How to become a human toilet
How to become a completely independent adult
2011.03.22 00:44 How to become a completely independent adult
In different cultures there are events that relate passing from being a child to becoming an adult or coming of age. This often encompasses the passing a series of tests to demonstrate that a person is prepared for adulthood, or reaching a specified age, sometimes in conjunction with demonstrating preparation. Most modern societies determine legal adulthood based on reaching a legally specified age without requiring a demonstration of physical maturity or preparation for adulthood.
2015.10.28 05:11 Zodiacd Quantic Dream's Detroit: Become Human
This is a subreddit for Quantic Dream's 2018 game Detroit: Become Human.
2012.01.31 02:23 Pravusmentis Shitty Life Pro Tips
A place for the shittiest, most mocking "pro-tips" you can think of. Whether you want to let us know how glue can help out your hair or the quickest way to clog a public toilet, we're the place to post.
2024.06.10 03:32 AnyaGoblessed Where Are We Really From? Unpacking the Questions of Expat Living
After enduring four days of relentless headaches, courtesy of an unfortunate run-in between my head and my scooter’s handlebars, I finally relented and paid a visit to the doctor. The doctor had both good and bad news for me. The good news? My blood pressure was in perfect shape, and I walked away with two prescriptions and a vitamin B complex supplement, all for the grand total of $8.25 USD — without insurance, no less.
The bad news? It turns out I’m now contending with migraines — a condition that’s completely new to me, though not entirely foreign considering I’ve witnessed my sister endure similar pain and my mother struggle with a combination of migraines and cluster headaches. Despite the enlightening information I received at the clinic, I couldn’t help but feel apprehensive, especially when reflecting on the suffering my family members have experienced with this condition in the past.
Before heading home, I figured I’d pop into a nearby grocery store to stock up on essentials like green tea and milk, hoping to placate the migraine beast. The grocery shopping experience was uneventful — even somewhat enjoyable as I explored the aisles of a new branch. But when it came time to check out, the cashier unexpectedly threw me for a loop by asking where I was from to input into their computer. This question caught me off guard, as I had never been asked that in over a year of living in this country, not even at other locations of this very same grocery chain.
Slightly bewildered, I responded, “I live here.” Undeterred, the cashier pressed on, “But where are you from?” I repeated, “Here. I live here.” Still, she persisted, “But where are you from?” With a touch of frustration creeping into my voice, I clarified, “Here. I LIVE here.” This exchange left us both somewhat perplexed, as my understanding of ‘where I’m from’ is rooted in where I currently live and exist — not in the country where I was born, which lies a world away.
As I drove my scooter up the winding hills separating me from home, my mind lingered on the challenging question that had been posed to me: “Where am I from?” Realization dawned on me — this question is not easily answered. I am from the heart of America, where green hills roll into fields of wheat. I am from broken kingdoms and enduring fortresses.
My numerous failures define me far more than my few successes, yet I am also from a fierce determination to learn from those failures and seize every opportunity to live well and to be there for those I care for and can be present for. The land, the sea, and the sky all claim a part of me. This answer, while not a straightforward country, city, or state, encapsulates the complexity of my being. And so, I ask, where are we truly from?
Our fixation on surface-level attributes like place of origin or appearance often overshadows the more profound aspects of our identities. While these factors may have some bearing on our experiences, they are vastly outweighed by elements such as our character, values, growth, and future aspirations.
Emphasizing who we are, how we live and love, as well as our present and future trajectories, encourages a deeper understanding of ourselves and others. By acknowledging the complexity of our identities, we foster empathy and appreciation for diverse experiences, ultimately recognizing that our origin point is but one small piece of the puzzle that shapes our lives.
I’m reminded of Chelsea Effect’s “Stardust,” https://youtu.be/dKMxhVle6dc, which echoes the question: where are we, and from where did we come? We are stardust, the cosmic remnants of a boundless universe, living for a future that offers hope and solace. Guided by love, we traverse the vast expanse, seeking to ease the pain and struggles of our shared human experience.
In the end, it is this journey — the winding road, the rich tapestry of our past, and the ever-expanding universe that cradles us — that serves as our true home. Perhaps, then, the essence of “where we are” is not a fixed point in space or time, but rather a perpetual state of becoming, of growth, and of love.
#Expat #LivingAbroad #migraine
submitted by AnyaGoblessed to u/AnyaGoblessed [link] [comments]
The bad news? It turns out I’m now contending with migraines — a condition that’s completely new to me, though not entirely foreign considering I’ve witnessed my sister endure similar pain and my mother struggle with a combination of migraines and cluster headaches. Despite the enlightening information I received at the clinic, I couldn’t help but feel apprehensive, especially when reflecting on the suffering my family members have experienced with this condition in the past.
Before heading home, I figured I’d pop into a nearby grocery store to stock up on essentials like green tea and milk, hoping to placate the migraine beast. The grocery shopping experience was uneventful — even somewhat enjoyable as I explored the aisles of a new branch. But when it came time to check out, the cashier unexpectedly threw me for a loop by asking where I was from to input into their computer. This question caught me off guard, as I had never been asked that in over a year of living in this country, not even at other locations of this very same grocery chain.
Slightly bewildered, I responded, “I live here.” Undeterred, the cashier pressed on, “But where are you from?” I repeated, “Here. I live here.” Still, she persisted, “But where are you from?” With a touch of frustration creeping into my voice, I clarified, “Here. I LIVE here.” This exchange left us both somewhat perplexed, as my understanding of ‘where I’m from’ is rooted in where I currently live and exist — not in the country where I was born, which lies a world away.
As I drove my scooter up the winding hills separating me from home, my mind lingered on the challenging question that had been posed to me: “Where am I from?” Realization dawned on me — this question is not easily answered. I am from the heart of America, where green hills roll into fields of wheat. I am from broken kingdoms and enduring fortresses.
My numerous failures define me far more than my few successes, yet I am also from a fierce determination to learn from those failures and seize every opportunity to live well and to be there for those I care for and can be present for. The land, the sea, and the sky all claim a part of me. This answer, while not a straightforward country, city, or state, encapsulates the complexity of my being. And so, I ask, where are we truly from?
Our fixation on surface-level attributes like place of origin or appearance often overshadows the more profound aspects of our identities. While these factors may have some bearing on our experiences, they are vastly outweighed by elements such as our character, values, growth, and future aspirations.
Emphasizing who we are, how we live and love, as well as our present and future trajectories, encourages a deeper understanding of ourselves and others. By acknowledging the complexity of our identities, we foster empathy and appreciation for diverse experiences, ultimately recognizing that our origin point is but one small piece of the puzzle that shapes our lives.
I’m reminded of Chelsea Effect’s “Stardust,” https://youtu.be/dKMxhVle6dc, which echoes the question: where are we, and from where did we come? We are stardust, the cosmic remnants of a boundless universe, living for a future that offers hope and solace. Guided by love, we traverse the vast expanse, seeking to ease the pain and struggles of our shared human experience.
In the end, it is this journey — the winding road, the rich tapestry of our past, and the ever-expanding universe that cradles us — that serves as our true home. Perhaps, then, the essence of “where we are” is not a fixed point in space or time, but rather a perpetual state of becoming, of growth, and of love.
#Expat #LivingAbroad #migraine
2024.06.10 03:17 PonnieYT Ponnie
 | Ponnie's Info: Ponnie is a Kedom, a powerful being (who is Genderless, yes she has no girl stuff or boy stuff, but she makes it look like she's a girl and she goes by she/her). Ponnie has only one weakness that is if she were to be stabbed in the middle of the eye, she'd die, but if she has any kid, her powers would pass onto them (her parent's powers are her powers but alters a little bit after 2 generations of Kedoms having kids). Ponnie stays in her camera/bedroom so that she doesn't have a mental breakdown and if she does come out it's for a video or something urgent. Ponnie will hold a grudge against whoever tries to take her life. She has been alive for 4.5 million years, she's been through a lot. She's seen the greediest president in history, she was used by him, she's helped George Washington through war and so on, she's done so many things to keep everything alive and well. Anyone or even if she touches someone they will be healed and refreshed like they had a good nap or night. She is 2 ft tall, she has wings and a tail, she has a halo but you can't see it with the naked eye. She doesn't like to fight, so she didn't fight alongside ghost in the war (can't remember the name of the war). If she does fight, she will be comsumed by rage and the taste of war, that halo will fall and become horns. Her fur is softer than anything in the glaxay/universe/world. Her parents (who are unamed for now) gave their lives to allow her to live, but her birthday is on Earthday. Her parents created the world and the universe with it's planets. But the life before she was born was like how in the bible basically "Let there be light" but it was dark and whatever. She would be in her 20's in human years right now. She made it where only she can have kids with a Jekom or a Kedom (but she's the only one of her species and so is shad) so no human, no mammal, no anything execpt for a Kedom and a Jekom can have a child with Ponnie. And she's the heart of the universe, she has 4 arms and 4 wings, but she hides both of them, she can't be seen or heard on cameras. She has no lungs. She also has bunny legs and feet. Ponnie = Creation submitted by PonnieYT to zukionnaadventures [link] [comments] |
2024.06.10 03:13 babyloniangardens Tower of Fantasy Survey Feedback
Tower of Fantasy is having a Survey rn, and at the end of it they allow you to send Feedback & Suggestions (which I feel like is the first time I've seen them ask this?!)
So here is what I sent in; maybe it will inspire other people to send similar Suggestions, so we can continue to make TOF better and better! :D
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I wasn't able to fit all of these Suggestions in the Feedback Box (and I have even more Suggestions beyond these starter ~25), so feel free to condense !
~
Also be sure to check out: https://www.reddit.com/TowerofFantasy/comments/1d9lppv/tof_ver_40_survey_potential_feedback_suggestions/ by u/KyUisuki as well! They left a lot of great suggestions as well!! :D
Let's do our best to send some great and useful Feedback, to keep making TOF better! :D
submitted by babyloniangardens to TowerofFantasy [link] [comments]
So here is what I sent in; maybe it will inspire other people to send similar Suggestions, so we can continue to make TOF better and better! :D
~
- Buff Older Weapons (they should be like only 5--20% worse than the Newest at A0); maybe Buff Flame Weapons whenever a New Flame Character is Released, and Frost Weapons when a New Frost Character is Released & etc etc. I don't mind the Newest Character being the strongest of the Element, but they really shouldn't be THAT much stronger; it limits team possibilities and makes the meta so boring :/
- Overhaul the UI, it's so confusing and outdated and clunky and hard to navigate
- More Male Characters please!!!!!! Fu Li, Rong Jin, Wen Xi, Neo, Klema, Kanro, Archon Elric!
- Add PVP Crew wars. n addition, it would be cool to see a System where Guilds can control 'Regions', like in New World and then can enact certain policies on the Territories they control like in other MMOs
- Make the Story better--the 4.0 Story is really good so far but I want it to be Genshin / Star Rail level. Each part of Genshin’s story is like 3-4 Hours long, while TOF’s is much much shorter. It would be nice for TOF’s story to be longer and so it can have a greater level of depth and focus, like Genshin. I also hope Nan Yin comes back & the Greyspace are connected to the Omnium Plague somehow, because right now it feels like the Greyspace is SO disconnected to the Omnium Plague MetaNarrative; are the Greyspace Entities just Humans that were transformed by Omnium Radiation?
- More Character Story Quests
- More Gear + Matrix Resources. It is really hard to catch up to Veteran Players who have a huge amount of resources if you are a New Player.
- Add a New Gear Piece: Converts a % of one Elemental Attack to another Elemental Attack (EXAMPLE: Converts 25% of Frost Attack & adds it to your Volt Attack or Convert 50% of Flame Attack into Frost Attack). This would great, since now you don't need to completely change your Gear when you run a New Team since as long as you have that Gear Piece (with good Substats of coursE), you will be good to go! And this will help allow New Team Compositions & Diversity, creating more Multi Element/Rainbow Teams and would be really fun and good for the Meta! :)
- More Tank / Benediction Characters; & Buff Tank & Benediction Resonance!!!
- Add More Game Modes + Better Rewards & More Focus on them. I love playing Break from Destiny & Apex League but they feel very outdated; they should updated. Break from Destiny should ALL the weapons---and should have a smaller map size so the game will be more combat focused and intense. And Apex League should give Players access to ALL Weapons, not just certain ‘Free’ Weapons. And there should be better rewards from them, more cosmetics and more DC. This will encourage people to play them more. I would also love a Simulated Universe in Tower of Fantasy (like they have in Star Rail!), a roguelike dungeon with fights, puzzles, lore and great rewards. Emphasis on the lore!
- More Skins / Outfits from Bosses. I wish we could get actual full outfits from fighting World Bosses. Having an Accessory from the World Boss is nice, but an actual Outfit would be so much better and cooler and so much more Worth it! I love all the Outfit designs and I wanna see more!
- Add More Apartments for Players, like the one in Mirroria. I LOVE our Apartment in Mirroria---and I wish we could get more super cool Apartments in Aesperia, Innars, Domain 9, etc. I wish you could also easily teleport to / from your apartment.
- Maybe add Elemental Reactions, even if it's only through Certain New Characters via Resonances & Skills. Unlike Genshin, which has the same static Reactions, TOF can introduce Reactions via Characters which can allow for SO much more diversity and flexibility and variety. You can have 2 Different Frost Characters that both give a Reaction to Frost & Volt DMG, while working in very different ways and having very different teammates. It could actually end up being MUCH better than Genshin's Reaction System--in Genshin, there is only a Limited number of Reactions. But in TOF, there can be as many Reactions as there are Characters!
- Add a Friendship System, where we can Talk & Bond to the Characters like Ji Yu, Lin, Zeke, etc in the Overworld, like this: https://www.reddit.com/Genshin_Impact/comments/lr78w1/idea_the_friendship_system_and_how_to_include/
- The Story Skip Feature should be better Optimized; I feel like people are always running into trouble, completely and accidentally skipping ahead of the story and they don't know how to backtrack / what they're doing
- Let our Avatar wear Simulacra Outfits (I want to wear Tian Lang's Outfit!)
- More Teleport Waypoints; getting around the 4.0 Map is hard
- Better A3 Skins + More Gachapon Skins; would love for there to be Gachapon Skins for every Character (I want a Gachapon Skin for Fei Se & Yulan! )
- In World of Warcraft, Players are part of 2 Different Opposing Factions and these Factions have large scale PVP Wars and Events in the Overworld. It would be SO Cool to have TOF have something like that; Maybe Players can join either Hykros or the Heirs of Aida (or the Greyspace or Zhen Gong or the Norns Federation) and can fight against one another in certain areas / during certain events / on certain Channels for the chance of Rewards. It could be explained as some sort of Hykros training exercise, if you need an explanation. It would really add a lot of Life to the game and bring people together :)
- Joint Operations should be streamlined and the cutscenes should be removed; the Nan Yin Joint Operation is perfect and I wish all JO's were as simple and straightforward as that one. Also, it would be good to Equalize Joint Operations even more, so that Low Level Players can match up and easily play with Higher Level Players, while getting different Levels of Rewards.
- The Aesperia + Artificial Island Map should be completely redone. As the first area of the game, it is VERY lacking, especially in comparison to the newest and most beautiful areas of Domain 9.
- It would be cool to have more dynamic Weather Events; I feel like it never rains in TOF?
- I wish Molinia was an Actual Playable Character. Also, I would love to see Yun from Zhen Gong become Playable, as well Payable Characters that are similar to Sparrowtail and Longxiang---they have such cool and beautiful designs!
- I wish that the Aesperia Characters got New Designs, since they look so basic and simple compared to the newer characters. I don't mind the characters designs being sexy, as long as they are wearing something cool and beautiful and unique!
- It would be awesome to have more Rainbow / Multi Elemental Resonance Effects, to encourage more Diverse & Varied Team possibilities
- Add More Playable Characters----1 New Character Every 3 Weeks, like Genshin/Star Rail. Having only 1 New Character every Month is kinda slow. Having a New Character every 3 Weeks at least makes things more Exciting and keeps the excitement and interest in the game going on strong with all the New Characters :D
~
I wasn't able to fit all of these Suggestions in the Feedback Box (and I have even more Suggestions beyond these starter ~25), so feel free to condense !
~
Also be sure to check out: https://www.reddit.com/TowerofFantasy/comments/1d9lppv/tof_ver_40_survey_potential_feedback_suggestions/ by u/KyUisuki as well! They left a lot of great suggestions as well!! :D
Let's do our best to send some great and useful Feedback, to keep making TOF better! :D
2024.06.10 03:02 maxdefolsch [Monogatari Short Stories] Hitagi Throwing
Hi ! This is one more post of a series whose aim is to share the Monogatari short stories that hadn't been translated into English yet. Except that one already was. Whatever.
Short stories masterpost here, updated regularly to show our progress with the translations.
Today is a re-translation of Hitagi Throwing (by Tigoris), a rather long short story, published in the Heroine Book #5: Senjougahara Hitagi. This one is among the most interesting short stories : it is about Suruga remembering her first meeting with Hitagi at the age of 12.
Once again, the previous translation was very old, and I wanted to make sure we had a better version for the short stories book.
As someone who has been devoted to Senjougahara Hitagi for some years now, it feels like a betrayal of some kind to say something like this, but when I first met her as a first-year in middle school, the impression that I had of her was not exactly a positive one.
To be more specific, one might say that it was a negative impression.
I thought, “Just who is this girl?”
If it’s okay to be a bit more informal, then my more exact thought was, “This girl’s bad news.” Now, I’d like you to cut me some slack here, because at the time I had only just graduated from elementary school, and I was, in appearance, personality, ability, and intellect, a brat of a meager 12 years of age.
However, I will also firmly say that Senjougahara-senpai was not entirely without fault of her own; in fact, let me emphasize that she was not without fault. After all, when she—the track-and-field club’s very own ace—came storming into the gym during basketball practice, it seemed like the start of a raid, and all of the basketball club members flinched. And she didn’t come alone. She brought along a large group of her followers, which was not limited to other track-and-field members and included students from not only the second- and third-year students, but there were even some first-year students mixed in. To an observer, it looked as if a feudal lord had descended upon the gymnasium along with his full retinue of retainers.
To put it another way, it’s like when Mitchi showed up in Slam Dunk.
She was smiling softly and had a gentle manner, but that only made her all the more intimidating, in part because her cronies had an unusual air about them.
“You’re Kanbaru-san, then? I’ve heard rumors that you’re quick on your feet—if it’s no bother, may I observe you?”
What is she, a noble lady?
That was what I wanted to say, but back then Senjougahara-senpai was like that—she was like a character taken straight from a shoujo novel.
It put a shiver down my spine to discover that this person really existed. And allow me to clarify that when I say “a shiver down my spine,” I don’t mean it in the good way—looking back on it now, it might be more accurate to say that I recoiled with shock.
I had an instinctive feeling that her request was strange.
And so was she.
To put it simply, that just about sums up my first impression of her—of course, Senjougahara-senpai was famous, so after I had enrolled in the school and even before I joined the basketball club, I had already heard her name a number of times.
She and Hanekawa-senpai were the two poster children for my school—to the point that we were told (by a teacher during the entrance ceremony) not to cross “those two” if we wanted to make it in the school (at the time I didn’t know which two the teacher was talking about, but, in retrospect, the warning was largely accurate).
However, as you know, I was a twelve-year-old who had, for various reasons, a rather extraordinary obsession with running fast—but because of those same reasons, I was unable to join the track and field club. Nevertheless, I took an interest in the ace of the track and field club, Senjougahara-senpai, and went to observe her running during that April, even though I had not become a trial member of the team.
I didn’t realize that it was possible for a person to run so beautifully.
It took my breath away.
My running form was not something that I had received coaching for—even now, I have not received any education in sprinting, so my running form is self-taught. Being self-taught is not a bad thing; it’s a perfectly acceptable running style, and I never had a complex about how I ran, but when I saw Senjougahara-senpai run on that day, the beauty of her form stood in stark contrast to the frantic flailing of my own form.
She displayed the final form of human running.
She was the idealized runner.
But I could not attempt to copy her—she was not like me, and I was not like her.
I was painfully aware of our differences.
I also remember thinking that the track uniforms were erotic, but that’s neither here nor there. I’d had no intention of joining the track club, as I said before, but after seeing her run, whatever lingering regrets I had were gone.
It blew me away.
To look at it another way, it was seeing Senjougahara-senpai run that day that made me into the basketball player that I am today—it was easy to forget what had caused me to become so passionately devoted to basketball, but I’ll save that discussion of “you never know what event will become a turning point in your life” for another time.
You could say that I’m not really a shy person, but when it came to Senjougahara-senpai, I made it my policy to actively avoid coming in contact with her, so for her to seek me out on her own was so surprising as to strike me dumb. Add in her whole “storybook princess” demeanor, and I turned into a stuttering, stumbling idiot—so, suffice to say, on the day that Senjougahara-senpai (and her retinue) observed my basketball practice, I was not exactly doing my best.
“May we speak, Kanbaru-san?”
After practice, Senjougahara-senpai approached me—and while I didn’t exactly feel enticed by her invitation, my heart skipped a beat regardless.
Looking at her up close, it was hard to believe that a girl with such mature features was only a year older than myself.
“You’re as fast as the rumors say—so how about it? Do you have any interest in transferring to the track club? Why not spend your youth in friendly competition with me?”
… She was an impressively bold headhunter. By the way, the basketball team captain (a third-year) was also there at the time as Senjougahara-senpai (a second-year) tried to steal me from the team, but the captain acted as if it were none of her business and didn’t interrupt.
Just what were you hoping to find by examining the ball that closely, captain?
You can turn it over as many times as you want; you’re not going to find a hole.
I was disappointed in the team captain, but setting that aside, I was happy to receive the invitation—no matter the situation or the way that it was said, I would always be happy to receive praise for the legs that I was so proud of. It made my heart dance to be acknowledged.
That simplicity still has not changed.
I’ve always been an idiot when it came to this.
That said, it still didn’t mean that I was so stupid as to blindly be scouted just because someone praised me. I’m an idiot who can think. So I politely, but firmly, declined her invitation while trying to hint that she had been a bit rude, but without being so blatant as to damage her reputation or be rude myself.
“Better luck next time.”
Huh?
What is this memory?
Who is this cheeky little brat? Oh, it’s me.
Was I at the age where I reacted to authority with petulance? Or was I afraid that if I didn’t reject her firmly, she would wear away my resolve and convince me to join the track club? Either way, maybe that wasn’t the exact phrasing that I used (I would like to think so), but, even if so, I still rejected Senjougahara-senpai in a rude way.
“Oh my. You’re quite spirited, aren’t you? I’m becoming even more interested in you.”
Senjougahara-senpai replied in a cool and composed tone (looking back on it now, I can’t help but think, “Who the hell are you?”), but the retinue of club members assembled behind her looked to be trying to use their eyes to stab me through.
Oh man, I’m so dead.
The crowd of cronies looked ready to get physical with me, but Senjougahara-senpai smiled and held a hand out to stop them without looking, then said, “It’s okay. I like nothing more than to tame cute girls like this.”
Seriously, who the hell are you?
Perhaps my imagination is adding to the memory a bit, so maybe my memory of middle school second-year Senjougahara-senpai isn’t perfectly accurate, but the big picture of us having a stressful, if brief, interview as our first contact is certainly true.
“Have a pleasant day.”
And with those parting words, Senjougahara-senpai left.
Even in the face of my unfavorable and downright rude response, she remained elegant. She carried on that noble air from start to finish, and while those events did hurt me, I thought that it was for the best.
Even if I had to be rude to do it, it would be better to firmly reject her than to reply so mildly that she continued to hold out hopes for me—of course, having rejected one of the famous girls of the school, I suspected that I may have set myself up to have a difficult life as a middle school girl, but, well, even if I had tried to stay in her good favor, I would likely have bungled that too.
Come if you’re going to come; I’ll take you on.
That was the stance that I mentally took, and I was not disappointed.
But the one who came to find me in the gym the next day was not one or more of Senjougahara-senpai’s retinue come to put me in my place, but instead it was Senjougahara-senpai herself—without anyone else, just herself.
“Hello everyone. We are blessed with lovely weather today, aren’t we? May I observe your practice once again?”
The older girls in the basketball club began to murmur to each other—it sounded different from the reaction from the previous day, and I later learned that it was because Senjougahara-senpai very rarely went anywhere unaccompanied.
She didn’t choose to have people follow her around, but instead, it was more that she was the kind of person that people naturally gravitated to and followed—which meant that the only way she could arrive in the gym without at least a small group of followers was for her to have told them to leave her alone.
Why?
I told her “better luck next time,” so did she actually think that she should try again and hopefully have better luck on the second attempt? And she decided that coming on her own might be the factor that would convince me?
Several of the basketball team members volunteered to make Senjougahara-senpai more comfortable, and so she sat off to the side in a comfortable chair, partaking in the snacks she had been provided while watching us practice with a smile. Or rather, she watched me practice. I couldn’t read anything from her body language.
I had been welcomed into the basketball club with a good bit of fanfare because of my speed, so it wasn’t as if I had never been observed while playing before, but there was something about being watched so intensely that made it difficult to play. On that day, I missed an unusually high percentage of shots and even made a lot of simple mistakes with dribbling—the only thing that kept me from outright failing was the speed of my legs. But seeing as Senjougahara-senpai was there to see how fast I could be, she must have been happy with the display.
“Kanbaru-san. Have you reconsidered your response to my invitation?”
“No, I’m not having second thoughts…”
I didn’t go so far as to say I hadn’t thought about it at all.
It was difficult to be rude to someone who showed up two days in a row to express interest in you.
“Hm. Then how about this? You and I shall have a 100-meter race, and if I win, then you will transfer into the track club. Don’t you think it’s a wonderful idea?”
“… So if you lose, then you’ll join the basketball team?”
“Eh?”
She tilted her head in confusion.
No, don’t you “Eh?” me.
There’s no way that you don’t understand.
“No, I will not be doing that.”
She firmly rejected the idea.
“But it would mean that I will no longer come to the gym every day without fail.”
“You intend to come every day…”
I told her no.
I’m pretty sure that I tried to be less rude than the day before.
“Oh.”
Senjougahara-senpai seemed genuinely surprised by the response.
“How strange. Was I wrong about you?”
“About what?”
“Someone like you would be unable to back down when presented with a challenge.”
“…”
That assumption of hers—was correct.
But, even if that were the case, I couldn’t allow myself to race against anyone. Of course, if I accepted the challenge and won, then the whole issue would be settled. But if I were to lose… I didn’t want to think about what would happen.
Also, there was the question of whether Senjougahara-senpai would actually back down if I won against her in the race—so it would be all risk with no reward.
“No thanks.”
She simply said that she understood.
I fell silent, and Senjougahara-senpai left—but before she departed the gym, she cleaned up the snack wrappers and put away the chair that she had used while observing our practice. She did seem to have had a good upbringing.
I was happy if she understood that she wouldn’t be able to convince me to join her club, but, thinking about it more, Senjougahara-senpai hadn’t said what it was that she understood. The true meaning of her words was a mystery.
And the next day, that mystery was solved.
For the third time, Senjougahara Hitagi arrived in the gymnasium during the basketball team’s practice. But unlike the first and second visits, she was not wearing her school uniform, nor was she wearing the erotic—that is to say, stylish—uniform of the track club, but she instead wore one of our own basketball uniforms.
Her back bore the number 4.
Well, actually, the number was also on the front of her jersey, so I don’t suppose I needed to specify that it was on her back. Anyway, the point is that the #4 jersey belonged to the captain.
I looked back to confirm and found that, sure enough, our team captain was in the back of the gym wearing her P.E. uniform and polishing a basketball. I just polished that one. Why are you polishing it again? Just how shiny do you want that ball to be? It’ll slip out of our hands if you give it any more polish than that.
Apparently our team captain rented out her uniform, what you might call the symbol that our team followed, to Senjougahara-senpai when she asked for it. You could say that this was the instant when all of our captain’s authority vanished.
Once this whole thing was settled, there would be a coup d'état.
“If you will not compete with me on the track, then I will come to your field and compete with this basketball. Does this work for you?”
“Uh… huh…?”
To be entirely honest, I was mostly just feeling uneasy at that point in time, and I definitely didn’t want to accept her challenge. I didn’t want to, but what choice did I have when she had shown up a third time to try and convince me to join the track club?
She did, technically, ask for the “captain’s” permission before doing this (it pains me that I had to put quotation marks around captain, but that reflects the sad state of affairs at the time), and so half of the gym’s court was reserved for myself and Senjougahara-senpai to have our competition.
Our showdown.
Bout. Duel.
What actually followed was not as dramatic as the words used to describe it might suggest. It wasn’t instantly resolved, and there was definitely some tension during the competition, but it’s a bit difficult to have much drama when the competition is just a free throw contest. Our “captain,” or, I guess I should say, our captain, insisted that we have a competition where there was no risk of us coming into physical contact with each other. I was a new member on the team, and while Senjougahara-senpai was a veteran athlete, she was not a basketball player. So, to be on the safe side, it was decided that we could not have a true 1-on-1 match on the off chance that either of us should get injured.
Whoever made ten baskets first would win.
There were no handicaps, and the competition proceeded in a simple and straightforward manner—we took turns taking our shots, and after thirty minutes, it was all over.
The final score was ten to nine.
It was a close match—which Senjougahara-senpai won.
We both missed a number of shots, but we remained neck-and-neck throughout, until, in the end, Senjougahara-senpai managed to get the final basket.
“It was a good competition.” Senjougahara spoke, brushing aside her long, elegant hair. “Kanbaru-san, it seems that you are more suited for the basketball court than the track—I hope that you will continue to give it your best.”
She turned on her heel and left the gym.
I had already been thinking of some way to avoid taking part in races (such as by focusing on long jump or high jump) and had resigned myself to having to join the track club, so when Senjougahara-senpai simply departed, I was left dumbfounded for a moment.
But it was only a moment.
I hurriedly chased after Senjougahara-senpai—and I full-out sprinted, so I quickly caught up to her elegant walk, and I grabbed her wrist.
Grabbing someone by the wrist is a forceful way to stop them. One might say that it’s wild and violent, which is to say, it’s very me. Senjougahara-senpai turned to look at me with obvious suspicion, and perhaps she was letting her real self show through because her gaze was sharp.
Under that sharp gaze, I asked, “Was this your goal from the start?”
It was almost more like an interrogation than a simple question, which was also very like me.
“You wanted to compete with me, beat me, and then drop me?”
“… What do you mean? For what reason would I do such a thing?”
Senjougahara-senpai asked back seriously without any hint of evasion.
“To protect me,” I replied.
The outline was simple enough—there was no mistake that the original reason that she had come to the gym was to scout me for the track team after hearing rumors about me.
And she would surely have anticipated that there was a chance that I would say no to her invitation.
But what she did not anticipate was the super strength of my refusal—that is, my more-than-necessary, full-on rejection. And I had rejected her so rudely in front of all of her followers.
Senjougahara-senpai managed to keep things peaceful at that time, but, as they say, bad news travels fast. A newly enrolled first-year who dared to bare her teeth at the elegant and skilled Senjougahara Hitagi would be a rumor that reached every ear in record time, and when it did… my school life would have a very bleak outlook.
I had planned—which is to say, foolishly assumed—to deal with that problem when the time came, but Senjougahara-senpai had a way to prevent it from happening in the first place.
She was able to rein in the people who followed her directly, but she had no way of anticipating what others might do upon hearing the rumor—people are good on their own, but there’s plenty of bad to be found in a group. That was why Senjougahara-senpai needed to get ahead of the rumors and put an end to the story—and in a way that would let her be in the winning position. But it wasn’t just about her winning—she needed to win in such a way that it would be a close battle so as not to tarnish the reputation of the first-year rising star of the basketball team.
And so we had a free-throw contest.
… Thinking about it more, it had been strange for the team captain to just go along with whatever Senjougahara-senpai said, but then also be the one to decide on the rules for the contest in the way that she did… In other words, by having us take turns to do our free throws, they would be able to control the scores, and the two of them must have arranged the entire circumstance of our contest from the start, back whenever Senjougahara-senpai had gone to ask to borrow the uniform (which means I was completely wrong about the captain).
If I had accepted her challenge on the second day—which would have been the best for Senjougahara-senpai—she could have controlled her speed so as to put on a show of it being a close race between the two of us.
She must have a lot of confidence to have been so sure that she could “barely win in a neck-and-neck competition” in not only running on the track but also a free throw competition. That she was able to pull it off so cleanly, however, meant that I could not fault her for that confidence.
By clearly and definitively beating me and then, just as clearly and definitively, acknowledging my ability in a public space—which is to say, giving me permission to continue playing basketball—she would knock down the perceived conflict and defuse the situation with her fans who might have wished me harm.
“… Supposing that I had been thinking along those lines…”
Senjougahara-senpai spoke now in a flat, sober voice that was entirely unlike how she had been talking up until that point.
“Wouldn’t you be throwing away my consideration by confronting me and voicing your thoughts to me? Are you not undoing what I’ve just done?”
She was trying to tell me that I should follow her lead and subtly accept what she did for me. I let go of her wrist.
And then I took hold of her hand instead.
I did so gently.
I copied Senjougahara-senpai’s mannerisms of softness and kindness—she no doubt thought that I was trying to have a friendly parting handshake to show that there were no hard feelings, but instead I did something that was completely unexpected and kissed the back of her hand.
“W… What?!”
She practically screamed the word with surprise, and I straightened.
“No, I don’t think so.” I declared. “Because I have decided to accept your kindness and go far beyond what is necessary to repay it—Senjougahara-senpai.”
From now on, I am your dog.
That’s what I told her.
Senjougahara Hitagi and Kanbaru Suruga. The pair that would go on to be called the Valhalla Duo began here.
“Are you an idiot?”
I still think that those words and the cold smile that came with them were probably Senjougahara-senpai’s genuine, impartial reaction to what I had said.
As usual, thank you spr-o-ckt for contributing to this commission.
A cute little story. I wish we could see more of those that actually feels important rather than yet another pun-filled discussion about a random topic.
See you next time for another story !
submitted by maxdefolsch to araragi [link] [comments]
Short stories masterpost here, updated regularly to show our progress with the translations.
Today is a re-translation of Hitagi Throwing (by Tigoris), a rather long short story, published in the Heroine Book #5: Senjougahara Hitagi. This one is among the most interesting short stories : it is about Suruga remembering her first meeting with Hitagi at the age of 12.
Once again, the previous translation was very old, and I wanted to make sure we had a better version for the short stories book.
As someone who has been devoted to Senjougahara Hitagi for some years now, it feels like a betrayal of some kind to say something like this, but when I first met her as a first-year in middle school, the impression that I had of her was not exactly a positive one.
To be more specific, one might say that it was a negative impression.
I thought, “Just who is this girl?”
If it’s okay to be a bit more informal, then my more exact thought was, “This girl’s bad news.” Now, I’d like you to cut me some slack here, because at the time I had only just graduated from elementary school, and I was, in appearance, personality, ability, and intellect, a brat of a meager 12 years of age.
However, I will also firmly say that Senjougahara-senpai was not entirely without fault of her own; in fact, let me emphasize that she was not without fault. After all, when she—the track-and-field club’s very own ace—came storming into the gym during basketball practice, it seemed like the start of a raid, and all of the basketball club members flinched. And she didn’t come alone. She brought along a large group of her followers, which was not limited to other track-and-field members and included students from not only the second- and third-year students, but there were even some first-year students mixed in. To an observer, it looked as if a feudal lord had descended upon the gymnasium along with his full retinue of retainers.
To put it another way, it’s like when Mitchi showed up in Slam Dunk.
She was smiling softly and had a gentle manner, but that only made her all the more intimidating, in part because her cronies had an unusual air about them.
“You’re Kanbaru-san, then? I’ve heard rumors that you’re quick on your feet—if it’s no bother, may I observe you?”
What is she, a noble lady?
That was what I wanted to say, but back then Senjougahara-senpai was like that—she was like a character taken straight from a shoujo novel.
It put a shiver down my spine to discover that this person really existed. And allow me to clarify that when I say “a shiver down my spine,” I don’t mean it in the good way—looking back on it now, it might be more accurate to say that I recoiled with shock.
I had an instinctive feeling that her request was strange.
And so was she.
To put it simply, that just about sums up my first impression of her—of course, Senjougahara-senpai was famous, so after I had enrolled in the school and even before I joined the basketball club, I had already heard her name a number of times.
She and Hanekawa-senpai were the two poster children for my school—to the point that we were told (by a teacher during the entrance ceremony) not to cross “those two” if we wanted to make it in the school (at the time I didn’t know which two the teacher was talking about, but, in retrospect, the warning was largely accurate).
However, as you know, I was a twelve-year-old who had, for various reasons, a rather extraordinary obsession with running fast—but because of those same reasons, I was unable to join the track and field club. Nevertheless, I took an interest in the ace of the track and field club, Senjougahara-senpai, and went to observe her running during that April, even though I had not become a trial member of the team.
I didn’t realize that it was possible for a person to run so beautifully.
It took my breath away.
My running form was not something that I had received coaching for—even now, I have not received any education in sprinting, so my running form is self-taught. Being self-taught is not a bad thing; it’s a perfectly acceptable running style, and I never had a complex about how I ran, but when I saw Senjougahara-senpai run on that day, the beauty of her form stood in stark contrast to the frantic flailing of my own form.
She displayed the final form of human running.
She was the idealized runner.
But I could not attempt to copy her—she was not like me, and I was not like her.
I was painfully aware of our differences.
I also remember thinking that the track uniforms were erotic, but that’s neither here nor there. I’d had no intention of joining the track club, as I said before, but after seeing her run, whatever lingering regrets I had were gone.
It blew me away.
To look at it another way, it was seeing Senjougahara-senpai run that day that made me into the basketball player that I am today—it was easy to forget what had caused me to become so passionately devoted to basketball, but I’ll save that discussion of “you never know what event will become a turning point in your life” for another time.
You could say that I’m not really a shy person, but when it came to Senjougahara-senpai, I made it my policy to actively avoid coming in contact with her, so for her to seek me out on her own was so surprising as to strike me dumb. Add in her whole “storybook princess” demeanor, and I turned into a stuttering, stumbling idiot—so, suffice to say, on the day that Senjougahara-senpai (and her retinue) observed my basketball practice, I was not exactly doing my best.
“May we speak, Kanbaru-san?”
After practice, Senjougahara-senpai approached me—and while I didn’t exactly feel enticed by her invitation, my heart skipped a beat regardless.
Looking at her up close, it was hard to believe that a girl with such mature features was only a year older than myself.
“You’re as fast as the rumors say—so how about it? Do you have any interest in transferring to the track club? Why not spend your youth in friendly competition with me?”
… She was an impressively bold headhunter. By the way, the basketball team captain (a third-year) was also there at the time as Senjougahara-senpai (a second-year) tried to steal me from the team, but the captain acted as if it were none of her business and didn’t interrupt.
Just what were you hoping to find by examining the ball that closely, captain?
You can turn it over as many times as you want; you’re not going to find a hole.
I was disappointed in the team captain, but setting that aside, I was happy to receive the invitation—no matter the situation or the way that it was said, I would always be happy to receive praise for the legs that I was so proud of. It made my heart dance to be acknowledged.
That simplicity still has not changed.
I’ve always been an idiot when it came to this.
That said, it still didn’t mean that I was so stupid as to blindly be scouted just because someone praised me. I’m an idiot who can think. So I politely, but firmly, declined her invitation while trying to hint that she had been a bit rude, but without being so blatant as to damage her reputation or be rude myself.
“Better luck next time.”
Huh?
What is this memory?
Who is this cheeky little brat? Oh, it’s me.
Was I at the age where I reacted to authority with petulance? Or was I afraid that if I didn’t reject her firmly, she would wear away my resolve and convince me to join the track club? Either way, maybe that wasn’t the exact phrasing that I used (I would like to think so), but, even if so, I still rejected Senjougahara-senpai in a rude way.
“Oh my. You’re quite spirited, aren’t you? I’m becoming even more interested in you.”
Senjougahara-senpai replied in a cool and composed tone (looking back on it now, I can’t help but think, “Who the hell are you?”), but the retinue of club members assembled behind her looked to be trying to use their eyes to stab me through.
Oh man, I’m so dead.
The crowd of cronies looked ready to get physical with me, but Senjougahara-senpai smiled and held a hand out to stop them without looking, then said, “It’s okay. I like nothing more than to tame cute girls like this.”
Seriously, who the hell are you?
Perhaps my imagination is adding to the memory a bit, so maybe my memory of middle school second-year Senjougahara-senpai isn’t perfectly accurate, but the big picture of us having a stressful, if brief, interview as our first contact is certainly true.
“Have a pleasant day.”
And with those parting words, Senjougahara-senpai left.
Even in the face of my unfavorable and downright rude response, she remained elegant. She carried on that noble air from start to finish, and while those events did hurt me, I thought that it was for the best.
Even if I had to be rude to do it, it would be better to firmly reject her than to reply so mildly that she continued to hold out hopes for me—of course, having rejected one of the famous girls of the school, I suspected that I may have set myself up to have a difficult life as a middle school girl, but, well, even if I had tried to stay in her good favor, I would likely have bungled that too.
Come if you’re going to come; I’ll take you on.
That was the stance that I mentally took, and I was not disappointed.
But the one who came to find me in the gym the next day was not one or more of Senjougahara-senpai’s retinue come to put me in my place, but instead it was Senjougahara-senpai herself—without anyone else, just herself.
“Hello everyone. We are blessed with lovely weather today, aren’t we? May I observe your practice once again?”
The older girls in the basketball club began to murmur to each other—it sounded different from the reaction from the previous day, and I later learned that it was because Senjougahara-senpai very rarely went anywhere unaccompanied.
She didn’t choose to have people follow her around, but instead, it was more that she was the kind of person that people naturally gravitated to and followed—which meant that the only way she could arrive in the gym without at least a small group of followers was for her to have told them to leave her alone.
Why?
I told her “better luck next time,” so did she actually think that she should try again and hopefully have better luck on the second attempt? And she decided that coming on her own might be the factor that would convince me?
Several of the basketball team members volunteered to make Senjougahara-senpai more comfortable, and so she sat off to the side in a comfortable chair, partaking in the snacks she had been provided while watching us practice with a smile. Or rather, she watched me practice. I couldn’t read anything from her body language.
I had been welcomed into the basketball club with a good bit of fanfare because of my speed, so it wasn’t as if I had never been observed while playing before, but there was something about being watched so intensely that made it difficult to play. On that day, I missed an unusually high percentage of shots and even made a lot of simple mistakes with dribbling—the only thing that kept me from outright failing was the speed of my legs. But seeing as Senjougahara-senpai was there to see how fast I could be, she must have been happy with the display.
“Kanbaru-san. Have you reconsidered your response to my invitation?”
“No, I’m not having second thoughts…”
I didn’t go so far as to say I hadn’t thought about it at all.
It was difficult to be rude to someone who showed up two days in a row to express interest in you.
“Hm. Then how about this? You and I shall have a 100-meter race, and if I win, then you will transfer into the track club. Don’t you think it’s a wonderful idea?”
“… So if you lose, then you’ll join the basketball team?”
“Eh?”
She tilted her head in confusion.
No, don’t you “Eh?” me.
There’s no way that you don’t understand.
“No, I will not be doing that.”
She firmly rejected the idea.
“But it would mean that I will no longer come to the gym every day without fail.”
“You intend to come every day…”
I told her no.
I’m pretty sure that I tried to be less rude than the day before.
“Oh.”
Senjougahara-senpai seemed genuinely surprised by the response.
“How strange. Was I wrong about you?”
“About what?”
“Someone like you would be unable to back down when presented with a challenge.”
“…”
That assumption of hers—was correct.
But, even if that were the case, I couldn’t allow myself to race against anyone. Of course, if I accepted the challenge and won, then the whole issue would be settled. But if I were to lose… I didn’t want to think about what would happen.
Also, there was the question of whether Senjougahara-senpai would actually back down if I won against her in the race—so it would be all risk with no reward.
“No thanks.”
She simply said that she understood.
I fell silent, and Senjougahara-senpai left—but before she departed the gym, she cleaned up the snack wrappers and put away the chair that she had used while observing our practice. She did seem to have had a good upbringing.
I was happy if she understood that she wouldn’t be able to convince me to join her club, but, thinking about it more, Senjougahara-senpai hadn’t said what it was that she understood. The true meaning of her words was a mystery.
And the next day, that mystery was solved.
For the third time, Senjougahara Hitagi arrived in the gymnasium during the basketball team’s practice. But unlike the first and second visits, she was not wearing her school uniform, nor was she wearing the erotic—that is to say, stylish—uniform of the track club, but she instead wore one of our own basketball uniforms.
Her back bore the number 4.
Well, actually, the number was also on the front of her jersey, so I don’t suppose I needed to specify that it was on her back. Anyway, the point is that the #4 jersey belonged to the captain.
I looked back to confirm and found that, sure enough, our team captain was in the back of the gym wearing her P.E. uniform and polishing a basketball. I just polished that one. Why are you polishing it again? Just how shiny do you want that ball to be? It’ll slip out of our hands if you give it any more polish than that.
Apparently our team captain rented out her uniform, what you might call the symbol that our team followed, to Senjougahara-senpai when she asked for it. You could say that this was the instant when all of our captain’s authority vanished.
Once this whole thing was settled, there would be a coup d'état.
“If you will not compete with me on the track, then I will come to your field and compete with this basketball. Does this work for you?”
“Uh… huh…?”
To be entirely honest, I was mostly just feeling uneasy at that point in time, and I definitely didn’t want to accept her challenge. I didn’t want to, but what choice did I have when she had shown up a third time to try and convince me to join the track club?
She did, technically, ask for the “captain’s” permission before doing this (it pains me that I had to put quotation marks around captain, but that reflects the sad state of affairs at the time), and so half of the gym’s court was reserved for myself and Senjougahara-senpai to have our competition.
Our showdown.
Bout. Duel.
What actually followed was not as dramatic as the words used to describe it might suggest. It wasn’t instantly resolved, and there was definitely some tension during the competition, but it’s a bit difficult to have much drama when the competition is just a free throw contest. Our “captain,” or, I guess I should say, our captain, insisted that we have a competition where there was no risk of us coming into physical contact with each other. I was a new member on the team, and while Senjougahara-senpai was a veteran athlete, she was not a basketball player. So, to be on the safe side, it was decided that we could not have a true 1-on-1 match on the off chance that either of us should get injured.
Whoever made ten baskets first would win.
There were no handicaps, and the competition proceeded in a simple and straightforward manner—we took turns taking our shots, and after thirty minutes, it was all over.
The final score was ten to nine.
It was a close match—which Senjougahara-senpai won.
We both missed a number of shots, but we remained neck-and-neck throughout, until, in the end, Senjougahara-senpai managed to get the final basket.
“It was a good competition.” Senjougahara spoke, brushing aside her long, elegant hair. “Kanbaru-san, it seems that you are more suited for the basketball court than the track—I hope that you will continue to give it your best.”
She turned on her heel and left the gym.
I had already been thinking of some way to avoid taking part in races (such as by focusing on long jump or high jump) and had resigned myself to having to join the track club, so when Senjougahara-senpai simply departed, I was left dumbfounded for a moment.
But it was only a moment.
I hurriedly chased after Senjougahara-senpai—and I full-out sprinted, so I quickly caught up to her elegant walk, and I grabbed her wrist.
Grabbing someone by the wrist is a forceful way to stop them. One might say that it’s wild and violent, which is to say, it’s very me. Senjougahara-senpai turned to look at me with obvious suspicion, and perhaps she was letting her real self show through because her gaze was sharp.
Under that sharp gaze, I asked, “Was this your goal from the start?”
It was almost more like an interrogation than a simple question, which was also very like me.
“You wanted to compete with me, beat me, and then drop me?”
“… What do you mean? For what reason would I do such a thing?”
Senjougahara-senpai asked back seriously without any hint of evasion.
“To protect me,” I replied.
The outline was simple enough—there was no mistake that the original reason that she had come to the gym was to scout me for the track team after hearing rumors about me.
And she would surely have anticipated that there was a chance that I would say no to her invitation.
But what she did not anticipate was the super strength of my refusal—that is, my more-than-necessary, full-on rejection. And I had rejected her so rudely in front of all of her followers.
Senjougahara-senpai managed to keep things peaceful at that time, but, as they say, bad news travels fast. A newly enrolled first-year who dared to bare her teeth at the elegant and skilled Senjougahara Hitagi would be a rumor that reached every ear in record time, and when it did… my school life would have a very bleak outlook.
I had planned—which is to say, foolishly assumed—to deal with that problem when the time came, but Senjougahara-senpai had a way to prevent it from happening in the first place.
She was able to rein in the people who followed her directly, but she had no way of anticipating what others might do upon hearing the rumor—people are good on their own, but there’s plenty of bad to be found in a group. That was why Senjougahara-senpai needed to get ahead of the rumors and put an end to the story—and in a way that would let her be in the winning position. But it wasn’t just about her winning—she needed to win in such a way that it would be a close battle so as not to tarnish the reputation of the first-year rising star of the basketball team.
And so we had a free-throw contest.
… Thinking about it more, it had been strange for the team captain to just go along with whatever Senjougahara-senpai said, but then also be the one to decide on the rules for the contest in the way that she did… In other words, by having us take turns to do our free throws, they would be able to control the scores, and the two of them must have arranged the entire circumstance of our contest from the start, back whenever Senjougahara-senpai had gone to ask to borrow the uniform (which means I was completely wrong about the captain).
If I had accepted her challenge on the second day—which would have been the best for Senjougahara-senpai—she could have controlled her speed so as to put on a show of it being a close race between the two of us.
She must have a lot of confidence to have been so sure that she could “barely win in a neck-and-neck competition” in not only running on the track but also a free throw competition. That she was able to pull it off so cleanly, however, meant that I could not fault her for that confidence.
By clearly and definitively beating me and then, just as clearly and definitively, acknowledging my ability in a public space—which is to say, giving me permission to continue playing basketball—she would knock down the perceived conflict and defuse the situation with her fans who might have wished me harm.
“… Supposing that I had been thinking along those lines…”
Senjougahara-senpai spoke now in a flat, sober voice that was entirely unlike how she had been talking up until that point.
“Wouldn’t you be throwing away my consideration by confronting me and voicing your thoughts to me? Are you not undoing what I’ve just done?”
She was trying to tell me that I should follow her lead and subtly accept what she did for me. I let go of her wrist.
And then I took hold of her hand instead.
I did so gently.
I copied Senjougahara-senpai’s mannerisms of softness and kindness—she no doubt thought that I was trying to have a friendly parting handshake to show that there were no hard feelings, but instead I did something that was completely unexpected and kissed the back of her hand.
“W… What?!”
She practically screamed the word with surprise, and I straightened.
“No, I don’t think so.” I declared. “Because I have decided to accept your kindness and go far beyond what is necessary to repay it—Senjougahara-senpai.”
From now on, I am your dog.
That’s what I told her.
Senjougahara Hitagi and Kanbaru Suruga. The pair that would go on to be called the Valhalla Duo began here.
“Are you an idiot?”
I still think that those words and the cold smile that came with them were probably Senjougahara-senpai’s genuine, impartial reaction to what I had said.
As usual, thank you spr-o-ckt for contributing to this commission.
A cute little story. I wish we could see more of those that actually feels important rather than yet another pun-filled discussion about a random topic.
See you next time for another story !
2024.06.10 03:02 perennialchristos How does primacy of conscience not end up becoming subjective morality?
I’ll start off by saying that I’m not lgbt or anything like that but I was curious about the argument invoked for going against what the Church declares as doctrine. I understand that primacy of conscience is basically saying that you are obligated to follow your conscience even if it goes against Church teaching, but I’m sort of confused as to how that could not potentially end up resulting in complete subjective morality? As anyone could essentially invoke primacy of conscious in most scenarios and try to convince themselves that something is ok if they really want to do it, and mentally it’s very hard to discern what you want to do based on your desires vs what you actually thinks is right. Like if someone was raised in a certain environment that certain things are permissible while others are not, and these are deeply engrained, even if they go against Church teaching, would that not influence their “primacy of conscious”? Also how does someone determine an objective moral framework, like if I believe something is absolutely wrong no matter what, but someone else says it’s fine, how do we know who is right? As an example I’ll use abortion, in this case I became pro-life before becoming a Christian just from secular reasoning, and to me it just seems very obvious and non negotiable that taking innocent human life is wrong, but people will try to justify through a variety of excuses. How do I determine what is actually right and wrong or not? And would it not be easier just to follow the Churches doctrines completely? Thanks and God bless
submitted by perennialchristos to LGBTCatholic [link] [comments]
2024.06.10 03:02 Aside_Dish Anatomy of an Action Line: Writing Better Action
Hey, guys, got a bit of free time, and wanted to just share some tips I've learned in my few years of screenwriting. I am not a professional screenwriter, but I think I've surpassed the absolute dogshit phase, and that's about where my authority ends, lol. Anyways, it's all just my opinion, but hopefully some of you guys find this helpful. A lot of it may be rehashed advice, but wanted to kinda put this into one thread. I'm sure there's some I missed, so maybe I'll save them for the next thread.
So, whenever people talk about action lines, opinions can get divided fairly quickly. And it's easy to see why. There are numerous ways to skin a cat, like Alien's short, choppy lines, or Shane Black's more narrative ones. Neither one is inherently better than the other, but they both accomplish a few things: they entertain, they inform us about characterization, they move the plot, and they keep the pace.
Action lines aren't simply an instructional manual for a director. You can write the most technically-proficient screenplay that has zero frill and is straight to the point all day long, but at the end of the day, we're writers. Style and flair show our own voices, and help inform actors as to the mindset of our characters. They can inform mannerisms, and set design, and lighting and direction. Style and flair as your "tone," and they are not unfilmable when done correctly.
I'll use an example from one of my own screenplays here. There is a line that is as follows:
Another thing I find helpful is to manipulate sentence length and structure to inform tone. Read any great action script, and you'll notice that during fast-paced scenes, the dialogue is short. Sentences are fragmented. Read like bullet points. Efficient, and punctual. Lighter scenes are more flowy, sometimes having one, even two parathetical phrases. It's poetry, a bit more lustrous and narrative-like.
All that to say, when you're writing heavy action, use shorter lines and sentence fragments. Lots of periods.
Additionally, it's also important to consider not just the on-screen aesthetics, but the on-page aesthetics. Make your screenplay physically-pleasing to look at. Readers like whitespace. They like to be able to scan pages quickly and get a good grasp of pacing just off of looks alone. When possible, try to keep your action lines limited to 1-2 lines, and absolutely avoid orphans (single words on a new line) and widows (action lines being split onto multiple pages) when you can. If not for your readers, do it for yourself. When you learn to use whitespace properly, it helps you identify where your action lags and where your pacing is too quick for the scene.
On scenes, I personally like to bold my scene headings. This is all personal preference, but if you haven't tried it, I suggest you do so. It makes it very easy to do quick scans and see how long your scenes are. Can quickly scroll through a screenplay and realize that the scene that is 2 minutes in your head is 6 pages long. Make it easier on yourself, and train your eyes to scan for bold headings.
Scene length is also something to be cognizant of. There is no golden rule on how exactly long a scene "should" be. The advice is always to enter as late as possible, and leave as soon as possible. It's really great advice, but it doesn't mean there isn't room for scenes that are a bit longer. Just make sure it's only done when necessary, and you at least make it entertaining for the reader. No one wants 5 pages of boring dialogue.
Oh, and please don't CAPITALIZE every OTHER word. It REALLY makes it difficult to READ, and you lose all EMPHASIS on the things THAT MATTER and your SCREENPLAY will look like a DONALD TRUMP Tweet. Use capitalization sparingly so it packs the most punch. Except when you first introduce important characters and any with dialogue -- always capitalize them.
For a final brief tip, if you feel your action lines are becoming monotonous due to always starting with, "he X," "he Y," rearrange your words. It's okay to start a line with "Sitting down, X did Y." Help your reader not be bored.
P.S. I'll do two dialogues tip as well. If you struggle with getting exposition to come off well, have your characters doing something. Doubly-so if you can somehow relate what they're doing to the conversation (subtext and all that). Have them cleaning a gun, or trying to unclog a sink. Trust me, it makes it easier on the readers and the viewers.
Lastly, if you want your characters to sound natural, don't go to a coffee shop and listen to people talk. In real life, people never get to the point. They ramble and ramble and constantly change the subject. Screenplays need to be tight and succinct. Get to the point and get out of the scene. See above on leaving as early as feasible.
submitted by Aside_Dish to Screenwriting [link] [comments]
So, whenever people talk about action lines, opinions can get divided fairly quickly. And it's easy to see why. There are numerous ways to skin a cat, like Alien's short, choppy lines, or Shane Black's more narrative ones. Neither one is inherently better than the other, but they both accomplish a few things: they entertain, they inform us about characterization, they move the plot, and they keep the pace.
Action lines aren't simply an instructional manual for a director. You can write the most technically-proficient screenplay that has zero frill and is straight to the point all day long, but at the end of the day, we're writers. Style and flair show our own voices, and help inform actors as to the mindset of our characters. They can inform mannerisms, and set design, and lighting and direction. Style and flair as your "tone," and they are not unfilmable when done correctly.
I'll use an example from one of my own screenplays here. There is a line that is as follows:
Sounds of a ZOMBIE SNAPPING AND SNARLING. Spit sloshes around its mouth, a Pavlovian response to the scent of human flesh.Not a great line by any means, but the unfilmable description of the Pavlovian response characterizes these zombies. It tells us that they don't just eat flesh; they crave it, it's in their DNA. We could easily remove the entire second sentence, and it would technically be correct, but it loses its voice. It would be a nothingburger line.
Another thing I find helpful is to manipulate sentence length and structure to inform tone. Read any great action script, and you'll notice that during fast-paced scenes, the dialogue is short. Sentences are fragmented. Read like bullet points. Efficient, and punctual. Lighter scenes are more flowy, sometimes having one, even two parathetical phrases. It's poetry, a bit more lustrous and narrative-like.
All that to say, when you're writing heavy action, use shorter lines and sentence fragments. Lots of periods.
Additionally, it's also important to consider not just the on-screen aesthetics, but the on-page aesthetics. Make your screenplay physically-pleasing to look at. Readers like whitespace. They like to be able to scan pages quickly and get a good grasp of pacing just off of looks alone. When possible, try to keep your action lines limited to 1-2 lines, and absolutely avoid orphans (single words on a new line) and widows (action lines being split onto multiple pages) when you can. If not for your readers, do it for yourself. When you learn to use whitespace properly, it helps you identify where your action lags and where your pacing is too quick for the scene.
On scenes, I personally like to bold my scene headings. This is all personal preference, but if you haven't tried it, I suggest you do so. It makes it very easy to do quick scans and see how long your scenes are. Can quickly scroll through a screenplay and realize that the scene that is 2 minutes in your head is 6 pages long. Make it easier on yourself, and train your eyes to scan for bold headings.
Scene length is also something to be cognizant of. There is no golden rule on how exactly long a scene "should" be. The advice is always to enter as late as possible, and leave as soon as possible. It's really great advice, but it doesn't mean there isn't room for scenes that are a bit longer. Just make sure it's only done when necessary, and you at least make it entertaining for the reader. No one wants 5 pages of boring dialogue.
Oh, and please don't CAPITALIZE every OTHER word. It REALLY makes it difficult to READ, and you lose all EMPHASIS on the things THAT MATTER and your SCREENPLAY will look like a DONALD TRUMP Tweet. Use capitalization sparingly so it packs the most punch. Except when you first introduce important characters and any with dialogue -- always capitalize them.
For a final brief tip, if you feel your action lines are becoming monotonous due to always starting with, "he X," "he Y," rearrange your words. It's okay to start a line with "Sitting down, X did Y." Help your reader not be bored.
P.S. I'll do two dialogues tip as well. If you struggle with getting exposition to come off well, have your characters doing something. Doubly-so if you can somehow relate what they're doing to the conversation (subtext and all that). Have them cleaning a gun, or trying to unclog a sink. Trust me, it makes it easier on the readers and the viewers.
Lastly, if you want your characters to sound natural, don't go to a coffee shop and listen to people talk. In real life, people never get to the point. They ramble and ramble and constantly change the subject. Screenplays need to be tight and succinct. Get to the point and get out of the scene. See above on leaving as early as feasible.
2024.06.10 03:00 Camping-in-the-snow As an Aspie, what's your thoughts on Estrangement from your Parents? I'm conflicted.
If you are an adult child who has abandoned your parent and you are reading this website you might have a flood of conflicting feelings ranging from outrage to shame. If you are so overwhelmed with these feelings that you cannot or will not consider that you could be wrong in abandoning them, then you should move on to a website that makes you feel better. If your feelings are so strong that reflection is not possible then you may want to consider some guidance and counseling. There are some excellent sources particularly those engaged in family systems counseling such as the Hellenger Institute in California. This website is not written for you and its perspective is not directed to you. However should you feel, on the subject of your parents, that some reflection might be of benefit to you then you may want to read on.
With that said the first and most important issue to consider is who informs you regarding your relationship with your parents. The major reason that adult children abandon their parents is the interference in that relationship by third parties. These third parties may be a parent divorced from the other, a spouse, or a religious organization. These third parties may have sent you negative messages from your childhood or it may have begun in your adult life. Nonetheless these messages are consistently negative and contain “spin” of the facts and events surrounding your relationship with your parents. It is done for sinister reasons of control and domination. It is intentional and homicidal. It is important to discern in life how we are informed and by whom because it is only then that we can truly seek our own truth. People who thrive on estrangement are more abundant than you know and they will, in a most genteel way, seek to dominate you by taking you away from those who have always been your friend. It is a kind of control and narcissism in people who perpetuate these social crimes.
A word of caution comes from Richard A. Gardner, MD who wrote a book titled “The Parental Alienation Syndrome”. Dr. Garner said “Only terminate your relationship with your parents in the most extreme of circumstances and only then after careful counseling and guidance from a professional.” Your entire identity is tied up in who they are, their historical systems and beliefs trouncing around your family history. It is sometimes said that you are only truly free to be who you are once you have resolved the issues that your parents were not able to resolve. It is in a real sense the repayment for the gift of your life. While it is important for you to process your relationship with your parents, hopefully with the help of a competent therapist specifically trained in alienation, it is just as important to immediately stop any abusive conduct or demeaning and humiliating language you habitually direct toward them. Stop hyper-criticalness and start communication. If the abuse is allowed to continue then at some point, you will not be able to reconcile with your parents. Your own vicious abuse and the lies you tell yourself will become a reality that will never leave you and you literally will live a lie the rest of your life. In the end if that parent dies before you have effected reconciliation then you live with this karma and unrecoverable grief the remainder of your life, scarring the generations to come after you. Nothing about an estranged relationship is static. The estrangement grows, intensifies and becomes irreconcilable not only for the abuser but also for the one abused. It expands itself to the extended family, to your own family and children and sometimes friends. It robs you of your happy memories. What was once an irritant becomes the basis for intense hatred and intense hatred is madness. The abused parent may suffer actual brain damage and early death as a result of your conduct. Two out of three alienated parents admit to suicidal thoughts.
If you have allowed your parents to just drift away without comment, begin to communicate in writing only in order to diminish the potential for anxiety. When anxiety appears try to figure out what it is telling you and why. Gentleness will go a long way in reversing the consequences of your behavior borne by your parents. If you’re distancing yourself from your parents because of their mental illness or addictions, then seek help first with Alanon. These people are quite experienced at assisting family members with these issues. You may find that your relationship may need to be in writing or on the telephone or video internet for a time. Seek the advice of your parent’s therapist or your own if the parent is untreated. Just don’t run away at a time when your parent may need you the most. In these relationships a good bit of the success or failure has to do with setting healthy boundaries and you probably would need help from professionals to do that. In this situation kindness and compassion should be your companions.
If your estrangement from your parents is because you are too busy or they are not good enough or their behavior is embarrassing because you have moved up a notch on the social scale, then you have an ethical problem and you need to take a look at yourself and what kind of human being you are or want to be. The same would be true if the addictions are your own or if you have been unable to make your way in the world and you are ashamed. Seek help for your own addictions and for your ethical failings. If you are overcome by your thoughts of rationalization, justification and believe without a doubt that your parents “deserve what they get”, then know that these are symptoms and not truths. You are being blinded by hate. In all ways seek to resolve your relationships, seek to reverse the consequences of your actions and make yourself a better person. In a short form, live in love vs. hate and in all ways seek to not end up with regrets.
submitted by Camping-in-the-snow to autism [link] [comments]
With that said the first and most important issue to consider is who informs you regarding your relationship with your parents. The major reason that adult children abandon their parents is the interference in that relationship by third parties. These third parties may be a parent divorced from the other, a spouse, or a religious organization. These third parties may have sent you negative messages from your childhood or it may have begun in your adult life. Nonetheless these messages are consistently negative and contain “spin” of the facts and events surrounding your relationship with your parents. It is done for sinister reasons of control and domination. It is intentional and homicidal. It is important to discern in life how we are informed and by whom because it is only then that we can truly seek our own truth. People who thrive on estrangement are more abundant than you know and they will, in a most genteel way, seek to dominate you by taking you away from those who have always been your friend. It is a kind of control and narcissism in people who perpetuate these social crimes.
A word of caution comes from Richard A. Gardner, MD who wrote a book titled “The Parental Alienation Syndrome”. Dr. Garner said “Only terminate your relationship with your parents in the most extreme of circumstances and only then after careful counseling and guidance from a professional.” Your entire identity is tied up in who they are, their historical systems and beliefs trouncing around your family history. It is sometimes said that you are only truly free to be who you are once you have resolved the issues that your parents were not able to resolve. It is in a real sense the repayment for the gift of your life. While it is important for you to process your relationship with your parents, hopefully with the help of a competent therapist specifically trained in alienation, it is just as important to immediately stop any abusive conduct or demeaning and humiliating language you habitually direct toward them. Stop hyper-criticalness and start communication. If the abuse is allowed to continue then at some point, you will not be able to reconcile with your parents. Your own vicious abuse and the lies you tell yourself will become a reality that will never leave you and you literally will live a lie the rest of your life. In the end if that parent dies before you have effected reconciliation then you live with this karma and unrecoverable grief the remainder of your life, scarring the generations to come after you. Nothing about an estranged relationship is static. The estrangement grows, intensifies and becomes irreconcilable not only for the abuser but also for the one abused. It expands itself to the extended family, to your own family and children and sometimes friends. It robs you of your happy memories. What was once an irritant becomes the basis for intense hatred and intense hatred is madness. The abused parent may suffer actual brain damage and early death as a result of your conduct. Two out of three alienated parents admit to suicidal thoughts.
If you have allowed your parents to just drift away without comment, begin to communicate in writing only in order to diminish the potential for anxiety. When anxiety appears try to figure out what it is telling you and why. Gentleness will go a long way in reversing the consequences of your behavior borne by your parents. If you’re distancing yourself from your parents because of their mental illness or addictions, then seek help first with Alanon. These people are quite experienced at assisting family members with these issues. You may find that your relationship may need to be in writing or on the telephone or video internet for a time. Seek the advice of your parent’s therapist or your own if the parent is untreated. Just don’t run away at a time when your parent may need you the most. In these relationships a good bit of the success or failure has to do with setting healthy boundaries and you probably would need help from professionals to do that. In this situation kindness and compassion should be your companions.
If your estrangement from your parents is because you are too busy or they are not good enough or their behavior is embarrassing because you have moved up a notch on the social scale, then you have an ethical problem and you need to take a look at yourself and what kind of human being you are or want to be. The same would be true if the addictions are your own or if you have been unable to make your way in the world and you are ashamed. Seek help for your own addictions and for your ethical failings. If you are overcome by your thoughts of rationalization, justification and believe without a doubt that your parents “deserve what they get”, then know that these are symptoms and not truths. You are being blinded by hate. In all ways seek to resolve your relationships, seek to reverse the consequences of your actions and make yourself a better person. In a short form, live in love vs. hate and in all ways seek to not end up with regrets.
2024.06.10 02:58 Ok_Broccoli_2108 After 12 years I'm crawling out of denial and need help, but getting access to a doctor and care is so difficult (rant)
I was only fifteen years old when I started having constant diarrhea, no matter what I ate. I was always skinny, but in just under two months of going to the bathroom up to eight times a day, my parents noticed the pounds dropping off and forcibly took me to go see my pediatrician. I was 5'2 and 102 pounds before all of it, but at the doctor's I weighed in at 87 pounds. I was sent to the emergency of a Children's Hospital and they admitted me, initially in with the anorexics.
After several tests they diagnosed me with Crohn's disease and I was transferred to the gastroenterology wing. Immediately we were told about Remicade and Imuran. My parents were always somewhat health-nuts, and distrustful of doctors, so they did their own online research. The doctors would try to speak to me on my own and make these drugs seem like miraculous healing injections. "You could eat whatever you want, go out with your friends and not be left out..." etc. One lady ended that talk with "of course, there is a small risk of developing lymphoma, but you know you could eat what you want!". We once saw the pharmaceutical rep for Remicade exit the office of the head of the department, and my parents told me how the doctors get handsomely paid to prescribe certain drugs.
My mom read online that some people could control their symptoms with diets, like the Seignalet diet. So, being fifteen, I decided to go with what my parents thought was best. My Crohn's was very spread at the time, but mainly in the small intestine. At my lowest I dropped to 79 pounds, so in order to get back to a healthy weight, I followed two months on a liquid diet of Modulen and took Entocort pills. Pentasa made me sicker so I stopped that. The Entocort really helped.
I got back to a semi healthy state and cut gluten and dairy from my diet. I had to be careful what I ate and learned my trigger foods. At the age of 18 I went back for a capsule camera test, where they film the inside of your GI tract. There were still ulcers and inflammation. I couldn't be seen at the Children's Hospital anymore due to my age, and fell through the cracks of the system.
For years I never thought about Crohn's, didn't want to think about it as it triggered anxiety and denial and avoidance are my coping mechanisms. I was doing pretty fine, although the list of trigger foods grew larger every year. By 21 I became a vegan, since fish, meat and eggs all became very bad triggers. There are many random triggers too, for example cooked soy sauce (as in a stir fry) is mortal, but uncooked with vegetarian sushi is fine.
At 24 I had a rough patch and decided to seek help. I live in Canada and our healthcare system is A.B.Y.S.M.A.L. I don't have a family doctor, but I managed to get an appointment with a generalist, who referred me to a gastroenterologist. When I got there, she acted so uninterested, kept looking at her watch, and she prescribed me a huge dose of Mezavant, since Entocort isn't covered by public health insurance for adults. Each pill is pretty big, and she told me to take 4 a day. I was doubtful but thought she probably knew what she was doing.
I reacted to it like you'd react to a gastrointestinal virus. Vomited and shat myself dry for two days, dizzy, couldn't keep water down. My dad tried to call the clinic and she was supposedly out of the country, but her assigned nurse said I should take the pills again in a smaller dose "to see what it does". I obviously didn't, and she never tried to contact me again. I later learned that Mezavant has the same active ingredient as Pentasa, which I had told her I had reacted badly to. Eventually my condition improved on its own.
So for years, I avoided the topic of my diagnosis. Shut it out. My boyfriend doesn't like hearing about the symptoms too so it made it easy to keep ignoring. I could go months without it crossing my mind. My diet kept becoming more restricted. In bad phases I manage to eat very little amounts of food, because the less I eat, the less likely I am to react badly.
But about a year ago, I started having a type of pain I never had before, after reacting to something I was used to eating. It felt like a point just left and a bit below my navel. For a few weeks I couldn't lie on my front. If I had more than breakfast and went for a long walk, I would get pain there like stitch, but pretty bad to the point I had to stop if I was hiking, or wait for the bus. That got better around last September, but the stitch on a walk after lunch remained at times.
In February, on a random day at university, that central lower left pain came back with a vengeance. I went on about my life, but it was dull, growing ache as long as I was standing up. It would be better if I sat, and gone if lying down. For about a week, even just the waist of my pants rubbing on my skin there felt painful. I managed to go about my life as always though. It wasn't even linked to diarrhea. However, even if it has gotten better since, a bout of diarrhea can make that pain come, but not as bad as in February.
Went to see another doctor in March, because I have grown tired and hopeless about this issue. I was told the wait time for a consultation with a gastroenterologist is minimum 3 months, but it could be longer. Meanwhile, I am so beyond done. Tired of not being able to eat anything without heavy planning going into it and of feeling left out of social events. Even if I go to a birthday party at a restaurant and can only have a mocktail on the menu, I'm glad to be there and included, but also feel somewhat excluded by this condition. I can no longer drink alcohol either, I can't really have lunch, so I only have a snack bar and a gluten free vegan muffin for lunch usually. I am hungry almost every day, even if I often forget to eat now, but if time has taught me anything, it's that nothing is worth having to sit on the toilet with crampy diarrhea. It's the absolute worst. The thought of surgery is my worst nightmare and I would rather die.
Now at 27, I am 5'5 and weigh 106 pounds, and people, even strangers often comment on my weight and say I need to eat more. I don't really lose weight, I have been like this for about 2-3 years, but my family loves to comment on my bones when they hug me. They're all slightly overweight so maybe their perception of normality is warped though. The biggest I got was 128 pounds when I was 20 and lived abroad, then it decreased and maintained around 106-112 since.
So anyway, here I am, feeling pretty hopeless. I hope I get a callback before the fall. I'm finishing my Masters so as a student I can't afford private care yet. I think I'm at a point now where I am finally ready to explore medication, because I am sick and tired of restricting myself. I've now read all the doom and gloom, but I'd love to know that there actually is hope for someone like me to live a normal life and not always fear everything I put in my mouth that isn't one of my "safe" foods.
Sorry for the long rant.
submitted by Ok_Broccoli_2108 to CrohnsDisease [link] [comments]
After several tests they diagnosed me with Crohn's disease and I was transferred to the gastroenterology wing. Immediately we were told about Remicade and Imuran. My parents were always somewhat health-nuts, and distrustful of doctors, so they did their own online research. The doctors would try to speak to me on my own and make these drugs seem like miraculous healing injections. "You could eat whatever you want, go out with your friends and not be left out..." etc. One lady ended that talk with "of course, there is a small risk of developing lymphoma, but you know you could eat what you want!". We once saw the pharmaceutical rep for Remicade exit the office of the head of the department, and my parents told me how the doctors get handsomely paid to prescribe certain drugs.
My mom read online that some people could control their symptoms with diets, like the Seignalet diet. So, being fifteen, I decided to go with what my parents thought was best. My Crohn's was very spread at the time, but mainly in the small intestine. At my lowest I dropped to 79 pounds, so in order to get back to a healthy weight, I followed two months on a liquid diet of Modulen and took Entocort pills. Pentasa made me sicker so I stopped that. The Entocort really helped.
I got back to a semi healthy state and cut gluten and dairy from my diet. I had to be careful what I ate and learned my trigger foods. At the age of 18 I went back for a capsule camera test, where they film the inside of your GI tract. There were still ulcers and inflammation. I couldn't be seen at the Children's Hospital anymore due to my age, and fell through the cracks of the system.
For years I never thought about Crohn's, didn't want to think about it as it triggered anxiety and denial and avoidance are my coping mechanisms. I was doing pretty fine, although the list of trigger foods grew larger every year. By 21 I became a vegan, since fish, meat and eggs all became very bad triggers. There are many random triggers too, for example cooked soy sauce (as in a stir fry) is mortal, but uncooked with vegetarian sushi is fine.
At 24 I had a rough patch and decided to seek help. I live in Canada and our healthcare system is A.B.Y.S.M.A.L. I don't have a family doctor, but I managed to get an appointment with a generalist, who referred me to a gastroenterologist. When I got there, she acted so uninterested, kept looking at her watch, and she prescribed me a huge dose of Mezavant, since Entocort isn't covered by public health insurance for adults. Each pill is pretty big, and she told me to take 4 a day. I was doubtful but thought she probably knew what she was doing.
I reacted to it like you'd react to a gastrointestinal virus. Vomited and shat myself dry for two days, dizzy, couldn't keep water down. My dad tried to call the clinic and she was supposedly out of the country, but her assigned nurse said I should take the pills again in a smaller dose "to see what it does". I obviously didn't, and she never tried to contact me again. I later learned that Mezavant has the same active ingredient as Pentasa, which I had told her I had reacted badly to. Eventually my condition improved on its own.
So for years, I avoided the topic of my diagnosis. Shut it out. My boyfriend doesn't like hearing about the symptoms too so it made it easy to keep ignoring. I could go months without it crossing my mind. My diet kept becoming more restricted. In bad phases I manage to eat very little amounts of food, because the less I eat, the less likely I am to react badly.
But about a year ago, I started having a type of pain I never had before, after reacting to something I was used to eating. It felt like a point just left and a bit below my navel. For a few weeks I couldn't lie on my front. If I had more than breakfast and went for a long walk, I would get pain there like stitch, but pretty bad to the point I had to stop if I was hiking, or wait for the bus. That got better around last September, but the stitch on a walk after lunch remained at times.
In February, on a random day at university, that central lower left pain came back with a vengeance. I went on about my life, but it was dull, growing ache as long as I was standing up. It would be better if I sat, and gone if lying down. For about a week, even just the waist of my pants rubbing on my skin there felt painful. I managed to go about my life as always though. It wasn't even linked to diarrhea. However, even if it has gotten better since, a bout of diarrhea can make that pain come, but not as bad as in February.
Went to see another doctor in March, because I have grown tired and hopeless about this issue. I was told the wait time for a consultation with a gastroenterologist is minimum 3 months, but it could be longer. Meanwhile, I am so beyond done. Tired of not being able to eat anything without heavy planning going into it and of feeling left out of social events. Even if I go to a birthday party at a restaurant and can only have a mocktail on the menu, I'm glad to be there and included, but also feel somewhat excluded by this condition. I can no longer drink alcohol either, I can't really have lunch, so I only have a snack bar and a gluten free vegan muffin for lunch usually. I am hungry almost every day, even if I often forget to eat now, but if time has taught me anything, it's that nothing is worth having to sit on the toilet with crampy diarrhea. It's the absolute worst. The thought of surgery is my worst nightmare and I would rather die.
Now at 27, I am 5'5 and weigh 106 pounds, and people, even strangers often comment on my weight and say I need to eat more. I don't really lose weight, I have been like this for about 2-3 years, but my family loves to comment on my bones when they hug me. They're all slightly overweight so maybe their perception of normality is warped though. The biggest I got was 128 pounds when I was 20 and lived abroad, then it decreased and maintained around 106-112 since.
So anyway, here I am, feeling pretty hopeless. I hope I get a callback before the fall. I'm finishing my Masters so as a student I can't afford private care yet. I think I'm at a point now where I am finally ready to explore medication, because I am sick and tired of restricting myself. I've now read all the doom and gloom, but I'd love to know that there actually is hope for someone like me to live a normal life and not always fear everything I put in my mouth that isn't one of my "safe" foods.
Sorry for the long rant.
2024.06.10 02:48 Exciting-Gas-6014 Please Chance Me! – Ivies + HYPSM - Pre med/law (ill explain, no i'm not undecisive)
Hi there! I've had trouble finding feedback on my current application so I'd very much appreciate it if you could take a look and give me an idea of what my target schools/reach schools are. Thank you!
Demographics: Male, UK, Rich Private School, Immigrant, speak 4 languages (Arabic, Spanish, French, English)
Intended major(s): Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology (would like to go on to law school and become a health/patent lawyer)
SAT: 1580
Class rank: no class rank
UW/W GPA (IB): 41/45 Predicted rn
Coursework: Higher Level (HL) Biology (7), HL Chemistry (6), HL Math AI (6), Standard Level (SL) Economics (6), SL English (6), SL Spanish Ab Initio (7)
Awards:
International Medicine and Disease Olympiad Silver Medal
Prestigious essay competition global finalist (top 75 out of thousands of competitors)
Another essay competition silver medal.
National Spanish Exam Level 01: Perfect Score (Gold Medal)
Extracurriculars:
Have taken 10+ online courses on various medical topics, all from Harvard Edx or alternative programs. Did well on all.
Letters of Rec:
Generally positive I'd say, I'd have no exact idea however how well I did in this category.
Unfinalised list of US Colleges I intend to apply to:
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Columbia
UPenn
Dartmouth
Cornell
Brown
MIT
Stanford
Caltech
John Hopkins
NYU
UChicago
Duke
Vanderbilt
UNC
Northwestern
Emory
Tufts
Not confirmed which I'm ED'ing to, but either most likely either HYPSM/Brown/Columbia.
Please leave a comment and let me know what unis you think are plausible for me to get into from your experience.
submitted by Exciting-Gas-6014 to chanceme [link] [comments]
Demographics: Male, UK, Rich Private School, Immigrant, speak 4 languages (Arabic, Spanish, French, English)
Intended major(s): Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology (would like to go on to law school and become a health/patent lawyer)
SAT: 1580
Class rank: no class rank
UW/W GPA (IB): 41/45 Predicted rn
Coursework: Higher Level (HL) Biology (7), HL Chemistry (6), HL Math AI (6), Standard Level (SL) Economics (6), SL English (6), SL Spanish Ab Initio (7)
Awards:
International Medicine and Disease Olympiad Silver Medal
Prestigious essay competition global finalist (top 75 out of thousands of competitors)
Another essay competition silver medal.
National Spanish Exam Level 01: Perfect Score (Gold Medal)
Extracurriculars:
- Head of HOSA club at school
- Logistics head of one of Canada's largest student led conferences (1000+ students attended)
- Science Club Head at school
- On science council at school
- Published research paper in peer reviewed journal (not highschool one, real one)
- Summer internship at local hospital for research under a professor.
- Muslim Student Association Leader
- Started a CPR education nonprofit organization that implements CPR training after hours at schools.
- I have some more extracurriculars, but they're a bit more of the similar activities.
Have taken 10+ online courses on various medical topics, all from Harvard Edx or alternative programs. Did well on all.
Letters of Rec:
Generally positive I'd say, I'd have no exact idea however how well I did in this category.
Unfinalised list of US Colleges I intend to apply to:
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Columbia
UPenn
Dartmouth
Cornell
Brown
MIT
Stanford
Caltech
John Hopkins
NYU
UChicago
Duke
Vanderbilt
UNC
Northwestern
Emory
Tufts
Not confirmed which I'm ED'ing to, but either most likely either HYPSM/Brown/Columbia.
Please leave a comment and let me know what unis you think are plausible for me to get into from your experience.
2024.06.10 02:41 MK_Matrix I lost my dog a few years ago. He suddenly showed up on our porch a few weeks back.
A few years ago, I had a dog named Bear. A bit on the nose for a Newfoundland, I know, but the day I found him wandering around the street, I was more concerned with helping him than coming up with something clever. As such, the name started out as a joke, but when I was sure that I was gonna officially adopt him and the time came to actually give him a name, I had been using it so consistently that he responded to it. So, Bear it was.
He was a good dog. I never figured out how old he actually was - he didn’t look very big when I found him, but I’m not privy to dogs, especially ones this big, so I never could pin down an age. He was certainly a character - he barely ever barked, would sleep on my floor instead of the expensive bed that I bought him (just my luck), and would randomly get explosive bursts of energy that transformed him from a dog into a battering ram. He alternated between being afraid of his own shadow and being willing to die for me, all over a squirrel that scurried in front of us while we were out on a walk. I bought him a red collar that just barely fit him, and he made it his mission to try and discard it in the funniest ways possible, like rubbing his neck against walls and scratching at it with his hind legs. Despite his quirks, I loved him, and he certainly loved me.
If you really gave it some thought, he was odd in other ways than just his personality. I mean, on the day I found him, what was a Newfie doing in the middle of a toll road in the forests of California? I’d just assumed he was a puppy from a mill that got out, but it was cooler to imagine some crazy backstory for him. Bear, the vampire dog, who prowled the Six Rivers National Forest as its apex predator, was tamed one day by half a ham sandwich. It gave me a good laugh, if nothing else.
It was a couple of years after I got Bear that I started dating a girl I’d met at a coffee shop a few miles away. We’d hit it off to the point that we were staying at each other’s houses, and life was good. Bear seemed to like her, and since she had his seal of approval, she had mine. That’s just how it worked.
One day, I left her in charge of watching Bear while I ran errands. Given that he’d chewed through the bottom of a door the day prior (we were working on it), I couldn’t leave him by himself, and since the grocery store was a few miles away from my house, I thought she shouldn’t have any trouble with him. She was a vet tech, after all, and had given me plenty of pointers on how to deal with him.
I got back an hour later and found my date on the couch where I left her, watching the next episode of the show we were binging. I was a bit pissed that she went on without me, but was more concerned with where Bear was. When I’d left, he was at her feet, sound asleep. Now, though, he was absent. I searched the upstairs first, in hopes that he was actually using the dog bed for once, but to no avail. I walked back downstairs and into the kitchen, hoping that he was lying on the air vent that he liked. He wasn’t there, but I did find something that no pet owner wants to see. The chain on the back door was dangling, ripped out of the wall, and the door was pushed open. My stomach sank as I realized what happened, and I just sat there for a moment before my date walked into the kitchen and covered her mouth.
She profusely apologized, and I wasn’t really angry at her - sure, she should have been paying more attention, but I was sure that he didn’t get very far. I’d assumed that he had seen a squirrel through the backdoor and broke out to try to get after it, and hoped he’d tired himself out and was lying in the shade under one of the trees in the backyard. Still, I wanted to do more than just hope, so I grabbed the flashlights I kept in the utility drawer, and we walked out into the backyard, hoping to find him.
I lived on the edge of the aforementioned national forest, and Bear and I often went on walks through there, so if he wasn’t out back, he was certainly in the woods. I knew the area well, but it was still a lot of ground to cover, and we didn’t have a lot of time before it was pitch black. We searched for a few hours, and while I wanted to keep going, she was tired, and regrettably, I was too. We decided that he’d probably be fine for the night, and went back inside, intent on starting a new search bright and early.
We spent all of the next day searching. We spent all of the next week searching. Hell, it almost came up on a month, and I was starting to recognize the lichen patterns on specific trees before I had to face it. Bear was gone. I had put up flyers with reward money and scoured every area of the woods from top to bottom. I was heartbroken, to say the least.
I kind of shut myself off from the world a little bit after that. I stopped talking to the girl I was seeing - I didn’t really blame her, but I couldn’t build a relationship on a complete disaster like that. I started working from home instead of making the commute to the office, as even driving down the forested roads that I had spent hot afternoons frantically searching made me a bit queasy. I was a mess, and I didn’t get over it for a long time.
This all happened a little over three years ago, and I was mostly over it by this point. I’d since met and married my wife, and we were expecting our first child in a few months. We were still living in the same house - even if it had some sad memories attached to it, it was still a nice place, and I wasn’t willing to give up on it. I had hope that my new life with my family would help drown out some of the sadness that still stained the place. Part of me still wished that Bear was there to see it with me.
Ideally, that would’ve been the end of the story, or better yet, I wouldn’t even be writing this right now, but three weeks ago, everything changed. I woke up earlier than I usually would to get breakfast started, as it was a bit of a tradition between my wife and I to make pancakes every Saturday, and it was my turn that week. I was finishing up when I heard it, loud as day - a bark from the backyard. This scared the shit out of me, as it wasn’t something I’d heard from the backyard in years. I moved the pancakes to a plate, shut the stove off, and peeked out the window as I was transporting them to the dining table.
It sounds cliché, but I nearly dropped the plate onto the floor when I saw where the bark came from. It was Bear, standing in the middle of the yard. He looked remarkably clean, and it looked like he had finally managed to get the collar off. I started freaking out instantly, and yanked the back door open before running outside in just my bathrobe and slippers. I expected some fairy tale-esque reunion, with him jumping into my arms and knocking me down because of how heavy he was. I was ecstatic to see him, and I was expecting him to feel that same way.
Instead of running towards me, he turned and ran towards the tree line, growling. He turned around and got into an aggressive stance, his tail still and his eyes narrowed. I was stunned, but I figured that he had been in the woods for so long that he was probably scared to death by seeing me again. Regrettably, he might have also felt that I’d abandoned him, but that was a possibility I didn’t want to consider at that moment. He just needed some TLC, and he’d be my dog again just like that. I ran inside and grabbed the half-empty package of bacon from inside the fridge. I threw it on the stove and went back to the window, watching as Bear laid down in the yard. Oddly enough, he didn’t lie in the shade under the trees, like he usually would have, but right in the sun. Three years was a long time to be lost, so maybe his habits had been turned upside down by learning to survive.
I put the bacon in a paper bowl and walked outside. I shook the bowl, calling his name from the concrete porch. He didn’t budge, still lying in the middle of the yard. I figured I’d leave it sitting out, and he’d come get it when he felt more comfortable. My wife was up by this point, justifiably confused by me calling my lost dog’s name from the back of the house. I excitedly showed her that he’d returned, but she seemed less enthusiastic than me. She smiled upon seeing him, but she didn’t have the same connection to him that I did, so I couldn’t blame her for her diluted reaction.
I went to the store right away to grab new dog food, water and food bowls, and most importantly, parts for a doggy door. We lived in a safe enough area that I could install one without fear of a break in, and I wanted to ease Bear back into our house by letting him come in at his own pace. I spent the whole day installing it, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure he wasn’t getting into trouble. He just laid in the sun, presumably napping.
The next morning, I walked into the kitchen to see if there were any signs that Bear had been in the house. Sure enough, there was a clump of black fur stuck in the corner of the doggy door, and the dry food I’d put in the bowl looked to be partially eaten. I told my wife as such when she got up, and she wasn’t fazed by it, instead grabbing my hand and leading me upstairs back into our bedroom. I hadn’t noticed when I got up, but one of the dog bones I’d left on the back patio was on our bedroom carpet, implying that he’d been in there last night, probably guarding us while we slept. My wife seemed a bit disturbed by this, but I was thrilled. To me, this just served as proof that part of my old Bear was still in him - he used to do that all the time, after all.
I sat down with my wife that night and started to discuss how we could make Bear feel more comfortable in our home, but she stopped me. She tried to reason that he had spent years presumably lost in the woods, and had probably become feral and unpredictable. As much as I wanted to cast those doubts aside and override her, she had a valid point; you don’t just spend years stranded and come back the same, human, dog, or otherwise. We met in the middle; if Bear was still hanging around the house in a month and showed signs of improved friendliness, we could try and reincorporate him into our lives. I would do anything to have him back, but I did have a pregnant wife to worry about, so I agreed. In the meantime, we agreed that I’d install a lock on the doggy door so that he or anything else couldn’t get inside. I made a mental note to go to the hardware store sometime next week, as the next day was a national holiday and it was closed.
I abruptly woke up at around 2 in the morning, and wasn’t sure what woke me at first. I thought that I might need water, so I started to head downstairs to get some from the tap. When I got into the kitchen, I started to retrieve a glass when I heard what sounded like scratching on the siding of the house. It was loud and rapid, as if something was trying to claw its way through the wall. Puzzled, I turned to look out the window, and almost choked on my water when I saw Bear’s head looking through the kitchen window. As soon as I saw him, the scratching immediately stopped. He wasn’t panting or anything, despite the fact that it sounded like he was trying to dig through the wall moments prior. He was just sitting at the window, staring at me. Admittedly, in the moonlight, he looked kind of creepy - just looking at me, motionless.
Before I could say his name to see if he would respond with a bark or any other noise, his head quickly sank below the window, in one fluid motion. Usually, when dogs dismount from a surface they’re looking over while standing on their hind legs, there’s a moment where they remove their first front paw and sort of stumble under their weight before moving the other one. That didn’t happen here, though - he just vanished without a sound. I was really creeped out by this point, but figured that he was just surveying the house to see if he felt more comfortable inside. I chalked his weird disappearance up to me being exhausted and it being too dark to fully see him moving.
The next morning, I told my wife that I thought Bear was getting more comfortable around us, and recounted the events of last night. She seemed a bit unsettled, and switched the subject to the doggy door, but I was too excited to take that into account. I told her I was going for a walk in the preserve, put on my running shoes, and left the house.
I was about two miles into the woods when I came across an open area that I hadn’t seen before. Odd, because I knew these woods like the back of my hand, but maybe some campers had come and illegally set up for the night. Several small trees in the area were snapped at the base, possibly in an attempt to free up space for a tent. Maybe this had been here and I just hadn’t noticed it?
That was the theory I was operating on at first, until I looked down at my feet and noticed what was going on. There were white objects poking out of the dirt, which I thought were just pebbles when I arrived. Now that I had actually stopped to look around, though, I noticed that they weren’t rocks at all, but little animal bones. I wasn’t really fazed upon seeing this - animals die in the woods all the time, and I’d probably just stumbled across a mountain lion’s work. That would have made sense, except for a few things.
For one, the bones seemed to be arranged in some sort of pattern. It didn’t look like any symbol in particular, just a set of interlocking circles. There was no way that an animal would arrange the bones of their prey like this, so I was already weirded out, but then I noticed that as the circles grew larger, so did the bones, to the point that some of them were bigger than my arm. I was sufficiently freaked out now, so I turned and went back the way I came, calling the park services helpline on my way home. They told me that I’d probably come across an area frequented by deer, and subsequently predators looking for a quick meal, and that it probably wasn’t anything to be concerned about. After I badgered them for a bit and explained the whole pattern thing, they agreed to send someone out to take a look at it, just in case. I was satisfied with that, so I continued home and tried not to think about it.
I caught glimpses of Bear in the backyard for a few weeks, but didn’t see him for a prolonged period of time until yesterday. I was sitting outside by our fire pit, reading, when I noticed his head poke out from behind one of the trees lining the path of the preserve. I couldn’t see the rest of his body, and that confused me, considering that his head was six feet above the ground. Given that my kitchen window was about the same height, I figured that he was once again standing on his hind legs, probably after some critter in the tree, and I couldn’t see his body because of the angle. That explanation made sense to me, so I didn’t really pay him any mind - if I chose to ignore him, maybe he’d feel like I wasn’t a threat, and would be more comfortable around me. At this point, I’d try anything.
I looked up again two minutes later, and he wasn’t at the tree anymore. I figured that whatever he was after jumped out of the tree and he’d hightailed it after them, so I went back to reading. The snap of a twig moments later grabbed my attention again, and I looked up to see his head poking out from behind another tree fifty feet away. He was at a different angle now, but I still couldn’t see his body, which should’ve been impossible considering how fluffy he was. I couldn’t tell from the newly increased distance, but I swore I saw a single one of his paws wrapped around the tree, almost like how a person would put their hand around a door frame for stability. I wasn’t sure if I was just seeing things, but I wasn’t in the mood to read anymore, so I went inside.
It hurt me to admit this, but at this point, I think I was accepting that Bear was too far gone, and I couldn’t really blame him for that. He was an animal who had been thrust into the cold, dark wilderness, and to expect him to be unchanged by that would be unfair. Still, I was building a family, and it was my duty to protect them. The next day, I got my opportunity to do just that when I spotted Bear once again lying in the center of the back lawn. I grabbed two baking sheets and walked outside, slapping them together and yelling. This loud display apparently worked, as he shot up and darted towards the tree line. I felt like absolute shit after doing this, but it was what needed to be done.
I thought that would be the end of it. I spooked him away, and now I could focus on getting our lives back to normal. Today was a Saturday morning, and instead of making pancakes, I intended on surprising my wife with breakfast from her favorite local donut shop, as she told me that she’d been craving them the night prior. I’m no dummy when it comes to hints, so I hopped into the car and peeled out onto the road, hoping I’d get there before all her favorite flavors sold out.
As I was speeding down the road, I saw it. Or, at least, I thought I did. Under one of the trees on the side of the road, I saw Bear. He was standing on his hind legs, with no support. He didn’t move his head to look at the car, or even show any kind of reaction to me passing him. He just sat there, doing nothing. I slammed on the brakes, and thank god there weren’t any other cars on the road at this time of day, because I would’ve caused an accident. I looked into the rearview mirror, and saw nothing under the tree. I jumped out of the car, looking around like a madman, and saw nothing. The woods were silent, save for the sound of wind and twigs snapping in the distance.
I got back into the car and took a moment before driving again. What I’d just seen, I wasn’t sure, and I was having a full-blown panic attack as a result. After I took some deep breaths, reason returned to me, and I figured that I was seeing things that weren’t there, in dark places in the light of dawn. I resumed driving, albeit at a much slower pace than before. I couldn’t exactly focus my full attention on the road.
When I got to the donut shop, I was met with a pleasant surprise - in line in front of me was the vet tech that I’d been seeing years ago. Even though we’d stopped seeing each other, we ended on fine terms, and didn’t harbor any bad feelings toward each other, as evidenced by the smile and hug we greeted each other with. She asked to grab a couple of coffees and donuts to catch up for a little bit before I returned home, and I agreed, wanting to get my mind off of things. She had done well for herself - she was a full blown vet now, and had been for some time. She was married and had a son, and gave me a bunch of jokey warnings about parenthood. The subject turned to pets, and even though I didn’t want to sour feelings between us, I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut about Bear.
I told her everything that happened, save for what I’d just seen fifteen minutes ago - I wasn’t even sure if I’d actually seen it. She looked concerned while I talked, and tried to interject a few times, but I just kept spilling my feelings. When the floor was finally hers, she hesitated for a second, and then spoke.
“That’s… impossible.”
“What?”
“I really didn’t wanna tell you this, because I didn’t wanna hurt you more, but a few months after we stopped talking, someone brought Bear into our office. He was hit by a car, and we did everything we could… but there was nothing we could do. I didn’t call you about it, because I didn’t think you wanted to hear that your dog was dead.”
I asked her how she was so sure. It couldn’t be. I’d seen my dog alive.
“His collar. He had his collar on when he came into the office. The red one with his name tag on it.”
I left the shop after that. I didn’t leave the parking lot, though. Not because I was afraid to go home, even if I was.
But because I was ashamed. I’m a bad husband. I forgot to get a lock for the doggy door.
submitted by MK_Matrix to scarystories [link] [comments]
He was a good dog. I never figured out how old he actually was - he didn’t look very big when I found him, but I’m not privy to dogs, especially ones this big, so I never could pin down an age. He was certainly a character - he barely ever barked, would sleep on my floor instead of the expensive bed that I bought him (just my luck), and would randomly get explosive bursts of energy that transformed him from a dog into a battering ram. He alternated between being afraid of his own shadow and being willing to die for me, all over a squirrel that scurried in front of us while we were out on a walk. I bought him a red collar that just barely fit him, and he made it his mission to try and discard it in the funniest ways possible, like rubbing his neck against walls and scratching at it with his hind legs. Despite his quirks, I loved him, and he certainly loved me.
If you really gave it some thought, he was odd in other ways than just his personality. I mean, on the day I found him, what was a Newfie doing in the middle of a toll road in the forests of California? I’d just assumed he was a puppy from a mill that got out, but it was cooler to imagine some crazy backstory for him. Bear, the vampire dog, who prowled the Six Rivers National Forest as its apex predator, was tamed one day by half a ham sandwich. It gave me a good laugh, if nothing else.
It was a couple of years after I got Bear that I started dating a girl I’d met at a coffee shop a few miles away. We’d hit it off to the point that we were staying at each other’s houses, and life was good. Bear seemed to like her, and since she had his seal of approval, she had mine. That’s just how it worked.
One day, I left her in charge of watching Bear while I ran errands. Given that he’d chewed through the bottom of a door the day prior (we were working on it), I couldn’t leave him by himself, and since the grocery store was a few miles away from my house, I thought she shouldn’t have any trouble with him. She was a vet tech, after all, and had given me plenty of pointers on how to deal with him.
I got back an hour later and found my date on the couch where I left her, watching the next episode of the show we were binging. I was a bit pissed that she went on without me, but was more concerned with where Bear was. When I’d left, he was at her feet, sound asleep. Now, though, he was absent. I searched the upstairs first, in hopes that he was actually using the dog bed for once, but to no avail. I walked back downstairs and into the kitchen, hoping that he was lying on the air vent that he liked. He wasn’t there, but I did find something that no pet owner wants to see. The chain on the back door was dangling, ripped out of the wall, and the door was pushed open. My stomach sank as I realized what happened, and I just sat there for a moment before my date walked into the kitchen and covered her mouth.
She profusely apologized, and I wasn’t really angry at her - sure, she should have been paying more attention, but I was sure that he didn’t get very far. I’d assumed that he had seen a squirrel through the backdoor and broke out to try to get after it, and hoped he’d tired himself out and was lying in the shade under one of the trees in the backyard. Still, I wanted to do more than just hope, so I grabbed the flashlights I kept in the utility drawer, and we walked out into the backyard, hoping to find him.
I lived on the edge of the aforementioned national forest, and Bear and I often went on walks through there, so if he wasn’t out back, he was certainly in the woods. I knew the area well, but it was still a lot of ground to cover, and we didn’t have a lot of time before it was pitch black. We searched for a few hours, and while I wanted to keep going, she was tired, and regrettably, I was too. We decided that he’d probably be fine for the night, and went back inside, intent on starting a new search bright and early.
We spent all of the next day searching. We spent all of the next week searching. Hell, it almost came up on a month, and I was starting to recognize the lichen patterns on specific trees before I had to face it. Bear was gone. I had put up flyers with reward money and scoured every area of the woods from top to bottom. I was heartbroken, to say the least.
I kind of shut myself off from the world a little bit after that. I stopped talking to the girl I was seeing - I didn’t really blame her, but I couldn’t build a relationship on a complete disaster like that. I started working from home instead of making the commute to the office, as even driving down the forested roads that I had spent hot afternoons frantically searching made me a bit queasy. I was a mess, and I didn’t get over it for a long time.
This all happened a little over three years ago, and I was mostly over it by this point. I’d since met and married my wife, and we were expecting our first child in a few months. We were still living in the same house - even if it had some sad memories attached to it, it was still a nice place, and I wasn’t willing to give up on it. I had hope that my new life with my family would help drown out some of the sadness that still stained the place. Part of me still wished that Bear was there to see it with me.
Ideally, that would’ve been the end of the story, or better yet, I wouldn’t even be writing this right now, but three weeks ago, everything changed. I woke up earlier than I usually would to get breakfast started, as it was a bit of a tradition between my wife and I to make pancakes every Saturday, and it was my turn that week. I was finishing up when I heard it, loud as day - a bark from the backyard. This scared the shit out of me, as it wasn’t something I’d heard from the backyard in years. I moved the pancakes to a plate, shut the stove off, and peeked out the window as I was transporting them to the dining table.
It sounds cliché, but I nearly dropped the plate onto the floor when I saw where the bark came from. It was Bear, standing in the middle of the yard. He looked remarkably clean, and it looked like he had finally managed to get the collar off. I started freaking out instantly, and yanked the back door open before running outside in just my bathrobe and slippers. I expected some fairy tale-esque reunion, with him jumping into my arms and knocking me down because of how heavy he was. I was ecstatic to see him, and I was expecting him to feel that same way.
Instead of running towards me, he turned and ran towards the tree line, growling. He turned around and got into an aggressive stance, his tail still and his eyes narrowed. I was stunned, but I figured that he had been in the woods for so long that he was probably scared to death by seeing me again. Regrettably, he might have also felt that I’d abandoned him, but that was a possibility I didn’t want to consider at that moment. He just needed some TLC, and he’d be my dog again just like that. I ran inside and grabbed the half-empty package of bacon from inside the fridge. I threw it on the stove and went back to the window, watching as Bear laid down in the yard. Oddly enough, he didn’t lie in the shade under the trees, like he usually would have, but right in the sun. Three years was a long time to be lost, so maybe his habits had been turned upside down by learning to survive.
I put the bacon in a paper bowl and walked outside. I shook the bowl, calling his name from the concrete porch. He didn’t budge, still lying in the middle of the yard. I figured I’d leave it sitting out, and he’d come get it when he felt more comfortable. My wife was up by this point, justifiably confused by me calling my lost dog’s name from the back of the house. I excitedly showed her that he’d returned, but she seemed less enthusiastic than me. She smiled upon seeing him, but she didn’t have the same connection to him that I did, so I couldn’t blame her for her diluted reaction.
I went to the store right away to grab new dog food, water and food bowls, and most importantly, parts for a doggy door. We lived in a safe enough area that I could install one without fear of a break in, and I wanted to ease Bear back into our house by letting him come in at his own pace. I spent the whole day installing it, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure he wasn’t getting into trouble. He just laid in the sun, presumably napping.
The next morning, I walked into the kitchen to see if there were any signs that Bear had been in the house. Sure enough, there was a clump of black fur stuck in the corner of the doggy door, and the dry food I’d put in the bowl looked to be partially eaten. I told my wife as such when she got up, and she wasn’t fazed by it, instead grabbing my hand and leading me upstairs back into our bedroom. I hadn’t noticed when I got up, but one of the dog bones I’d left on the back patio was on our bedroom carpet, implying that he’d been in there last night, probably guarding us while we slept. My wife seemed a bit disturbed by this, but I was thrilled. To me, this just served as proof that part of my old Bear was still in him - he used to do that all the time, after all.
I sat down with my wife that night and started to discuss how we could make Bear feel more comfortable in our home, but she stopped me. She tried to reason that he had spent years presumably lost in the woods, and had probably become feral and unpredictable. As much as I wanted to cast those doubts aside and override her, she had a valid point; you don’t just spend years stranded and come back the same, human, dog, or otherwise. We met in the middle; if Bear was still hanging around the house in a month and showed signs of improved friendliness, we could try and reincorporate him into our lives. I would do anything to have him back, but I did have a pregnant wife to worry about, so I agreed. In the meantime, we agreed that I’d install a lock on the doggy door so that he or anything else couldn’t get inside. I made a mental note to go to the hardware store sometime next week, as the next day was a national holiday and it was closed.
I abruptly woke up at around 2 in the morning, and wasn’t sure what woke me at first. I thought that I might need water, so I started to head downstairs to get some from the tap. When I got into the kitchen, I started to retrieve a glass when I heard what sounded like scratching on the siding of the house. It was loud and rapid, as if something was trying to claw its way through the wall. Puzzled, I turned to look out the window, and almost choked on my water when I saw Bear’s head looking through the kitchen window. As soon as I saw him, the scratching immediately stopped. He wasn’t panting or anything, despite the fact that it sounded like he was trying to dig through the wall moments prior. He was just sitting at the window, staring at me. Admittedly, in the moonlight, he looked kind of creepy - just looking at me, motionless.
Before I could say his name to see if he would respond with a bark or any other noise, his head quickly sank below the window, in one fluid motion. Usually, when dogs dismount from a surface they’re looking over while standing on their hind legs, there’s a moment where they remove their first front paw and sort of stumble under their weight before moving the other one. That didn’t happen here, though - he just vanished without a sound. I was really creeped out by this point, but figured that he was just surveying the house to see if he felt more comfortable inside. I chalked his weird disappearance up to me being exhausted and it being too dark to fully see him moving.
The next morning, I told my wife that I thought Bear was getting more comfortable around us, and recounted the events of last night. She seemed a bit unsettled, and switched the subject to the doggy door, but I was too excited to take that into account. I told her I was going for a walk in the preserve, put on my running shoes, and left the house.
I was about two miles into the woods when I came across an open area that I hadn’t seen before. Odd, because I knew these woods like the back of my hand, but maybe some campers had come and illegally set up for the night. Several small trees in the area were snapped at the base, possibly in an attempt to free up space for a tent. Maybe this had been here and I just hadn’t noticed it?
That was the theory I was operating on at first, until I looked down at my feet and noticed what was going on. There were white objects poking out of the dirt, which I thought were just pebbles when I arrived. Now that I had actually stopped to look around, though, I noticed that they weren’t rocks at all, but little animal bones. I wasn’t really fazed upon seeing this - animals die in the woods all the time, and I’d probably just stumbled across a mountain lion’s work. That would have made sense, except for a few things.
For one, the bones seemed to be arranged in some sort of pattern. It didn’t look like any symbol in particular, just a set of interlocking circles. There was no way that an animal would arrange the bones of their prey like this, so I was already weirded out, but then I noticed that as the circles grew larger, so did the bones, to the point that some of them were bigger than my arm. I was sufficiently freaked out now, so I turned and went back the way I came, calling the park services helpline on my way home. They told me that I’d probably come across an area frequented by deer, and subsequently predators looking for a quick meal, and that it probably wasn’t anything to be concerned about. After I badgered them for a bit and explained the whole pattern thing, they agreed to send someone out to take a look at it, just in case. I was satisfied with that, so I continued home and tried not to think about it.
I caught glimpses of Bear in the backyard for a few weeks, but didn’t see him for a prolonged period of time until yesterday. I was sitting outside by our fire pit, reading, when I noticed his head poke out from behind one of the trees lining the path of the preserve. I couldn’t see the rest of his body, and that confused me, considering that his head was six feet above the ground. Given that my kitchen window was about the same height, I figured that he was once again standing on his hind legs, probably after some critter in the tree, and I couldn’t see his body because of the angle. That explanation made sense to me, so I didn’t really pay him any mind - if I chose to ignore him, maybe he’d feel like I wasn’t a threat, and would be more comfortable around me. At this point, I’d try anything.
I looked up again two minutes later, and he wasn’t at the tree anymore. I figured that whatever he was after jumped out of the tree and he’d hightailed it after them, so I went back to reading. The snap of a twig moments later grabbed my attention again, and I looked up to see his head poking out from behind another tree fifty feet away. He was at a different angle now, but I still couldn’t see his body, which should’ve been impossible considering how fluffy he was. I couldn’t tell from the newly increased distance, but I swore I saw a single one of his paws wrapped around the tree, almost like how a person would put their hand around a door frame for stability. I wasn’t sure if I was just seeing things, but I wasn’t in the mood to read anymore, so I went inside.
It hurt me to admit this, but at this point, I think I was accepting that Bear was too far gone, and I couldn’t really blame him for that. He was an animal who had been thrust into the cold, dark wilderness, and to expect him to be unchanged by that would be unfair. Still, I was building a family, and it was my duty to protect them. The next day, I got my opportunity to do just that when I spotted Bear once again lying in the center of the back lawn. I grabbed two baking sheets and walked outside, slapping them together and yelling. This loud display apparently worked, as he shot up and darted towards the tree line. I felt like absolute shit after doing this, but it was what needed to be done.
I thought that would be the end of it. I spooked him away, and now I could focus on getting our lives back to normal. Today was a Saturday morning, and instead of making pancakes, I intended on surprising my wife with breakfast from her favorite local donut shop, as she told me that she’d been craving them the night prior. I’m no dummy when it comes to hints, so I hopped into the car and peeled out onto the road, hoping I’d get there before all her favorite flavors sold out.
As I was speeding down the road, I saw it. Or, at least, I thought I did. Under one of the trees on the side of the road, I saw Bear. He was standing on his hind legs, with no support. He didn’t move his head to look at the car, or even show any kind of reaction to me passing him. He just sat there, doing nothing. I slammed on the brakes, and thank god there weren’t any other cars on the road at this time of day, because I would’ve caused an accident. I looked into the rearview mirror, and saw nothing under the tree. I jumped out of the car, looking around like a madman, and saw nothing. The woods were silent, save for the sound of wind and twigs snapping in the distance.
I got back into the car and took a moment before driving again. What I’d just seen, I wasn’t sure, and I was having a full-blown panic attack as a result. After I took some deep breaths, reason returned to me, and I figured that I was seeing things that weren’t there, in dark places in the light of dawn. I resumed driving, albeit at a much slower pace than before. I couldn’t exactly focus my full attention on the road.
When I got to the donut shop, I was met with a pleasant surprise - in line in front of me was the vet tech that I’d been seeing years ago. Even though we’d stopped seeing each other, we ended on fine terms, and didn’t harbor any bad feelings toward each other, as evidenced by the smile and hug we greeted each other with. She asked to grab a couple of coffees and donuts to catch up for a little bit before I returned home, and I agreed, wanting to get my mind off of things. She had done well for herself - she was a full blown vet now, and had been for some time. She was married and had a son, and gave me a bunch of jokey warnings about parenthood. The subject turned to pets, and even though I didn’t want to sour feelings between us, I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut about Bear.
I told her everything that happened, save for what I’d just seen fifteen minutes ago - I wasn’t even sure if I’d actually seen it. She looked concerned while I talked, and tried to interject a few times, but I just kept spilling my feelings. When the floor was finally hers, she hesitated for a second, and then spoke.
“That’s… impossible.”
“What?”
“I really didn’t wanna tell you this, because I didn’t wanna hurt you more, but a few months after we stopped talking, someone brought Bear into our office. He was hit by a car, and we did everything we could… but there was nothing we could do. I didn’t call you about it, because I didn’t think you wanted to hear that your dog was dead.”
I asked her how she was so sure. It couldn’t be. I’d seen my dog alive.
“His collar. He had his collar on when he came into the office. The red one with his name tag on it.”
I left the shop after that. I didn’t leave the parking lot, though. Not because I was afraid to go home, even if I was.
But because I was ashamed. I’m a bad husband. I forgot to get a lock for the doggy door.
2024.06.10 02:27 Hitch42 The Audio Drama Directory links from June 3 to June 9, 2024
 | The Audio Drama Directory is an online directory of audio drama and storytelling websites, with at least one new link added to it every day, and 100 or more new entries created each month. Here are the newest articles from the past week: submitted by Hitch42 to audiodrama [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/oke5fn0j1n5d1.jpg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3575346dcc8808494f13584b88094d3413e7beeb
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2024.06.10 02:24 2cool4ashe "I’m deleting the damn post I clearly explained this all wrong" OP gets frustrated when users in /r/cats tell them their kitty is just playing with them.
Like the title says, the OP deleted their post, "My cat wakes up from her sleep and bites me constantly", from cats, which was only a short video showcasing the kitty's potentially malicious behavior, however, they left all their downvoted comments up for us to read and enjoy!
Let's start with a description of the video. The OP, while recording their tortie cat sleeping on their lap, nudges the cat with their arm somewhat forcefully, which causes kitty to grab OP's arm and nibble on it briefly.
First up is a redditor who thinks kitty is playing with OP: (commenters will be abbreviated with C1, C2, etc.)
submitted by 2cool4ashe to SubredditDrama [link] [comments]
Let's start with a description of the video. The OP, while recording their tortie cat sleeping on their lap, nudges the cat with their arm somewhat forcefully, which causes kitty to grab OP's arm and nibble on it briefly.
First up is a redditor who thinks kitty is playing with OP: (commenters will be abbreviated with C1, C2, etc.)
C1: she’s playing and you’re evidently pushing your arm into her so are encouraging the behaviour. she doesn’t look annoyed at all, this is 100% play behaviour but if you want her to stop you need to move away and ignore her every time she does it until she understands it’s an unwanted behaviour. C2: also 12 isn't very old brained yet C1: yes i was also going to add this. a 12 year old cat isn’t going to wake up and forget their owner randomly, she’s literally just playing and/or being affectionate (love bites). OP: She does this almost every time she wakes up C1: doesn’t mean she’s confused, i’d say it’s a heck of a lot more likely that she’s either giving you love bites or she’s waking up and wanting to play. bites like in the video you’ve posted aren’t aggression, they’re play or affection based. if she was actually confused and biting you because she doesn’t know who you are, she would be growling/hissing and would break the skin. there just isn’t a scenario in cat behaviour where a cat would wake up confused and just gently nip whoever they’re with. if you’re actually concerned though, take her to the vet. C3: I mean the cat is literally hugging her arm, i assume its her first cat and she adopted it recently? Otherwise idk why normal cat behavior is so foreign to opOne redditor gives some simple advice:
C1: Take your arm away from her belly and she will miraculously stop.Another adds they can relate to kitty:
C1: She wakes up and chooses violence. I can relate.This user adds a little bit of sass to their reply:
C1: encourages behavior by pushing arm toward cat as it's playing omg why is this happening is my cat senile Lol OP: Everyone is misunderstanding this so much, I was just getting an example video. She does this the moment she wakes up when she never did before, not sure how it’s the same as just standard cat playing! Never realized people could be so damn toxic on a cat subreddit. C2: It's hard to completely explain a cats behavior, cats stay playful even when they grow older, to anyone this looks like normal behavior even in the scenario you mentioned it's not so weird and it really does sound like standard cat play but if you're worried about her talk to a veterinarianWe get to a longer comment from a redditor, who is confused OP has had a cat for 12 years but doesn't understand its behavior:
C1: You have a cat for 12 years I assume from the post body and you don't know the basic cat language? Bro, I give ny hand to my boy sometimes when he's energetic and hyperactive. He bites me but with love, there's no harsh feelings. At the same time he will lick my hand and keep it for himself but won't bite. If he wanted to bite me it would have been serious injuries and blood. He's 1.4 year old, talks a lot. You should know what your cat wants, if she's tired or annoyed leave her at her own till she gets normal. Your pet is just like your own child, don't be 24/7 around her spying or being always there. Imagine how your child would say "Mom, I need space". Giver her space, let her do whatever she wants inside the house. You explain with love coz humans are different, you can discipline your child but with animals you can't use your angry voice they'll get scared and instead become more aggressive and defensive. You can't make up with Animals after loud screaming 🤷♂️. This is just my piece of advice, I know you won't scream at her but give her space. Constant nagging will annoy them, you are being there always when she wakes up, give her toys instead OP: Like I’ve said in comments, she does this from a dead sleep even without me touching her and it started around 6 months ago so it’s strange people say it’s just play when she’s not a kitten idk she isn’t playful like that normally at all C2: Cats don't grow out of playing or wanting to play. Play ≠ kitten. It is generally encouraged as part of cats growing old, is to keep playing with them - however they like to play. Encourage them to run and jump with toys etc! C3: [to OP] Omg. You’re an idiot. OP: Everyone is misinterpreting what I’m saying.A user comments that torties are unique kitties:
C1: Torties are an odd patchwork of emotions OP: Yeah she’s so aggressive she’s a princess C1: Can you explain what other ways she's aggressive? Maybe that will give a better picture of why she's acting like this after waking? OP: She generally hates all my other cats. Sometimes if she’s in a bad mood and you walk by her she’ll smack you. She has massive boundaries (which is fine) about how she is touched and how much or else she’ll growl/attack you. C1: Has that been behaviours she's had the entire time you've had her? Or is it new or becoming more common? Any changes in her personality or behaviours are definitely something to keep track of and discuss with your vet. If you are worried I would recommend to see your vet again soon and explain everything. There are ways to help her, maybe meds, maybe she's in pain and is angry about it (valid lol). OP: This isn’t new behavior besides the type like the video, she’s always had a mean side since we found her as a stray. I’m not sure but yeah I think she needs a vet too.Lastly, we get the response that pushes OP towards post deletion:
C1: "Why does she keep constantly biting me?" shoves whole arm into her mouth Seems like you've trained her into playing like this, where playing means she bites you. OP: It’s just for the video. She’ll just be laying sleeping my lap and when she wakes up she’ll bite me never too roughly it doesn’t seem like playing, it seems like confusion to me? C1: In the video, it looks like she's playing, and it looks like you're enticing her to play, without any further examples to show that it's not normal behavior when you're both playing OP: Yes and I explained that that wasn’t what was happening? C2: your cat doesn't understand when is or isn't an appropriate time. she knows arm means play. OP: No, she only does this after she wakes up from a nap meowing. C3: Did you only recently adopt the cat? This is a very very normal cat behavior, after napping cats have energy and want to play OP: I’m deleting the damn post I clearly explained this all wrong, my cat dead asleep wakes up and starts this behavior while meowing.
2024.06.10 02:22 Numerous-Egg7865 Home wrecker
So,, I have this friend, we can call her Ella. We used to be so close but she treated me terribly and now we’re more acquaintances than anything. She has this friend, we will call her Mary. Mary and Ella have become really close, and early in their friendship Ella had sex with Mary’s boyfriend. They weren’t super close then but they were friends. Now they hang out very often and Ella has never told Mary a thing. The worst part is, part of me thinks it might still be happening because Ella will hangout with the boy quite often “as friends.” I want to tell Mary but I worry a little because Ella will lose all of her friends if I do. She will be completely alone and as a human that makes it hard. I feel guilty everyday seeing them hang out and I feel worried for the problems that may follow. How should I go about this?
submitted by Numerous-Egg7865 to Advice [link] [comments]
2024.06.10 02:21 Dragon-King-of-Death Nah I'd Adapt
Okay so to start with. Just the other day, one of my friends found my last post and challenged me to make a build that granted the use of the Essence of The Jumpmaster, to build the Ultimate Survivalist Build. What that means is that you could be dropped into the harshest most dangerous places in existence and with come out alive. But to make it harder you only get one perk per jump. Looking like Mahoraga is Optional. (For reference here is the Essence)
You consume the Essence of an experienced Jumper, and gain the following benefits: •Gain 10,000 Choice Points. •These points may be spent across any Jumpchain document, you do not however gain the benefits of any discounts. •You may take any purchases listed as Free at no cost so long as you spend 100cp in the corresponding Jump Document for each Free option taken. •You may also choose to apply the Body Mod supplement to yourself. •Drawbacks do not grant any points. •Gain one origin for free, you benefit from any exclusive perks or freebies for this origin. •Any stipends of bonus choice points a jump may grant are only accessible if you spend twice that amount of Choice Points in that jump. You must obey any restrictions associated with these stipends. •You may choose to be dropped into any setting in which you have spent choice points on, or you may be returned to your original reality.
So far the perks I have chosen are Andreias Amarantos from Empires of Antiquity Fate Legends, Dragon Slayer from Voyage to Valhalla Fate Legends, A Mother’s Love from The Divinity Saga’s Jump, Adaptability from The New JJK Jump, God Hand from The Vasto of White Jump, Master of Many Resistances EX from The Grand Foreigner Jump and The Indestructible Reptile from The One Helluva Broken Day Jump. If you could suggest and resistance or adaptability perks that would be great. (Here is the Description of The Perks)
[Andreias Amarantos (600)]: •Having been bathed in holy flames blessed by the Gods of Olympus when you were younger, you share a similar blessing as Achilles. Your body has become invincible, at least in regards to those that lack the divine. Any attack, no matter the power or nature, will fail to harm your body should it not be delivered by a divine weapon or a divine being, even magic or powerful conceptual weapons. To truly pass this defense, the divinity must be equal to that of at least a demigod with one powerful parent or the equivalent, and lesser amounts of divinity will result in only a small percentage of the incoming attack being able to affect you. It is also possible for enemies to trick their way past this blessing, by attacking with an ‘act of friendship’, such as being bitten by a vampire who intends to turn you into a vampire like them. Finally, your one true weakness that all can strike at, is that one of your heels were unable to be covered in the fires and not only does that heel lack your invincibility, specifically striking it with enough power to damage the heel will result in your invincibility being deactivated for a full day.
[Dragon Slayer (600)]: •The evil dragon shall fall and the world will reach its sunset. For you are here to ensure that. Some may reach legendary status after many trials but you? You already reached this pillar. Siegfried, one of the greatest Heroes in mythology. He is your peer and perfect equal. Your skill in battle is as such that even a twice over more powerful opponent, enhanced by the Holy Grail, could be matched by your sheer prowess with a sword. The kind of skill no doubt helped you as you slew a dragon. Whether or not you truly have already done the deed matters little for you receive such rewards now. Your every strike is vastly more effective against draconic enemies. As long as they can be counted as being a dragon, even if they only have the core or blood of one, they will suffer far more damage from your attacks, as if you are their weakness. As such attacks from them are also less powerful against you. And that is without counting what kind of durability you have now. Your body itself is a titan, unmoving against the greatest of attacks for you bathed in the blood of Fafnir. Your skin is like dragon scales, invulnerable to anything short of something on the level of a Hero of Charities Spear. Especially in a defensive battle, you are like a moving fortress as your protection increases even further. There is one downside to this blessing however. One part of your body was not receiving the dragons blood, causing a weak spot the size of a linden leaf. This weak spot can not be covered and must remain exposed at all times. Any attack you suffer there will not be weakened, impacting you with its full force and damage to your weak spot is considerably more difficult to heal. Also due to the nature of your protection, if you yourself are struck with something possessing an Anti-Dragon attribute, the protection will be slightly weakened.
[A Mother’s Love (600/800 CP)]: •The Curse of Baldur is a powerful protective magic that Freya cast on her son Baldur. It rendered him immune to harm from physical attacks and nearly any magic. Even being slain would only incapacitate him temporarily. The only thing capable of breaking this protection was the mistletoe. This caused the protective runes to shatter. For 600 CP you claim the curse for yourself without suffering the inability to feel like Baldur. You however, must select a single substance that is capable of piercing your defenses. This may be a rare substance however, such as an exotic metal. •Also should your protection be breached it will reappear a few minutes later rather than disappearing permanently. For an additional 200 CP you can upgrade this perk further into the Protection of the World. When Freya cast her spell on Taylor she modified the curse to be stronger and retain the user’s ability to feel. The protection of the world made Taylor immune to any being native to her universe. Only a being such as Scion who was foreign to her multiverse would be capable of piercing her impenetrable skin.
•Master of Many Resistances EX is a skill that grants the user immunity to nearly all status effects. Everything from resistance to specific diseases, to special weapons can be gained with this skill. Though the more general this protection is the less effective the skill becomes. For example, you could acquire complete protection from a single specific type of attack, or you could have a decent resistance against everything. You may freely shift this parameter at will, but you will only retain your active resistances.
[Adaptability (-1000cp)]: •Yeah this isn’t the technique of a human or a cursed spirit but a shikigami. But it’s cool so I’m putting it here. This is the ability to adapt to all phenomena such as attacks and how you fight. Each time the eight handled wheel behind you turns you become more and more resistant to a type of attack. Not just the specific one but in general. This adaptation works after a single attack but will speed up after each strike of the same technique. Such as if you were hit by a flame attack repeatedly you would become immune to it and flames in general. You also adapt as you fight. Your blows become able to injure your opponent even if they were previously invincible. Such as an opponent being weak to fire your blows will become wreathed in flames. This does take time though as the wheel must finish spinning four times. Also it can only adapt to one thing at a time. So if you are being hit with both ice and fire you can choose which to adapt to at the time. This effect is nullified when you remove the wheel and stop using the technique.
[The Indestructible Reptile (600 CP)]: •With this extraordinary perk, you unlock the unparalleled adaptability of SCP-682, the fearsome reptilian anomaly. Just like the entity itself, you possess the remarkable ability to rapidly adapt and overcome the most daunting challenges and threats. When threatened your body will rapidly adapt to the threat generating countermeasures. This extends to your body, mind, and even your very essence giving you an inherent capacity for adaptation. When confronted with hazardous or hostile environments, your physiology adjusts seamlessly, granting you immunity or resistance to the dangers that would affect others. Whether it be extreme temperatures, toxic substances, or other perils, your body can transform to withstand and thrive. •Should you dislike the adaption you may shed the physical changes while retaining the adaption. For example, if you don’t want a larger physical body your muscles might go denser and still retain your enhanced strength. Moreover, your mind exhibits an extraordinary capacity for strategic adaptation. When faced with intellectual challenges or mental assaults, your cognitive abilities sharpen, allowing you to analyze and counteract even the most complex of schemes. Your thoughts become nimble and your intuition keen, enabling you to swiftly devise creative solutions and outmaneuver those who would seek to undermine you. Should a threat fail to eradicate you in a single strike then you will only grow stronger from their effort. Perhaps eventually you can adapt beyond reality itself.
[God Hand (400 CP)]: •This perk allows you to access the legendary Noble Phantasm of the mythic hero, Heracles - the God Hand. Your body will become on par with divine-class conceptual armor, rendering you nearly invulnerable. Any method that kills you once will not be able to kill you again, providing you with eleven lives. In addition, these boons will be permanent, making you a constantly growing warrior. This represents the monumental achievement of the twelve labors of Greek mythology, granting you the ability to endure and overcome any obstacle. With this ability, death is not the end but the beginning, and you will emerge from each battle stronger than before. Lastly, these lives will be restored every ten years or once per jump whichever is shorter.
(Links) Empires of Antiquity Fate Legends Voyage to Valhalla Fate Legends The Divinity Saga JJK Jump The Vasto of White Grand Foreigner One Helluva Broken Day
submitted by Dragon-King-of-Death to JumpChain [link] [comments]
You consume the Essence of an experienced Jumper, and gain the following benefits: •Gain 10,000 Choice Points. •These points may be spent across any Jumpchain document, you do not however gain the benefits of any discounts. •You may take any purchases listed as Free at no cost so long as you spend 100cp in the corresponding Jump Document for each Free option taken. •You may also choose to apply the Body Mod supplement to yourself. •Drawbacks do not grant any points. •Gain one origin for free, you benefit from any exclusive perks or freebies for this origin. •Any stipends of bonus choice points a jump may grant are only accessible if you spend twice that amount of Choice Points in that jump. You must obey any restrictions associated with these stipends. •You may choose to be dropped into any setting in which you have spent choice points on, or you may be returned to your original reality.
So far the perks I have chosen are Andreias Amarantos from Empires of Antiquity Fate Legends, Dragon Slayer from Voyage to Valhalla Fate Legends, A Mother’s Love from The Divinity Saga’s Jump, Adaptability from The New JJK Jump, God Hand from The Vasto of White Jump, Master of Many Resistances EX from The Grand Foreigner Jump and The Indestructible Reptile from The One Helluva Broken Day Jump. If you could suggest and resistance or adaptability perks that would be great. (Here is the Description of The Perks)
[Andreias Amarantos (600)]: •Having been bathed in holy flames blessed by the Gods of Olympus when you were younger, you share a similar blessing as Achilles. Your body has become invincible, at least in regards to those that lack the divine. Any attack, no matter the power or nature, will fail to harm your body should it not be delivered by a divine weapon or a divine being, even magic or powerful conceptual weapons. To truly pass this defense, the divinity must be equal to that of at least a demigod with one powerful parent or the equivalent, and lesser amounts of divinity will result in only a small percentage of the incoming attack being able to affect you. It is also possible for enemies to trick their way past this blessing, by attacking with an ‘act of friendship’, such as being bitten by a vampire who intends to turn you into a vampire like them. Finally, your one true weakness that all can strike at, is that one of your heels were unable to be covered in the fires and not only does that heel lack your invincibility, specifically striking it with enough power to damage the heel will result in your invincibility being deactivated for a full day.
[Dragon Slayer (600)]: •The evil dragon shall fall and the world will reach its sunset. For you are here to ensure that. Some may reach legendary status after many trials but you? You already reached this pillar. Siegfried, one of the greatest Heroes in mythology. He is your peer and perfect equal. Your skill in battle is as such that even a twice over more powerful opponent, enhanced by the Holy Grail, could be matched by your sheer prowess with a sword. The kind of skill no doubt helped you as you slew a dragon. Whether or not you truly have already done the deed matters little for you receive such rewards now. Your every strike is vastly more effective against draconic enemies. As long as they can be counted as being a dragon, even if they only have the core or blood of one, they will suffer far more damage from your attacks, as if you are their weakness. As such attacks from them are also less powerful against you. And that is without counting what kind of durability you have now. Your body itself is a titan, unmoving against the greatest of attacks for you bathed in the blood of Fafnir. Your skin is like dragon scales, invulnerable to anything short of something on the level of a Hero of Charities Spear. Especially in a defensive battle, you are like a moving fortress as your protection increases even further. There is one downside to this blessing however. One part of your body was not receiving the dragons blood, causing a weak spot the size of a linden leaf. This weak spot can not be covered and must remain exposed at all times. Any attack you suffer there will not be weakened, impacting you with its full force and damage to your weak spot is considerably more difficult to heal. Also due to the nature of your protection, if you yourself are struck with something possessing an Anti-Dragon attribute, the protection will be slightly weakened.
[A Mother’s Love (600/800 CP)]: •The Curse of Baldur is a powerful protective magic that Freya cast on her son Baldur. It rendered him immune to harm from physical attacks and nearly any magic. Even being slain would only incapacitate him temporarily. The only thing capable of breaking this protection was the mistletoe. This caused the protective runes to shatter. For 600 CP you claim the curse for yourself without suffering the inability to feel like Baldur. You however, must select a single substance that is capable of piercing your defenses. This may be a rare substance however, such as an exotic metal. •Also should your protection be breached it will reappear a few minutes later rather than disappearing permanently. For an additional 200 CP you can upgrade this perk further into the Protection of the World. When Freya cast her spell on Taylor she modified the curse to be stronger and retain the user’s ability to feel. The protection of the world made Taylor immune to any being native to her universe. Only a being such as Scion who was foreign to her multiverse would be capable of piercing her impenetrable skin.
•Master of Many Resistances EX is a skill that grants the user immunity to nearly all status effects. Everything from resistance to specific diseases, to special weapons can be gained with this skill. Though the more general this protection is the less effective the skill becomes. For example, you could acquire complete protection from a single specific type of attack, or you could have a decent resistance against everything. You may freely shift this parameter at will, but you will only retain your active resistances.
[Adaptability (-1000cp)]: •Yeah this isn’t the technique of a human or a cursed spirit but a shikigami. But it’s cool so I’m putting it here. This is the ability to adapt to all phenomena such as attacks and how you fight. Each time the eight handled wheel behind you turns you become more and more resistant to a type of attack. Not just the specific one but in general. This adaptation works after a single attack but will speed up after each strike of the same technique. Such as if you were hit by a flame attack repeatedly you would become immune to it and flames in general. You also adapt as you fight. Your blows become able to injure your opponent even if they were previously invincible. Such as an opponent being weak to fire your blows will become wreathed in flames. This does take time though as the wheel must finish spinning four times. Also it can only adapt to one thing at a time. So if you are being hit with both ice and fire you can choose which to adapt to at the time. This effect is nullified when you remove the wheel and stop using the technique.
[The Indestructible Reptile (600 CP)]: •With this extraordinary perk, you unlock the unparalleled adaptability of SCP-682, the fearsome reptilian anomaly. Just like the entity itself, you possess the remarkable ability to rapidly adapt and overcome the most daunting challenges and threats. When threatened your body will rapidly adapt to the threat generating countermeasures. This extends to your body, mind, and even your very essence giving you an inherent capacity for adaptation. When confronted with hazardous or hostile environments, your physiology adjusts seamlessly, granting you immunity or resistance to the dangers that would affect others. Whether it be extreme temperatures, toxic substances, or other perils, your body can transform to withstand and thrive. •Should you dislike the adaption you may shed the physical changes while retaining the adaption. For example, if you don’t want a larger physical body your muscles might go denser and still retain your enhanced strength. Moreover, your mind exhibits an extraordinary capacity for strategic adaptation. When faced with intellectual challenges or mental assaults, your cognitive abilities sharpen, allowing you to analyze and counteract even the most complex of schemes. Your thoughts become nimble and your intuition keen, enabling you to swiftly devise creative solutions and outmaneuver those who would seek to undermine you. Should a threat fail to eradicate you in a single strike then you will only grow stronger from their effort. Perhaps eventually you can adapt beyond reality itself.
[God Hand (400 CP)]: •This perk allows you to access the legendary Noble Phantasm of the mythic hero, Heracles - the God Hand. Your body will become on par with divine-class conceptual armor, rendering you nearly invulnerable. Any method that kills you once will not be able to kill you again, providing you with eleven lives. In addition, these boons will be permanent, making you a constantly growing warrior. This represents the monumental achievement of the twelve labors of Greek mythology, granting you the ability to endure and overcome any obstacle. With this ability, death is not the end but the beginning, and you will emerge from each battle stronger than before. Lastly, these lives will be restored every ten years or once per jump whichever is shorter.
(Links) Empires of Antiquity Fate Legends Voyage to Valhalla Fate Legends The Divinity Saga JJK Jump The Vasto of White Grand Foreigner One Helluva Broken Day
2024.06.10 02:12 KrunK_EnstinE Stop taking extreme stances on everything people, its a movie not politics..
Spoilers ahead, duh.
The people that say Furiosa was terrible annoy me almost as much as the people that say it was perfect. It was good, the story was shit. The actors were amazing, the writers are dumb. The only beef with any of the action I had was NOT showing the damn fight between Immortan Joes army and Dementus. CGI does suck, but practical effects are extremely expensive. My expectations were met and if you had fury road expectations then well, you over hyped a prequel to a side character. I hope this movie is still profitable as it will probably determine whether or not we get another film.
It's a Prequel, that makes writing it 100X easier yet some how they still managed to get it completely wrong.
Furiosa's hate for Immortan makes zero sense by the end of this movie. I always expected he had forced her to be one of his wives. At the very least a failed mother that cannot produce offspring but still had to live in the vault with the rest of the wives for a time. Instead he makes her his champion, gives her status, power, food, shelter, water. It appears to be the opposite in my opinion, she should actually like him. Yeah he is a terrible human, but this is the wasteland we're talking about. Most peoples daily activity includes getting robbed, beaten, kicked, starved raped and eventually brutally killed. Being a praetorian for Joe is 100000% better than living in a cave "free" from him. If you MUST live in Hell is it not better to be Satan's right hand rather than the bottom of the burning cauldron.
People freaking about Rictus and Furiosa are also dumb, Rictus has the mental capacity of an 8 year old boy. He has probably never had sex nor does he even know how. The way he lies like a child not being able to fool even the densest of adults, constantly needing to be re focused on tasks. I feel like the actor did a great job, if you have seen of mice and men I believe this is the inspiration behind Rictus. Yeah he was kinda fat and out of shape vs fury road, boohoo nobody cares Nathan Jones is 54 now get over it. This was the one character they wrote well in both films.
I also take beef with the start of the movie, how did 3 loud motorcycles get into the green place without anyone noticing? This place is supposedly secured and watched 24/7 yet 3 dudes on choppers just strolled in like they were invisible. Vuvalini banish young boys to the outskirts where they go insane as they are forced to walk on stilts in the bog to survive only being allowed to live for sperm production. The many mothers are NOT good people, they are people created by the times. Dementus should have had this be his origin, a huge missed opportunity imho. The wasteland creates these people, not the other way around! They kept depicting that people like him or Joe make the times but the times make the people. A slap in the face to the Humungus. They made a weak attempt at the end to depict Dementus as a product of his environment, then abandoned it and made him a tree instead. At least torturing him makes sense as it shows Furiosa is just as petty as the rest of us, her mother was tortured so she becomes the thing she hates the most after Dementus family was tortured and killed making him the thing he hates the most. It's boring writing. Writing people like George RR Martin does is amazing. I wish more writers would do this. Stupidly evil for the sake of having a villain is 90s.
There are several other story hiccups that annoy me but this is just ranting at this point, all in all I give it a solid 7/10. For reference I gave Fury Road a 9. Stop picking an extreme stance people, its okay to criticize the things you enjoy. Also Ana Taylor-Joy is a badass actor and deserves an Oscar for perfectly depicting a young Furiosa despite all the terrible writing, her and Hemsworth really sold this movie for me.
submitted by KrunK_EnstinE to MadMax [link] [comments]
The people that say Furiosa was terrible annoy me almost as much as the people that say it was perfect. It was good, the story was shit. The actors were amazing, the writers are dumb. The only beef with any of the action I had was NOT showing the damn fight between Immortan Joes army and Dementus. CGI does suck, but practical effects are extremely expensive. My expectations were met and if you had fury road expectations then well, you over hyped a prequel to a side character. I hope this movie is still profitable as it will probably determine whether or not we get another film.
It's a Prequel, that makes writing it 100X easier yet some how they still managed to get it completely wrong.
Furiosa's hate for Immortan makes zero sense by the end of this movie. I always expected he had forced her to be one of his wives. At the very least a failed mother that cannot produce offspring but still had to live in the vault with the rest of the wives for a time. Instead he makes her his champion, gives her status, power, food, shelter, water. It appears to be the opposite in my opinion, she should actually like him. Yeah he is a terrible human, but this is the wasteland we're talking about. Most peoples daily activity includes getting robbed, beaten, kicked, starved raped and eventually brutally killed. Being a praetorian for Joe is 100000% better than living in a cave "free" from him. If you MUST live in Hell is it not better to be Satan's right hand rather than the bottom of the burning cauldron.
People freaking about Rictus and Furiosa are also dumb, Rictus has the mental capacity of an 8 year old boy. He has probably never had sex nor does he even know how. The way he lies like a child not being able to fool even the densest of adults, constantly needing to be re focused on tasks. I feel like the actor did a great job, if you have seen of mice and men I believe this is the inspiration behind Rictus. Yeah he was kinda fat and out of shape vs fury road, boohoo nobody cares Nathan Jones is 54 now get over it. This was the one character they wrote well in both films.
I also take beef with the start of the movie, how did 3 loud motorcycles get into the green place without anyone noticing? This place is supposedly secured and watched 24/7 yet 3 dudes on choppers just strolled in like they were invisible. Vuvalini banish young boys to the outskirts where they go insane as they are forced to walk on stilts in the bog to survive only being allowed to live for sperm production. The many mothers are NOT good people, they are people created by the times. Dementus should have had this be his origin, a huge missed opportunity imho. The wasteland creates these people, not the other way around! They kept depicting that people like him or Joe make the times but the times make the people. A slap in the face to the Humungus. They made a weak attempt at the end to depict Dementus as a product of his environment, then abandoned it and made him a tree instead. At least torturing him makes sense as it shows Furiosa is just as petty as the rest of us, her mother was tortured so she becomes the thing she hates the most after Dementus family was tortured and killed making him the thing he hates the most. It's boring writing. Writing people like George RR Martin does is amazing. I wish more writers would do this. Stupidly evil for the sake of having a villain is 90s.
There are several other story hiccups that annoy me but this is just ranting at this point, all in all I give it a solid 7/10. For reference I gave Fury Road a 9. Stop picking an extreme stance people, its okay to criticize the things you enjoy. Also Ana Taylor-Joy is a badass actor and deserves an Oscar for perfectly depicting a young Furiosa despite all the terrible writing, her and Hemsworth really sold this movie for me.
2024.06.10 02:09 orangeapple1947 Just finished the game - I adored it!
As a massive fan of Avatar I’d been dreaming of a game for this (literally) for years, ever since I played the old 2009 Games on PS3 and DS (Nok is the best and I will hear nothing else on the matter), and I absolutely loved this game!
It’s not without its’ issues; I bought it at launch and it had its’ bugs, and still has quite a few; so much so that I put my playthrough on pause so that it could be patched as I wanted to try to complete as much as humanely possible before finishing the game.
But now my playthrough is unpaused, and now over - and I’m very satisfied with it.
I really enjoyed how it expanded Pandora’s biomes and filled in the gap between the first and second films, and I felt pretty much all the characters were easy to love or understand their motivations (Except Mercer, guy’s a psychopath.)
Honestly I think my favourite character (apart from our Sarentu) was Teylan, as I really felt for him and enjoyed his character - also let’s be real he has some serious drip (Ubisoft please allow us to dress like that.)
I really enjoyed all the twists and turns, the expansion of the clans, flora and fauna of Pandora, and the unique premise of the story as a whole (I shan’t be specific as to avoid spoilers for other people) but I highly recommend the game if you haven’t played it!
I have to say my favourite biomes are probably the Kinglor Forest and the Clouded Forest - nothing beats the first time you step out of the opening area, it reminded me a lot of Fallout 3, oddly enough, and the giant trees of the Clouded Forest, the fog and just the mystique of it all was just glorious.
(Don’t get me wrong, I also adore the Upper Plains!)
I think it’s definitely also reached its’ intended goal, too - I think it’s made me appreciate our planet and a lot of its’ natural habitats and creatures, because let’s be real, it’s pretty amazing.
Though Pandora is undoubtedly beautiful, there’s so much to see on our own planet and it saddens me to think that, with the way things are going now, Avatar’s grim and polluted future is more and more likely to become reality. (Minus the Avatars and whatnot.)
Anyways, just wanted to share my thoughts, and I’m stoked for the DLC (One of the few games I’m tempted to buy the season pass for!)
submitted by orangeapple1947 to FrontiersOfPandora [link] [comments]
It’s not without its’ issues; I bought it at launch and it had its’ bugs, and still has quite a few; so much so that I put my playthrough on pause so that it could be patched as I wanted to try to complete as much as humanely possible before finishing the game.
But now my playthrough is unpaused, and now over - and I’m very satisfied with it.
I really enjoyed how it expanded Pandora’s biomes and filled in the gap between the first and second films, and I felt pretty much all the characters were easy to love or understand their motivations (Except Mercer, guy’s a psychopath.)
Honestly I think my favourite character (apart from our Sarentu) was Teylan, as I really felt for him and enjoyed his character - also let’s be real he has some serious drip (Ubisoft please allow us to dress like that.)
I really enjoyed all the twists and turns, the expansion of the clans, flora and fauna of Pandora, and the unique premise of the story as a whole (I shan’t be specific as to avoid spoilers for other people) but I highly recommend the game if you haven’t played it!
I have to say my favourite biomes are probably the Kinglor Forest and the Clouded Forest - nothing beats the first time you step out of the opening area, it reminded me a lot of Fallout 3, oddly enough, and the giant trees of the Clouded Forest, the fog and just the mystique of it all was just glorious.
(Don’t get me wrong, I also adore the Upper Plains!)
I think it’s definitely also reached its’ intended goal, too - I think it’s made me appreciate our planet and a lot of its’ natural habitats and creatures, because let’s be real, it’s pretty amazing.
Though Pandora is undoubtedly beautiful, there’s so much to see on our own planet and it saddens me to think that, with the way things are going now, Avatar’s grim and polluted future is more and more likely to become reality. (Minus the Avatars and whatnot.)
Anyways, just wanted to share my thoughts, and I’m stoked for the DLC (One of the few games I’m tempted to buy the season pass for!)
2024.06.10 02:05 Kuroihane One voice (Kassandra Curze short story)
 | One Voiceco-written with u/SandwichQuiet7369“Say, captain, do you believe in fate?” Dark corridors of the Nightfall were dimly lit with stripes of pale light, resembling their homeworld traditions. The homeworld to which they headed now. Morgenstern stood against one of the Emperor’s Angels, however he could not think of one soul to call this particular one an angel. Or any other space marine on this ship for that matter. Cold black eyes stared the iterator down, there was no animosity in them. Just a faint blink of curiosity. “What is it to you, Iterator, we’re not in one of your peace talks right now,” said Jago Sevatarion, first captain of the Night Lords legion. He pushed through the man standing before him and headed through the corridor. He heard steps of the mortal trying to catch up to him, almost skipping but still trying to uphold decency. The thought of any mortal maintaining a face before him amused the Night Lord. Morgenstern caught up with the space marine. They walked in silence for a few moments. “Lady Kassandra is going to sentence Nostramo to Exterminatus,” said the iterator. He sounded calm, but heightened senses of a space marine gave away his slightly higher heart rate to Jago. First captain quickly glanced at the man beside him. “That is for Mother to decide,” he said quietly, “If she deems this planet a lost cause, so be it.” “And what do you think, captain?” the iterator asked, sounding unnaturally passionless, “I thought of you as a rare example of independent thinker on this whole fleet. I thought you of all people knew that our Lady’s judgments could be… affected.” The space marine stopped suddenly, causing Morgenstern to flinch. Iterator however held his composure, stopping himself and turning to the Night Lord, man’s cloak clicking from a quick movement as he did so. “Are you questioning the primarch, mortal?” black flame danced dangerously in the eyes of the first captain. “Are you not?” he shot back. Jago hated that for all that he wanted he could not refute this man. “What do you want me to do?” If Morgenstern didn’t know who was before him, he would have thought the Night Lord sounded helplessly. “I suggest you listen to your own words, captain,” the iterator began slowly, “I suggest for the first time you try to do better.” “What does it mean, Morgenstern?” Even muffled by airlocks, primarch’s voice felt suppressing. “Canons are disarmed, Lady Kassandra,” Morgenstern said after a long silence. “That is not how it is supposed to be,” Primarch's voice contained suppressed disbelief and rising rage. “It is indeed not.” A series of strikes shook the deck. Jago looked at the iterator. Even though the mortal flinched each time Kassandra Curze’s hit landed on the bridge's gates, Morgenstern firmly stood against them, hands behind his back. “OPEN THE GATES AND DO WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO!” a shout from the other side of the airlocks made the iterator suffer from a headache. He turned to the first captain. “I will kindly ask you to leave, Jago,” he said firmly. The first captain measured the mortal with his glance for a moment. Then the space marine turned away from the bridge. “It is your funeral, iterator.” “Then I will expect flowers from you, captain,” Morgenstern answered, as the primarch's screams in the background became more chaotic and loud. “You better love plastic, it is the best we have on Nostramo,” Night Lord’s words were distant. The Iterator smiled at this unexpected joke from a space marine and focused his sight on the gates. Strikes still fell on their steel. “I SWEAR, MORTAL, YOU WILL REGRET THAT DECISION AS I WILL BE MAKING MYSELF A ROBE OUT OF YOUR SKIN WITH YOU STILL BREATHING!” Now, that is just rude, Morgenstern thought to himself trying to stay calm as his Lady’s words made a cold sweat run down his back. The iterator stood and waited. Screams and threats continued, but as hours went on he started to notice something new in Kassandra’s voice. Pain started as thin threads in the fabric of her voice, growing thicker until all that was there was agony. It was so alive, so unbearable that the man felt pain in his own heart. Those screams were filled with thick despair and fear, fear of someone whose world crumbled beneath their feet. Voice of the Dark Queen, vibrating through the walls and floor of the deck started slowly fading more silent, until it became a flow of slurred words, then just a torrent of silent sobs and whispers. And then there was silence. Kassandra couldn’t manage her breath. Her vision blurred, hearts beat so hard, she thought her ribs would break. Opening mouth in a silent scream, primarch clawed her head, blood streamed between her fingers. Kassandra slid down the bridge gates trying to find some shelter in her surroundings. But there was nothing. Only a spacious empty bridge and complete darkness. She hugged her knees, burying her head in them, in a futile attempt to cover her eyes from what she was about to see. Primarch’s eyes blazed purple, now burning with the fire of cursed future. Kassandra was engulfed with darkness, a dark choking fog of false reality swirling around her. Then she blinked. Kassandra no longer sat on the cold floor of the bridge. Her hands now tightly grasped the armrests of her command throne. Nostramo is guilty. This filthy planet is rotten to the core and one sentence awaits it. Death. We gave them a chance, a quiet rustling voice came. The impudent mortal standing to her side shouted an immediate counter command to the fleet before comms could be closed. Kassandra recognized the woman even seeing her for the first time in her life. Morgenstern’s wheat blond mane and sharp jaw was recognizable even in this warped reality. Why he, or she, looked like this, did not matter for now. Her stupidly arrant actions did. The Primarch clamped her jaw, her hands clenched so hard the armrests cracked. Dashing, Lady of the VIIIth raised from her flagship’s throne and grabbed Morgenstern, tossing her across the bridge. The Mortal flew until she hit the wall with a horrible whack, falling down. Quietly moaning from pain, the iterator tried to get up, getting only to her four before pain stopped her further attempts. The Primarch couldn’t believe it. One of the only people in the whole galaxy Kassandra thought she could count on had just gone against her. She is guilty too, whispered the voice, and just as that pathetic sphere of mud, she deserves death. The Primarch took a step forward. That mortal is not the same! A new, youthful voice proclaimed. Kassandra made two more steps. The first voice laughed at her in cruel mocking, Ah-ha-ha, but you still are. Look at her. So much pain. So much misery. BROUGHT BY YOUR HAND! The voice became silent for a moment. Then it sounded again. Kill her. Kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, KILL HER, KILL HER– Voices echoed in primarch’s head, doubling and tripling, deafening her thoughts. The cacophony building up and turning to a crescendo. “SILENCE!” The primarch roared. Her voice thundered across the fleet through the vox channel that was still open, as the communication officer was frozen in fear. The order was given. If they were sentient, the servitors and engines would have silenced themselves too. As she came closer to the kneeling iterator, primarch’s breath became heavier and heavier, weighed down by her resolution. The voice granted her a few seconds of peace before starting to talk again. This time berating her for embarrassment she brought upon herself in front of her subordinates. And how do you want them to respect you after such a fit? How do you want them to keep being afraid of you? You still are just the same child from–, Kassandra swept it away to the back of her head. Morgenstern coughed up lumps of blood and spit. Turning back to her lady coming closer, she used one of the bridge's consoles to lean on and stand up. A mouthful of blood splat forth giving it a new coat of red paint. So proud, so foolish. Kassandra grabbed the woman's shoulder and turned her around. She lifted the iterator in the air holding her by the throat. The Primarch gazed mortal in the eyes. Iterator's stubborn determination hit her with flaming intensity. We do not have to do this, the youthful voice again tried to reason. The lightning claws chattered to life. One smooth motion in less than one second is all it would take. The rustling voice started its declamation again. Those who help the peccant are peccant themselves. Guilt demands punishment. There can be no hesitation, no mercy, and no exceptions. That is how this galaxy works. That is how justice is ensured. We learned this at a young age. You know this. Your sons know this. Even this wench knows this. She, who is in front of you is guilty of aiding crime, justice HAS to be dealt. Your feelings matter nothing. A sharpened tip of a chainglaive promptly rose to meet the primarch's throat. She turned her head to see who was so foolishly, insolently brave to even think of that. “Mother, please,” Lord Commander Shang’s voice sounded desperate, even distorted by his helmet. Sweet, stupid Shang, rustling voice laughed at the space marine. He is not stupid, a youthful bitter silent voice echoed defeated in the primarch’s skull. “Lower your weapon this instance, Lord Commander, and you might stay alive until the tribunal,” Primcrch's voice pushed down the already thick air of the bridge. “He will not,” another space marine’s voice sounded from behind Lady of the VIIIth, paired with the sound of a spinning chainglaive. First captain of the Night Lords legion stood up against his gene-mother. Another one? After that lump of mud is dealt with, you should look really closely at your impudent brats, rustling voice snarled. And take our legion’s last honorable parts? questioned the youthful one. “One more to defy me,” said Kassandra, “one more to be punished.” No retort came. Sevatarion’s visor lenses gleaned grim. Sworn oaths betrayed each other. “Th– Then do it,” the mortal's voice choked out. “Prove everyone right. Destroy Nostramo. Kill your people. Kill your sons. Kill me. Prove that there is only Night Hauntress left. Put out the last glimmering flames of light you have in your miserable life.” Ha! the rustling voice exclaimed enthusiastically, maybe you should listen to that pest after all! She is frightened, the youthful murmured. “They all have betrayed me.” Primarch closed her eyes and shook her head trying to think clearly. Her hand tensed, making a woman in her grasp cough up blood again. Then make these an example, a rustling voice whispered nonchalantly, their skin hanging on the main deck will stop any one from defying you again. This is what you call justice? You could be better than this. “No.” Kassandra spoke uncertainly, “Shut up.” Morgenstern desperately grabbed primarch’s hands, fighting suffocation. With the corner of her eye, Kassandra noticed how her sons tightened grips on their weapons. Stop this whining, and do what you must. You will not be able to turn back from this. What, you will betray the justice itself for a cup of sweet beverage? You know it is more than that. Two voices argue, spiraling and mixing in themselves, deafening Kassandra, making her feel like her head is about to explode. A cacophony of madness blinded the primarch, extinguishing reason that left in her broken mind. The Lady of the VIIIth screamed. And everything went dark. When Kassandra’s vision cleared again, bridge walls and observation windows were thinly painted red. Crew and servitors, dismembered, covered the floor with their body parts and intestines. Irritating disharmonic wet dripping noise of blood, streaming down the bridge interior and systems, filled the space. Kassandra’s breath was heavy and uneven. She stared long at her gauntlets and lightning claws, soaked in body fluids of men and women she slaughtered, before raising her eyes. Shang’s body, pierced and pinned by his own chainglaive, hung on the bridge gates, leaving a long trail of blood flowing down. Leaning on the airlocks, sat Sevatarion’s beheaded corpse, surrounded by several dozen space marines. Cracked armor, severed limbs, they were grouped around their captain and Lord Commander as if they had kept a defense line against some raging beast. Tears of horror and self-loath streamed down the face of the primarch. Surrounding scene resembled primarch ancient Terra’s myths of afterlife punishment and damnation. Hell created by her own madness. Muffled moans brought Kassandra’s attention to the foot of the bridge throne. Iterator’s broken body lay there motionless. But she was still alive. Kassandra rushed to her, stopping two steps from away, no desire to come closer, no courage. Morgenstern coughed, following her pierced lungs prompting. She could only move her eyes to look at the devastated primarch. “You did it,” croaked the iterator, “you killed us all.” “I–“ “Come closer.” Morgenstern did not let her make excuses. Unable to refute the dying woman, Kassandra made two steps forward and leaned lower to Morgenstern. She noticed the detonator in the iterator’s hand too late. “Ave Dominus Nox, my Lady.” Before fire tore reality of the vision apart, Kassandra realized one last thing. There were never two voices vocalizing in her head. There was only her own. The floor’s rockrete stinged Kassandra's cheek with cold. Tears silently rolled down her face, blurring her vision. She did not twitch nor scratched herself, limply lying on the floor. She was so tired. Constant nightmares that always came to life, sooner or later. False hope that she could ever escape it. Hope that her sons and her iterator have been shoving down her throat right now. And that vision. What she saw was so surreal, yet so alive. Alternative present and immediate future was not something she ever saw until this point. But that did not matter. It too was knitted from threads of darkness. “You should have just killed me.” she whispered. The stone’s chill became strangely calming. Kassandra felt like she did not want to ever get up. She contemplated voices, or rather voices that haunted her in that bizarre vision. Voices that were unsynchronized and split, but still belonged to Kassandra Curze. She was no fool. Kassandra understood that there was something deeply wrong with her. Something that she allowed to happen. Something that since tormented her and was her shelter alike. The primarch’s thoughts were interrupted by a torrent of another possible forthcoming stirring in her eyes. Kassandra’s body tightened up, she bit her lip, once more that day painting her face with a stripe of red. Then the primarch stopped breathing. She could not believe herself, stopping every movement of her body, trying not to scare off what is to come. Kassandra felt this only once, in a dark alley of Nostramo, where she was forced with a role of judge. Where she chose to be the executioner. Canvas of light, images of future burned on it, second time in Kassandra’s life, they were not pitch black. She closed her eyes and let herself be consumed. Only the finest gold-plated rockrete surrounded the Lady of the VIIIth legion. Eighteen marble statues greeted her, behind them stood their legions in perfect parade formation. Unlike the statues used on compliant worlds, not a single statue here was produced from the mass industrial lines. Instead, entire armies of the finest artisans the Imperium had to offer were unleashed just for this room. The Hall of Heroes was enchanting. The history of humanity under the rule of the Emperor, captured on its walls gazed upon anyone who stepped here. It seemed that whatever architects worked on this chamber, their end goal was to capture the glory of Mankind itself. Many could be elevated by those walls, but the primarch of the Night Lords was not. Too much light, not enough shadows, she felt trapped in a cage without bars. That was a place for heroes. And she was not a hero. In the center of the Imperial Palace Kassandra knelt, dressed in ceremonial tail-suit, head bowed, before the Emperor of Mankind. She was still waiting for judgment, for censure, for rejection and banishment. But none came as she waited. Then the Emperor spoke. +Stand up, daughter.+ At the unexpected words Kassandra twitched her head, looking up at her father, before turning away in embarrassment. She slowly stood up, not fully sure she was really allowed to, warily anticipating what was to come. Annoying rustling made itself heard. What does he have to say to us? This hypocrite, will he critique us again? Will he- +I only want to speak to you.+ Soft waves of force washing against her mind made the distracting voice finally shut up. Kassandra looked her father in the eyes. His face was so serene, she doubted he even had really spoken right now. Watching her father’s glorious image, she felt bitter, realizing how different they were. Father and daughter, what a fraking joke, she thought to herself. “What do you want me to hear, father?” asked primarch, defense ringing in her voice. The Emperor waited before his answer. +You are conflicted.+ Kassandra felt anger welling up inside her. “Oh, Emperor, beloved by all, your attentiveness should be celebrated by all of humanity!” She loudly spat these words, and then continued, now almost whispering, “I almost gouged out my eyeballs before you on Nostramo, and you just left me with your little funny war on stars.” Emperor held out his hand and softly grasped his daughter’s shoulder. It felt stunningly unnatural for the Lady of the VIIIth, but also stirred up something inside her from the old days. From those days she still had someone who really cared about her on Nostramo. +I never wanted or intended you to suffer like this. I had belief you will overcome this.+ Kassandra grinned bitterly. “As you can see, I failed. Perhaps, you should have intended better.” +You may be right. I want you to join Blood Angels’ expedition fleet.+ Lady of the VIIIth squinted. “Want your perfect Angel to watch over me? Is that your punishment?” +It is your opportunity.+ Kassandra shook off her father’s hand. “Opportunity for what?! To make your Imperium, this house of hypocrisy and violence, larger and broader?” The Emperor's face remained impenetrable. +To make it better.+ Kassandra tried to find words, but could not. The Emperor's words were not just a façade, they were not a ploy to coax her in compliance. He was being genuine. Kassandra lowered her head, examining the Imperial Palace’s floor marble in defeat of her obstinacy. “How will I make Imperium better, if I cannot make myself better?” +The question you should ask is not how to make yourself better. But how to finally decide who you are.+ “And who am I supposed to be?” Kassandra raised her head again in a hope for an answer. The Emperor slowly held out his hand, tenderly touching his daughter’s forehead with his index. +That you must find out for yourself.+ The Emperor and his palace, all around Kassandra Curze, disappeared. She now appeared in complete darkness, looking around, trying to understand what the Emperor just did to her. Everywhere the primarch could see was only dark, she stood ankles deep in an obsidian water that made no sound as she wandered around. Kassandra tried to walk in one direction until she stopped, understanding that this dark plane was endless. Cold of this place bit her bones. “Always so enigmatic, isn’t he?” sounded a rustling voice behind her. Kassandra turned around snappily, as she had not felt anyone to sneak up. That was new for her. Before primarch stood figure, figure rivaling her in height and stature, covered in thin black mist, making its features unrecognizable. “Who, the frak, are you?” Kassandra asked the stranger. “Weren’t you told to ask yourself this question?” Shadow answered, clearly amused by her bewilderment. “How do you know?” The primarch was getting annoyed by this creature’s attitude. “I was there, obviously.” The dark figure started to walk in circles around Kassandra, reminding her of beasts readying to jump at their prey. But Kassandra was no prey. And she was not in the mood for these charades. “We are in my head,” Kassandra stated the obvious. “Look at her, that girl is not only about appearances!” a stranger mocked her, clapping its hands. “Enough,” ordered the primarch, “surely, you are not the one to answer my questions.” The dark figure finally ended its circling, stopping in front of the dismissive primarch. “And what questions would you ask?” mocking rustling changed with an ominous growl. Kassandra thought for a couple of moments. “How shall I deal from now on?” “Just as before.” “I cannot.” “Why? Have you become so weak?” “Because I have to be stronger than that.” The creature snarled in resentment of these words. “Who do you think you are? Humanity’s savior, warrior princess in a snow-white armor?” Kassandra's eyes widened in sudden recognition. “Why so silent? Admit it to yourself and your dead mommy. She would be so disappointed.” Shadow was tense, opposing the primarch. "Admit it. You are a monster." Kassandra stared at the figure. It all made sense to her now. Her prior visions, her father’s words. This place and abomination of darkness standing before her. Awareness dawned on her with a weight of new, vaguely perceived, responsibility, crushing her with guilt for all she has done by now. She was afraid. But here and now she had a chance. A chance to start walking towards a ghostly glimpse of light at the end of the cursed tunnel she now saw. Now that she knew it existed. Kassandra walked closer to the shadow and extended her arm, placing hand on the figure's chest. “I know what I am,” upon her touch, black mist dissolved revealing a face that Kassandra hated so much. Dirty rags and self-made blades lay on a creature’s milk-pale skin. Sunken eyes as black as the void of space and twice as cold. Lips peeled back barring sharp teeth in horror. “I know what I am,” repeated Kassandra, voice filled with realization, “I am you.” Her reflection’s features started to twist and break, turning into jet black liquid. Violently swirling around the primarch’s hand, her arm, and her body. Kassandra felt as if she was forced to drink sewer water. But it was a part of her. Only with it could she be complete. In a second it was over. She stood alone in the endless plane that did not seem so unwelcoming now. Cold became less severe. Pitch-black water was gone, and beneath her feet, soft onyx grass sprouted. Within a moment of contemplation, Kassandra lowered herself and lay down in its delicate embrace, relaxing her body. Resting there, Kassandra Curze avowed. “I am Night Hauntress.” |
2024.06.10 01:53 Trevignano_Romano Trevignano Romano - June 2024
Message from the Queen of the Rosary given to Gisella on 9 June 2024
My daughter, thank you for welcoming me into your heart. Daughter, the times that are coming will be hard and I want all those who have true Faith to be ready. I ask you to take advantage of this moment of Grace. Convert, keep the Covenant with God, follow his Commandments and confess your sins. Try to keep yourself as clean as possible. My children, the earth will be shaken to be renewed. Its purification is necessary! Consecrated children, do not embrace New Age doctrines. The only weapon to avoid getting lost is Prayer and Faith only in God! Do not mix with the world and be true shepherds. Humanity has betrayed the Law of God and nature, believing that it is more powerful than Him, but remember that God is the Creator of all things. I cry, because I see so many of my children lost in the confusion. I as a Mother, want to help you find the right path, but you often do not listen to My Appeals: have Faith, courage and be pious. This is the time of the struggle between good and evil! I ask you, always choose the good, help your brothers when they falter. God looks at your hardened hearts, he sees falsehood, pride, envy, wickedness and would like to transform you. Be light, let yourselves be transformed by his Mercy and let hearts of stone become hearts of flesh. My beloved, my presence on this earth will not last forever... take advantage and meditate on my words today. It's urgent... the time is now and it's today. Listen to my words! Now I leave you with my maternal blessing, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
SHORT REFLECTION
The words of the Mother of God erupt like a real "spiritual earthquake" in our lives, because they want a real and total change in our existence, so that we can really start living according to the desires of Heaven. We can actualize all this in our lives, when we nourish it through Faith and Prayer, foundations on which we must rest "our spiritual building". Only by renewing our life, with the help of sacramental grace, especially through the sacrament of confession which cleanses our soul from our sins, would we be certain of implementing his plans in our existence. How much confusion reigns among men in the world today. Not only because like the first man and the first woman, they were tempted and thought of becoming like God. But the great temptation in which man lives is that he no longer wants to be satisfied with becoming like God, but wants to become greater than God Putting yourself in his place, subverting the very nature of the Creator. For these reasons, we must lovingly welcome the warnings of the Queen of Heaven, who continues to descend to earth for us. We still don't know how long we would have this "grace" of living at her feet, so we welcome her invitations. In particular her shepherds, who are called to lead all of God's flock on the true path that the Lord has traced for the good of humanity. Let us destroy our ego (I) which through envy, jealousy, wickedness and all those desires that are suggested to us in our heart by Satan, do nothing but shape a heart of stone, a heart that does not know how to love, but just hate. While the Lord asks us to form a heart of flesh, a heart imbued with his merciful love. Let's not put off for tomorrow what is asked of us today. We live in the present, because it belongs to God. We leave the future in his hands.... Forward with prayer!
Message from the Queen of the Rosary given to Gisella on 3 June 2024
Dear children, thank you for having responded to my call in your heart. Children, I ask you to have respect for the Body and Blood of My Son! During her life he left his blood for the Eternal Alliance. Respect children, this Alliance! Be docile to his Holy Commandments. Today, dear children, they want to remove Jesus from the world, from your lives, from schools... do not be deprived of the Love of God. Be filled with His Holy Love, especially during the Sacraments! My children, have reverence for the Body of Jesus, just as My Angels and I Myself do. Kneel and lower your head before this immense miracle, which continues in all the Holy Masses. Pray, children for my shepherds, that they may always be illuminated by the Light of Christ in their hearts and in their consciences. Now I leave you with My maternal blessing, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen
There will be many graces that will descend.
submitted by Trevignano_Romano to trevignano [link] [comments]
My daughter, thank you for welcoming me into your heart. Daughter, the times that are coming will be hard and I want all those who have true Faith to be ready. I ask you to take advantage of this moment of Grace. Convert, keep the Covenant with God, follow his Commandments and confess your sins. Try to keep yourself as clean as possible. My children, the earth will be shaken to be renewed. Its purification is necessary! Consecrated children, do not embrace New Age doctrines. The only weapon to avoid getting lost is Prayer and Faith only in God! Do not mix with the world and be true shepherds. Humanity has betrayed the Law of God and nature, believing that it is more powerful than Him, but remember that God is the Creator of all things. I cry, because I see so many of my children lost in the confusion. I as a Mother, want to help you find the right path, but you often do not listen to My Appeals: have Faith, courage and be pious. This is the time of the struggle between good and evil! I ask you, always choose the good, help your brothers when they falter. God looks at your hardened hearts, he sees falsehood, pride, envy, wickedness and would like to transform you. Be light, let yourselves be transformed by his Mercy and let hearts of stone become hearts of flesh. My beloved, my presence on this earth will not last forever... take advantage and meditate on my words today. It's urgent... the time is now and it's today. Listen to my words! Now I leave you with my maternal blessing, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
SHORT REFLECTION
The words of the Mother of God erupt like a real "spiritual earthquake" in our lives, because they want a real and total change in our existence, so that we can really start living according to the desires of Heaven. We can actualize all this in our lives, when we nourish it through Faith and Prayer, foundations on which we must rest "our spiritual building". Only by renewing our life, with the help of sacramental grace, especially through the sacrament of confession which cleanses our soul from our sins, would we be certain of implementing his plans in our existence. How much confusion reigns among men in the world today. Not only because like the first man and the first woman, they were tempted and thought of becoming like God. But the great temptation in which man lives is that he no longer wants to be satisfied with becoming like God, but wants to become greater than God Putting yourself in his place, subverting the very nature of the Creator. For these reasons, we must lovingly welcome the warnings of the Queen of Heaven, who continues to descend to earth for us. We still don't know how long we would have this "grace" of living at her feet, so we welcome her invitations. In particular her shepherds, who are called to lead all of God's flock on the true path that the Lord has traced for the good of humanity. Let us destroy our ego (I) which through envy, jealousy, wickedness and all those desires that are suggested to us in our heart by Satan, do nothing but shape a heart of stone, a heart that does not know how to love, but just hate. While the Lord asks us to form a heart of flesh, a heart imbued with his merciful love. Let's not put off for tomorrow what is asked of us today. We live in the present, because it belongs to God. We leave the future in his hands.... Forward with prayer!
Message from the Queen of the Rosary given to Gisella on 3 June 2024
Dear children, thank you for having responded to my call in your heart. Children, I ask you to have respect for the Body and Blood of My Son! During her life he left his blood for the Eternal Alliance. Respect children, this Alliance! Be docile to his Holy Commandments. Today, dear children, they want to remove Jesus from the world, from your lives, from schools... do not be deprived of the Love of God. Be filled with His Holy Love, especially during the Sacraments! My children, have reverence for the Body of Jesus, just as My Angels and I Myself do. Kneel and lower your head before this immense miracle, which continues in all the Holy Masses. Pray, children for my shepherds, that they may always be illuminated by the Light of Christ in their hearts and in their consciences. Now I leave you with My maternal blessing, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen
There will be many graces that will descend.
2024.06.10 01:50 cporter202 Leveraging ChatGPT for Global Market Research: Pros and Cons in Translation Tasks
As the business landscape becomes ever more globalized, market research has assumed a critical role in understanding and catering to diverse consumer bases. Notably, efficient and accurate translation is imperative in ensuring that the research encompasses and resonates with the intended audiences across different geographies. In this sphere, AI-powered tools like ChatGPT have emerged as potent assets, promising to revolutionize the way translation is handled in global market research.
The pros of utilizing a language model like ChatGPT in translation tasks are multifaceted. First and foremost, ChatGPT offers remarkable speed, allowing researchers to translate and analyze large volumes of data in a fraction of the time required for traditional human translation. Additionally, it provides consistent output, thus mitigating the risk of human error that might occur due to fatigue or oversight during repetitive tasks.
Moreover, the introduction of such AI tools can significantly reduce costs associated with market research translation. Where professional human translators command a premium for their expertise, AI-based translations can be executed at a fraction of the cost, democratizing access to global markets for businesses of all sizes.
However, there are tangible cons. Although AI has advanced considerably, nuances in language are still sometimes lost in machine translation. ChatGPT may struggle with idiomatic expressions, local slang, or cultural references that are crucial for accurate market analysis. Furthermore, it lacks the deep contextual understanding that seasoned human translators bring to the table—a critical component for culturally-sensitive market research.
Privacy and data security are other concerns. When sensitive market research data is processed by AI platforms, the potential risk of data breaches must be taken into consideration.
Despite these limitations, the use of ChatGPT for translation in global market research is an area rife with potential, inviting a debate on how we can best leverage AI while also addressing its shortcomings. The key question for those in market research today is how to strike the right balance between the undeniable benefits of speed and cost-effectiveness offered by AI, and the unequaled depth of understanding provided by human expertise. How can we harness the advantages of AI translation while avoiding pitfalls? Is there room for a synergistic approach that combines the strengths of both human and artificial intelligence? Let's discuss.
submitted by cporter202 to ChatGPTautomation [link] [comments]
The pros of utilizing a language model like ChatGPT in translation tasks are multifaceted. First and foremost, ChatGPT offers remarkable speed, allowing researchers to translate and analyze large volumes of data in a fraction of the time required for traditional human translation. Additionally, it provides consistent output, thus mitigating the risk of human error that might occur due to fatigue or oversight during repetitive tasks.
Moreover, the introduction of such AI tools can significantly reduce costs associated with market research translation. Where professional human translators command a premium for their expertise, AI-based translations can be executed at a fraction of the cost, democratizing access to global markets for businesses of all sizes.
However, there are tangible cons. Although AI has advanced considerably, nuances in language are still sometimes lost in machine translation. ChatGPT may struggle with idiomatic expressions, local slang, or cultural references that are crucial for accurate market analysis. Furthermore, it lacks the deep contextual understanding that seasoned human translators bring to the table—a critical component for culturally-sensitive market research.
Privacy and data security are other concerns. When sensitive market research data is processed by AI platforms, the potential risk of data breaches must be taken into consideration.
Despite these limitations, the use of ChatGPT for translation in global market research is an area rife with potential, inviting a debate on how we can best leverage AI while also addressing its shortcomings. The key question for those in market research today is how to strike the right balance between the undeniable benefits of speed and cost-effectiveness offered by AI, and the unequaled depth of understanding provided by human expertise. How can we harness the advantages of AI translation while avoiding pitfalls? Is there room for a synergistic approach that combines the strengths of both human and artificial intelligence? Let's discuss.
2024.06.10 01:47 wokeupabug On Hegel and Secularism
One of the most influential treatments of religion from European modernity begins with this striking statement of God's centrality to human experience:
And while it is somewhat tangential to the main theme of this subreddit, I understand there's been some interest in this topic here. There has recently been here some contentious discussions here about the relation between historical-critical methodology and Qur'anic studies, in which a point of concern was raised about supposed ideological foundations of the western academy on the basis of its supposed allegiance to Hegelian assumptions about religion -- an account which credited historical-critical methodology to a supposed commitment to Hegel among western academics, and which challenged the suitability of historical-critical methodology to Qur'anic studies on this basis. There are interesting and important questions in this vicinity, pertaining to the understanding of western modernity, the comparison of different worldviews, and what to make of the place of religion given humanity's present situation. But precisely in their interest and importance, they merit a more careful engagement with the sources. To this end, I hope that these sources will help provide a more considered understanding of what Hegel's treatment of religion actually involves, and promote further discussion and inquiry into these matters in ways that are of more immediate interest to the subreddit than my own remarks on this topic will be.
Hegel's paean to religion in the introduction to his Lectures continued:
But there is an important question here about how religion is understood. The dominant understandings of religion in Hegel's Europe took three major forms: first, the older form associated with the Enlightenment, where religion was understood as an outcome of natural reason and so God understood as a category in the philosopher's metaphysics; second, the burgeoning liberal theology, where religion was understood as an expression of the private feelings and commitments characterizing a given group of people; and third, the understanding of religion that develops out of the early expressions of a historical-critical program, where religion becomes a matter of certain facts of human history to be catalogued by the historian, philologist, and folklorist. And, burgeoning alongside the new liberal and historical-critical theologies, there were of course also the critics of religion.
Hegel pit his position on religion against all four of these movements, and one of the characteristics of his mature period is an ongoing battle, at times rather personal, against the champions of these approaches. A key document of this is the introduction he wrote to Henrich's Religion, which is available in English translation in Hodgson's (ed.) G.W.F. Hegel: Theologian of the Spirit.
For Hegel, religion has to be understood as finding its essence neither in the philosopher's metaphysics, nor in the private feelings or commitments of a given congregation, nor the historical facts of the critical school, but rather in the dogmatic content of revelation. Thus, the aforementioned account of religion as the penultimate form of consciousness in the Encyclopedia begins like this: "It lies essentially in the notion of religion -- the religion, i.e., whose content is absolute mind -- that it be revealed, and, what is more, revealed by God."
An extended passage from the aforementioned Lectures can help clarify his attitude toward the rationalist, the liberal, and the historical-critical approaches:
How has this misunderstanding of Hegel's significance occurred? A common suggestion holds Hegel responsible for the rejection of God and religion by way of holding Feuerbach -- and perhaps those associated with him, like D Strauss and Marx -- responsible for this, and regarding Feuerbach as carrying out Hegel's legacy. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Feuerbach's relation to Hegel was one of stark opposition: so much that he explicitly maintained that the formula for arriving at truth is to do the opposite of what Hegel had done. From his Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy:
It is certainly true that Feuerbach here reveals the "influence" of Hegel, but this is not the kind of influence we would use to plausibly credit Hegel with Feuerbach's position. This would be like attributing free market economics to socialists on the grounds that Friedrich Hayek promotes free market economics and in The Road to Serfdom is responding to socialism.
The details of Hegel's relation to religion are thus inconsistent with the narrative that assigns to him the place of founder of the secularism of western modernity, but rather speak to the complications and ambiguities of western modernity as a context -- a context in which one of its most influential thinkers can commit himself to such a defense of the dogmatic content of religious revelation and pit himself against the ascendency of the liberal and historical-critical theologies. And it is just these complications and ambiguities that ought to inform and render interesting and important our discussions on and inquiries into these matters.
submitted by wokeupabug to AcademicQuran [link] [comments]
From [the manifold images and configurations of consciousness] flows all that brings [human beings] respect, satisfaction, honor, and happiness, all these interests have their center, find their end and their beginning, their truth, in one thought, in the thought of God. God is known in religion; God is the sustaining center, which breathes life into all these configurations in their existence... (31)This is Hegel's 1824 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, available in English translation in Hodgson's (ed.) Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: Volume I - Introduction and the Concept of Religion.
And while it is somewhat tangential to the main theme of this subreddit, I understand there's been some interest in this topic here. There has recently been here some contentious discussions here about the relation between historical-critical methodology and Qur'anic studies, in which a point of concern was raised about supposed ideological foundations of the western academy on the basis of its supposed allegiance to Hegelian assumptions about religion -- an account which credited historical-critical methodology to a supposed commitment to Hegel among western academics, and which challenged the suitability of historical-critical methodology to Qur'anic studies on this basis. There are interesting and important questions in this vicinity, pertaining to the understanding of western modernity, the comparison of different worldviews, and what to make of the place of religion given humanity's present situation. But precisely in their interest and importance, they merit a more careful engagement with the sources. To this end, I hope that these sources will help provide a more considered understanding of what Hegel's treatment of religion actually involves, and promote further discussion and inquiry into these matters in ways that are of more immediate interest to the subreddit than my own remarks on this topic will be.
Hegel's paean to religion in the introduction to his Lectures continued:
Religion appears as what is occupied with this [center]. Occupation with this ultimate, final end is thus unreservedly free and is therefore its own end since all other aims go back to this final end; though previously valid for themselves, they disappear in the face of it, no other aim holds against it, and all are resolved in it... This occupation is the consciousness of absolute truth; as a mode of sensibility it is the absolute enjoyment we call blessedness, while as activity it does nothing but manifest the glory of God and reveal the divine majesty. (31-32)This privileged place assigned to God, and to religion as the mode of our access to God, is a consistent and characteristic feature of Hegel's mature thought. The definitive presentation of this thought is his system articulated in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, which presents the different shapes that thought can take in a progressive series as it strikes towards an adequate grasp of its situation. And for Hegel the penultimate form of thought, that shape which is most adequate save for any but -- in Hegel's mind -- philosophy, is religion. Hence in the Encyclopaedia we find the account of religion occupying this privileged place. This can be found in English translation in Wallace and Miller's (trans.) Hegel: Philosophy of Mind, with this treatment of religion beginning at §564.
But there is an important question here about how religion is understood. The dominant understandings of religion in Hegel's Europe took three major forms: first, the older form associated with the Enlightenment, where religion was understood as an outcome of natural reason and so God understood as a category in the philosopher's metaphysics; second, the burgeoning liberal theology, where religion was understood as an expression of the private feelings and commitments characterizing a given group of people; and third, the understanding of religion that develops out of the early expressions of a historical-critical program, where religion becomes a matter of certain facts of human history to be catalogued by the historian, philologist, and folklorist. And, burgeoning alongside the new liberal and historical-critical theologies, there were of course also the critics of religion.
Hegel pit his position on religion against all four of these movements, and one of the characteristics of his mature period is an ongoing battle, at times rather personal, against the champions of these approaches. A key document of this is the introduction he wrote to Henrich's Religion, which is available in English translation in Hodgson's (ed.) G.W.F. Hegel: Theologian of the Spirit.
For Hegel, religion has to be understood as finding its essence neither in the philosopher's metaphysics, nor in the private feelings or commitments of a given congregation, nor the historical facts of the critical school, but rather in the dogmatic content of revelation. Thus, the aforementioned account of religion as the penultimate form of consciousness in the Encyclopedia begins like this: "It lies essentially in the notion of religion -- the religion, i.e., whose content is absolute mind -- that it be revealed, and, what is more, revealed by God."
An extended passage from the aforementioned Lectures can help clarify his attitude toward the rationalist, the liberal, and the historical-critical approaches:
I must remark that it had previously escaped my notice that theologis naturalis was an object of the Wolffian philosophy, which introduces the nature of God into the content of philosophy... In regard to that concrete science we can say that, because it was only a science of the understanding, its concept of God was restricted to the sterile result of an abstract essence of the understanding... [And thus] God is not grasped [by natural theology] as spirit... In the Wolffian philosophy this supreme [being] is called ens or thing, and it promptly announces itself as the sort of abstraction that does not in principle correspond to our representations of God... (33-34)Given these commitments, it is hard to understand the allegations that have been made in the aforementioned discussions, that credit Hegel with introducing to the western academy a secularizing attitude which rejects the place of God, religion, and the metaphysical. We can see here that he reserved a particular dismissive scorn toward historical-critical methodology as a mode of theological understanding. And in general he leveraged his considerable influence in his time precisely against the cultural trajectories which in this allegation get misattributed to him, and he has remained a touchstone for modern theologians and other thinkers who wish to return to the dogmatic content of religious thought as its essence and to the recognition of religion as a central part of the human vocation.
This rational theology has on the whole been called the theology of the Enlightenment. Pertinent here, however, is not merely this kind of theology but also the kind that leaves reason aside and expressly rejects philosophy... Though biblical words lie at its basis, to be sure, private opinion and feeling still remain the controlling factor...
In the rational theology of our more recent times the principle role is played by this way of looking at things, bringing reason into the lists against itself and combatting philosophy on the grounds that reason can have no cognition of God. The consequence is that no meaning for the expression "God" remains in theology any more than in philosophy, save only for the representation, definition, or abstraction of the supreme being -- a vacuum of abstraction... Such is the overall result of rational theology, this generally negative tendency toward any content at all in regard to the nature of God... The result is that one only knows in general that God is; but otherwise the supreme being is inwardly empty and dead. It is not to be grasped as a living God, a concrete content; it is not to be grasped as spirit...
But when modern theology says that we cannot have cognition of God or that God has no further determinations within himself, it knows only that God is as something abstract without content, and in this way God is reduced to this hollow abstraction. It is all the same whether we [then] say we cannot have cognition of God, or that God is only a supreme being. Inasmuch as we [can] know [only] that God is, God is the abstractum...
It is to be noted that there is a type of theology that wants to adopt only a historical attitude toward religion; it even has an abundance of cognition, though only of a historical kind. This cognition is no concern of ours, for if the cognition of religion were merely historical, we would have to compare such theologians with countinghouse clerks, who keep the ledgers and accounts of other people's wealth, a wealth that [merely] passes through their hands without their retaining any of it, clerks who act only for others without acquiring assets of their own... (42-44)
How has this misunderstanding of Hegel's significance occurred? A common suggestion holds Hegel responsible for the rejection of God and religion by way of holding Feuerbach -- and perhaps those associated with him, like D Strauss and Marx -- responsible for this, and regarding Feuerbach as carrying out Hegel's legacy. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Feuerbach's relation to Hegel was one of stark opposition: so much that he explicitly maintained that the formula for arriving at truth is to do the opposite of what Hegel had done. From his Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy:
Spinoza is actually the initiator of modern speculative philosophy; Schelling, its restorer; and Hegel, its consummator... The method of the reformative critique of speculative philosophy as such does not differ from that already used in the Philosophy of Religion. We need only turn the predicate into the subject and thus as subject into object and principle--that is, [we need only] reverse speculative philosophy. In this way, we have unconcealed, pure, and untarnished truth... (153-154)As for the allegation that Hegel is the path away from theology, Feuerbach likewise could not be clearer. From the same text:
The direct, crystal-clear and undeceptive identification of the essence of man -- which has been taken away from him through abstraction -- with man, cannot be effected through a positive approach; it can only be derived from the Hegelian philosophy as its negation; it can only be apprehended at all if it is apprehended as the total negation of speculative philosophy... (157)
The Hegelian logic is theology that has been turned into reason and presence; it is theology turned into logic... (155)On these points, see also his Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy, The Necessity of a Reform in Philosophy, and Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, which, together with the aforementioned, are available in Hanfi's (trans.) Ludwig Feuerbach: The Fiery Brook - Selected Writings, to which the above pagination refers.
He who clings to Hegelian philosophy also clings to theology. The Hegelian doctrine that nature or reality is posited by the Idea, is the rational expression of the theological doctrine that nature, the material being, has been created by God, i.e. the non-material, i.e. abstract, being...
The Hegelian philosophy is the last refuge and the last rational mainstay of theology. Just as once the Catholic theologians became de facto Aristotelians in order to combat Protestantism, so now the Protestant theologians must de jure become Hegelians in order to combat "atheism." (168)
It is certainly true that Feuerbach here reveals the "influence" of Hegel, but this is not the kind of influence we would use to plausibly credit Hegel with Feuerbach's position. This would be like attributing free market economics to socialists on the grounds that Friedrich Hayek promotes free market economics and in The Road to Serfdom is responding to socialism.
The details of Hegel's relation to religion are thus inconsistent with the narrative that assigns to him the place of founder of the secularism of western modernity, but rather speak to the complications and ambiguities of western modernity as a context -- a context in which one of its most influential thinkers can commit himself to such a defense of the dogmatic content of religious revelation and pit himself against the ascendency of the liberal and historical-critical theologies. And it is just these complications and ambiguities that ought to inform and render interesting and important our discussions on and inquiries into these matters.
2024.06.10 01:30 HottestElbows Incarnation of Stars
Incarnation of Stars
Incarnation of Stars (IOS) is the cursed spirit of humanity’s fear of the stars, which had been defeated (I literally don’t know how), sealed into a cursed tool, and placed in the hands of a human experiment comprising of over two hundred human souls. The star cursed spirit lost to this accumulation of souls (no-diffing at least 150 of them), and losing to the body. Being conquered, it exists similar to Sukuna, while its host, Akito Hoshimachi, has control over the body. IOS grants Akito the ability to manifest his dreams and delusions, as if he has an open barrier domain around him at all times. His CE manifests as “starlight”. When visible, it simply takes the appearance of a starry night sky.
Incarnation of Stars, instead of taking hold of his domain like Higuruma or Hakari, instead grants Akito an immediate understanding of an ability similar to simple domains. Inside the semi-domain, titled City of Stars (COS), grants the ability to manifest Akito’s CE as stars or star-related properties, which includes beams of radiant starlight, or controlling the gravity around Akito, who is considered a star by his CT, or stars that he creates. Gravity can be controlled vertically or horizontally to push enemies in or away, and also intensified or lightened so enemies either fall or float.
Akito also has a semi-divination, which grants him slight precognition. He has a sharp intuition on incoming attacks, enemy dodges, etc. etc. He can also create divinations outside of COS.
Stars can also suck things in or blow things up, being fueled by the amount of CE poured into them. Akito can create mini-novas or black holes accordingly, but a limit is placed on his output due to the limit on how much of Akito’s dreams and delusions that he can output.
Akito can lighten his own gravity for increased speed, heavy his own gravity for increased power on his strikes, or increase the gravity on his projectiles to make them just as lethal as his own strikes.
Additionally, Akito is capable of astral projection if he sinks into the simple domain, projecting himself onto a manifested star. His previous body turns into another star, making Akito capable of semi-teleportation.
His domain was inverted to be pre-programmed as open immediately after his creation in order to limit his power; if he were to have a closed barrier, he would lose his restriction to the outside world and his power would become unlimited as his delusions take over. Thus, Akito normally has an open barrier domain, to which the sure-hit is simply infinite moonbeams. Various limitations had been pre-programmed into him in order to limit his ability to close the domain, resulting in an incredibly strong open barrier domain. Only if Akito gives in to the temptation of living in his delusions can he close his barrier; this is done if he is facing an enemy to which has relinquished their humanity and defied their fate, like Sukuna but not Gojo; Osamu and Aethel, but not Ryuji.
submitted by HottestElbows to CTsandbox [link] [comments]
Incarnation of Stars (IOS) is the cursed spirit of humanity’s fear of the stars, which had been defeated (I literally don’t know how), sealed into a cursed tool, and placed in the hands of a human experiment comprising of over two hundred human souls. The star cursed spirit lost to this accumulation of souls (no-diffing at least 150 of them), and losing to the body. Being conquered, it exists similar to Sukuna, while its host, Akito Hoshimachi, has control over the body. IOS grants Akito the ability to manifest his dreams and delusions, as if he has an open barrier domain around him at all times. His CE manifests as “starlight”. When visible, it simply takes the appearance of a starry night sky.
Incarnation of Stars, instead of taking hold of his domain like Higuruma or Hakari, instead grants Akito an immediate understanding of an ability similar to simple domains. Inside the semi-domain, titled City of Stars (COS), grants the ability to manifest Akito’s CE as stars or star-related properties, which includes beams of radiant starlight, or controlling the gravity around Akito, who is considered a star by his CT, or stars that he creates. Gravity can be controlled vertically or horizontally to push enemies in or away, and also intensified or lightened so enemies either fall or float.
Akito also has a semi-divination, which grants him slight precognition. He has a sharp intuition on incoming attacks, enemy dodges, etc. etc. He can also create divinations outside of COS.
Stars can also suck things in or blow things up, being fueled by the amount of CE poured into them. Akito can create mini-novas or black holes accordingly, but a limit is placed on his output due to the limit on how much of Akito’s dreams and delusions that he can output.
Akito can lighten his own gravity for increased speed, heavy his own gravity for increased power on his strikes, or increase the gravity on his projectiles to make them just as lethal as his own strikes.
Additionally, Akito is capable of astral projection if he sinks into the simple domain, projecting himself onto a manifested star. His previous body turns into another star, making Akito capable of semi-teleportation.
Maximum Technique
Akito’s maximum technique, Moonbeam, creates a beam of shining night sky filling a five foot radius, which falls upon the enemy. They’re burned by searing starlight and burdened by dilution of their Cursed Techniques as their innate domain battles with Akito’s projected dreams and delusions. This beam can be manifested for up to a minute, in which Akito cannot astral project or control gravity. In addition, Akito can manifest the cursed spirit within him as a giant Moth, titled the Sovereign of Stars. Said moth is only half as strong as the cursed spirit it originally was and is completely loyal to Akito, both functioning on it’s own agenda or his commands. The moth is also considered a star by his CT and can project Akito’s CE and his creations through itself.Domain Expansion
Akito’s domain, Soul of the Stygian Sovereign, creates a domain inside which removes the limit on output for Akito’s dreams and delusions. Due to the domain being a manifestation of Akito’s innate domain, and being separate from the real world, Akito’s limit is removed. Thus, he can make whatever he wants as the sure-hit, meanwhile the abilities that had an output limit become stronger as a result.His domain was inverted to be pre-programmed as open immediately after his creation in order to limit his power; if he were to have a closed barrier, he would lose his restriction to the outside world and his power would become unlimited as his delusions take over. Thus, Akito normally has an open barrier domain, to which the sure-hit is simply infinite moonbeams. Various limitations had been pre-programmed into him in order to limit his ability to close the domain, resulting in an incredibly strong open barrier domain. Only if Akito gives in to the temptation of living in his delusions can he close his barrier; this is done if he is facing an enemy to which has relinquished their humanity and defied their fate, like Sukuna but not Gojo; Osamu and Aethel, but not Ryuji.
Afterthoughts
Having a hard time conceptualizing a hollow technique. Got any ideas?2024.06.10 01:08 Unique-Influence-782 Any ideas???
So I have this idea of story called GET IT ON. It's a story of involving around people that are just different and look like can't have a good chemistry but still can get along. The characters are:
The genres are: Dark Fantasy, Action, Thriller, Slice of life
I was thinking the story vibe to be like a "roller coaster" feeling iykwim, like whenever you on a roller coaster ride, all you felt were adrenaline rush and whatever that just made your heart beating fast and biting nails, you get me? 😭
But i have no idea what the story should be about and how those 11 characters meet up and become a team. If yall got any ideas, please dont hesitate to share it with me 🙏 Btw no sexual in this story, most of my stories are only about friendship, reality, depression, comedy and death
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- Kaisen / Student / Male
- Ethan Kanade / Fashion Diva / Male
- Hendrew / Gymnast / Male
- Henry / Unemployee Person / Male
- Mason / Athlete / Male
- LinKen / DJ / Male
- Sammy / Musician / Female
- Kim Ki-Rae / Mechanic / Female
- Hunter Oak / Criminal / Male
- Waterson / Biker / Male
- Hayden / Homeless Person / Male
The genres are: Dark Fantasy, Action, Thriller, Slice of life
I was thinking the story vibe to be like a "roller coaster" feeling iykwim, like whenever you on a roller coaster ride, all you felt were adrenaline rush and whatever that just made your heart beating fast and biting nails, you get me? 😭
But i have no idea what the story should be about and how those 11 characters meet up and become a team. If yall got any ideas, please dont hesitate to share it with me 🙏 Btw no sexual in this story, most of my stories are only about friendship, reality, depression, comedy and death