what I wrote here is trivial matters, wholly contrary to my hair-raising, heart-throbbing literature. Things such as loci I proceed to, those who I crossed with, minutiae of my meals, purchased goods, weather, or the state of my birds. Nowadays it has been fixedly about the mischief of my Canine Warriors and the occupations of my Master... but I mustn't fixate solely on these dovish occurrences. Hahahahaha!
Bond 4	Putative to the first glance as it may be, this habitus belongs to Michi. She's is wed to my son Souhaku, and the name Michi is one I styled her with at the ceremony. Michi is one woman I incontestably burdened overmuch. As age took the light of my sight, The Eight Dog Chronicles would have never been completed weren't for her becoming my new eyes and penning hands. For such, I'm agreed with the significance of me manifesting in her physicality. My apologies to Michi but we shall share the litter once more.
Bond 5	I once forsook the importance of my samurai family, but not that I finally met a lord worth attending, I believe I finally reacquired my warrior feather. Furthermore, if you will favor me in spite of my life full of regrets, I will put my entire soul to your avail.
My Room 1	Zowie, we egress? You're too noble to go on foot. Wait for a litter.
My Room 2	My lord must be as a proper lord and exude a tight-laced and august presence. And when that visage is impossible for you... turning a blind eye is oft an act of courtesy.
My Room 3	Master, you're deserving of Kyokutei Bakin's attendance. Be assured. You say Servants cannot choose their lords? Nay, I vehemently disagree.
My Room 4 (if you have Foreigner Hokusai)	Tetsuzou... Katsushika Hokusai and I are a match made in hell. Perhaps the old saying about the wedlock best describes it: The most maladjusted bonds are the tighter and most uncuttable. That man is the left to my right. The dragon to my tiger. The billow to my maelstrom! That man was meticulously built from all the pieces I lack. You may call Strange Tales of the Crescent Moon, the collaborative novel series of Tetsuzou and mine, the greatest miracle in Edo's history. I expected not to consort with him anew here in Chaldea... Agh... Dear me...!
My Room 5 (if you have both Hokusais)	Ei. Oei. Yes, I'm talking to you, the garrulous lass. W-w-w-w-wait, wait. Yes, I do have the plot for my next series already in mind. Hold off your starry eyes, I can't get it written overnight. I'm very aware that I'm in no position to cast aspersions, having to borrow Michi's hands again, but with that in mind, I still must ask: Are you satisfied with your choices? Katsushika Oui is more than resolved enough of an ukyou artist... You're fine this way? Then I trust your decisions. Mh? Xiannu?
My Room 6 (if you have Andersen + any other writer)	It's heartening to see literary compeers here in Chaldea. Howbeit, masterful warriors of the pen are all insufferable bothers. If you pardon the self-deprecation, ahahahaha! O, Andersen-dono, writer of fairy tales? My writing mentors were Santou Kyouden's tales of antiquity. In my immature days, I misprized juvenile literature, but now their rich flavor ingrain into me. Allow me to try my hand... Once upon a time, an elderly couple lived alone in the mountains...
My Room 7 (if you unlocked Kouyou's 2nd Ascension)	Oh?! Kijou Momiji? So here she goes by the name Kijou Kouyou. In my chapbook series Keisei Suikoden, she is the hero representing Chen Da, the Complete Star. Keisei Suikoden is an adaptation of Water Margin where I gender-bent all 108 heroes into women. A piece of prose I'm fondly proud of. Conversely, as my eyes travel the rows of Chaldea, I find no shortage of charmer warriors and knights. Wahahaha, 200 springs later, nothing changed.
My Room 10 (if you have Tametomo)	Chinzei Hachirou Minamoto-no-Tametomo-dono. Who could have thought you were an automated puppet of furthermost subtle deft? Flabbergasting! A man forsooth, forsooth more stalwart than rumor says. Notwithstanding, this uncurbable affection akin to blood love must be the karma of a novelist's life... Er, I wish request you a tale of adventure to upstage the Strange Tales of the Crescent Moon.
Likes	Frankly, nothing pleases my heart more than birds. On one occasion, I was raising hundreds of them at once, counting beyond 60 different species. The most memorable was a canary that grew with me from nonage to senectitude. I hear that in their original outlander language, canary shares its etymology with canine. Hehe. Another example of myousenjishou. Fate binds us in wondrous ways.
Dislikes	What do I dislike? Not counting Tetsuzou? Mmm... that must be... when affairs don't go as foreseen. Unexpected woe sorrows me tremendously! Most ill of all are misspellings in my writing! I also disfavor artists with Tetsuzou's disposition to dare enjoy such unpredicted calamity to the point of illustrating them! GAAAH!
Holy Grail	The Holy Grail!? [the canine warriors interrupt him with loud barking] Ey, now is not the time. Halt this mischief at once, Shinbei and Dousetsu. Keno, Shino, are you starting yet another fight? Kobungo has eaten far more than his fill and still has no end in sight. Aye, Daikoku, you good boy who does no wrong, go awake Genpachi and Sousuke. Ah, Master left me to rub their bellies...
Event	A startling carnival? Nothing I have business with! That is unless you say the festivities are a profitable time!
Birthday	You say it's your day of nativity, Master? Oh, congratulatable. Mmmm, congratulatable! We must amass the men for a felicitatory ceremony. And would you kindly have the reading of my novels as the first event in it? I have a new series completed in secrecy to be revealed come such auspicious occasion. Of course, as my Master, you get a 20% discount... GAH! [Michi takes over even if he's in 2nd Ascension] Ahem, father obviously meant to say we humbly offer it as a present. Happy birthday. May you have a healthy year.

Translation notes:

1. Superstitious chants to ward off misfortune. Basically Japanese equivalents of knocking on wood. Probably not relevant here, but the kuwabara chant is considered particularly effective at protecting from being struck by lightning.
2. Shinzen Gejutsu (meaning "Xian slapstick") is an ancient book of stage magic tricks. The Mirthful Butterfly trick mentioned here is one where the performer secretly blows as fan on a paper butterfly to make it look alive.
3. A sacred tree in Chiba.

​

Tokimura Michi (1st Ascension only)	CV: Serizawa Yuu
Level up 3	I'll always be in your debt.
Victory 4	I hope you can forgive us.
My Room 8 (if you have Foreigner Hokusai)	I respect Oei from the bottom of my heart. She's an example of filial piety in how she supports her Poppa. She's the complete opposite of me, who could just trace my pen as ordered while correcting mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake. I'm truly ashamed of all the gloat and vanity I felt for the calligraphy I picked only as a house chore. Can you believe I took the pseudonym "Takizawa Kindou", meaning "child of Takizawa (Ba)kin"? What an embarrassment. However, no matter difficult it was, what we did together is your Michi's greatest pride and joy, father.
My Room 9 (if you have any pretty boy4)	AAAAAAAHH! I love me some pretty boys. A pretty boy who enjoys cross-dressing! A pretty boy drenching in the path of evil! Aaaaah! My effete heart is archly taken... Oh! W-what you just heard is merely the plot of a future series. Fiction, you understand? B-but, I'd be very glad if father gives his Michi permission to take this rare opportunity at a second life and resume the writing of this series I couldn't complete in life.

1. Current list: D' Eon, Astolfo, Billy, Ko-Gil, Paris, Nobukatsu, Alexander, Nemo, Sieg, Kotarou, Taisui, and Voyager.

​

Fusehime (3rd Ascension only)	CV: Serizawa Yuu
Level up 1	How felicitous!
Level up 2	You honor the warrior class.
Level up 3	[Yatsufusa barks] Hehe, great.
Ascension 3	Name me Fusehime. Satomi Yoshizane's firstborn and god showed by Buddha post-death. And the tiryagyoni by me is Yatsufusa. Spirit Dog who conquered his hatred to join me in your abetment. In prizing his honor and knowing his shame, he hankers for the battleground. [Yatsufusa growls]
Ascension 4	The blind who slumbered at the first warble of the nightingale. Fiction writer Kyokutei Bakin. His journey with the gods still hasn't met its wrap. Each time the living picture the deeds of the Eight Canine Warriors, his noble spirit recurs in the world of existence. As long there is one reader, penned thoughts are undying. I and Yatsufusa vow to company and guide his journey. *Departing this world / And all its trouble and pain / To be as before / And finally become / A puppet of soil and rain.*5 [Yatsufusa howls solemnly]
Battle Start 1	The flowers of death shall bloom primely!
Battle Start 2	The new ordinances are just and unjust.
Battle Start 3	Buddha's mercy execrates not the Impure Land or its impurities.
Battle Start 4	I vow to company and guide.
Skill 1	I am never on my lonesome.
Skill 2	Virtue always triumphs over sinisterness.
Skill 3	Myousenjishou.
Skill 4	The gushing water is as brume.
Command Card 1	Assented.
Command Card 2	Unmistakably.
Command Card 3	Contrary to my contemplations...
Noble Phantasm Card 1	Challenge adversity, and be unafraid of death.
Noble Phantasm Card 2	Far alarming concern.
Noble Phantasm Card 3	A gratifying opponent.
Noble Phantasm Card 4	I shall make them realize their missteps.
Attack 1	Yatsufusa, yah!
Attack 2	Extricate from man's world of suffering.
Attack 3	Pour down the axle of Murasame!6
Attack 4	Frontal horizontal bisection!
Attack 5	Never at the mercy of the waves!
Attack 6	Alabaster is the Genji silk.
Attack 7	Man is endowed with the Eight Bonds and Five Virtues.7
Extra Attack 1	With the force of the ascending sun!
Extra Attack 2	Which ought triumph and which ought falter?
Extra Attack 3	Easy as hunting a horde of lamb.
Extra Attack 4	Asharagamokuren Kyuraisu Tekkeretsu no Pa!8
Noble Phantasm 1	Trichiliocosmic satta seeking the bodhi's awakening, gaze upon the 8 orbs cresting above you. Those are the pledged Eight Canine Warriors. My word, bid good omen to this place! Nansou Satomi Hakkenden!
Noble Phantasm 2	Trichiliocosmic satta seeking the bodhi's awakening, gaze upon the 8 lights aloft in the heavens. Those are the bodhi's guidance! My word, vest good omen to those far beyond! Nansou Satomi Hakkenden!
Damage 1	Ah, repulsive.
Damage 2	Uah.
Damage 3	Praiseworthy.
Damage 4	Fie.
Defeat 1	Alone was I born and alone I take the last journey.
Defeat 2	O Yatsufusa, will you company me to the cliff of nirvana?
Defeat 3	A lone pheasant cries on the blazed glade.9
Defeat 4	I capitulate.
Victory 1	Felled. Huhu, I overplayed it.
Victory 2	To engage the sinewy, you must have connate might.
Victory 3	O Yatsufusa, greatly done.
Victory 4	Was it the providence of the gods or the mercy of the Buddha?
Bond 1	My supernatural powers were indued by gods and Buddha through the exsufflation in the sacred Mount Toyama. There I gained my dibba-cakkhu and martial erudition, and Yatsufusa gained his swiftness of foot. Since gained, my grandest katana Murasame-maru, was meant to sometime leave my hand and regain its deserved place as the Emperor's possession. I do not bemoan having to part with it. I merely wish for this time to come later rather than sooner. And you?
Bond 2	In the unification of Kazusa and Shimousa, my birthplace, the land of Awa, was renamed Chiba, after the Chiba clan of the Bandou Heike. What bells do the word Chiba ring in your mind? Peanuts? A pear monster? The Mouseland? Oh dear... what is this mullberry mud-like drink you offer me...? How sugared!10 All the sugar! Truthfully, this dulls the palates. [Concerned Yatsufusa bark]
Bond 3	Like this, tiryagyoni seek the bodhi's awakening. Albeit I, Fusehime, am guardian of Satomi, I am bound in Human Order past the abyss of death to regain life in this deserted world of the living. We two are enlivened to participate, in whichever manner, in this pivotal war. Nonetheless, my prayers go for that you never forget your just heart which tenders lifes.
Bond 4	I am an embodiment traced from the Dog Chronicles. As such, it stands to reason if you discern me as Kyokutei Bakin. Notwithstanding, the quintessence of a Heroic Spirit is as hidden as the tang of an inscripted katana. Bakin turning Heroic Spirit post death is equivalent to me turning goddess post suicide. All was one unchanging fantasy.
Bond 5	Soon will come the day I can shout "It is the hour! The moment we lasted for! Eight Dogs, armor in full cover!" in exultation. Until then, I will watch over your path to the future.
My Room 1	Hear the surging thunders of the battlefield. They will give you continued luck in the fortunes of war.
My Room 2	Wield me as your katana.
My Room 3	Is my lord you or perhaps Bakin? That may be for you to decide.
My Room 4 (if you have any Raikou + Tsuna + Ushiwaka + Kagekiyo	Doujigiri Yasutsuna. Usumidori. Higekiri. Azamaru. Celebrated swords from the whole country in one room... Yes, splendid katanas.
My Room 5 (if you have all Nobunagas + Ranmaru)	Souza Samonji. Heshikiri Haseibe. Fudou Yukimitsu Saber. Splendid katana... Hm? Saber? An English word in the katana name? Ah, nonetheless, this is scabbard decoration is wonderful. And what is this one called? Heshi-KILL... Haseibe... Eater...? [Confused Yatsufusa bark]
My Room 6 (if have all Bakumatsu Servants)	Izumi-no-kami Kanesada. Kashuu Kiyomitsu. Kijinmaru Kunishige. Mutsu-no-kami Yoshiyuki. And would that last one be... perchance Hizen? Splendid, splendid katanas!
My Room 7 (if you have Emiya or Chloe)	Gan Jiang and Mo Ye. Honestly, honestly fateful swords. It resembles you and I, Yatsufusa.
My Room 8 (if you have any Servant with a dog)	Here in Chaldea, I find many in company of tiryagyoni like me. It reconfirms me that my Yatsufusa is the best. The biggest and most lovesome... Uh. Mayhap not the biggest. And most lovesome? It is difficult to say... [Confused bark] Most comfortable to mount... Nay, I am sometimes left with numb legs. [Sad bark] Stop, sulk not. Oh! Best digger of mountain vegetables! Perfect! [Happy bark]
Likes	The grounds of Satomi. The landscape of my birthplace is indelible. The hills and dales of Awa, the shoals of the Heguri River, our poor tiny port and harbor. I wish to wander the land once more with Yatsufusa.
Dislikes	None is allowed to break a spoken vow.
Holy Grail	Appeals are for man to make. And for man to realize.
Event	My dibba-cakkhu perceived omens of better fortune afar.
Birthday	Oh, it is the day of your birth? How auspicious. [Happy barks] What was that? Yatsufusa said he has words to impart you. [Barks] "Master, your face looks positively mature.", he said. [Louder barks] "You may ride my back, but only today". [Howl] "Awooooo", he said! Hehe, I'm envious.

1. Bakin's death poem as translated by Leon M. Zolbrod, 1996.
   
2. Murasame's name means "passing shower", so that's a rain pun here.
   
3. In Confucianism, the Five Virtues are Justice, Duty, Honor, Knowledge, and Faith; and the Three Bonds are with your monarch (Loyalty), with your parents (Wisdom), and with your spouse (Brotherhood). As you probably notice, together the Five Virtues and Three Bonds form the eight virtues the Eight Canine Warriors symbolize. The "Eight Bonds" mentioned here are probably a script typo that made it past Serizawa's recording.
   
4. The shinigami's chant.
   
5. Pheasants are birds noted to go back to save their children in burning meadows, and that's often brought up as an example of a parent that cares for its children.
   
6. From the Chiba local products context and the comment on the ridiculous excess of sugar, I'm pretty confident we gave her max coffee.
   

(Warning: Manga spoiler up to ch.263!!!+ It's long+ ship?:HayaxMikado)
hi~This is based on some evidence I've found in the manga/discussion/Aka's Q&A and interviews + Bamboo Cutter Tale parallels
​ ​ ​ I've been thinking the conclusion of Mikado's story is underwhelming. He has a grand introduction, after that he barely appeared and now he just lost instantly after he challenged Shirogane a few chapters ago
Is he just introduced into the story for a love triangle(kinda) even after miyuki and kaguya are already dating...?(After all, he is an important character in The Tale of The Bamboo Cutter... )
But later I've changed my thoughts: Maybe that's not the end of this character.
What if Aka will make him important AFTER this Kaguya rescue arc??
And what if he is reserved for later because he actually is connected to another character?
Like...the true Hayasaka?(Aka needs to resolve Kaguya's family problem first so there will be room for fluff daily school life chapters .)
One thing has been on my mind for a long time, which is : If Aka decided to give Hayasaka a love interest in the future, she will likely end up with Mikado Shijo.
After reading manga and discussions, I've noticed some points that might hint toward Hayasaka×Mikado endgame (*some of them are just my own interpretation)
1.Bamboo Cutter Tale
Emperor's task:
Beside the emperor getting Kaguya's love (Ai/ Hayasaka Ai) pun, There is also another theory about the Bamboo Cutter tale and Hayasaka's friends' names :
(Volume 19 extras)
Hinokuchi(火之口) and Suruga(駿河)can be interpreted as the place where the emperor(Mikado) tells his servant to burn the things kaguya gave(and the tale ends).
Suruga is the province where the mountain is located, and Hinokuchi means crater( of a volcano)
It's likely that Mikado will have something to do with Hayasaka.(Like Ishigami-Tsubame /Fujiwara-Hourai/Miko-Osaragi/Miyuki-Momo
connected, we can guess that Mikado and Hayasaka are connected as well.)
*Hayasaka has multiple "faces" in the manga and in the TotBC.
The official fan book stated that Hayasaka is the envoy from the moon that takes kaguya-hime back to the moon.
(Hayasaka being the reason why Kaguya was threatened by Oko.）
And there is one post that summarizes Hayasaka's other role
in the tale that is greatly made by other fans (highly recommend,this theory is a fun read!)
It's actually possible Hayasaka also represents Kaguya's love (being involved in the emperor's task/replacing Kaguya-hime and becoming his lover.)
​
2.two spies
Hayasaka is suspicious about Mikado's sudden transfer so we know she didn't trust Mikado.But the reason is unknown till now.
When Maki appered at the stuco room to explain the whole arranged mirriage, Haya suddenly dissapeared (which is kinda weird) so we cant't see her thoughts.
​
3.Class seating
They sit next to each other in the class( likely is intended).It's a convenient way to make characters interact.(Class 3-A seating chart by other fans) (Edit:Added more up to date version of ( Class 3-A chart thanks to @Ark_Evensong for the chart update:))
​
4.Their past is hidden?
Despite both being important characters in the Shinomiya+Shijos family drama, these two still haven't interacted on screen for once .But it's hinted that they may have history.
(1.)Mikado knows Hayasaka
Since Hayasaka works for the Shinomiyas, the Hayasakas and the Shijos definitely acknowledge each other's existence.
When maki talks to Kaguya she calls hayasaka "Ai"
After Mikado's transfer we haven't seen any Hayasaka/Mikado interaction which is weird since they both involved with the Shiomiya/Shijo conflict.
They only appeared together in a panel once:
When Shirogane said he wanted to ask Mikado something, he glanced at Hayasaka and Hinokuchi.(Mikado:...Sure?)
We couldn't see Mikado's face but later he suddenly starts talking about Shinomiyas doing something and acts concerned.
If he knows Hayasaka, that will explain his weird reaction.
So if Mikado knows Hayasaka Ai,
Then the fact he didn't even consider Haya as someone he knows is weird (he listed kashiwagi and kaguya but no hayasaka).
(2.)Hayasaka knew him well?
In chapter 257 (Haya Skateboarding chapter) when Fujiwara wonders if Mikado tells Kaguya what time they will arrive, Hayasaka said:
"I'm sure he has."
"I've never seen that man make a mistake in his life"
Her line suggests that she likely knew him well or had been spying on him for a long time (or perhaps through his life,since he was seven….
Mikado started his plan ten years ago, when he's seven.
Hayasaka also reunited with Kaguya at the age of seven…
(3).How they address each other
In the tea party chapter Hayasaka calls Mikado" Mikado-Sama" (in the Japanese raws), which is normal considering Hayasaka comes from a servant family.(she calls Maki "Maki-sama" until the baseball chapter )
But when Mikado told Kaguya that Hayasaka will arrive in 30 minutes, he calls Hayasaka "Hayasaka Ai"(in the Japanese version)
The honorifics thing is a little strange on Mikado's side because he for now basically calls everyone by their name or nicknames even if he isn't very familiar with them(Nagisa chan,miyuki kun, princess ,tsubasa kun ,Ishigami-kun ) But he calls Hayasaka "Hayasaka Ai"(whan Maki talks to Kaguya about Hayasaka she uses "Ai" )
It's weird because he is supposed to have known Hayasaka for a long time due to her being the maid of Shinomiya.(If we assume he does know her.)
(4.) Texting
I think texting might be one of the important themes in Haya and Mikado's character.
Mikado stated that he and Kaguya used to text each other a lot back in the day.
We know Kaguya rarely uses her phone until
She enters high school(and texts with Shirogane), so Kaguya probably didn't do that.
IF Mikado is not lying there,then who is the one he's talking to?
It's possible that person is Hayasaka.
In chapter 19(The first chapter where haya was introduced),
Hayasaka is helping Kaguya get a text from Shirogane, saying if Kaguya insists not to text him first then she'll do it for her.
Another example:Haya coming up with replies to letters for Kaguya.(Ch179)
*We know Kaguya-Sama is just like a fan comic of the tale of Bamboo cutter, it's character and many plot is based on this folklore written by anon author during the Heian period, during that time,people use poem/love letters were the main means of courtship(they barely have chance to meet someone of their opposite gender), both party judge each other based on their calligraphy, the cleverness of their verses, even the quality of the paper they used.These letter sometimes are not written by themselves but their parents or their servants.(haya is the maid)
Actually the Emperor does exchange letters with Kaguya-hime for years in the tale, and due to that Kaguya starts to have feelings for him.
So what if, this time the one text with Mikado is not Kaguya herself ?
​
5.Cinderella and the prince
Mikado and Hayasaka might represent prince Charming and Cinderella.
Hayasaka -Cinderella
Based on chapter 177, we know Hayasaka likes Disney a lot.
When Haya and Kaguya discuss Ishi's dating plans,
Hayasaka said she actually quite like ishigami's clothing rental idea,
and
“BIBBIDI-BOBBIDI-BOOING HER INTO A PRINCESS OUTFIT WOULD BE QUITE NICE."
This is a Disney Cinderella reference.
Hayasaka is also similar to Cinderella in some way, like both needing to work everyday and having a miserable childhood.
If Kaguya=kaguya-hime
I'm thinking Hayasaka might be the Cinderella in this manga
Mikado-Prince Charming?
I haven't seen anyone talk about this before but..
When Mikado told Kaguya his plan to rescue her, Kaguya directly said:
"You sound like a prince straight out of a fairy tale right now."
In Japanese it's "まるで白馬の王子様ね"
"白馬の王子" could means Prince charming/Knight in shining armor
And one of the definitions of the typical fairy tale character Prince Charming is Cinderella's love interest.(At Least, in the Disney version of the Cinderella movie.)
If that's not a coincidence then that means Mikado might be representing Prince Charming in the Cinderella tale.
The shijo siblings are also familiar with Disneyland. (Another Hint?)
(Crack Theory:So he might be aiming for the wrong princess…)
(Edit after ch 261: Haya wouldn't mind being saved by a knight …)
​

1. Many parallels

(Not clear evidence, just some parallels I think are interesting haha)
These two already have shown some similarity.
(1.)Mirroring each other (in universe/meta )
They're both our main protagonists' close friends.one for Shirogane, one for Kaguya.
They also have some scene parallels/similar to each other.
(These two often become the center of NTR discussion lol)
Also hayasaka with those yuri baits v.s. Mikado with those boyfucker jokes …lol)
Hayasaka and Mikado both have to endure their "sibling".And seems to be good at taking care of others.(He's like Maki's Hayasaka.)and they also have the same tsukkomi vibes.
Hayasaka and Mikado become "spies" due to their family issues.They're trapped in this situation(it's even harder for Hayasaka)
(2.)Similar to kaguprez
They could serve as a parallel to Kaguprez:
Kaguya has similar traits to Haya. (they're like siblings)
And Mikado also similar to Shirogane.
Hayasaka came from a servant family.
Mikado is a heir of a zaibatsu.
They are like the reverse version of Kaguprez
But they're not entirely the same.So it could be unique and interesting.
To me they are a compatible pair, Mikado went to India with Maki on Christmas, he's likely to make Hayas dating plan come true lol
​
(3.) Chapter 216 parallels
The characters in chapter 216(girl’s tea party) is a clear parallel for chapter 214,
Kaguya≤≥Shirogane
Kashiwagi≤≥Tsubasa
What's left for Hayasaka is Mikado
(Maki is forever alone,or also parallel to Mikado )
Also in chapter 216, it's heavily focused on Hayasaka when talking about Mikado.
​
7.Interviews and Q&A
Aka said in an interview that the true Hayasaka will appear in 7 volumes later (that interview is around volume 18 or 19) and hayasaka will take the main stage at some point in the current arc.
He also said there will be a new character tied to her new development.
What If the new character who will be connected to the true haya =her love interest =Mikado??
(This "new character" doesn't have to be the "new suitor" (most likely refers to Abe ) that also mentioned in the same interview since Mikado also haven't be properly introduced in to the story at that time.Due to other established similarity backgrounds between haya and Mikado, I think he is a more possible choice.)
Q&A:
In this drunk Q&A it's also hinted that Aka might write a serious romance arc about Hayasaka.
(*This not necessarily points at Haya×Mikado
But more about these two(mostly Hayasaka) will have more screen time)
Q: I love Hayasaka to death. Is it possible that she'll end up with someone in the future?
A:Depends on what Hayasaka does
Q:Will Hayasaka be happy?
A:Yeah
Q: Will Hayaska fall in love with someone at some point?
A: Depends on what Hayasaka does
Q:I want to know more about Mikado-kun, but will he show up again?
A:Yeah.
9.Mikado involved in the shijo peace arc/Mamagane story
Kaguya said she will try her best to make peace with the Shijos. If she fails, Oko Will marry her off .It's possible that after the current arc, we will see Kaguya trying to solve things (Shijo family arc).
That might be where Mamagane finally enters the story as an antagonist.(Many suspect she's the mystery woman who talked to Mikado in chapter 216,so it's likely Mikado will also play a major role in that arc. Also, Shirogane still hasn't beat Mikado. If he finds out his mom is on good terms with Mikado, He might recall his traumatic past.(--as Miyuki's rival and new friend, he can also have a major role in the Shirogane family plot)
(Delusional theory/fanfic?)
Actually the one Mikado fell in love with is hayasaka (who's posing as Kaguya)
Maybe Haya has been posing as Kaguya(=princess)many times in the past too. And so far we know she's good at it.
She does that in the fireworks chapter and 4koma too.It might not make sense now…
I came up with this scenario because Hayasaka's story theme revolves around her masks/multiple fake personality and her acting ability.
She also likes daydreaming/has a strong belief that her true self will not be loved. She probably really wants to be saved like a princess.
(edit after helicopter chapter: she actually wouldn't mind that.)
(her Cinderella reference line might suggest her story theme: cosplay/dress up like a princess)
If the Mikado texting thing is true then it will be an important thing in his story because Mikado(emperor)in the Bamboo Cutter tale exchanged messages/letters with princess Kaguya for years and they fell in love.
Mikado says he and Kaguya met at some parties,if the person he met was actually Hayasaka then that's in even more like Cinderella meets Prince Charming at a ball.
Mikado and Hayasaka being paired would line up the character story themes and solve many problems.
Like, Haya can have her fairytale prince, being saved like a princess,enjoy her romantic high school life)
Mikado can get a princess, finally he can fulfill his promise and make all her dreams come true.it ends the suffering of these two.)
Also Haya/Mikado plot can be a way to keep Haya tied to the major plot(Shinomiya/Shijo family) after she quit her job,since Mikado clearly have some plans about Kaguya, haya (wants to protect her friend) may have some conflict with him.
If we take the pun seriously it could mean that the emperor(Mikado) gets kaguya's love(Ai) in the end of the tale (=in the end of the manga)
We can't be sure if these two will become a thing, for now I'm just pretty convinced they are connected in a very subtle way.
I will keep looking forward to new developments in the manga. Maybe more classroom chapters or Abe enters the story...Hoping it will last longer and have a great ending.
[Tldr; Mikado might become important after this Shinomiyas arc due to the fact that he is likely connected with the shijo peace arc,mamagane story and the true Hayasaka.
Maybe Mikado is a prince who's not for Kaguya-hime but Hayasaka(Cinderella/the other "Princess").
If Hayasaka will have a romance plot,I think Mikado is the most likely love interest candidate and these two are probably already connected in a subtle way.]
*This is my first post on Reddit and my English is kinda bad so if there're some grammatical mistakes or weird phrasings plese tell me(if you want)
​
🔆Thank you for reading this :0 I'd like to discuss the manga with you:)

I heard the scream the night the guests arrived.
So far out in the woods it could have crossed over from some other life into mine, escaped from a stranger’s dream. I was certain I heard it though. Certain I was awake.
It may have started as an attempt at No! before detaching from the word, from language – and then it was done. The sort of thing you could hear through the screened window of a cabin in the middle of the Pacific Northwest rainforest and half-convince yourself, a suburban kid who knew nothing of the woods, that it was the shriek of an animal or bird, some natural thing you lacked the knowledge to identify.
I should have gone to someone right then, or left on the van out in the morning with the other guys who decided to quit or got canned for breaking one of the rules. But the truth is I never had trouble sleeping the whole time I was there. It was like I was mildly drugged, or hypnotized. The insomnia came later.
Now I don’t sleep at all.
* * *
Ty got me the job. He was in my American Lit class sophomore year. Right away he assumed a friendship where none existed. I wouldn’t say I ever liked him, but I got used to him.
So when he came to me in early June talking about a job at a “camp for old dudes” and saying it paid a thousand a week (insane money for the early 90s) I just rolled with it. Ty was vague about how he heard about the gig, saying a “buddy” told him, and I suspected it was a lie. It’s why, when he told me he’d gotten word we were both in, I was surprised it might turn out to be real.
It was called The Sanctuary. I’d never heard of it before but apparently it had been mentioned in the news from time to time over the last century if you bothered to dig around. A thousand acres of ancient forest two hours east of Seattle. Ultra-exclusive, invitation only. A retreat where, once a year, a couple hundred VIPs – billionaires, leaders of government, corporate CEOs, along with a sprinkling of athletes and entertainers and academics – would gather to attend outdoor lectures, put on skits, share the greatness of their thoughts while getting stinking drunk. All of them were men.
We were instructed to gather at the corner of a mall parking lot in Kirkland for the drive to the site. Three buses rolled up. Fancy charters with leather seats and a screen playing a videotape of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I remember Ty being strained, jumpy. I occupied myself by trying to block him out, giving him one-word answers, pretending to sleep. Looking back on it, I saw how his excitement was actually the worry he was trying to hide.
As soon as we stepped off the bus we were ushered into the dining hall where we were given a non-disclosure agreement to sign. Then the one who was in charge and was referred to only as the Steward gave us a rundown of the rules.
No mail in or out. No phone calls (there was no landline in the staff camp, and our packs were searched to make sure none of us brought a satellite phone, the only thing back then that might have worked out there). There was a curfew of nine o’clock. Violations resulted in dismissal without pay and immediate removal from the property. Contact with guests is to be kept to a minimum.
We had five days of training before the guests arrived. A single path, wide and clear, took us back and forth from our camp to the main compound where the guests slept and had their gatherings. There were a number of other, narrower trails that forked off into the trees in different directions, but we were forbidden from starting down any of them.
Ty and I shared a cabin. After the first couple days there, in the lead-up to what the Steward called the Arrival, I found myself curious about Ty’s impressions of the place.
“Here’s the weird thing,” he said one night. “They’re all super-serious about the privacy of the guests, right?”
“They come here to get away from attention.”
“Right. But what is the Steward most strict about? It’s the woods.”
“How do you mean?”
“The one thing they’re really bent over backwards about is making sure we don’t wander off on one of the trails.”
“So what’s your theory?”
“They don’t want us seeing what they don’t want us to see.”
* * *
The area where the guests stayed was a cross between a scouts jamboree, a five-star restaurant and Disneyland. There was a dining hall much larger than where the staff ate. A pond with the giant sculpture of a grinning child carved out of the remains of an enormous redwood at one end. An amphitheater.
Dotted around these features were a dozen or so wall tents, each with their own canopied picnic table. This is where the guests stayed, each with its own name. Behemoth. Owls Head. Kaleidoscope. One waiter per site. On the morning of the Arrival, I was assigned to Metamorphosis.
They came in limos, Suburbans with blacked-out windows, a rock star who roared up on a Harley. I watched them come. My eight. Some bulging out of Bermuda shorts, legs pale and prickled with hair, spindly arms like toothpicks stuck in a baked potato. Some slight, their movements fussy. All of them heaving themselves up the gentle slope to Metamorphosis as if it was the final ascent on Everest. Except for one.
He was probably the oldest of all of them, but he led the line up to the camp with little effort. The first thing he did was ask my name.
“I’m the Secretary,” he said. “And I could murder a gin-and-tonic.”
I recognized him. Sort of. A white face in a blue suit on the cable news. He was powerful even compared to the enormously powerful men who guffawed and slurred and boasted around him.
The other seven guests kept me running for drinks and platters of charcuterie and King crab legs on ice all that first day. Here again the Secretary was the sole exception. He spoke directly to me, seemed interested in my responses. An attention that wasn’t creepy but was intimate nonetheless. His focus was of a kind that held you, so that you were left with the sense that he knew aspects of yourself far deeper after a single moment than you did, or ever would.
That was the night I heard the scream. In the morning Ty told me he heard it too.
“Why didn’t you say anything last night?” I asked him.
“Because I was scared, man.”
In the evening, after the guests had been served their tasting menu dinners, I returned to staff camp to find Ty wasn’t there. The bag he kept under his bunk was gone too. Ty didn’t tell me he had any plans on leaving. But I had an idea where he’d gone.
He went to look for where the scream came from.
* * *
There was a search. The Steward told me there was, anyway. This happened sometimes. The Sanctuary had a way of exposing the weaknesses in some, as the Steward put it. And once it did, they were gone.
I tried to explain that Ty would be the last guy to make an eight mile hike alone in the dark. This prompted a round of questions about how close I was to him. I lied. Said I barely knew him. Agreed that chances were he was already back home, plastering Lanacane on the mosquito bites he wouldn’t shut up about.
The truth is, I didn’t want to be sent away. One reason was that if Ty had gotten into trouble I could be more useful to him if I stayed on. The other reason was the Secretary and I were becoming friends.
Over the course of days he carved out more of his time and spent it talking with me. It didn’t seem especially odd. This was the point of the Sanctuary, after all. International arms sales? Sure. Skirting anti-trust scrutiny on an unannounced merger? Whatever. But it was also cool if all you wanted to do was shoot the breeze with a nobody lit major.
The Secretary was wise. He knew things. Presidential adulteries, state secrets, how Congressmen were blackmailed into changing their votes. But he knew other things too. Unspeakable things. Observations of human nature most would be destroyed by if they stumbled on them, but not him.
His interest in me was driven by his interest in everything: How could it become part of him? The Secretary didn’t just observe the world. He absorbed it. His cloudy eyes pulling me, the trees, the food on every plate – everything he looked at became his.
I didn’t know all that when he asked me if I had a first love. Sexual feelings but also the broader yearning to “be conjoined with them,” the one I wanted “and would always want.”
For me it was Isobel Turnley. My junior year of high school. She arrived in October from out of town. Redhaired, deep laugh, a boyish body with a womanly mouth. My first.
I told the Secretary all of this and then some. The particulars slipping out in a rush, like having to piss in public and feeling the relief of being emptied out before realizing there’d been someone watching you the whole time.
* * *
When I could, I tried to find out what happened to Ty. I was pretty sure it had to do with the Second Agenda. That’s what one of the guests, drunk, called it when I saw him start off down one of the trails into the woods.
“I’ve been tapped for the Second Agenda,” he said. “And you don’t say no to that!”
Even in his drunkenness he realized he’d said too much. He stumbled into the trees as if he had no choice in it. I kept an eye out for him when he came back. He joined the long, candlelit table in the dining hall a few minutes late. The man appeared to be in a state of surprise, as if grappling with astonishing news.
Only a fraction of the guests ventured onto the trails. Those who did were chosen. I noticed how it was only after speaking with one of the guests who were repeat visitors. The Secretary being one of them.
I knew it was a bad idea to ask him about it. But I owed Ty the effort.
I’d brought the Secretary one of his seemingly random cocktail selections – a Rob Roy – and stuttered out my questions before I had a chance to change my mind. Why did some of the guests go into the forest and others didn’t? What was the Second Agenda? Where was my friend?
“None of what you think matters in fact matters at all,” he said. “Perspective. Have you ever seen a map of Dante’s underworld? His hell? It’s a hole. One with increasing levels of punishment, down and down, narrowing as it goes. But if you turned the map around – changed the perspective – the hole becomes a pyramid. To enter it is no longer a descent into darkness but an ascendance. If you wish to touch the sun you must go all the way to the top. Survey the world as only a god could see it.”
He handed me his empty glass and joined Metamorphosis’ guests. In his absence I tried to collect his remarks in my head. He hadn’t mentioned the woods or a Second Agenda or Ty’s whereabouts. Yet I felt that he’d answered something I wanted to know even more.
* * *
After lights out I left my cabin. There were voices in the fire-dotted darkness of the compound. A drunken holler bouncing off the redwoods. I kept to the treeline. When the first cutaway opened up to my left I slipped into it.
I carried on down the trail. A breeze passed over my face, curling around me, carrying the scent of the ocean though the ocean was too far away. It came to me then: this wind wasn’t the natural movement of air, but exhalations. A living being, unseen but close. Inhuman.
The forest was so black it was absent of even the faintest outline of trees or branches. And then, all at once, lights pushed through them. Yellow fires. Along with portable spotlights of the kind used to make roadside repairs through the night. But there was no road here.
I felt like I was going to be sick. The nausea came with the intuition that whatever the lights and fire were illuminating was unnatural in a way I couldn’t imagine. An indescribable wrongness.
A scream. Followed by another. They faded in volume within moments. It was only after they’d retreated that I realized it was because I had run away from where they were coming from.
* * *
They gave the wait staff a couple hours off between lunch and dinner. That afternoon, the Secretary asked if I would rather spend the time attending some of the Sanctuary’s events with him instead.
Some of it was predictable: stock picks from a “Wall Street wizard,” a Hall of Fame pitcher revealing the best brothels and barbecue in every city he played in. There didn’t seem to be any theme behind the talks, other than what you were hearing was material you wouldn’t hear anywhere else.
As the guests stumbled out of the dining hall after dinner the Secretary invited to stay to watch the Pageant.
“It’s silliness, for the most part,” he said. “But it can sometimes achieve a certain grandeur.”
A frat house musical revue. That was the tone of the thing off the top. Guests singing old college songs and reciting dirty poems. Old white guy bullshit. Yet as the performance went on, it changed. The actors traded their tuxedos for dresses and stuffed bras and lipstick. A drag show. The songs were different now too. An atonal clash of shrieks and grunts.
The ones who were still costumed as men began lifting the skirts of those dressed as women. Around me the audience howled. I looked to where the Secretary had been sitting but he was gone.
The audience bucked and lurched and slapped their own faces. It wasn’t drunkenness. It struck me that they were poisoned, or spellbound. I looked to the stage again. The actors didn’t appear to be pretending anymore, but doing whatever they had been doing for real now. Nobody noticed because the audience gave up watching and started acting in the same ways in the rows of seating. Punches were thrown. Faces willingly offered to be met by fists, begging for pain. There were bodies in other men’s mouths, blood dripping from mouths, screeches of excitement uttered from their mouths.
From across the pond, behind the amphitheater, a fire came to life at the base of the carved tree. The grinning child. Except now, in the licks of flame, it appeared to be snarling.
* * *
I don’t remember side-stepping out from the row where I was seated, crossing the compound and finding the same trail I’d walked down the night before. There was only my being in the one place followed my being in the other.
For a time I just walked in the dark. I couldn’t stay on the trail. There would have to be a security detail out here, watchers of some kind. It was important for me to stay out of sight. At the first glimmer of light ahead I stepped off the trail and worked my way along it in parallel. When I was close enough I crouched down and waited for my vision to make sense of what I could see.
A bush party. Beer coolers, a fire, voices calling out. Grown men – some of the guests – and younger women in equal number. There was music too. “I’m Your Baby Tonight.” The sugary Top-40 on every radio at the time.
The women were prostitutes. Streetwalkers from downtown, plainly wasted. The men were either drinking, or bending over a platter of coke on a table by the fire, or talking with the women as they guided them into the shadows.
The Secretary’s voice returned to me and with it the meaning I’d only partly grasped at the time he spoke them. How the best way to look at the underworld was as a hole in the ground. Because then you could turn it upside down. Where you stop is up to you. A chasm of tortures. A tower of pleasures.
I crawled on hands and knees before getting to my feet. Following the shape of the trail I could sense next to me. It took maybe another hour before more firelight appeared.
A single bonfire at the center of a clearing larger than the bush party’s. A circle of cages on flatbed trailers. Four of them. Looking inward to where the fire had almost diminished to a bed of embers. It reminded me of an image in a book from when I was little. A story about a traveling circus, and this was the illustration of the cages on wheels where the animals were kept at night. Except when I squinted through the iron bars I found people instead.
One per cage. A teenaged boy staring, unblinking, into the firelight. A woman in her late-twenties wearing a filthy Rolling Stones t-shirt. A man the same age as her, sobbing. The last cage was empty.
Other than the fire and the cages there was a military-style medical tent set off in partial shadow. Voices and lights flashed from within. When the flaps opened a pair of men in ski-masks came out. Guns holstered at their waists, their movements sure. Not guests.
They went straight to the cage with the crying man inside. One of the ski-mask men reached inside and grasped the crying man’s ankle before he thumped to the floor and was dragged out in a single pull. The man kept trying to get to his feet even as he was hauled over the ground and into the tent. He started screaming only once he was inside.
I carried on before the masked men could come out of the tent again.
The forest was the same dense life around me – there was no start to it, no end – yet I knew I was going deeper into it. All the way to the top. I had already seen enough to break me. Survey the world as only a god could see it.
It took almost all the rest of the night to come to the trail’s final stop.
Another clearing, bigger than the others combined. Several fires were dotted around its border. It made it difficult to see the people gathered in the center.
Maybe ten, a dozen. All of them in the same Bermuda shorts or golf pants the guests wore around the compound, but now each of them with orange hoods over their heads. The eye holes carefully cut in the shape of stars, the mouths little circles.
They were speaking but not in conversation. A murmuring. The longer it went on I heard it as a recited text but spoken in overlapping voices, a language that may have been English, but arrived to my ears as something other than that. Old, long-forgotten, blasphemous.
My eyes adjusted to the light. The first thing it let me see was the body.
A man bound at the ankles but otherwise free to move, which he did by writhing on the ground. On one of his rollovers his face was directed at me and I saw that it was Ty.
One of the hooded men stepped forward. Went to Ty, bent down, drew a cardboard cutter from his pants pocket and sliced his throat.
My friend made no sound other than a wet hiccupping. A different hooded man came to him. The second man got down on his knees and let Ty’s pulsing blood fill his cupped hands. Then he rose, brought the offering to the man whose back was closest to me, and let him drink.
The speaking stopped. They watched the blood-drinking man double over, stagger, but not fall. He straightened again. Taller by inches than his height of a moment ago. The man pulled off his hood.
Decades had been removed from him, drawn away from his body like a sheet. The Secretary was young now. The same age as me. His hair thick and full, the creases of his face smoothed, his body muscled in the lean way of a swimmer.
I turned to the side and puked out the last three days of everything I’d swallowed in a hot torrent over the ferns.
When I looked back into the clearing a woman stood over Ty’s body. She was unbound, but there was nothing left in her that would allow her to even attempt to run. I recognized something familiar about her. My first thought was that she was from a TV show from when I was a kid, a grown-up child star. A blink and I saw who she really was.
Isobel Turnley. The girl who I’d described to the Secretary, confessed every intimacy about, the most personal being that I would think of her always no matter who I would go on to become. The love of my life.
The Secretary went to her. Held her with his young hands at the tops of her arms. Kissed her with his blood-encircled mouth.
A stillness. I absorbed the moment as the man who kissed Isobel did, and it entered me as a burning stone, an ulcer cutting through my stomach.
The Secretary pulled away from her. Turned to look into the trees at the spot where I was crouched. He didn’t point at my location, didn’t voice a command. But the masked men came for me as if he had.
They weren’t in the clearing but stationed in the trees. They must have been, because they appeared from nowhere.
I found the trail and ran over it into the deeper woods beyond. I ran blind and without pause.
With the dawn came an inkling of direction. A way to the highway. A flagged pickup truck.
They could have found me after that, at any point in the days and years that came after. It would have been nothing for them. I felt sure it was the Secretary who ordered them not to pursue me. Not out of mercy or friendship or anything of the kind. He let me live because I was his.
* * *
When I got back to my apartment I called my mom. At the end she mentioned getting a call out of the blue from another kid’s mom from my high school days. She’d seen something in the news about Isobel Turnley going missing two days earlier.
Mom thought I might be interested to know. Wasn’t she a sweetheart of yours?
* * *
I’m older now. My wife died two months ago. After the funeral my kids promised to visit more but are already inventing the excuses that will let them visit less.
I bought a digital camera. Top of the line, smaller than a pack of cigarettes. It can zoom in on nosehairs from fifty yards off. I’m taking it with me back to the Sanctuary. They still have their gatherings there as far as I know. The super-rich, the starters of wars. People like the Secretary.
I don’t figure on coming back from those woods a second time. And I’m settled on that, I’m good.
My one hope is that I get something on camera first. That it finds its way out to the world. To show how evil is a way of seeing. How deep the hole goes.

At least, I think it was a poetry book, it may have been more short stories. Most of the stories I can't remember, I think there might have been something about gum or trash or picking your nose or grilled cheese.
HOWEVER, I remember ONE story specifically, which I think might have been the final one in the book. It was about a teacher who would give money to his students for certain accomplishments. Like they'd get a dollar or something if they did well on an assignment, and he would pay for a Disneyland trip if they got an A in the class. At the end, the teacher is broke because everyone did so well.
The image that accompanied this one was of a bunch of happy looking students in a school bus on the left (?), with the teacher standing on the right (?) looking sad, holding a sign saying "Will Teach For Food".

The offer was that Disney would buy their epic poem for $169 and set them up at Disneyland to recite their poem to guests for as long as they wanted but they wouldn’t pay them to be there and, as soon as they quit, Disney would own the poem. They could throw it in the trash or turn it into a movie, but my friend would get no more money from them. My friend was seriously considering taking the deal.

A guy (Jerry Liebowitz?) is being treated by an allergist in Santa Monica weekly. He's working 16-17 hour days, is stressed. As he parks for an appointment a physician in a Mercedes parks so close to him he can't open his door. The physician just walks away, making Jerry mad, so he keys his car. The weeks after that he perpetrates petty vandalism on the car: dirty boots from the trash, chattering teeth from Toys-R-Us, a stack of pancakes...
8:40: Larry tells Joe about a flight: a 'loud Long Island woman' who talks a lot and a passenger who sits in the wrong seat and reacts angrily to the stewardess when she asks him to move. Larry recites the poem he wrote about the angry guy. Joe likes it.
16:50: We're back to Jerry vandalizing the physician's Mercedes, this time with a chess board, a cake, and rotten sardines.
21:40: A guy (Jack Cheeseborough? He tells the 'joke' at the beginning of 'Evening sky', has a credit in 'Green Cadillac', which is also set in Washington DC) who lives on 15th & T NW Washington DC loves his dogs. The mailman fears them, accusing Jack of siccing one of them (Lucky) on him. Lucky had already bit an old man, so an additional report could endanger him. Jack gets so worked up he puts his violent pit bull mix (Blackie) in the mailman's truck; the dog bites the mailman's face; Jack thinks the dog could have killed him. (I take this story as fictional. The references to DC's streets and neighborhoods are accurate, especially Caroline Street, a 1-block street inside T & U, 15th & 16th - I had to find it on a map.)
38:10: A street person (preacher?) (Moses Stone?), apparently also in Washington DC talks disconnectedly, with Biblical references.
45:00: Jerry Liebowitz recounts not-paying his Continental Cable bill, which involves eating grapes.
48:40: Larry tells Joe about his latest difficulties with Zachary. (Larry calls him 'a 15-year-old arrogant bastard'.) Zachary can't remember to ask for a new Metro card at school, cuts detention, dropped Spanish class.
51:40: Zachary tells Joe his side of the story.
56:40: A guy (Jack Cheeseborough?) tells Joe about raising hell at Disneyland when he was 19 or 20. He yells to people in a people-mover car (a sky tram) that their cable is breaking.
http://jfwiki.org/index.php?title=Always

Merry Christmas morning, everyone.
As I look out my dew-covered windows, I can clearly see that a white blanket has set itself upon the rooftops and the streets of my neighbourhood overnight. Snowflakes still intermittently swirl about under an overcast sky slowly lightening up in these morning hours. For my part of the world, this is a particularly rare occasion for this exact time of year, so I imagine that this will be a Christmas that I will treasure very much with my family today.
Of course, this likely isn’t the case for everyone else here today. There is no doubt that our long-held perceptions and traditions of Christmas are in flux, as uncomfortable and uninvited truths make their way into our homes to bring us unwanted lessons about the past, the present, and worst of all - what is yet to come.
Climate change, ever the largest elephant in the collapse room, threatens what Christmas "means" all around the world. For those of us fortunate to live in the northern hemisphere, ice skating and tobogganing might slowly fade away as the Dickensian "White Christmas” becomes nothing more than a memory. Christmas, however, is not a celebration exclusively reserved for the North. For those who live in the warmer parts of the world, Christmas has come under threat in various different ways, forcing families and communities to improvise and adapt to whatever our changing climate might bring next.
Isabelle Gerretsen, BBC, wrote a great article (“How climate change has altered Christmas”) on this very topic. I’ll be sharing two stories from this article, first from Salvador Gómez-Colón (Puerto Rico) and the second from Mitzi Jonelle Tan (the Philippines):

Salvador Gómez-Colón, 19, Puerto Rico
Puerto Ricans love Christmas, says 19-year-old Salvador Gómez-Colón. "Christmas is a spectacle. It's the biggest holiday in Puerto Rico."
During the festive period, families head into the mountains around the capital San Juan to gather at food trucks, called chinchorros. There they eat suckling pig and cod fritters. "It's very communal, you meet your neighbours and talk to strangers," says Gómez-Colón.
One of his favourite Christmas traditions is the parranda: carolling in the streets and outside people's houses. "It's very lively," he says. "We sing folklore songs with cymbals and drums."
This tradition continued even during Puerto Rico's darkest days, after the country was hit by category 5 Hurricane Maria in September 2017.
Hurricane Maria dropped more rain on Puerto Rico than any storm to hit the country since 1956. A storm of such strength is five times more likely to hit now than in the 1950s due to climate change, a 2019 study found.
"I've never felt as vulnerable in my entire life," says Gómez-Colón. "I was [sheltering] in a basement room with 10 others and lost communication with my dad and friends. I saw cars being lifted and palm trees flying around."
Despite the terrible situation, Puerto Ricans managed to celebrate Christmas that year. "The parrandas happened. It was performative – to show that everything was fine," he says.
In January, when the island was still without power, people gathered to celebrate the Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián, Puerto Rico's biggest annual festival marking the end of the holiday season. "There was live music and a lot of performances. It was a blast," he says.
During the Christmas period, much of Puerto Rico was still in complete darkness.
To help people rebuild their lives after Maria, Gómez-Colón started a crowdfunding campaign called "Light and Hope for Puerto Rico." Over 10 months, he raised almost $170,000 (£129,000) to support 3,500 families in Puerto Rico. With this money he bought hand-cranked washing machines as well as solar lamps for families without power.
"Santa couldn't come to homes that year, [but] the lights were gifts in themselves," he says.
"It's been four years since Maria but to many of us it feels like it was yesterday," he says. "You can repair bridges and street signs, but you can't repair the harm that has been done to the Puerto Rican mind."

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Mitzi Jonelle Tan, 22, the Philippines
"They say that Filipinos celebrate Christmas the longest," says Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a 22-year-old climate activist from Manila, the capital of the Philippines. "We celebrate from 1 September until 6 January."
It is a colourful and creative time. People make their own Christmas decorations, including a star-shaped lantern, called a parol. They hang these bright lanterns in windows and streets for the entire festive season, from September until January.
"The parol is something that families create together using colourful, recycled plastic and little pieces of wood," says Jonelle Tan.
"On Christmas morning we always take photos in front of churches near where my mum grew up," she says. "My mum and grandpa also used to take pictures in front of these churches."
But in 50 years' time, this special place for the Jonelle Tan family could no longer exist due to rising sea levels. "It's scary as it's not that far away," she says.
The Philippines is the world's most vulnerable country to disasters caused by climate change. The country is hit on average by more than 20 typhoons each year, which cause severe flooding and large-scale destruction. These severe climate impacts are already changing Filipinos' Christmas experience.
In November last year, super typhoon Goni, the year's most powerful storm, hit the Philippines at 225km/h (140mph).
"People were stranded on rooftops and all the roads were flooded," recalls Jonelle Tan. "A few days before Christmas, we were still helping clean up the mud that had flooded the houses."
The community spirit was incredible that year, she says. People brought food and gifts to the evacuation centres. "Christmas is a celebration of what we've gone through that year, together as a community," she says.
Jonelle Tan worries about what Christmas will be like in the future if storm surges and typhoons become more frequent.
**"**It is very scary because the area where my relatives live gets flooded very easily," she says. Flooding already means that many families can't put up their Christmas lights.
"We are fighting for our Christmas traditions to continue and to keep our family and community bonds," she says.

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In both circumstances, the background mores of Christmas – generosity, kindness, and goodwill towards all men and women – coloured the social bonds that were reinforced during these disasters, as people devoted their energies toward the good of the community rather than just themselves. A community of sufferers who found themselves in circumstances beyond their control, and yet found a way to uphold what matters most - love, family, and connection. Something that we must keep in mind for what is yet to come.
While we find ourselves seemingly helpless in a world beyond our control for reasons many and in multitude, this does not mean that we should endeavour to suffer alone and wrap ourselves up tightly in the reassuring embrace of doom and detachment. As we've read above, Christmas is not about the gifts, but the gift-giving. It is not about the feast, but the feasting with those we love around us. It is not about consumption, but charity, care, and community.
To conclude this rather rambling and disjointed piece, I wanted to discuss some thoughts raised by Michael Harris earlier this week. In the following article, he explains it best: in the ongoing aftermath of multiple ongoing crises, including supply chain shocks, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and affluent conspicuous over-consumption, perhaps we should continue to endeavour "for some finer – and more durable – way to show our love" this Christmas and forever onwards.
Christmas is what we make it, after all.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
​

The World has changed. Christmas must change, too - Michael Harris
One Christmas when I was nine or so, my mother took me aside after all the gifts had been torn open and asked, “Happy?”
I nodded, unsure where this was going.
“It’s just that I always wonder with you, Michael. It never seems to be enough.”
It was the 1980s – “enough” was the enemy. I grew up in the heyday of mindless shopping and obnoxious advertising. I was a spoiled child in an affluent suburb; my friends and I knew that contentment was not the point. Christmas was about the next gift, and the next. Christmas, to such a child, meant a spree of consumption through which, if one’s parents were very lucky, they might prove their love.
I was not alone in this immodest conviction. Our consumer culture was by then a single absorbing story that invested material goods with magical powers. In a sense we were all children then, blithely delighted by the haul that the 20th century had dumped at our feet. But the decades crawled by and splurging turned to nausea. We grew up, we began to ask ourselves: “Happy…?”
And then came a plague – forcing some of us to invent new proofs of our love. During the first pandemic Christmas, Nielsen discovered a spiking interest in homemade, personalized gifts. A year of baking sourdough and canning pickles culminated in a holiday brimming with knitted scarves and whittled ducks. Etsy and Pinterest reported floods of searches for the artisanal and craft-based. We had been living so long in extremis – and often in isolation – that we were desperate for ways to properly connect. We wanted to invest actual time, thought and labour in our gifts. We wanted our loved ones to know we had given them something of ourselves.
The change was broader than the Christmas season. My husband turned 40 and – since a proper party was impossible – I had all his friends send me the name of a song that reminded them of Kenny. Listening to this playlist, without error, Kenny could guess who’d submitted each song. It had cost me nothing but time, and yet he declared it his favourite present. I shouldn’t have been surprised – we live in an age of frictionless buying, where desires are satisfied with a click; that makes genuine gestures of affection more rare, more valuable.
Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve noticed a surge in creative gift-giving among my friends. As birthdays and anniversaries and graduations floated by, and we couldn’t mark these occasions in person, we turned to collages and mementoes. Several friends, on behalf of their spouses, asked us to record short videos describing favourite memories of times spent together.
This Christmas, my parents are getting a gift that can’t be found on Amazon. My brother snuck a bag of old VHS tapes out of their house and had them digitized. Old camping trips, school plays and birthday parties – nearly lost on the crumbling magnetic tape – are watchable again. Family history comes roaring back to life: a trip to Disneyland; my first birthday party (attended by my grandmother, who died just before the pandemic began); and a Christmas morning from long, long ago – my brothers and I wrapped in bathrobes, laughing, arguing, thrilling at the prospects under the tree.
Our memories of Christmas, though, don’t tell us what Christmas has to be. Even our most nostalgic ideas about the holiday are relatively recent inventions. For centuries, Christmas did mean a special feast, but not an orgy of wasteful consumption. By the 19th century, however, the growth of cities and the rise of a new middle class created the possibility of a different, gift-saddled holiday. Urban environments were seen as unsafe for children and middle-class parents (fearing the clamour of the streets) needed at-home rituals instead of public revelry.
The invention of photoengraving allowed corporations to market their goods with seductive imagery. A slightly toxic dream world of advertising arose, and Christmas was its holy day. Washington Irving built on simple Dutch traditions in his 1820 collection The Sketch Book, rebooting Christmas in a rhapsody of carols, mistletoe, games, feasting and a “great interchange of presents.” Just a few years later, the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (a.k.a. The Night Before Christmas) was published, largely cribbing from Irving’s writing; it codified in the North American mind a Christmas whose focus was a pile of gifts for the children. And Santa evolved from a strange elf who might leave you a rag doll to a fat man whose sack overflowed with every sweet thing. At exactly this moment, the American toy industry began to emerge.
Industrialization brought on faster production speeds and fabulous surpluses of clothing, toys and housewares. To keep up the consumer’s end of the capitalist bargain, though, “want” had to replace “need” as the driver of shopping habits. We would no longer buy things for pragmatic purposes, but rather to express ourselves, to feel happy and to convince others that we cared. So, at Christmastime, we married the idea of love with store-bought merchandise. Were you a good child this year? Then Santa will bring you a Nintendo. Were you naughty? Then perhaps not. (Such “naughty or nice” economics betray a culture-wide hunch that the poor somehow deserve their predicament.) Holiday consumption became a marker of good citizenship, a sign of some moral good. This was made all too clear in an 1856 issue of Harper’s Magazine, which noted: “Love is the moral of Christmas ... What are gifts but the proof and signs of love?”
So: If the idea of Christmas as a glut of consumer spending is merely an invention, could it then be un-invented? Could Santa be transformed again, his sack emptied and recycled?
Last Christmas, Canadians were kept apart by the pandemic, trips home were largely cancelled, and we did grow fond of homemade tokens – and yet it all made only a tiny, barely noticeable dent in our spending. We spent 3 per cent less on gifts last year. All that interest in the homemade, all the new crafts and the baking, didn’t keep us from whipping out our credit cards, too.
And this year? Another chance to reimagine Christmas came our way – in the form of supply-chain troubles. Off the coast of California, a record number of container ships sat waiting for an opening at ports disrupted by labour shortages and pandemic-fouled logistics. Walmart and Home Depot chartered their own ships, hoping to circumvent the lineups. Meanwhile, in my province, historic floods demolished the highway system, cutting B.C. off from the world. Santa’s pack was cinched, throttled, stymied. All those AWOL sugarplums. Warnings were blasted as winter approached: the dolls, the Tonka trucks, the Fisher-Price toys, would all be in short supply this Christmas. The CEO of Basic Fun (purveyors of Care Bears, etc.) warned that shelves would be pocked with empty holes. In England, pandemic issues combined with Brexit troubles to spur November runs on turkeys and puddings.
And yet all this did not really frighten the gods of consumption. Our 3-per-cent dalliance with frugality last year was merely a blip. Savings rates have declined again – and this Christmas we returned to prepandemic shopping levels. Mastercard predicted an increase of 7.4 per cent in holiday spending this year. Deloitte believes the increase is as high as 9 per cent. In the U.S., holiday spending is expected to total US$1.3-trillion. We assert normalcy through shopping. It soothes us. So, while we did have a chance to imagine new kinds of gift-giving, new demonstrations of our love, even the double punch of a global pandemic and climate crisis was not quite enough to dismantle our consumer spirit.
Can a more lasting change be coming? We now know, after all, what enormous costs such consumption entails. We’ve grown acquainted with the carbon footprint of all we consume in the name of holiday warmth. Baked into the greedy Christmases of yore was an ignorance of harsh facts – for example, that consumption by the world’s affluent would surpass population growth as the major driver of climate change.
Perhaps, next Christmas, as we go shopping in our pandemic-shaken cities, we can reflect on the fuller meaning of “consume.” For much of history, to “consume” did not signal shopping at all – it only meant using up, exhausting, bringing to ruin. In the 15th century, a “consumer” was one who squandered. In the 17th century, a “consumptive” was one whose body was eaten away by disease. It was only in the Roaring 1920s that those shifting syllables took the shape of “consumerism” and came to signal a productive buying and getting. The new “consumer” was an always-right customer – an honest driver of the holiday economy, happily unaware that each purchase was also, in its way, an act of consumptive destruction in the 17th-century sense. Perhaps by next Christmas – or the Christmas after that – we’ll find a way to reintegrate the older meaning of “consume” into our idea of shopping. We may remember it isn’t so benign (or so loving) a behaviour.
When I watch that old video of Christmas morning long ago, I have to admit that the scene, crowded with gifts – my little brother rummaging under the tree and handing out parcels, a tag on each one – is heartwarming, lovable, hard to criticize. But times change and Christmas must change, too. We now have to search for some finer – and more durable – way to show our love.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all 'cross the flat, Not a creature was stirring, not even ZigRat. The ankle socks were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Squrlz soon would be there. The Snorkels were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of karma danced in their heads. And mamma in her yoga pants, and I in my cap, Had just taken our Ambien for a long winter's nap. When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the ankles of the new-fallen snow, Gave a luster of midday to objects below. What's this?" said I. "Just what are the odds?" 'Twas a child's red wagon and eight tiny rein-mods! With a fluffy gray tail moving in swirls, I knew the driver was the famous St. Squrlz. More rapid than eagles his moderators they came, And he whistled, waved his paws, and called them by name: "Now, PinkMinx! Now DuckBoy! Panther and Grendel, too! On, Thubanstar! On, Essen! LordJim and NF2! To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!" As leaves before a December tornado fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the housetop the rein-mods they flew With the wagon full of karma, and St. Squrlz too -- And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Squrlz arrived with a bound. He was covered in fur, from his head to his paws, All his clothing well-tailored and devoid of flaws. A bundle of karma he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes -- how they twinkled! His fluffy tail, how merry! His cheeks full of birdseed, his nose like a cherry. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his fur like a wreath. He had a white underside and a little round belly That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a jolly old gray, And I laughed when I saw such a peculiar display. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, Filled the socks up with karma; then turned with a jerk, And laying his paw aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his wagon, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight -- "Happy Christmas, dear Snorkels, and to all a good night!"