(Warning this is quite long and verbose sorry!)
Hello,
I have been a lurker on this board and elsewhere for roughly a year and a bit now, I had another account but I forgot the password to it, so I'm having to post on a new one.
Basically I've decided to formally post some of what my interactions / "experiences" have been, with what I believe to be something quite extraordinary and likely non-human. Some of you may find that what I will describe tracks with your own experiences, and I think there at that intersection is where some of the most compelling andecotes can be found and shared.
I had for a long time decided against sharing my experiences on a permanent forum like Reddit (I have shared elsewhere before) but recent news events, as well as a perceived change in how people treat the subject, has made me reconsider this position. I want to preface this by saying quite firmly that I have experienced more than most of the population, but significantly less than some of the population, particularly those of you who are regulars here on this subreddit, so it will seem very tame to some of you. I am entirely earnest in what I will describe and nothing has been embellished or overstated.
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1.

So I will just segway from that lengthy introductory preface into the meat of it: my first conscious interaction with a strange craft exhibiting non-standard characteristics, and displaying signs of self-aware conscious attention, happened roughly twelve years ago (2011). At this time I was going through some turbulent periods in my own life and I frequently enjoyed walking around my town at night to just get outdoors. I lived in an urban area and it was usually somewhat busy. This night, I decided to walk around at 1am and I took my flashlight with me. During this walk, I noticed for the first time that there was scaffolding erected on an old bank building, and this bank had been explored in years past by urbex folks, who had taken good photos of the views on it, and I thought suddenly, "why not climb it now for myself?" So I did. I climbed this building via its scaffolding at 1am at night in the cold somewhat rainy wind, and found myself at the top. I could look down at the people below and see new interesting sights of my town I had not seen before, as well as being able to look down into the bank itself, which had a huge Victorian-era glass dome on top of it framed in lovely wrought iron. I thought this was great, and I noticed that up here I could see nice views of the night sky. So after looking around for a while, I decide to lay down on my back and look at the night sky. I do this for about 10 minutes, just looking, while I listen to the people below and around me on the street going about their drunk business (it was a night that people went out to socialize, I can't remember exactly which day it may have been a Friday). I then try to go to sleep and I close my eyes. I can't remember how long I was in that state for. I think it was maybe 30 minutes. When I open my eyes, I noticed that there was a strange white bright light in the sky, like a bright white LED dot just hanging the sky. It was somehow immediately obvious to me that this was not a star. I noticed that it was moving in a circular pattern: clockwise, then anti-clockwise, then stopping, then moving up and down, and left and right, and then clockwise anti-clockwise again (for example). I thought: that's extremely strange. So I think, just for a lark, why not flash my flashlight at it? So I do. I flash a pattern at it. Flash! Flash flash -- pause -- flash flash (for example). It was like morse code, except it wasn't morse code because I didn't know morse code. Then it flashed the same pattern I flashed at it, back at me! I was amazed but not scared or gobsmacked. It was just like a "huh." moment. So I end up spending another 30 minutes playing essentially "Simon Says" flashlight games with this thing in the sky. Every pattern I flash, it flashed back. After flashing a pattern, or during times I wasn't flashing a pattern, it would start the movement routine again: clockwise, anti-clockwise, up, down, etc. and it would stop when it was time to flash. So eventually I have my fill of this amazing experience and decide that it's time to leave. I climb back down the scaffolding. I try to rationalize what I just went through: I have thought about this a lot. At the time I don't know what I thought. At the time though I just thought... that it was a nice strange experience. It was vaguely spiritual. In 2011 I didn't have a good phone. I hadn't gotten a smartphone yet. The camera on my phone was awful and it could only do SMS and calls and play Snake. So no sorry I do not have footage of it. And then for five, six years that was it.

2.

2016: I see strange white orb-shaped objects fly over rooftops in my neighbourhood, as I was on the top landing of my house looking out of the top landing window. There were two. They were extremely bright objects. They looked almost exactly like burning magnesium, if you ever had a science class where the teacher burned magnesium strips, they looked almost exactly like that, except less bright and it did not hurt my eyes to look directly at it. These objects flew calmy like leaves on water over the buildings. I tried to look at them for as long as I could until they were no longer in sight. I did not want to get my phone out for fear I would stop seeing them at any time. Smooth motion in-flight. They moved kind of like fireflies: no straight lines like jet planes or prop planes. Kind of like a weaving sort of motion. Then, a few months later after this, I see the same sighting again, from the same vantage spot that I was in the last time, flying the same path over the rooftops. So I know it was not some one-off weather event or something like that: this was intentional. This time I think there were 3. At this point I began to know, no longer doubting at all, that I had seen anomalous objects and linked it to my experience in 2011: all of these objects looked white and were orbs. The one from 2011 did not shine quite like magnesium that these ones did, but I chalked that up to, well, I don't know -- something to do with altitude if I had to guess, because these ones were significantly lower in altitude than the one from 2011, I could tell.

3.

It started to get weird for me five years later in 2021. Inexplicably so. I just started suddenly to begin to feel and know things. That year I had begun to get deeper into the UFO / alien folklore topic (I think the NY Times vids had piqued my interest in it again). During this year I had a spritual awakening, or was on the cusp of one (I still feel like I am on the cusp, but I'm also somehow pretty much over that cusp, but still kind of feel "on the cusp", because I haven't devoted near enough energy to it -- maybe some of you will know what I mean here, sorry it's hard to explain). I was beginning to explore astral projecting, meditation, and honing my intuition somewhat, and exploring various "occult" topics (thought forms and particularly manifestation and CE-5). I was beginning to become keenly aware of evil. I started to think about concepts such as the alleged "Great Filter", which I believe exists, and I think the filter is overcoming prior evolutionary selection traits that worked in the past but now do not -- it is overcoming the need to compete; competition got us here but now it is starting to hinder us and even harm us. We need to stop competing with each other and our planet. Competition is an early evolutionary strategy that only works for animals. Once an animal has evolved past a certain threshold it must discard competition and embrace new evolutionary stratagems or else it will fail at this threshold. I started to intuitively understand concepts about life, about being human, about difficulties of human-alien contact (inter-dimensionals being a truly difficult first contact situation because for example death and pain may not exist for them even conceptually), and about possible future mankinds. About where the evolution of apes may lead. It was a strange time for me. I was able to visualize strongly in my head certain things, and I think that was a magnet. I was noticing more and more of these white orbs in the sky at night. I could make them "flash" at me by standing outside and thinking, saying in my head: "Flash! Flash! Go on, flash!" and sometimes something would flash at me from the sky. One evening I was dancing to music. I was emitting positive "vibes." I was visualizing in my head about dancing with various alien types... you know the ones probably... grey, reptillian, mantids, nordics, lyrans, big foot, etc. it's cringe but I felt like this was the means to something. Suddenly I get the impulse to look outside, and I do. I see a very bright white shining nebula star-like object (very bright orb with white light tendrils) shining at me. Then it starts to move away. It starts to move away and fade. I felt like it knew that I was looking at it. I also started to have dreams around this time. They involved aliens. Images started to appear in my mind's eye. Some quite frightening. One dream was a test, and I failed it, and I refuse to elaborate on that test. In another dream I managed to "break free" and beat on a frail grey alien-looking being, strangling it and then crying in its face and telling it that I forgave it. Some dreams involved places "I" have not been to, but remember regardless, scenes I remember, people, places, towns, views. Everything felt familiar. Incredibly complex dreams. I have a vague memory of an encounter in my home, half-forgotten, with an entity. I gave assurances mentally that I would not be scared upon a meeting, but I was scared and screamed. This memory exists almost like a dream but I am entirely sure it did happen. Saw an orange orb in my room. Felt numerous and sudden instances of inexplicable nirvanic bliss, like I was feeling pure, pure, love. This was a time of strange growth.

4.

This was a major one and the most recent (nothing since). This happened in the tail-end of 2021. I was washing dishes at 11pm at night. Suddenly and without warning I experience honest-to-God telepathy for the first time in my life. Yes, I know that telepathy exists. I know it because I experienced it, and I know that it was incredibly gentle. It was not a "voice in my head." It was more like a foreign thought that was not mine, placed into my head, with an undertone of implication that it was communication. It was like language, but bypassing all somatic and verbal components and instead the raw information contained within a linguistic system was placed inside my head: raw, pure, information. A foreign gentle thought, that I knew intuitively came from elsewhere. It did not alarm me, did not scare me, did not jilt me. I just went: "oooooh." Perhaps I am fortunate in that I experienced gentle telepathy, because I understand that some have not. The thought was essentially, to go outside and look up. So I did. This was something huge and I knew it immediately. I went outside and looked up. And I saw it. A bright white LED dot-like orb flew overhead extremely low. It was MASSIVE and moving fast. I saw it moving like a leaf on water. Just gliding soundlessly. Smooth movement through the night sky. Like a firefly, weaving and bobbing on its way east. The entire time I stood there in AWE with my mouth wide open watching it as it disappeared out of sight over the roof of buildings. I got goosebumps as I stood there still, my eyes locked onto where I last saw it. After that I thought, "well!" and went back inside and finished washing up.
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And that's it. I have had nothing since. But it seems to be every five years since 2011. So I'm probably due for more around 2026 (which is close to the 2027 date being touted around certain circles). Something else I want to mention is that I saw an "alien" when I was around 10 years old at a distance. Tall, grey off-white, gangly, walking into a woodland area. Bulbous head.
So those are all my experiences. As I said, they are relatively tame compared to some of what I have read here, and I'm leaving a few things out like more dreams and such and an off-hand minor poltergeist experience, and I'm sorry it was so long, but is it not the nature of this thing that it cannot be summarized so neatly? Thank you for reading if you have read this far, and please if any of this tracks with your own experiences, comment and tell me about it. I cannot share most of this with most people because it sounds very strange to them.

My 8 year old, 4 foot tall, retaining wall failed last year, 3/4 of the wall failed. Original contractor rebuilt in last August. I just noticed that one corner of the wall is starting to fail, the material behind the wall has developed slippage and I can see gravel coming out between the blocks, which is how the last failure started. I don't want to keep rebuilding this and I don't really want to take the whole thing down. Is there something I can do with the one corner that is failing and still keep the rest of the wall? I don't think I can take the whole wall down as it would have too much of an impact on our deck and pt that at risk. Just grasping for some solution. Going back to the original contractor is not an option.

Coaches have often told me that I’m “sitting” at max velocity. Meaning that my hips are not tall and forward, instead back and down. I’m not running as tall as I could be either. This effects my leg cycle and my foot strike, as I don’t get enough backside mechanics (can’t get my heel as high as it could be) and I’m often landing in front of my center of mass rather than striking down under my hips. I run 10.8 currently and I believe I can cut off a few tenths if I fix this. Any drills or cues that I could use this off season that could help fix my hips sinking and / or running taller?

Let’s go in depth a little. Something I like to use when comparing fights is what I call statistics, or for short, HT/HM/OHBD.
HT/HM/OHBD stands for Hits Thrown/Hits Made/ Opponent Hits Blocked or Dodged.
For context, when I do Johan, it’s going to be the amount of hits Johan threw, the amount of hits that landed on Yuseong, and the amount of attacks Yuseong threw that Johan either blocked or dodged.
All that being said, let’s get into this.
KEEP IN MIND, THIS IS ONLY FOR UI JOHAN VS YUSEONG.
Johan’s HT/HM/OHBD was:
8/7/2 (For OHBD, 1 of them was the momentum used for his roundhouse kick).
This is an extremely good ratio. This means that out of the 8 hits that Johan threw, 7 of them landed on Yuseong.
For Yuseong, his HT/HM/OHBD was:
4/2/1
This is a horrible ratio. This means that during the entire fight Yuseong was only able to throw 4 attacks and was only able to land 2 of them. He also only dodged 1 hit out of the 8 that Johan threw.
But let’s go even further into depth.
Johan has a 50% chance to dodge whatever Yuseong throws at him, 87.5% (88%) chance to hit Yuseong.
Meanwhile, Yuseong only has a 33% chance to hit Johan while he’s in UI and a 50% chance to hit him while he gets out of UI (1 of the hits Yuseong landed was when Johan lost UI, so it was just out of inconvenience).
This doesn’t even account for 4 things.

1. This doesn’t account for the fact that Yuseong literally didn’t even have a chance to attack until Johan let his guard slip (he was feeling the energy of Yuseong’s desperation, therefore distracting himself mentally and in turn distracting himself physically).
   
2. This doesn’t account for Johan’s systema barrage which I counted as 1 hit. This would up Johan’s attacks thrown to 12, his attacks landed to 11, and his chance to hit Yuseong up to 91.6% (92%).
   
3. This doesn’t account for the attacks that happened off screen (there were likely attacks that Johan made during the flashback and landed successfully).
   
4. This doesn’t account for the power difference in their attacks. Yuseong’s attacks didn’t slow Johan down at all, the entire fight was just Johan knowing he can finish Yuseong off and Eugene realizing how much stronger Johan is. Johan was constantly making Yuseong bleed, slamming him into concrete and him aiming for his vital spots, such as when his crescent kick landed on Yuseong’s organ and when his flying kick landed on his neck/side of the head (yes, even though it looks like his shoulder you can clearly see by the way Yuseong’s head and hair are drawn it’s his neck. This is why it was so easy to wrap the same foot he used for this attack around the back of the neck for his next attack). Even Yuseong knew how strong Johan was just by his presence when he went into UI. This is why Yuseong stopped mid attack and Ryuhei had to stop Eugene from helping him, because both of them realized how dangerous Johan was.
   

To add insult to injury, Eugene literally openly admits that Johan won via saying “Do you know who you just defeated? (Blah blah blah blah blah)… my brother.”
So yeah, this wasn’t a tie.
Now let’s go over some common misconceptions.

1. “They tied because both of them collapsed.”

This is wrong. Yuseong collapsed because he was completely beat down and nearly died to Johan’s roundhouse kick. JOHAN collapsed because of the toll UI had on his body. NOT because of Yuseong’s fighting. Johan states in the chapter before that he has to fire up ALL of his muscles and ALL of his nerves in order to physically copy UI Daniel’s perfect body. He literally states that he’s putting EVERYTHING on the line, meaning he’s putting his life at risk by doing this.
This is why Johan has this brief moment of not being able to move before getting up and regaining his perfect body, because the 10 second limit had reached it’s time. He got up when he regained his perfect body and threw the roundhouse kick.
So yeah, this is wrong.

1. “Yuseong blocked CQC Johan’s attack therefore he won the fight.”

First of all, this wasn’t UI Johan. When people like me talk about UI Johan we are not talking about Johan before or after he gains UI. We’re talking about when he HAS UI. CQC Johan was just base fatigued (yes, fatigued because of the physical toll of UI) Johan using CQC. Not UI Johan.
Now let’s go more in depth as to why it would still be wrong.
When Yuseong “got up,” it wasn’t him getting up. Eugene helped him up and carried Yuseong’s limp body. When Johan was using his CQC, Eugene was holding Yuseong. Meaning the distance between him and Yuseong was literally 0. He was right next to him. Therefore this isn’t a feat that Jihan’s attack got “blocked” by Yuseong. Because Yuseong literally just slumped over. He didn’t do anything to actually block the attack, he just slumped over. It doesn’t mean he won.

1. “Yuseong got up after UI Johan so he won.”

No he didn’t. Yuseong HIMSELF did not get up. It was Eugene who had to pick him up and carry him. That doesn’t mean he got up, it was Eugene doing the work. Not Yuseong. I said this in the point above I believe.

1. “Yuseong tanked the attacks.”

I normally laugh when I see this argument. Yuseong most definitely did NOT tank the attacks. Dude was literally crying mid fight from how much Johan’s attack hurt him. Tanking an attack is something that’s shown often with Zack or Gun. Being able to take a hit with no visual effect or physical damage. Sure you can argue that it would help out his endurance, but that doesn’t change the fact that in the end Yuseong still lost.
So yeah, all that being said, this wasn’t a tie. This was a beatdown.
If you disagree with anything I said feel free to address it in the comments or make your own post and tag me in it.
Might make a post later about the majority of y’all’s bad takes on how Johan and Yuseong are “weak.” (They’re both top 5 in gen 2. And Johan is literally top 5 in the current verse with his statement that correlates to UI Daniel).

The "R Mika is a bad character design" bandwagon never fails to disappoint. It's fucking Street Fighter. There is a green guy with electricity powers. He doesn't even electrocute you, he electrocutes his fucking self first and then you second. And you know what we did in the 90s? We shrugged our shoulders and nodded at each other, "Oh shucks! Capcom is so wacky!" What will they think of next? They thought of a 7 foot tall Mexican and then they took a lunch break for 3 months and decided that thinking of new characters for Street Fighter was hard work for a pre-globalized world with fair wages. Let's see, we can make a game in one year that pulls enough profit to pay for each employee that worked on this for....let me get my calculator out, that's 5 million dollars per person here at Capcom. Ahhhhhh just steal Bruce Lee and keep the money. And Fei Long was and is loved, for no reason, really. Back then, you could take risks on retarded ideas and people would still love you. Think about it - the fact that someone went to a board meeting, just got done making a sketch of Ryu, and another man spoke up and said said "Okay, and then we make an Indian guy with stretchy legs." And they did. And despite Indians having no cultural relevance to stretchy legs, or fuck, cultural relevance in fighting or games in general? We have Dhalsim. Are we better for it? Yes, he adds something to the game and because it was the 90s, it wasn't for diversity or hashtags, it was just because some idiots in Japan were not ashamed that they didn't know anything about India. They had no ideas then and they still released a Street Fighter every year because it was profitable. R Mika is a Dostoevsky character compared to T Hawk. They put Street Fighter on every system. They put it on a system with only 3 fucking buttons that couldn't produce anything that sounded human and told you to buy a controller for their game, and then told you to fuck off, No more street fighter games, and sorry about the controller you had to buy to play our game. Oh and all the characters sound like they have cystic fibrosis on the Genesis version, too. Look that up in Encarta. Games made money with no problem: For christ sake, they released a game where you needed to buy another game just to make the first game work - and it was a flagship Sonic game for $70 bucks...and it MADE money. Sonic and Knuckles was an extortion project, not a videogame. It didn't make "Uhh this game is successful, but we can't fund a sequel by ourselves" successful, it was "Let's put this faggot in a game about Pinball because Pinball rhymes with Spinball, a word we just made up." successful. The 90s were a time when you could make shit up without risk. You could fail at everything in life and still get a job in middle management making a good income. If Sonic Spinball could be made un-ironically, then so can your salary. Now kids without STEM degrees are called worthless by job-secure 59 year olds in hiring HR. "Look, I don't think you're qualified for this job, Microsoft Excel can be very daunting. 900 people are competing for this job, and I found 500 math PhDs in Bangladesh who are willing to do the work over Skype. "It says here you have a degree in History: I had a degree in history too, art history - it's just like regular history only less. Fuck you." So part of our interview is to figure out a way for me to justify why I can work here and why you can't - which is hard because, keep in mind, I have some brown people that will work over Gmail and pay for their own long-distance Skype credit, which saves me about 99% of an otherwise healthy worker's salary per year. A few questions: Do you have a math PhD? No? Do you have the motivation to work under pressure..hold on i'm not done...Do you have the motivation to work under pressure even if you're being paid in circus peanuts? It's not looking good for you. What makes you think you're in demand in a capitalist system that appraises your worth based on whether or not you can do a job better than poor people with the internet? Let me reiterate, I have a degree in art history - why should I hire someone that basically is just me + all other history? How do you think we stay competitive in the marketplace if we have people like me who have a degree in Peter Rabbit Illustration and don't seek out the absolute most unfortunate people with the best credentials? I have a guy with a math PhD from Nigeria that cleans our toilets remotely from a computer. What he doesn't know is that I piss all over the toilet seat on purpose. I literally just piss all over the toilet seat just to tell a black man to clean up my refuse, and godamnit if I will give back what Capitalism gave me just so I can go back to pissing vanilla-style. I work long-dick style from now on and I ain't going back to vanilla style. I can piss and shit anywhere I want and a black man controlling a robot will always be not that far behind me, remind me again why I'm not the richest man in the world? The economy has evolved - workers that used to use Excel 2005, now need to know Excel 2015 at this company - ...Excel 2005 was easy for liberal arts majors, but 2015? Much easier, actually. ..it's actually way easier for just about anyone to do work these days...and because of that, my piss gets cleaned by robots. Anyone can do this job and everyone needs it, hence piss robots. Only got one piss-robot but a long line of workers looking to pilot it. Poor people clean piss like it's their last day on earth...and if you piss as much as I do, they're spending their last day on earth a lot of times a day. It's Groundhog Piss day for these guys, and I am the groundhog. If some brown kid can convince me that I can call him racial slurs AND sign a non-disclosure agreement about said racial slurs, AND that he can get work done through GChat? Let's use the Groundhog Day analogy again..Name the only cool person older than 50. Bill Murray. I'm Bill Murray the Groundhog, baby. Devalue, debase, and reduce every last thing on this earth in the name of efficient markets and if you get to the end, you're Bill Murray. That's some economics they don't teach you in school. Welcome to the big leagues. I want a candidate that knows how economics works - not some socialist that reduces our competitive advantage in the world. We use Microsoft fucking Excel here. This isn't a fucking game. Microsoft Excel is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, and I'm still doing it 20 years later..it's practically the only thing I've done at this job for the past 20 years. The efficiency of being able to rename a servile little indian boy a SandNog on GChat in the same interface that I receive his work in and I get to pay him in beach shells? Uhh someone get me off the this gravy train because my goose is cooked and papa is ready to eat. That is why I voted Ron Paul - papa wants to eat. If the Efficient markets have worked themselves out to the point where I can call a desperate brown kid a sandnigger and get work that is more efficient and productive for it then we've won. Tell me what the difference is between a sandnigger that does good work and a white person that does good work? I'll give you a hint: If I can't call either of them sandniggers, there is no difference. Okay that wasn't a hint, that was the answer and I'm giving it to you long dick style. There are so many people from countries that I don't respect waiting to be hired... I'll eventually get to a Sophie's Choice situation - "Do I pick this guy who doesn't mind that I call him a CamelBoo (Jigaboo+Camel) or do I pick the white guy? Hold on with the Street Fighter and R Mika shit, I'm talking to you about economics - fucking always with the videogames, these kids. I pick the CamelBoo because Papa wants to eat. When I was your age, I could afford a car in 5 months on overtime pay alone, but I'm saving money on the fact that Banglor speaks a language that doesn't have a word for "Overtime". I want a payroll tax exemption for making him a non-salaried subcontractor, and he wants to understand why I keep asking for "More Clocks" in Google Translate. It's because your country is too poor to have a word that means getting more money at your discretion. It's a superfluous word for you. Of course you want overtime - that's like having four different words for "chicken wings". Of course I want to have the edible kind of chicken wings - I'm so rarely going to speak about a chicken's wings in the context of anything but fried chicken, the word is not necessary. Did you know that both Pakistan and the US don't have a word that represents the low-level humiliation of manning a robot that cleans my piss all day? Was there a word for the feeling of cool satisfaction that a man got from a nice shoe shine an affable and willing negro gave to man in Birmingham in the 1930s? No, but that shoe got polished. And so shall the toilet seat. That's a lot of math PhDs, that are literally just waiting to be called a nigger by me - a guy that still asks his employees to help him "log on the dotcoms" to check my aol email account. The real injustice is not that I continue to use AOL 3.0 like a security blanket, but that if a competing company is not filled with people like me I have to get more wizkid brown nerds to make up for it. I am a liability and yet I steer this ship away from the iceberg. I am the emperor with no clothes. I must bear the burden of the nakedness I have resolved to live in. I am exposed. And you are blaming me for spilling a little pee-pee or, god forbid, soaking the entire bathroom at work every 20 to 30 minutes? Even Jesus had to go to the bathroom when he was on the cross for 3 days. You think he just held it in because he was embarassed? Do you hold me to a higher standard than Jesus? It's a highly pissable bathroom and I'm a highly pissable man. That is my only sin. You think you have it tough because you can't get a job? I have to call 9000 kids named Rameen and sometimes I can't even make it to the end of the phone call to get to the part where I unapologetically make racial jokes that they don't understand. I called this one guy a SandySpook - you know, like the Sandy Hook shooting. I called him an entire massacre. SandySpook this, SandySpook that. I even got frustrated that he wasn't feeling shitty about himself, so I got obvious about it and started calling him "Dead Children". I literally called the guy Dead Children. He only started to notice that I was called him different things when I accidentally referred to him as "Dead Kids". If he had a problem with it, I got 8999 others who are willing to play part to their own degradation and abuse. I didn't make the rules of capitalism - if someone will clean up my piss by remotely controlling a robot for 5 cents an hour - do you get mad at the piss? No, you get mad at the toilet for being so pissable. Then you get mad at the entire bathroom for getting piss all over it. But do you blame the pisser or the piss-ee? No, he must piss. And maybe he doesn't have to piss all over the place, but who cares who has to clean up my piss if it isn't me? Were we talking about Street Fighter? Yes people were retarded and retarded people were a valuable part of the gaming economy. It was a good thing because we got interesting shit from retards. Retards with money are as useful as Investment Banks, they don't make anything to give the world, but they give their money to someone else that does and then the government has to give them welfare because they shit their pants too much. But it wasn't just retards that shit their panties... when UMVC3 was released so soon, people went apeshit. Maybe they didn't get the memo that that's how buying shit works. You are supposed to buy shit that you like and then it and things like it gets made again. You're not supposed to not buy shit that you like. Even fucking retard in the 90s knew that. There are indie games and then there are triple A games - the mid-tier games don't exist anymore, and 1 or 2 AAA games are all some studios budget out. The mid-tier is gone now. In the 90s, Capcom made SF2 for SNES and then they made SF2 for the Amiga. Is that really that crazy? Imagine being a Capcom employee in the 90s and you're coming back from your lunchbreak, which was a few days longer than you expected, in Italy, and you knew that you could make a profit by putting your game on a system that nobody has anyway - those SF2 devs had so much money that they didn't know what to do with: they literally did not know what to do with it. They made an Amiga SF2, an Atari SF2, a Commodore 64 SF2 - then they made some more SF2s, then they got millions of dollars for it. To this day, nobody knows what an Amiga is, yet they still pulled a profit on just the people that bought Amiga by accident. That's the 90s in a nutshell, you can make whatever you want because and you can make a profit from people that buy your shit by accident, and if you can't, you really had nothing to offer anyone. Buy more shares of Pets.com, it's 1997. Rocks.com and BagofEmptyAir.com are booming in the futures market. IT's the 90s and everything is great. This gravy train will never end." A few friends made Doom in a garage in a few months, and the economy had to start paying them in pussy because the dollars were all being used up. John Carmack was literally paid in stinky pussy for a few years. And this is why half of the 29+ year olds thought "Rai-You" says "Dookan" btw - nobody cared that Street Fighter sounded like shit, calculators were powered by lemons like 5 years before SF and you could make money investing in an internet company that sold ugly milk. There was a market for people that wanted to buy milk that was ugly. It was the 90s. You could make money just combining shit for no reason. In the 80s, Marketing scored it big by combining raisins and smokey black jazz musicians. To reiterate, they gave raisins blackface, and then told you that they go in your mouth, and ugh it was just gross - and back in the 80s, black people weren't useful or well-liked by white people until Social Networking, so really, the California Raisins were 0 for 0. Huge success. The 90s made Pogs successful. Pogs combined cardboard with itself to make garbage. And it was a phenomenon. You can't afford to make Street Fighter V in 2015, but we figured out a way to make people trade circles with value called money for circles of trash called cardboard, and then they sold us containers for that trash too: and nobody thought, hey isn't this Pogtainer a minitrash can? Did they sell me a mini trash can and call it a Pogtainer? Nobody just stopped and said, "Am I sure this isn't just a little trash can for cardboard?" for at least 4 years. People played with cardboard circles for longer than they played Street Fighter X Tekken, get your head in the game, Capcom. ...you can't afford to make your flagship fighting game. That's a problem. Just fucking scale back the technology already and make profitable games again. Games are too fucking expensive to make. Next gen is a disaster. It's unsustainable, just let it die. Start from scratch, bring back Lycos, pogs, ace of base, jell pens, and every other 90s codeword for trash because as soon as we start giving garbage value, so too will we get back to giving value to actual things. The commodification of capitalism was supposed to be scary because of the fear that we'll pump out shitty things that would sell. It's much scarier than that. We pump out shitty things that don't sell, and there are 9000 people waiting in line to do it, anyway. 9000 Bangladeshis working over the internet. 9000 people who work a day job on Reddit and Wikipedia, 9000 experts with LifeHack blogs stealing the same idea about saving money on shaving cream ortelling you why it's bad to shampoo your hair, 9000 girls who realize that they're not pretty enough to get paid to be naked unless they get cum in their mouth, the list goes on. In the 90s, If you waited 6 months, a computer three times more powerful came out, and internet speeds doubled - now instead of new computers, we look forward to pornstars that may or may not swallow cum. The innovation and progress of capitalism is truly upon us. We don't dare to wonder about things like space exploration as we stand in front of a threshold of doubt and a frontier unknown and take a step anyway. If we can't make spaceships, or find gratification in the grandiosity of an intrinsic sense of coming closer to something bigger than yourself, then just give me the porn. Everything is free, and if it's not, keep checking bittorrent, because it's probably fucking free. We forgot how to love, and when we see girls that love cum, we start to wonder and believe that we can love again, too. I'm not a homo, but that cum makes me feel things. And even if I was, she can guzzle cum like an Irishman at a swim-meet, i'll never love cum like that, not no way, not no how, not like that...and she does it for almost free, depending on how ugly she is. That's love. That's what I felt like the first time I played SFII - it kills me to know that the best times are behind me, and the closest I was to ever getting to experiencing what the true love of a mouthful of cum is like was when I was a supple, young child of 8. Things changed quickly because development costs were lower and shit was insanely expensive - Hardware and software was much more expensive than it is now - people paid $70 to $80 in 1990 dollars. That's crazy. People just threw money everywhere. There were companies that helped people sell things on Ebay, and they made a living. You can't even make a living on ebay selling things yourself. And the stockmarket proved that pyramid schemes could make you profitable - as long as someone that wasn't you had the shares of the hyper-inflated startup that tanked, it didn't matter that you made $50,000 buying options in a company that sells candy for raccoons, that's 50,000 shares someone who isn't me is stuck with. Chuck ROck 2 being $70 in 90s dollars makes a lot more sense now that people are burning money and raccoons have lollipops in their mouth, doesn't it? Square could justify selling a Final Fantasy game on a TI-83 calculator and still pull a profit. When a developer said "Jump" to a publisher for funding, they asked "How high?" right after "Are there at least 20 fat kids that are interested in buying this game to cover the entire budget?" Some of the most unlikeable, unfocus-tested, bullshit could make money because kids had grandparents. Nobody buys shit by accident and keeps it anymore, they'll argue on Apple tech support to get a refund for their 2.99 phone game. Why would you pay 60 bucks for a game with a caveman in it - they have never been able to make Cavemen likeable. But the 90s could try Encino Man, Chuck Rock, Joe and Mac, Flintstones, Adventure Island, Tomba... movies and games etc - what changed? Cave Men sure as fuck didn't - they literally sold Cave Man games to people and made a profit, now nobody wants to play cave man games? Fuck out of here. Cave Man games didn't change. People just don't want to waste their money playing as a Cave Man and they're willing to return the game and admit that they bought a game to play as someone stupider than they are. We can try to make the cave man cool, we can get Brendon Frasier, we can give them dinosaurs to ride on - no, like we have the internet now, nobody wants to play as a fucking cave man, not even by accident anymore. We're done. Nobody has made a cave man game since the 90s. Steam has a no-return policy and nobody so people will make sure they don't buy cave man games. There are no cave men in League of Legends or Dota. There are no Caveman in fucking any game that anyone likes. Would you rather live in an era where you could make money making things nobody likes and other things people like, or begging Capcom to look under the couch for development money for their most famous game that people already like. We had a market that was able to sustain CaveMan games being sold for 140 inflation adjusted dollars sounds bad, but let me tell you, Chuck Rock sold enough to get a Chuck Rock 2...on the Amiga, Amiga CD32, Sega Game Gear, Sega Mega-CD, Sega Master System, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. Try to sell me Chuck Rock 2 in 2015, I dare you. I fucking double dog dare you. Kickstarter's incentive system better find a way to account for sloppy, almost blasphemous blowjobs, if they want to sell Chuck Rock in 2015. Pile of shit. Novelty was everywhere because innovation was highly rewarded in a society that valued things. You open up a magazine and see new games all the time: "What's this? Samurai Showdown? That's different." Nevermind that I have to go to the arcade and pay enough quarters to hear what Ryu says clearly, look at all these games we're getting. Now that people can understand what Ryu says at home, arcades are fucking dead. Oh, yeah, what a coincidence. As soon as Ryu doesn't talk through a speak-and-spell arcades die. Yeah no connection. I'm 12, I can make money at school selling Mortal Kombat fatalities because information has value when nobody has access to it. Is that a good thing? Fuck no, it's not a good thing. But I made it a good thing. I convinced a kid that Kitana has a "Fuck-Ality" and charged him $5. I wrote random button presses on a napkin and made money for it. If that's wrong, I don't want to be right. No James, I wrote the code down right, you're just doing it wrong - keep trying if you want to see titties. "Keep trying for titties" - the maxim that made people who they were before the internet. We had to try for those titties, and we always did. Kids risked juvenile records to steal dirty magazines of porn that wouldn't stimulate a 13 year old's dick in 2015. There was porn in the everyone's woods, and for some reason, it was always of fat girls with like, i don't know, gunshot wounds and stretch marks..real nasty bitches..it was just fucking gross, but in the 90s you found beauty in anything, especially because seeing areolas was a rarity for a kid. Why is it always the same woman, though? It was the same fat bitch with the bruises and shit all over her thighs. She was the Heidi Klume of porn-woods. Kids these days can spell titties wrong in Google and Google will correct them. No trying at all. "You Searched for: Parks in Connecticut? Did you mean: Steaming Hot Latina Pussy and if so, I found a few videos that you might be interested in.. i mean, it's whatever, no big deal, it's just instant 40 minutes of 1080p pussy and you're 13, so you probably aren't making a decision consciously anyway, but just thought I'd ask...dude this is crazy, girls are practically dying to give their picture away on these sites man, we've got all these results for you for free! Yo, you're so lucky I'm hooking you up, like 15 years ago all I had were the same 12 Jenna Jameson pics for some kid. Got him super hard, though. I'm Google. I feel kinda bad that you're 13 years old and you can't get fully hard unless I bring you weird shit like girls with cocks fucking clowns in the ass. You can't get hard from regular porn, and If someone calls you a faggot for liking videos of girls with cocks, which seems reasonable considering I remember when all I had to do was find kids pics of Sable from WWF, then Twitter will make sure your parents will lose their job for transphobia. The only time a kid is reduced to jacking off to a woman that looked like she went down all the broken rides at the waterpark at Great Adventure is because he can't get off to normal women anymore because he's been exposed to so much porn. Weird shit is everywhere now. Cuckolding is its own category on porn sites - that shit never existed in the past. Now obese women with thighs covered in black and blues are starting to become a category, instead of something you shame-cummed to after finding in the woods. This is not what I had in mind when I thought Capitalism would ensure that the cream was supposed to rise to the top. The most undesirable and obese filth-hogs are more desireable than supermodels, because nobody can jack off to girls in swimsuits, not even 11 year olds. Supermodels don't make money. If you're a woman and you're getting paid for having your picture taken, it's probably because cum is being dumped on your face. The Age of Pussy Deflation - the internet age - where 50 minute porn videos are just a click away. Pussy just pussy now homie. Imagine telling Cindy Crawford, "Hey, you're really hot and everything, but if you don't get some semen in that mouth before you turn 39, I'm not quite sure you'll capture the MILF market, which is a great market, don't get me wrong, but it's heavily targeted towards black men, which is fine, but it overlaps with the market of guys who don't like black guys in porn, and you have to take a side, Cindy. Which side are you on, Cindy? This is a big decision for you Cindy - are you yay or nay on the black cock? And keep in mind, both parties want to see your mouth full of sperm. Yeah, I know it's kinda different than what you're used to, but Porn Stars are the new supermodels. We've all got cum in our mouths now, Cindy, it's up to you to decide how much you wanna get paid for it. She would probably get a job at Trader Joes. A woman like that lived in an era where her titties made her a millionaire, and they were covered up and now you expect her to put a cock in her ass for a 40 minute video you won't ever pay her for? But you will pay for Anita Sarkeesian's Patreon because you masturbate to dirty filth-women, but princess peach is a national treasure. Ono couldn't get enough money to develop Capcom's FLAGSHIP fighting game even after it was hugely successful because games take years and millions of dollars in 2015. And there is still some kid in a ketchup-stained novelty gaming shirt complaining about the textures. "Oh, this looks like ass. Oh his hair looks like bananas. Oh this design is dumb." Nigga, I found out about T-Hawk by opening up a magazine and reading an article written by a community college dropout that could still find work in the field because the publication market was healthy. You could NOT get hyped about T Hawk. For one, he was mexican - which was very unimpressive in the 90s. Hot sauce or premium burrito places or whatever hipster bullshit that made Mexicans so cool today didn't have fucking retards cheerleading it. Burritos were good, but not This Needs a Subreddit good. For 2, he's fucking stupid, okay? "Oh, this Mexican Mestizo fights to defend his homeland." Oh great, now the Mexicans are invading our videogames and I have to fight for his right to be here, too? Fuck it, it's the 90s. This might have value. I paid money for an Aerosmith CD, and I didn't realize what a ripoff it was until I was able to download music for free. Turns out music is free all the time. If someone puts a sticker on a CD, be careful because music is actually free. It's worth nothing. You can just get it. In the 90s, we didn't know that. We didn't know music was worth nothing and Columbia House sent us Alannis Moresette cds in the mail and charged us for it, we said, "Oh these cds are an investment. I can sell these back for 5x the amount. It's the 90s, even Alannis Moresette is worth something. Now level with me here, if Rush or Pink Floyd or whatever has a sticker on it that says $20, what are the chances that another musician, totally unrelated to them are worth exactly the same? The 90s made sure that whatever was worth less, was more valuable because of everything else. It was the Friendly Capitalism of the 90s - If you made a Genesis game, and you played as a rodent of some sort, then godamnit, Sonic ain't the only $60 ticket in town. Make the filthy fucking rodent say "gnarly" a few times and do me a favor, stop being a worrying faggot and get him a pair of sunglasses. Of course you're gonna make a profit it's the 90s. Nobody knows what they're doing and we're making a killing.. I'll give T Hawk a chance. I gave Dhalsim a chance, and I know I'm genuinely not racist because there's no way I can tweet about it to everyone, so that must mean it's true. You can't confirm racism anymore - not being racist can sometimes be hard, but writing hashtags are always easy - and the benefits from getting high fives from cool black people come faster in the latter case. You can have your cake and eat it too, in 2015 - and then you can take a picture of your cake and lament about how "Trayvon would've turned 19 today...this cake is for him." But as soon as you log off, Trayvon's cake is as dead as he is. And lucky for you, you can eat dead cakes because you're a selfish fat fuck sycophant that gets self-congratulatory black people to retweet your cake-morality. "The cake is a lie" you laugh to yourself, because memes are a thing now too. What a faggot you are, you wish you could tell yourself. Also we were used to getting games all the time, so it didn't really matter. A game could be developed in a year, risk being innovative with characters and systems, and still pull a profit because they didn't have a $5 million dollar Chun-Li's Eyelash Physics Studio. You think Darkstalkers is even a thing anymore? Capcom will sooner develop a game where Cops kill black people to get that Twitter cash and keep the Darkstalkers name in one go. That's called a two-fer. Darkstalkers is now a survival horror game. Resident Evil 4 let you kill Africans, now DarkStalkers is a game about cops stalking black people. The cops are female so it's okay. Kotaku writes, " Goodbye Darkstalkers the fighting game, hello DarkStalkers: The SocioPolitical Commentary" - people flip their shit on Twitter "Capcom is politically and socially conscious? Finally!" Finally Capcom is taking a political stance. I was worried about them. Capcom. The company that can't afford to make the most popular fighting game on earth, after the most successful iteration of their game in decades, finally DarkStalkers is saying something...oh and it has an unreleased Macklemore track? Where do I sign up for this? I thought I wanted a horror-themed fighting game that aestheticized everything awesome about design in a solid fighting game, but nah, this got the Feminist Frequency "This is Fine For Now" award. Fuck off. This is not fine. Fuck off with this shit. You're killing games. Nothing is fine for now, it's all fucked up when I could get 3 Darkstalkers games in 4 years and now I have to embarrass myself by being middle-aged faggot when FFXVI comes out. By the time the next Final Fantasy game comes out, who knows? I might be dead, so I have to settle for playing this shit. I don't want to play as a bunch of queers. I shouldn't have to plan how I want to be ashamed 9 years in advance, but this is what the gaming industry has done. If you go to the Capcom offices and ask, "When are we getting another Darkstalkers?" 2 things happen: The first thing is that Capcom starts laughing in your fat fucking face. "It costs more to make Ryu's hair look like not-bananas than it did to make Darkstalkers 3, and that was all of our not-bananas budget that has to last until the Ken DLC. We can make 5 Darkstalkers games a year, or we can not make Ryu have hair that looks like bananas, and trust us, they really look like bananas no matter what we do. It costs millions of dollars to get the bananas out of his hair - Playstation 4 is so advanced, but unfortunately bananas happen until millions of dollars and a few months gets them off. Right now the bananas are on Ken, but we expect to make those bananas go away too when Sony fixes the overdraw issue on our credit line. Event Hubs and NeoGaf are posting gifs of Ken's Hair and Shoryuken has started blogging about it - they are at max cpm, we can't fight it, we just have to pay to un-banana everything. Thanks to technology, it'll only put us back about...yeah, 7 theoretical DarkStalkers games. We can bear that cost, I think - I think we can recoup 40 Dino Crisis games if we hit our sales targets. Capcom financial information is quantified by the dead games it has because it's easier to understand for people in a world where NOTHING IS FUCKING VALUABLE. YOU CAN'T FUND YOUR OWN STREET FIGHTER GAME, THAT IS A RED FLAG. WHEN YOUR GAME COSTS 93.4 BREATH OF FIRES TO ANIMATE SOME NO-NAME SWEATER WEARING FAGGOT IN THE BACKGROUND STAGE, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. You don't even have enough money to give him any context - he cheers when both players die and when both players win, and he sure as fuck isn't cheering about street fighting in general, because he continues to cheer after the match ends. Just fucking don't have him at all, save your money at that point. Just fucking put the money elsewhere, no not in the fucking un-Banana hair jar - that's a waste of money too! Oh my god, you people have no fucking clue. What happened to you Capcom. What happened to you that you give anyone who says the word "Fundmantals" on EventHubs a job. You're Combofiending again. Combofiending the death of your company, and you pathetic bastards can't even see it. He spells every other word wrong on the Capcom blogs, but we Combofiending. Peter spelled Dragon Punch wrong again...Ahhh...we can't fire him now, we Combofiending. Peter, you need to proofread your work. But we Combofiending. The second thing that happens when you ask about Darkstalkers? EventHubs posts about how Capcom doesn't give a shit about their old IPs. Ono makes a statement on Twitter, "no, no no, we love our fans, but we can't afford to make a PS4 Darkstalkers game!" EventHubs posters come together, "How depressing. Capcom is just sitting on all their mega-fortune IPs! They don't know how to run a videogame company!" and make an online petition . "Ono-San, If this petition gets 92 signatures, will you release Darkstalkers 4?" Ono responds, "Listen all DarkStalk Fan! Sony no money for Capcom. Money hard to find for DarkStalkers series just like nut hard to find for squirrel in winter. Breath of Fire phone game now! So sad!" EventHubs and Shoryuken get an influx of inquiries about DarkStalkers and the Fighting Game community and blogosphere lights up. Everyone talks about how good DarkStalkers is, many of whom played it for 4 minutes at a roller rink are using words like "fundamentals" and "footsies" to make sure they sound legit. Capcom eventually realizes that they can make a $40 total profit if the online commotion of DarkStalkers is any indication of market interest. Ono petitions Jewish financiers to get funding after Sony's refusal. Darkstalkers 4 is a reality but Capcom will be indebted to Schlekestein Brothers investment bank for the rest of the company's life span. OH, and Part of the deal is that Ono has to join the IDF, too. Ono writes "I did it for you hardcore Darkstalkers fans!" when he shows off pics of himself in his IDF uniform in Israel." "This me serving our investors!" and holds up his little blanka figure in the foreground of a picture of a dead Palestinian child - you can't put blanka in front of everything and have it be funny. Nobody gives a FUCK that this is going on Ono's twitter, all they care about is that in the reveal trailer that was just released..and that Felicia's fur doesn't have real-time physics.."It's a war crime!". Everyone that pretended to like DarkStalkers is now on NeoGaf writing in a thread about how important 60 FPS fur physics are to the competitive scene. All posts start and end with, "Remember SF X Tekken". Kotaku releases a video showing that female representation per male representation in the trailer is problematic. Many refuse to buy a game that doesn't support 4k resolution. "Inadequate texture filter for a 2016 game" starts trending on Twitter. Surprisingly, the Jewish narrative in the trailer is universally praised. IGN lauds the trailer: "Capcom has taken Sasquatch and has evolved him in a bold and innovative new direction: He is now able to talk, which he does before every match by explaining why the Iran nuclear deal is bad for the western world." The Jewish direction is extolled by the FGC, as well: Maximillian makes a "I react to Demitri's yarmulka DLC announcement" video, which is publicized on all the major primetime news shows and Max is given a timeslot after Bill Maher. His show is similar to his Twitch channel: It's called "Assist Me" and he just asks for donations, which he gets. "Capcom is daring to be political in the current climate!" they say. Ryu takes up rabbinical study, eats kosher, and uses a bulldozer every 6 months to destroy Palestinian banks. Ono realizes that this is the key to the game's success, so he announces that "Holocaust-Remembrance costume pack in the works!" and he makes the Guinness book of world records for Most Retweeted Advertisement on Twitter. Everything is looking great for Darkstalkers 4 again. Then it happens: Chaos. Ono opens Arturo Sanchez Rosetta Stone.exe to translate what every 14 year old white kid in the suburbs is screaming over on Twitter. "4-frame buffer window? What a blowup. Frauds will body gdlk players. Dead game, says a kid with very thin wrists. "Trailer shows hard knockdowns on DP. Game is so dead." Ono tries to reply with his broken english into the his Rosetta Stone software but the program can't parse it. Ono's plea for the fgc to "No worry! We work on game and make better!" translates into "I have serious apprehensions about Zionism and Israel's use of unilateral force in Gaza and other occupied territories." People are disgusted by Ono's antisemitism and refuse to wait. Ono pleads, "Just give Capcom some time!" "Remember SF X Tekken?" says a cool kid on Twitter with an anime avatar. He gets a few retweets but no girls. "Because you certainly don't remember the 8 million." Okay now that gets him some girl retweets. Now that pussy is on the line, he's fighting for Israel. Ono realizes the perennial insight - the ultimate epiphany - if he, as an IDF soldier and puppet of the Israeli nation can be anti-semitic, is everything meaningless? Just as information has lost value in the internet age, so does the meaning of language itself atrophy too? Does everything die "just like Street Fighter X Tekken" and does nothing ever truly live, "just like Street Fighter X Tekken"? The irony is that the Holocaust wiped out the Jews from the streets without so much as a fight, but the Jews killed street fighter with the Holocaust. See how smart shit sounds when you reverse the sentences. Have you ever thought that perhaps smart shit is reversing the sentences? That is the second thing that happens.

Chapter 1
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For decades, humans and a dozen other races expanded through local star systems, competing against each other but never gaining a significant enough advantage to allow one to dominate.
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This continued until the Dominion arrived. A massive ship flew through known space, indifferent to the calls of inhabitants. Making no attempt at first contact, the ship ignored all sentients in its path, passing through every battle line unscathed, and instead dropped a mining station in a white dwarf star. Shortly after, a Dominion base was established in an nearby uninhabited system.
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Confused, the humans and other races continued their attempts to communicate with the obviously vastly superior technology. Other Dominion ships came and went, often under military guard, but paid no attention to the line of ships outside their base and the sublight radio waves they were transmitting.
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Finally, the commander must have gotten tired of seeing ships milling around and built a radio to initiate contact. He didn’t say much other than introducing himself and his race, and that it was their right as Class Two species to have a Dominion ambassador if they requested one. Despite the differences between the assembled aliens, they unanimously agreed.
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A month later, Laen arrived from the Dominion.
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The ambassador from Ultrua waved his tentacles around excitedly in the drab room. On the other side, seated in a comfortable but equally drab couch, the Dominion’s representative sat trying to focus on the words coming from the translator and not the non-sensible tentacle waving.
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Laen nodded enthusiastically, trying to end the conversation. “Yes, ambassador, I agree completely. No, I can’t do that. Not even a little. Yes, as I previously mentioned—“
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His next sentence was a little more excited than she liked and she dodged a tentacle that seemed aimed at her, although the translator on her arm assured her it meant ‘slime accumulated between shower tiles.’
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“Ambassador, I realize Household Artificial Intelligence is your main export. No, I cannot authorize any trade of Dominion technology. Yes, I’m sure they’re very good machines—fine. I’ll take one.”
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She almost immediately regretted agreeing to purchase something, as the Ultruin’s gesticulations became even faster. Laen struggled to keep up with the translator.
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“Again, I can’t offer technology. How about…ah…umm…Gold! I’ll give you thirty tons of gold,” she said, suddenly remembering that the ambassador for the Achrans had promised that exact amount in exchange for a mineral survey of a nearby planet. She didn’t know what the market price for gold was in this sector, but she didn’t care. It was useless to the Dominion after they had moved to subspace quantum technologies centuries ago.
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Judging from the way the Utruin was moving its entire body now, Laen guessed he was getting the better side of this deal.
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“Yes sir, I agree. I’m happy we could come to an agreement. If you’ll excuse me, I have other duties to attend to.” She pointed to the door emphatically, and the ambassador reluctantly began oozing out of the room while continuing to jabber away in his native tongue. Or rather, tentacle.
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“Yes, I’m sure. Wait no, just one. No, one unit, not one shipment.” She slammed the door closed after checking to make sure no tentacles were still inside the doorframe.
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Laen fell on the couch, mildly hoping it would collapse and she would be seriously injured, just to bring some excitement to the day. She hated this. She had a promising career in a completely different field, and suddenly her life was turned around and sent to the darkest corner of the galaxy, just because some knuckle dragging squid who hadn’t figured out how to build nanoscopic singularities requested an ambassador.
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She recognized the flaw in her last thought just as her wrist computer buzzed again. Angrily, she slapped the button. “What?”
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The secretary recoiled on the screen, but remained professional. “Your next appointment is here.”
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Laen forced herself to calm down. It wasn’t the secretary’s fault. In fact, she probably didn’t want to be here any more than Laen did. “Already? Did my last appointment go long?”
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“I’m afraid so.” Laen wasn’t surprised. The Ultruin like to talk. Or punch. Whatever served as communication for his species.
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“Alright send him in. Or her. Or it. Whatever comes through the door.” She ended the call and leaned back on the couch again, silently willing the supports to fail.
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The door opened and a being two meters tall and relatively skinny stepped through. He seemed much more like what a proper sentient should look like. Her own race was not much different, except that she had blue skin. “You must be Laen. I am Bradley Cardot, the representative of the Human…” his voice trailed off as he saw the simple chair opposite the couch where Laen was seated, still covered in slime from the Utruin ambassador.
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“I’m so sorry! Let me get a new one.” She activated her wrist computer. “Gren, I’m sorry to bother you,” she said apologetically, hoping it would make up for her outburst earlier. “The gentleman from the Human…sorry, who are you representing again?”
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“The Human Confederation.”
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“Right. Of course. Anyway, the chair is soaked and we need a new one. Can you grab one from…somewhere?” Her voice dropped almost to pleading. She couldn’t think of words any more. If anything else went wrong, she silently swore she would abandon all attempts of diplomacy and spend the rest of the day in a hot bath.
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The secretary delivered a clean chair and dragged the soiled one out of the room, trails of slime following it. Laen suddenly had a horrible thought about where the ‘slime accumulated between shower tiles’ the Ultruins were so vehement about came from.
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Mister Cardot sat in the clean chair and opened his briefcase as the door shut. “Miss Laen—I’m sorry, how do you wish to be called?”
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“Laen is fine. It’s the only name I have, besides my social identifier number.”
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“Right. Thank you again for seeing me. On behalf of the Human Confederation I’d like to welcome you and extend—“
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“I cannot offer Dominion technology under any circumstances.” That was the first thing every diplomat asked for. Maybe she could save some time in this appointment and take a break before the next.
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“I wasn’t…I didn’t finish…” The ambassador trailed off. Laen wished he would hurry up and leave. Her professional demeanor failed and she felt her face scowl as she tried and failed to keep smiling.
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The human stared at her quizzically. “Are you okay?”
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Laen was not prepared for that. “I’m sorry, what?”
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“You don’t seem to be very happy right now. Is everything alright?”
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She stared back for a few seconds. “No, it’s ‘fine’. Everything’s just peachy,” she bit out sarcastically. “You want to know how ‘fine’ this is?”
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Bradley looked concerned, but she continued. The flood gates were open, and she was going to have her say.
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“I didn’t want to be an ambassador! I was never interested in diplomacy or politics or xenos or any of that! I’m an accountant! Do you want to know how I got here?”
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Bradley was silent.
​
“I was meeting a colleague in the government center. I walked past the door to the Executive Director of External Affairs and Relations Regulations Committee’s Record Keeper’s Assistant’s office, and the Record Keeper was in there talking to his assistant and he came out and almost bumped into me and he shoved an envelope at me and said ‘there’s a ship leaving the galaxy from dock one twenty four in fifteen minutes be on it and here’s everything you need to know.’” She was almost crying as she babbled.
​
The man had stayed perfectly still throughout her tirade. Laen hardly noticed as she launched into the next part. She had revealed too much, she thought. How would she fix this latest blunder? Hot tub for a day wouldn’t be enough. Not even a week. And what about Bradley Cardot? She didn’t even pause in telling him her deepest concerns. She couldn’t allow him to leave with that information. She would have to arrange an accident of some kind and get a new human ambassador. She had never killed or ordered anyone murdered before, and the thought made her stop mid-sentence.
​
She would have to consider how to deal with Bradley later. While she had a captive audience, she may as well spill her feelings, even if she had to kill him later to cover it up.
​
“Nobody cares. They never cared,” she said tiredly. “Do you know I had over a hundred coworkers? I was connected to the net during the whole trip. The only message I got the entire month I was traveling here was an automated mail to inform me of my job change.”
​
She turned around and dug through her bag. “See this pamphlet?” She held it up for him. It was a folded paper with a pleasing yellow color, titled “So You’ve been Conscripted to be an Ambassador? How to Avoid Embarrassing Yourself and the Dominion”. She tossed it to him and he broke his pose to catch it from the air. “That’s what they gave me to prepare me for this role. The Dominion doesn’t care about me enough to train me. They don’t care about you enough to send someone competent. There’s nothing you can offer them and they know it. I’m only here to satisfy some archaic rule somewhere.”
​
Bradley was flipping through the pamphlet. “This says you can order a preemptive strike against Class two civilizations!”
​
“Yeah, it does. Technically, beyond my presence and availability as a representative of the Dominion, you don’t have any rights at all. My contact at the Forms and Regulations for the Department of Ethical Treatment of Inferior Sentients and Species told me which forms to fill out to have any inhabited planet here glassed by the military with no questions asked, and no one back home would even blink. I could make myself the governor of all your planets and parade Dominion military ships around as long as I had the right documents to make the captains go where I wanted.”
​
Bradley was oddly calm at the revelation, and continued to read the pamphlet unaware that she was still considering revoking his living privileges after the conversation.
​
Laen sat in the couch and continued while he read. “Our technology is so much more advanced than yours. I’m not trying to be insulting, that’s just how it is. Our two civilizations don’t need any of the same materials. We’re only in this galaxy to mine white dwarf stars, and you’re still scraping asteroids for resources. If you didn’t try and make contact, we could have lived in the same sector for decades and never crossed paths.”
​
The human ambassador nodded. “Our people have a theory called the Fermi Paradox. It’s basically what you just said, where an alien civilization is so advanced they have no interest in us, maliciously or otherwise.”
​
Laen nodded. “Just a few minutes ago, I traded thirty tons of gold for a robot that changes the thermostat! I don’t want a robot! I’ll probably dump it out the airlock without opening it.”
​
Bradley’s jaw dropped at the price of a House AI. “That’s quite a lot.” He closed the pamphlet. “Do you know what you need? A vacation.”
​
She was about to ask what that was when he pulled his own computer from his pocket and turned it on. Although it looked similar, she was certain it was ancient technology compared to hers.
​
“Check this out. This is a beach in the Bahamas.” He turned the screen to show her.
​
Every hot bath she had ever had paled in comparison to the paradise in front of her. She could tell the temperature of the vista just by the reflection of the sunlight on the water, which stretched to the horizon. Never on all the city planets she had lived on could she have imagined so much wasted space.
​
She could almost feel the water on her body, and had an intense urge to know what the sand would be like under her feet.
​
“It’s beautiful.”
​
“Come on. I’ll take you.”
​
“I can’t. I have my duties to attend to, and I think I have to be impartial.”
​
“Not at all. Like you said, the Dominion doesn’t care what you do. You can even accept bribes.”
​
That made her pause. “Really?”
​
“Yeah. It was in the manual. Page fourteen, I think.”
​
“It explicitly said that?”
​
“From ‘unenlightened civilizations with no relevance to the Dominion’, yes.” He opened the pamphlet and pointed to a paragraph.
​
“Wow. I must have dozed off for that part. But you’ll still use this as leverage in negotiations, or something. How do I know I can trust you?”
​
He looked at her with something she couldn’t quite understand. Maybe pity, or compassion. “You said no one cares about you, that you weren’t important. I’m telling you that you are important. To everyone in this sector, you are the most important person in the universe. You have the fates of billions in your hands, even if they belong to Class two civilizations. We have to trust you to do the best you can.”
​
When she didn’t say anything he continued. “If you look upwards to the Dominion, you’ll find what you said is true. You and your job are completely irrelevant to them. But we, who you’ve been placed in charge of, care very much about you. Even if it’s only in our best interest.” He smiled. “I’ll make sure your trip isn’t interrupted with any diplomacy stuff. Unless you’d like some actual training.”
​
She laughed. “That would give you a huge advantage against everyone else in the sector.”
​
Bradley only smiled.
​
Laen nodded. She knew he was just diplomatic, being nice to the person with big guns behind her, but right now she didn’t care. “Alright. Let’s go.”
​
“Right now?”
​
“Yeah.” She activated her wrist computer. “Gren? Cancel all my appointments for the next month. I’m going with Mister Cardot. And use my diplomatic credit to treat yourself to something.”
​
One week later.
​
Laen was sprawled on the beach, her knees soaking in the gentle waves while her back relaxed in the heat from the sand. She had made Bradley find the exact spot in the picture, and he assured her she was lying on the very grains of sand depicted.
​
The beach was deserted aside from her, a waiter holding a half empty cooler full of beverages, and two dozen armed guards hiding out of view.
​
She had no idea what day it was. Bradley had promised two weeks of uninterrupted relaxation, and true to his word no one was able to introduce themselves without going through both his bodyguards and hers. Just beyond the horizon, she was sure, swarms of boats still challenged the police blockade, but here it was completely peaceful.
​
An annoying buzzing wafted over the breeze from her cabin. She had brought her wrist computer on the chance she might need it, but she hadn’t looked at it once since she got here. There was no need for any communication, as far as she was concerned. She had told her ship she would be back in touch and that she hadn’t been kidnapped and there would be no need for the Dominion to abduct another passerby to maintain headcount.
​
It was nice here. She should leave the ship and set up shop on Earth. It would give the humans an unfair advantage but who cares?
​
She did. She cared. Bradley was the only one who cared enough to ask if she was okay. She could care about them in return.
​
Laen applied another layer of sunscreen purposefully designed for her blue skin and laid back on the sand, closing her eyes. She had almost fallen asleep when she suddenly bolted upright.
​
“I forgot to give the Ultruins their gold!”
​
Chapter 2
​
Laen walked onto the cramped bridge of her Dominion-issued diplomatic shuttle to see the full force of the Ultruin battle fleet arrayed before her.
​
The shuttle’s pilot, sitting in the chair on the left, greeted her with a wave before turning back to the controls with boredom. She couldn’t blame him. Nothing exciting was going to happen for a long time.
​
She wondered what she was wearing, but couldn’t risk taking the time to look. The only thing worse than showing up in your pajamas to a diplomatic incident was showing up in pajamas and then appearing embarrassed about it.
​
On screen, the Ultruin ambassador was gesticulating angrily, unaware that Laen had only now gotten up from her bed.
​
It didn’t matter. The Ultruan language was usually fast and chaotic, with multiple tentacles making signs at the same time. But now the ambassador was using a very formal, very slow pattern. The movements took long enough to communicate anything that a few minutes of skimming the text logs was enough to catch up on his ramblings.
​
Once she finished, she interrupted the Ultruin. “Thank you for that speech, ambassador, but there’s no need to declare war. I have your gold in an Achran bank. I will tell them to transfer it immediately.”
​
She let her mind wander while the translation of the alien’s words crawled across the screen. There was a lot of movement for so little communication. It took about fifty separate gestures to form one word. Why was this language so inefficient? She glanced at the screen again and saw he was only half finished with his sentence.
​
What was in the kitchen? The tiny shuttle boasted a one-square-meter kitchenette with all the amenities of a fourth-class restaurant in the middle of a random slum back home. There should be some leftover green paste, or was it the orange paste? If Gren ate all the green paste while Laen had been on vacation, she was going to have some harsh words for her.
​
Her mind came back to the moment to see the Ultruin staring at her silently. After a look at the text logs, she forced her nicest diplomatic smile for the being threatening her life.
​
“Again, I apologize for the delay, but surely if I add a late-payment fee to what I owe you we can leave as friends. It’s not as if you’ve delivered the AI either, right?”
​
The shuttle pilot cleared his throat. Laen glanced over at him. He was pointing at a cardboard box sitting in the co-pilot’s seat across the aisle. It had Ultruin shipping labels plastered all over it like a hobo’s attempt at wallpaper. Laen briefly wondered what address they used to ship it to her shuttle in the middle of empty space.
​
“Alright, so you have delivered the AI. But is thirty tons of gold really worth declaring war over?”
​
The Ultruin gestured some more. Laen leaned over to the pilot. “When we’re done here, toss the box out the airlock,” she whispered. The pilot nodded.
​
“Really? Wars of reimbursement are permitted for transactions over twenty thousand Konevs? And I suppose thirty tons of gold is more than twenty thousand?”
​
More gesturing.
​
“That’s great, but we surrender. We’re willing to hand over what we owe you. No need for hostilities, right?”
​
Still more gesturing. Where had she seen those movements before? Suddenly she remembered and now she couldn’t get the memories out of her head. The Sushi place with Mark had been a disaster. First of all he was as generic as possible, without a single defining trait. And then the giant tentacle monster the chefs were about to serve somehow escaped and gobbled Mark up. At least he wasn’t able to ask for a second date, and when the Dominion army finally dealt with the monster the sushi was surprisingly good, though slightly singed. Laen watched the Ultruin and wondered if he had any distant relatives in her home galaxy.
​
“Alright fine, have it your way.” She turned the viewscreen off and turned to the pilot. “In case you didn’t get that, the entire People’s Republic of Ultrua has declared war on me personally, and the Dominion by extension.”
​
“I didn’t, thanks. Was I supposed to be paying attention?”
​
“Nah. I was barely paying attention. So the Ultruins are just going to shoot at us for a while, and then maybe surrender. Tell me if something interesting happens.”
​
The pilot smirked. “Will do. Class twos, am I right?”
​
She stopped halfway through the hatch. “What is that supposed to mean?”
​
He pulled his helmet off so he could turn to face her. “They’re just so dumb! I don’t know why we bother talking to them at all.”
​
A wing of fighters blazed past the windows, peppering the skin of the craft with tiny kinetic slugs. Realizing the shuttle had no fighter defenses, the fighters slowly flew in front and emptied their magazines into the sitting shuttle. Inside the shuttle, of course, it was completely silent. Laen stepped back into the bridge to address the pilot.
​
“There are some very nice class two people I met. Just because their civilizations aren’t as old or as advanced as ours doesn’t mean they as individuals aren’t every bit as intelligent as your or I.”
​
“Ma’am, I don’t mean to insult you, but surely the Ultruins have spent more money on ammo in their little war than they could have made if they just took the gold.”
​
“The Ultruins might be a special case, but this is still the action of one man. Even with the support of his government. All the others in the fleet are just following orders. You can’t apply a generalization of one individual to an entire group.”
​
Megaton warheads splattered across the windshield like bugs. The glass automatically polarized to prevent ionizing radiation from reaching the passengers.
​
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry I insulted your friends. Happy?”
​
It was probably as good as she was going to get. “Close enough. And thank you for refraining from making that comment while the channel was open.”
​
The pilot laughed. “No kidding. Do I look like a class two?” A horrified look crossed his face as he realized he made the same joke a second time. “No, I’m sorry. I just-“
​
Laen smiled. “It’s fine.” She gestured to the light show outside. “Let me know when they get bored.”
​
Walking back to her room, she stopped at the refresher station to check the mirror. She sighed contentedly. Sometimes, success was not showing up to a declaration of war wearing pajamas. Today’s definition of success meant forgetting to change into pajamas from yesterday’s clothing, and wearing that to a declaration of war instead.
​
She would take whatever victory she could, especially because Gren had indeed eaten all the green paste and left Laen with the disgusting orange stuff.
​
Bradley Cardot, the human ambassador looked surprised. “They just opened fire? Then what?”
​
Laen shrugged and reached across the table for a pitcher of cool-aid. They were sitting in an empty room at a high-end human restaurant reserved for diplomatic events. Being able to order almost any drink known to humanity, Laen naturally chose cool-aid. “I grabbed a snack and went back to bed until they stopped.”
​
“That’s it? How did it end?”
​
“After a few hours, I had my pilot fire a warning shot through a small moon. They surrendered after that.”
​
“What happened to the Household AI? And the thirty tons of gold?”
​
“According to the document they signed, I returned the AI for a full refund. However, the whole thing started because I forgot to give them the gold, and the Ultruins don’t have thirty tons of their own. To process the whole transaction I have to pay them the original sum, without interest, and then they will refund it back to me.”
​
Bradley was clearly questioning the mental capacities of the people involved in the surrender document.
​
“It was seriously the only thing we could agree on. I was ready to give them both the AI and the gold just to get out of the talks a few hours early, but they wouldn’t have it.”
​
“That does sound like them. It’s still troubling, though. You shouldn’t have been in battle. Doesn’t the Dominion have a military ship you could have called for backup?”
​
“Well yeah, but I wasn’t in any danger. All Dominion ship hulls are statically placed.”
​
“What does that mean?”
​
Laen paused. “You seriously don’t know? As in Universal Static Positioning?”
​
Bradley shook his head.
​
“The molecules of the hull are in a form of stasis locked to relative ship position. Nothing except weaponry or tools designed to disrupt that stasis can damage it. Didn’t you already know that?”
​
He shook his head again.
​
Laen suddenly had a moment of clarity. “Oh! I keep forgetting you’re a class two, and USP is class seven tech. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you-“
​
“It’s fine. And I appreciate that you don’t think of us as technologically inferior. Even though we are.”
​
“Please, don’t mention this to anyone. I’m embarrassed just telling you.”
​
“Laen, It’s fine. I wasn’t insulted. And I won’t tell anyone.”
​
The Dominion ambassador breathed easier. “Thanks. But seriously, don’t tell anyone about Static Positioning. I could get court martialed just for saying the name to a class two.”
​
The Human smiled. “I won’t. Humanity will learn it the hard way when we become class seven. But for now, you can’t continue traveling through space in a shuttle, even with indestructible armor.”
​
“What do you mean?”
​
“The Ultruin’s thought they could win against you because all you had was a single shuttle.”
​
“But there was a Dominion ship only ten minutes away, if I was actually in danger.”
​
“They knew you weren’t in danger. They wanted to intimidate you. If they were actually declaring war on the Dominion, they would have gone to one of the Dominion bases.”
​
“I suppose. What do you suggest?”
​
Bradley smiled wide. “The Human Confederacy would like to offer you a diplomatic warship.”
​
“A warship? What am I supposed to do with a warship? I don’t think even the Ultruin’s would hesitate to fight someone with one warship.”
​
“Ah, but it’s not just one warship. It’s one Confederate warship, crewed by humans. If the Ultruins or anyone else open fire on you, they are not only declaring war on the Dominion, who couldn’t care less, but on the Human Confederacy as well. And we do care.”
​
Laen nodded slowly. “And by riding in your fancy ship, I would also be officially endorsing you.”
​
The man cocked his head to one side and smiled at her.
​
She wasn’t sure what to say. Picking up her glass of cool-aid, she maintained eye contact and drank the contents while being intimidating as possible.
​
Sensing her trepidation, Bradley continued. “I’m sure a Dominion equipped shuttle has every luxury Humans can’t imagine, but it must be extremely cramped on board. You can just park your ship in the hangar and take a stroll down the corridors once in a while-“
​
Laen choked on the cool-aid and coughed all over the table, narrowly avoiding Bradley. She wiped the liquid running down her chin with her sleeve, abandoning her intimidating stance. “I’m sorry, did you say hangar?”
​
“Yes. The ship I have in mind has a small hangar that would be more than enough-“
​
“How big is the kitchen?”
​
“I don’t know, probably about the size of this room?” He gestured at the walls. They were about ten meters by twelve.
​
“Do they stock cool-aid?” She asked, while lifting the glass that contained what cool-aid she hadn’t spilled.
​
“They…certainly can.”
​
“And do they serve the food we just ate?” Bradley had treated himself to a pork roast, while Laen had consumed five consecutive grilled-cheese sandwiches.
​
“Not exactly, but we can customize the menu to your liking. All on the Human Confederacy’s bill, of course.”
​
“I’ll take it!”
​
Bradley took a deep breath. “I’m glad we could be of service.”
​
A day later, Laen was almost jumping up and down with excitement. She was trying not to actually jump, because if she had she would have knocked her head on the overhead. The Perseverance was a Human Confederacy heavy cruiser, which meant it was slower than a light cruiser and less armored then a dreadnought.
​
The passageways were just as cramped as one her shuttle, they just went in straight much lines longer. But there were more open areas, like the gym, hangar, and galley. The bridge was another area with a lot of open space, but that was just to fit more viewscreens and buttons and switches.
​
Her shuttle, which lacked a name, was parked quietly in one corner of the Perseverance’s hangar. The rest of her crew declined to step onto the “Human death trap” and preferred to stay in a ship that wouldn’t vent atmosphere if it hit a micrometeor going a mere quarter of the speed of light.
​
The kitchen had been her first stop. It was filled with appliances and machines with functions she couldn’t even guess at, but she made the head chef promise not to start the next meal until she was there to watch. Being able to eat food with texture while being in space would be the ultimate luxury.
​
Now, she was climbing through the many hatches to get to the bridge. Her first stop as commander of the vessel was the Dominion supply base, one of the two bases operated by the Dominion in this galaxy.
​
“Have we arrived, captain?”
​
Captain Williams turned to face her. “Aye, ma’am. We are within radio hailing distance.”
​
“Open a channel!”
​
She waited excitedly for something to happen. Nothing did.
​
“No response.”
​
“Why would they be ignoring me? Wait, did you say radio?”
​
“Yes ma’am, our sublight communication is radio based.”
​
“That’s why. The base doesn’t have radio equipment. Call my shuttle, please.”
​
The main screen changed to show her shuttle pilot reading something with his feet on the console, ignoring the red lights that appeared whenever his foot bumped something. Seeing her on his own screen, he jumped and straightened his posture, hiding his reading material under his seat. “Yes ma’am. How may I help?”
​
“Contact Commander Devrak, please, and route the call to the bridge of the Perseverance over the sublight comms.”
​
“Right away.”
​
A moment later, Commander Devrak appeared on the screen.
​
“Yes ambassador Lon, what can I do for you?”
​
“It’s Laen.”
​
“My apologies, Lon. Why are you interrupting my day?”
​
“Do you remember that piece-of-junk shuttle you gave me?”
​
“I was ordered give you the Mark 25 model. Otherwise all you would have gotten was an oxygen mask and a pair of plastic angel wings.” Commander Devrak apparently wanted nothing to do with this conversation.
​
“Haha, very funny. Well, I got a new ship! See it on your scanner?”
​
“Nope.”
​
“Of course you do. It’s the biggest thing around besides the station.”
​
Devrak squinted at something off screen. “Oh, there it is, I mistook it for a garbage scow at first. No, it is a garbage scow. Does it even have USP?”
​
Laen glanced around nervously. “Ah, no, these are class twos, Devrak. No USP for a while.”
​
“Well, have fun. Somewhere far away, preferably.”
​
“Wait wait wait. I haven’t even shown you the firepower I have.”
​
Devrak sighed. “Whoever decided to give you firepower is clearly the worst tactician ever. Fine. What do you want to do?”
​
“Just launch a training drone and watch!”
​
The commander leaned back in his chair and spoke to someone before turning back to the camera. “Your drone’s launching now.”
​
Laen turned to Captain Williams. “Do you have the drone in your sights?”
​
“Bogey detected on our starboard bow, twenty five degrees by ten. Mass: eighteen thousand kilograms. Distance: eleven thousand meters.”
​
Laen jumped up. “Main guns to starboard! Prepare a full broadside!” She didn’t know if that was proper military speak, but she had watched a dozen space pirate movies to prepare for this moment.
​
The captain nodded to his crew. “Fire on my mark. Three, two one.”
​
There was a loud reverberation throughout the ship as eighteen cannons fired simultaneously.
​
After a few seconds, the tactical officer spoke. “Target impacted.”
​
Commander Devrak, still on screen, looked bored. “Are you sure?” The drone doesn’t show any damage.”
​
The tactical officer continued. “Sixteen of eighteen shells hit the target.”
​
Devrak’s expression stayed the same. “The accelerometer doesn’t even show its course changed.”
​
The captain turned to Laen. “Normally, against a target of that size we would use missiles or flak guns. The main guns are accurate to a thousand kilometers if we’re firing on ships our size.”
​
“Thank you Captain. And you, Commander Devrak, for being a good host.”
​
“Unwillingly. Good travels, ambassador. I’d hate to hear something bad happened and I had to rescue you.” Devrak closed the connection.
​
Captain Williams ignored the commander. “Where to now, ma’am?”
​
She pointed her finger forward. “To the edge of the universe!”
​
Just then, her communicator buzzed. “Hello?”
​
“Ma’am, it’s Chef Ganovich. We’re ready to prepare the next meal, if you’d still like to watch!”
​
“Are we having cool-aid?”
​
“Yes ma’am.”
​
“With grilled cheese?”
​
“As you requested.”
​
“Don’t start without me!” Laen turned off the communicator and almost ran out of the bridge but turned back to Captain Williams. “Take us anywhere! I doubt Devrak wants to see us anymore!”
​
The captain sighed. “Plot a course for Earth.” Under his breath, he muttered “I hate grilled cheese.”
​
Chapter 3
​
In a darkened room deep within the Perseverance, four crewmen conversed secretly.
​
“She’s up to no good. We have to stop her.”
​
“And you’ve seen how she treats the crew. She would do the same in our place.”
​
There were muttered agreements as they plotted. Suddenly, the hatch slammed open and Captain Williams strode through, accompanied by Chef Ganovich.
​
“What’s going on here?” The captain said angrily. “Gentlemen, are you conspiring?” The crewmen shrunk back.
​
Williams raised his voice. “WITHOUT ME?”
​
No one made eye contact.
​
“I told you I would be five minutes late, and you’ve started without me! Were this on the record, you’d be reprimanded for failure to adhere to protocol!”
​
Crewman Banes stepped forward. “We’re terribly sorry, captain. I take responsibility. We were waiting like you asked, and I just mentioned how eating macaroni and cheese a fourth time this week upset my stomach, and that started the conversation.”
​
Williams nodded. “Apology accepted. Now, let’s get this started in an orderly fashion. I understand some of you have complaints about our guest. As your captain, I represent the crew to the higher ups, including Miss Laen. Crewman Banes, why don’t you start.”
​
“Thank you, captain. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve been having nothing but grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, and nachos with cheese all week. I understand our mission is diplomatic in nature, but must we suffer just because she never saw cheese before?”
​
“That’s certainly a valid complaint, and one I share as well. Let’s hear Crewman Korenski.”
​
Korenski looked up with an evil grin. “She didn’t sign any agreement with us, but here we are ferrying her around the sector. She’s no good, I say. You saw what she did to the Ultruins, and that’s what she’ll do to us.”
​
The captain looked confused. “What, exactly, did she do to the Ultruins?”
​
“You saw, in the news, with the rest of us. The battle of…of…what was the battle called?”
​
Banes shrugged. “I don’t think they gave it a name. And it was in the middle of empty space, so there aren’t any planets to name it after.”
​
“There was that moon. The one she gave a piercing to.”
​
“Aye, though it wasn’t quite a moon. Moons orbit planets, and this object was sitting alone. It was more of a dwarf planet.”
​
“Don’t planets necessarily orbit stars?”
​
“Not necessarily. There are rogue planets between star systems.”
​
“Really? I didn’t know that.” Korenski shook the surprise off his face and returned to scowling. “What was this rogue planet’s name then? We can name the battle off of that.”
​
No one knew. Everyone took out their pocket computers and data pads to look it up.
​
One of the crewmen who hadn’t spoken yet found it first. “KX-9404-&kpX_\5.”
​
Korenski nodded slowly. “The battle of the rogue dwarf planet ‘kay ex dash nine four zero four dash ampersand, lowercase gee kay, uppercase ex, underscore backslash five’. It doesn’t really have a ring to it.”
​
Captain Williams checked the time. “Regardless, you were saying?”
​
“Right then. She dishonored the tenants of honorable warfare and humiliated everyone involved. The least she should have done is destroyed half their fleet in defense, and maybe painted some dents on her own hull to make it look like an actual battle. Instead the Ultruin commander surrendered without taking a single casualty!”
​
“And you’re upset…why?”
​
“It’s dishonorable. When I think about all those Ultruin sailors, returning to their homes unharmed when they should have been given honorable deaths, it makes me angry!”
​
Someone in the back spoke up. “Don’t blame the squids for having better looking wives than you!”
​
After a round of laughter, Banes joined in. “If you want an honorable death, Korenski, tell your wife what you tell us about her cooking!”
​
Williams spoke up. “Alright, that’s enough. Korenski, the Human Confederation is not allied or affiliated with the People’s Republic of Ultrua in any way, and we do not care whether they were humiliated or not. She conducted warfare in an honorable manner as far as we are concerned, and that’s as far as you need to be concerned.”
​
“Aye, captain.”
​
“Chef Ganovich, do you have anything to add?”
​
Ganovich cleared his throat. “As far as the food, Miss Laen appears to be a simple good hearted soul. All she cares about is watching all manner of meals involving cheese being made in ridiculous quantities. And maybe galactic domination. It’s hard to hear over the mixer. Regardless, she’s also a diplomat, and even if she demands the men stick to her meal choices, she will at least phrase it in a way that makes us feel better about it.”
​
“My thoughts exactly. Does anyone else have a specific complaint?”
​
Another crewman in the back spoke. “I’m responsible for cleaning her quarters. She leaves hairpins everywhere!”
​
“I’m pretty sure all women do that. Anyone else?”
​
The crewman wouldn’t be silenced. “And she has a dozen bottles of shampoo!”
​
Williams grimaced. “That’s even less of a complaint. Is there anyone else?”
​
No one spoke except the same crewman. “And you should see the shower drain!”
​
“I will speak with Miss Laen about the food. The other issues are not at all relevant.” Without waiting for a reply, the captain turned and walked out the hatch.
​
Williams met Laen in the executive conference room.
​
“Miss Laen, thank you for coming.”
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The blue skinned ambassador was nervous. “Of course. What is this about?”
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“I’m sorry for alarming you. It’s nothing serious. I just wanted to discuss something in private.”
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Laen did not appear less nervous.
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Williams continued. “We are happy to provide whatever food you enjoy, however, the men are used to a more…traditional diet in the service.”
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“They don’t like cheese?”
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“They do, just usually in much smaller quantities. And I don’t know about your species, but humans can get constipated from eating too much.”
​
Laen put a hand on her stomach. “Is that what that is? I’m sorry, I should have known you would object. Human space food is much more diverse than the Dominion’s. I was just so excited about being able to chew instead of just swallowing.”
​
“I understand. You can still order whatever you want, but would you mind if the crew returned to their scheduled menus?”
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“Of course not. And there’s no need to treat me special. I’ll have what the crew is having.”
​
Williams smiled. “I think you’ll enjoy it. And I know there’s cheesecake for desert.”
​
CONTINUED IN COMMENTS

• Sorry for the length - there is a lot to this event *

This happened about 14 years ago.
Mid November, around 3:10am, in the Hanover, VA area.
I was driving home. I was the only car on the road and it was a cloudless night. I looked over to my left and saw what, I thought at the time, was a meteor falling to earth. It was quite a ways away and it had a bright orange/red tail. I couldn’t keep track of it on the winding roads and houses/trees lining the road. I didn’t think much of it…until. I turned right on the road that led to my neighborhood. The road winds in an S shape, then opens up to a fairly visible area. As soon as I made my way through that S, I looked to the left, and there was - about 2 stories high and 200 feet away - a dark silver UFO.
I froze. I had never believed in aliens or anything like that before. The craft moved over top of my car (about a single story above my car). It was smooth, made no sound, was triangular, and had 3 blue “lights” at each point. I say “lights” because it seemed more like some form of reaction (chemical or otherwise) causing the blue light.
My car is barely moving at this point (my foot is off the gas and my radio had shut off). All I can think is “what the fk, what the fk, what the f**k” when suddenly, flashes of what my house looked liked came to my mind. The number of my house and where it was located came to my mind. As soon as I realized what I was thinking, I immediately was like "what are you doing? stop thinking that!"
As soon as I forced myself to stop thinking that, the craft started to move forward and up away from my car, right in the direction of my neighborhood. I knew they were going to my house. In my gut, I knew.
I was so scared, I drove though the neighborhood, doing laps, about 4 times - trying to see where it went. I didn't see it. I contemplated sleeping in my car, in the driveway - but chose against it out of fear of seeing aliens approach my car while half asleep.
It took every ounce of courage to go into my house. I knew they were in my house when I opened the door and the house was dark and silent. I had 3 dogs (one being a beagle, a basset hound, and a terrier). They always barked anytime the door was opened.
The house was SO dark and SO quiet and I ran down the hall into the bathroom. I locked the door and tried to calm down. I sat in my bathroom for about 20 minutes trying to figure out what to do. Then, I was terrified to open the door. What if it was standing right in front of the door when I opened it? There wasn’t anything I could use as a weapon in the bathroom. I think I grabbed a brush, haha. I then was like “ok, calm down….just brush your teeth, pee, then rush to your bedroom and lock the door”. Which I did.
I immediately turned the lights on and got in bed. I prayed to God to not let me remember anything. I was like “this is already too much for me to comprehend. Please don’t let me remember if something happens. I can’t handle it. It will break me mentally. If they are going to abduct me or whatever, please don’t let me remember it” and then I went to bed.
There have been a few times since that experience where I lost time (once was with someone else - about 8 hours lost for us both) and some experiences where I have woken up with weird markings on my body, but no more UFO sightings.
I also had what seems like a dream - I’m not sure - of a small, about 4 foot tall, being that had this kind of light/dirty brownish color skin (almost like a latte with a lot of cream and milk in it) and it had MASSIVE black eyes. In the dream/fracture of memory I was running down the hallway in my house and ran into the room closest to the front door and went to slam it shut. This thing’s head was caught between the door and the doorframe. And it made this god awful sound (like gurgling kind of) and then I went to punch it and that’s all I remember
After this experience, I spent about two years terrified to go to sleep. I would literally stay awake until I physically couldn’t anymore. About 3 years later, I was diagnosed with PTSD by a therapist (who did not know about this experience). I am in a much better place now mentally than I was 10 years ago. Even though I cannot remember what happened, I still feel this primal fear if I think about it too long. But, I’m not AS terrified as I was back then. I had a lot of things that I had to comprehend and come to peace with (like the fact that aliens are real). But I don’t believe they are nefarious. My best guess is that I was “tagged” - like marine biologists do to whales or sharks - but, I don’t really know.
Thank you for allowing a safe space for me to feel comfortable sharing. I have only told 2 people this my entire life out of fear of ridicule.

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Lots of thanks to u/Killsode-slugcat for helping me work through this chapter with editing.
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Memory transcription subject: Tevri, Venlil Romanticist
Date [standardized human time]: August 11, 2137
With eyes still closed, I stretched my legs and arms, paws pushing up against the inside of my sleeping bag. A sigh of contentment escaped my mouth.
I let the world in—light falling down in shafts that struck my still-waking eyes. No trees were around to provide cover from the rising sun that hung low in the east. The sounds of life surrounded me, occasionally being broken up by particularly strong gusts as well as a hint of something else.
My head turned to that hint, who still slept somewhat soundly off to my side. Last night Jack had set up his own sleeping bag less than an arm’s length from my own, citing our lack of a fire as the reason to gather closer to each other.
He tossed and turned, occasionally, muttering incoherently. At least he’s found some rest. After carrying me for over half of yesterday, he had certainly earned it.
It was actually quite surprising how well he had managed it all. His slim build compared to other humans that I had seen was betrayed by a hidden strength and incredible endurance. I suppose millions of years of evolution tends to allow such a thing.
Some part of me still felt bitter about what he had done the night prior to our last, but it was clear to me that his apology was sincere. I gave a quiet snort. He probably wouldn’t have carried you on your shoulders if he wasn’t at least somewhat sorry.
The covers of my too-big bag were thrown off and I sat up, holding my knocked knees with my paws.
Rocky rolling hills with low-grown shoots of grass lightly waved towards me. The nearby mountain range looked down upon us with its well-kept snow despite the summer season. Even three days of standing beneath them didn’t eliminate their wondrously looming presence.
I reached over to my nearby pack and grabbed my pen and journal. I clung to every thought that passed its way through my mind, marking them down the old fashioned way. There was something special about writing my feelings down on something physical rather than some pad or computer. It felt real in comparison to the alternative.
It was incredible to me how one of, if not the most dangerous planet to be found within known space was simultaneously one of the most fantastically beautiful worlds I ever had the pleasure of setting foot on. What a travesty it would have been had the federation actually managed to glass the biosphere. Ironically it had been the Arxur that prevented such a disastrous outcome. Those same savages had…
“Gah!”
Jack shot upright from where he had lain. He heaved harsh breaths, chest rising and falling as though he had just sprinted up the incline of a hill. I looked on with alarm, but didn’t think to disrupt the startled man. His eyes stared down at the dirt in front of him as he hung his hands between his legs.
“You okay?” I asked. He whipped to look at me like he had forgotten I was there. Slowly, he turned back to face the dirt. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” He took a curt sniff and ran his hands across his face as he took a deep sigh.
He was lying.
The restless sleep, the violent rise into consciousness, the obvious distress within those wild eyes—all signs of nightmares. It had been years now since I last worried about such things, but I knew all too well how difficult they were to deal with.
A thought, as intrusive as it was unwelcome, pushed its way through the crowded thoughts of my mind, forcing my heart to skip a beat. What would be enough to scare a predator—human—to scare a human within their dreams? Instantly, I shoved it back from wherever it had come. He needs you right now, just like how you needed her.
I gently crawled over to the distraught man and set a paw on an arm while he leaned forward. At my touch, he turned his head towards me, staring with those forward-facing eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.
A slight snarl of a smile crossed his face, but no answer came. Jack stood up and stretched his arms outward, leaning back and forth.
“C’mon, let's pack up and head out. S’always good to start out early.” He extended a hand down to me where I sat still. How could he just brush something so terrifying off so easily? My tail flicked absently I guess they always have been a rather resilient species. Why should they be any different mentally? I relented to his proposal, grabbing his hand and allowing him to pull me upright.
Breakfast—much like last night’s meal—consisted of dry pre-prepped rations. Without surrounding trees from which drywood could be scavenged, we were left fireless. The ‘breakfast bars’ as Jack called them were a sufficient substitute for warm food. Every meal with the human increased my interest in the cuisine of his species. I hadn’t imagined it would all be so wonderfully varied and delicious.
The bar itself was chewy, made of oats, filled with dried fruits and sweetened by sugar. Each bite gave a satisfying crunch as my taste buds reveled in the impeccably delightful taste.
After hydrating and filling ourselves with calories, we set off once more on the trail.
This time, I was actually able to walk properly, though less than an hour after we departed, I was left wishing that Jack could scare me sleepless again—that way I could guilt him into carrying me.
While we continued, I walked without thinking much about the placement of my paws. I worried for my human friend. His mind was clearly plagued by something terrible, but the answer of what continued to evade me. The only lead I had were my own experiences, and in chasing that lead, my mind wandered back to the past.
As I was dragged from our home without protest, Devra lambasted our parents. Velnik cowered to the side as he watched the ordeal, helpless with widened eyes. Dad practically had to peel my sister away from mom as I was shoved into our vehicle. The echo of her shouts faded away.
It was the first time my parents admitted me for predator disease screenings.
An iron grip held my hand and led me forward through the stark featureless halls of the facility. A glance over my shoulder revealed my parents walking along. They dared not to risk a look in my direction. Tears welled at the edge of my eyes as the echoes of distant screams shocked my ears and flooded my brain with fear-chemicals.
My tail wrapped around my body and my ears bent towards the ground. Why did they want to throw me in here with the monsters? All I did was explore.
The facility worker threw me in a chair within a purely white room other than the single large black wall. From the ceiling hung a projector that faced one of the three white surfaces. After the worker left, my eyes floated through the room, narrowing at a sight that practically screamed of its existence. Dark lines were scrawled into the furthest corner of the sterile chamber.
I didn’t have the time to think about its implications when the screen clicked on and the lights dimmed, enhancing the image before me.
The metal chair fell backward with me in it, creating a resounding clang that bounded back and forth across the walls.
My hands slipped and slid across the slick floor, carrying my body backwards. This scramble led the wall to smash against my back. Without a thought, my claws joined the countless other marks of those who had come before me.
A towering, onyx-shaded visage of the malevolent beast prowled beyond the edge of my vision, obscured by tears of terror that practically blinded me. The blood-orange eyes glowed greedily and its mouth was stuck in a perpetual snarl. Viscera of a horrifically familiar color dribbled down its chin from where the meat was in the Arxur’s razor-sharp teeth.
With a click, the sanguine show moved forward to yet another horrific display. Another click. Another. One more. Click. Click. Click. Silence.
My eyes were as raw as my bloodied paws. Their scraping and scrabbling joined me with the other souls who had faced this same experience. When the lights flicked on and the worker came back to collect me, I curled up trying and failing to back away. She stood me up, patting me down before pulling me from the room. Everything was a collective white blur, compressed into a single moment of unfocused voices until I heard the vehicle’s door slam.
The ride home was silent as I leaned my head against the padded surface of my seat. Shallow breaths rose and fell from my chest while Mom and Dad stared ahead. They hadn’t looked at me once since we left the facility—or even talked to me—since we left the facility.
Among the many questions I had, one clung to the surface of my mind before being swallowed by its sea of screams. Why?
When at last we arrived at home, I barely even noticed. Only when the door to the passenger cabin flung open did I somewhat rise from my stupor. A sudden surprise wrapped around me and pulled me from the car, dragging away from my supposed guardians.
In an instant, I was rushed to my room and placed upon the familiar comfort of my bed before being coated by two layers of warmth; one was the plush cloth of a blanket and the other the fluffy warmth of my sister’s fur. “It’s ok, Tev. You’re home. You’re safe.” My empty eyes had no tears left to give, so Devra lent me hers.
You’re home. You’re safe.
“Tev? Tevri?”
My repeated name yanked me from the memory. Ugh, I’ve got to stop wandering off like that.
“You in there sheep?”
With a grumble, I responded. “I told you to stop calling me that.”
Jack uttered a mischievous chuckle. “C’mon, let's get over this next hill then break for lunch. Sure seems you could use a rest.” Despite it going unnoticed moments prior, I now felt my heart pumping hard and each breath heaved just as harshly. A short break will probably do me some good.
Together, we crested the hilltop and sat down both our packs and ourselves. I greedily lapped up water from my bottle while the man beside me calmly took several swigs from his own canteen. The food he grabbed was a pair of packaged items that he called ‘pasta salad.’
The small noodles were coated in a layer of creamy sauce and mixed with a variety of colorful vegetables that I didn’t recognize, but just like everything else cooked up by these humans, it was delicious. The sweet, creamy sauce contrasted nicely with the savory taste of the noodles and the soft texture of the pasta paired with the lovely crunch of the vegetables made for a wonderful meal.
As I munched on my food, the wind lazily played with my tail. My heart drummed onward, steadying into an agreeable rhythm before finally, my breathing leveled out.
A field of purple flowers greeted us, climbing and falling with the rolling land. Down below us was the river we had loosely followed, bordered by nondescript bunches of shrubbery. Rapid white waters splashed up and against rocks, breaking the flow and sending up spray.
When together we finished our food, we sat there, enjoying the world around us. “So, Tevri,” as Jack spoke, I met his forward eyes, “we’ve been out here for two days now and I still know next to nothing about you. Why don’t you tell me a bit more ‘bout yourself.”
The sudden question caught me by surprise, but I tried my best to answer anyway. “There isn’t much to tell. I write stories and poetry about the nature of worlds I’ve visited.”
“Well, you must be one hell of a writer to throw around money like you do.”
At the compliment, I felt a rush of warmth to my face. “I—”
Jack’s calm demeanor became one of surprise in an instant. “Is your face ‘sposed to do that?” A pair of my paws clapped to my face, trying and failing to hide the spreading orange.
“Y-yes!” I squeaked. “It’s p-perfectly fine.”
“Huh, right.” He didn’t sound convinced in the slightest. “Well, uh, what about your family? You’ve met mine already, why don’t you tell me about yours?”
Just as the orange began to fade away, a shroud of mist met my eyes and my voice sunk with my ears. “I’d rather not.” The whiplash of jumping from a sense of contentment, to embarrassment, to sad longing was jarring to say the least.
“Ah.” He held his silence for a moment, allowing the blowing breeze and the distant rush of water to fill the space between.
“I’m sorry.”
“S-sorry? Sorry for what?”
Jack gave a huff. “You know it's funny really. You Venlil, us Humans. I never really saw it before, but even just a few days around you, it’s shown me just how similar our people really are.”
Again, wind and water.
“If it means anything, I’ve felt your loss.”
What?! How does he know? How could he possibly know?
He must have picked up my confusion before he responded. “After the battle of Earth I got used to hearing that answer of yours.”
Oh.
Jack rose, swinging his pack around his shoulders. “C’mon sheep, sun’s not getting any higher. Let's get going.”
“YOU—!” The dour mood was immediately washed away by my guide’s hearty laughter. Again with the emotional whiplash.
It was amazing how easily he managed to do that. Try as I might, I couldn’t stay mad at him. As I shook my head, I followed my guide’s motions and grabbed my bag to join him.
For a while we walked quietly, but once again, Jack tried to strike up a conversation. “So, you mentioned you’ve visited other worlds. What were they like?”
I gave the human equivalent of a shrug with my tail. “Some were better than others, but for the most part, they were quite beautiful.”
“You have any favorites?”
My ears perked up. “Oh yes! The sky cities of Nishtal were incredible. Dwelling among the clouds, it was a rather uplifting experience.” Jack groaned with a smile still on his face.
“That might be one of the worst puns I’ve ever heard.” In response, I simply chuckled.
“Nishtal, huh?” The smile on his face faded. “That’s the world of feathered sacks-of-shit, right?”
“What? The Krakotl? Don’t be dense now, they aren’t all that bad.”
Jack scoffed. “That’s easy for you to say. They didn’t try to wipe the Venlil from existence.”
“If they succeeded during the battle of earth, they very well could have. Not that it matters anymore. Nishtal’s skies are clouded by the ash of their once-lush swamps and their cities have been plucked from the skies. Their world died.”
Jack gave a gruff grunt. “What goes around comes around I guess.”
I was genuinely shocked at what I heard. The anger that began to bubble within me was not the same lighthearted stuff from earlier. “How can you say something like that?”
“They brought it upon themselves,” he barked.
“That bastard Kalsim was the one who brought destruction to his people and you know it. Billions of Krakotl were killed or captured by betterment. Can you honestly tell me, or even yourself, that any species deserves such a fate?”
Silence.
“No. No I guess I can’t” Mentally, I gave a sigh of relief.
With my tail, I gave him a gentle flick. “The Krakotl are functionally endangered now, you know? They may have killed a billion humans, but for each life taken, tens of their own were paid.”
My voice began to choke. “I had—have—friends among the Krakotl. If you think that the mourning you humans experienced was harsh, I just want you to think; how would you feel if less than a percent of your people survived death or capture”
These words of mine were followed by an air of silence. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but something I had said clearly struck a chord with the man. Unlike me, Jack seemed to ground himself in reality, but for the first time since I met him, his distant unfocused eyes made it clear enough that his mind was elsewhere.
The remainder of the day flew by beneath this same blanket of silence.
We passed from the wide grassy knolls into a sparse forest that was more brush than tree. The trail led beneath their branches and through the tall shrubbery, rarely veering one way or the other.
When we eventually stopped to make camp for the evening, the sun was still slightly above the horizon. The campsite was similar to the one we had stopped at on our first day. An old steel fire-pit was set in the middle and a steel food container lay to the side.
Even as we set up, the cold quiet remained.
Progress was slow. Jack usually did the majority of the work, but tonight, his movements were taken with less purpose than I was used to. More than once, his hands fumbled, dropping something only for him to robotically reach down and pick it up again.
Once he did finally unpack his belongings, he left to find wood for the fire. At least this time, I found myself less frightened than when he had last done so. The deafening silence of my thoughts was more disconcerting than the idea of any hunters prowling nearby.
Whatever I had said, it didn’t just strike a chord. No, this had shaken him. Not even those nightmares of his had affected him this deeply.
In much the same way that I hadn’t wanted to talk about my own family, it was clear that whatever this was, he had no desire to elaborate further. I did find it odd however that only after mentioning the near-annihilation of the Krakotl did he seem to change. Perhaps it had to do with whoever he had lost? If this was the case, then I couldn’t fully blame him for his hatred towards the Krakotl. Grief is a powerful accelerant for the fires of rage.
On the other paw, my poor heart broke for the poor avians. So many lost. So few left. When the news had arrived back on Venlil prime, I devoted every moment possible to comforting my grieving friends; to Dualo, Oqui, Icatl and Haiula.
For some though, the grief of their new reality was too strong. Several of my dear friends had been unable to overcome that grief. My ears fell and my head bowed. If nobody else would remember them, I would ensure I never forgot them. They deserved that much.
Despite the clouds looming over my mind, my ears perked up at the sound of footfalls and I turned to see a bundle beneath Jack’s arms. Minutes later, a brilliant blaze burned before us.
It felt good to have a fire again. The protective warmth felt like a familiar embrace. From my pack, I grabbed the same blanket my guide had lent me the day before and wrapped it across my body.
While I found myself shrouded in comfort, Jack prepared our food above the pit. It was yet another warm meal of packaged food. The smell of spice wafted up to the tips of my taste buds as he stirred it about with a metal ladle.
The clink of utensils against our metal bowls rose above the crackling flames. Their sun still peeked out from behind the trees, though soon enough, it fell and with it, came the night’s chill.
Countless stars that you simply didn’t get to see on Venlil Prime appeared in the night sky. A glance told me that I wasn’t the only one impressed by their appearance. My wide field of vision managed to capture nearly the entire sky. I wonder, which of those stars is home?
A gust of wind blew by sending shivers down my spine. The effect of the Wendigo’s story hadn’t been completely lost on me, but the terror it inspired had at least died down to a manageable amount. Staying near to Jack certainly helped.
Speaking of him, I’d had enough of this silence.
“Hey Jack, how would you like to hear a campfire story?” I asked, tossing aside the quiet that had covered.
“Hmph. A promise is a promise. Didn’t really have a fire last night to tell a story ‘round did we. Guess it’s only fair to give you a chance.”
My tail gave a flick of excitement at his agreeance. “I must warn you, this is a bit less of a story and more of a poem. It’s one of the last few that I wrote before my travels across the Federation ended. It isn’t quite as long of a tale as that Wendigo story you told me, but it means a lot to me.
Jack gave a thoughtful nod. “Very well, I call this poem ‘The Wandrer’s Curse.’”
“Across the stars we wandrers go, not caring much for threat or foes, The skies we see are not our own, But from them wonder’s always shown.
From Nishtal’s clear and crystal skies, To Fahl where golden deserts lie, And ‘cross the cradle’s fruitful lands, Our own horizons do expand.
It is amidst these very sights, That we the wandrers oft delight, For friends we seek and friends we find, Across the worlds of species kind.
Thru mountains, oceans and the woods, Where those long past once walked and stood, The wandrers seek to find the past; A simpler time, no clouds o’er cast.
Despite the friends which we have made, The clouds above us cast their shade, Upon the surface of our minds, And seek our hearts with chains to bind.
It is our lot to flee from pain, Brought on by smashing, lashing rains. Til weary broken and undone, We fall with legs which fail to run.
But such is life—that beautiful thing, That brings one joy and suff’ring. So with this final cloudless verse, Remember thee, the wandrer’s curse.”
At the end of my poem, the crackling fire picked up where my words left off. My eyes raised to the heavens once more and I realized just how wonderful this life was. There was something truly sublime about existing right here during this exact moment; under the stars, surrounded by trees the whistling, beside a warm fire that staved off the cold.
Sharing it with Jack made it that much better.
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https://pix4free.org/assets/library/2020-12-13/originals/alaska022.jpg (Cover Image)
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Hello nosurf
A couple of years ago I posted my "Commandments of Media Use". The list originally had 24 commandments, then 38. Now, it's grown to 52, and will continue to grow.
Well, without further ado, here are The 52 Commandments of Media.
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1.Never to forget that light feeling. When you’ve been away from your screens for a prolonged period of time.
2. Not to underestimate the slow, psychological poison of technology.
3. Not to chase the shadows cast by your screens at the expense of your life.
4. Not to rationalise excessive technology use.
5. To always, at every opportunity, choose the real world and not the digital one.
6. Your body becomes good at what you teach it to do. If you sit still while your mind is lost in the digital world, then your body shall atrophy. After all, sitting still hunched over a computer doesn’t require much muscle tone — so your body will not provide it.
7. Your mind adapts itself to every task, including consuming media. Watching videos will create a passive mind. Social media will create an unsatisfied mind. Internet browsing creates a distracted mind. There is no “this doesn’t count” or “I just do this to relax”. For your mind, every single thing you do becomes a part of you.
8. Not to forget — that human beings are not evolved to sit in a chair and watch screens.
9. Think of those you’ve seen in old videos or in poor countries. Their light, steady gaze and easy smiles. Then think of your own twitchy gaze and stiff smile. Ponder on what you’ve lost.
10. To notice the slow of time when away from technology.
11. Think of your screen-time in days prior. And realise that almost none of it can be remembered. Time poured into a drain.
12. To always approach technology with intention. This will be your anchor as the winds and whirlpools of the digital world pull on your precious attention.
13. The creators of technology who profit from stealing your time.
14. To switch everything off — and remember how it feels to be alive.
15. Even a perfect digital world could never be as satisfying as the imperfect one you were born into.
16. If they were speaking face to face they wouldn’t act like that.
17. The light breeze. The sun on your face. A quiet walk in nature. How they’re all a thousand times more fulfilling than the superstimuli found on screens.
18. Never to digitise your human urges.
19. Incels and Hikikomoris — how technology has trapped them in a looping nightmare.
20. To always remember that the news does not represent the entirety of reality.
21. Their faces as they use their technology
22. To never click unconsciously.
23. To always, as much as possible, act the same in the digital world as you do in the real world.
24. The more dopamine induced by screens, and the higher its potency, the less reality will excite you
25. Screens are not a necessity for a fulfilled life. To think so is an illusion.
26. From the stars in the sky, to the endless detail underneath a microscope, to the strange creatures dwelling in the deepest parts of the ocean, to the emotions inside a person's eyes, no virtual world will ever carry as much detail as reality itself.
27. Like a bolt of lightning or water running downhill, human beings (like all of nature) shall always be inclined to take the path of least resistance. And technology is the fastest, most accessible path to stimulation. Yet as human beings, we have the choice to delay gratification for a greater reward down the road. Only children and dogs are unable to do so.
28. Life is perceived as short by those who spend it on screens.
29. Why do you care? Why do you feel the need to give your opinion? Why does the issue of the day require your input? Why does the business of a celebrity far away concern you? Why do you allow others to decide what you pay attention to and what you don't?
30. When has awareness of world events made you happier? And when has your mere awareness had any effect on these events?
31. Every obscure, specific fetish. Every taboo. Every new piece of pornographic content. All the same. Foot fetish porn. Femdom porn. Rough porn. Public porn. Incest porn. Trans porn. All one and the same thing, with little distinction between them. Not special. Not unique. All producing the very same chemical reaction inside the brain.
32. Gathering yet more information will not get you to where you want to go.
33. All digital experiences are incomplete versions of experiences already possible in reality. Porn an incomplete version of sex. Romantic movies an incomplete version of love. Movies and video games an incomplete version of your life's adventure.
34. No matter the number of options available to you on screens, you can only be in one room at a time.
35. They do not think you beautiful. They think the digital image of you beautiful. They love the pixels transmitted to them by their screen, not you. There's you. And then there's digital images of you. These are entirely separate entities.
36. The dazed feeling after watching television. The scattered feeling after browsing the internet. The feeling of presence when in nature. Choose.
37. The negative emotions they induce in you for their own profit.
38. Like the sheep dog herds the sheep, algorithms herd the humans.
39. If the internet were to fail, if the electricity flow were to stop, if transport grinded to a halt, if supermarkets held no food, if the world's technology failed, what would you do?
40. The more we rely on technology, the more useless we become when it ceases to function.
41. The experts tell you it's fine, or that it's no big deal. But in your heart, you know it is not. Do not so easily hand the intuition you have built during a lifetime of experience over to experts who have never met you. You know what makes you feel good and whole. And you know what makes you feel corrupted. You don't need to ask experts. You don't need it confirmed by studies. You already know.
42. The youth of millions - stolen by screens.
43. The fashion in which you interact with your screens shall determine the course of your entire life. There is nothing trivial about it at all.
44. Level up a digital character inside a digital world and your real self shall level down in direct proportion.
45. The attractive digital people you see on screens do not exist. They are merely representations of people created with pixels or ink on a page. Nothing more than phantoms. The more time you spend gazing at them, the worse your romantic life shall become.
46. Not to check your devices without purpose. When important news arrives, it will reach you.
47. Those who quarrel online do not bicker with people. Instead, they quarrel with figments of their own imagination.
48. The producer remembered and rewarded. The consumer punished and forgotten.
49. You do tomorrow as you do today. Watch porn today, you'll repeat the behaviour tomorrow. Play video games today, you'll play them tomorrow. What you do now is what you'll do in the future. If you want to change, change what you do now. Now. Now.
50. You say: “I just do this to pass the time”. But why are you “passing time” in the first place? Did you forget that your time is limited? Did you forget about your death? Now that you've remembered once again, can you still justify spending another hour on your screens?
51. Which is reality? The chaos on your screen, or the quiet peace in the room that surrounds it?
52. You become the media you consume

I apologize for the possibility of lack of context. I had to delete my previous posts due to privacy concerns.
My now husband and I have been together 3 years, we just got married May 27th. My new MIL has been a JN from the very beginning, is a complete narc. Husband had some work to do because he was the golden child and there was some enmeshment he had to deal with. Luckily with therapy and some work he has made tremendous progress and set some good boundaries with his mom. Our wedding was a good eye opener for him.
So what happened?

1. We had the wedding at DHs childhood home (ugh). At first I was on board because it’s a beautiful property and would be free (a few months into planning it became abundantly clear it would not actually be “free”). There was a lot of cement work that needed to be done. His dad insisted on doing all of the work himself with the help of my husband. This resulted in work still being done the day of our wedding! JN conveniently “broke” her leg and could not help with anything. So my husband and I spent the morning of our wedding finishing concrete work and scrambling to set up since nothing could be set up until the concrete work was done.
   
2. She brought in a crew of her flying monkeys to decorate how she wanted. Luckily one of them actually helped convince her that some of my desires were the better option. Still incredibly frustrating.
   
3. During set up she rode around the property on a riding lawn mower bossing my bridesmaids around and having them do tasks that didn’t pertain to wedding set up. I finally had to call them together and give them specific tasks and tell them not to take any direction from JN.
   
4. At the last minute, JN conveniently decided to change her dress to one that was white.
   
5. DH Had his mom and dad walk him down the aisle. JN insisted she be in the middle. Luckily, DH put his foot down and wouldn’t let her.
   
6. While getting ready (literally had 30 minutes to get my hair and makeup done because of all the work) JN storms into the room with a group of her friends to get herself ready and took over the mirrors and got in the way of my hairdresser. Luckily, my hair and makeup girl (also my best friend) got pissed and kicked everyone out.
   
7. During speeches JN gave an incredibly long speech with detailed stories about all of her friends who helped with the property. No thank you to DH for all his work. At one point DH tried to cut her off and she scolded him into the microphone. We just walked away and all our friends and family were very kind and sympathetic toward us.
   
8. Days before the wedding, JN started sending me links to other venues telling me the property wouldn’t be ready in time.
   
9. During our family photos she whispered “no she can’t be in this” when we asked my BILs fiancé to join. We ignored her.
   
10. After her speech, she rounded up a crew of people to care for her inside the house because her leg was hurting. This was actually fine because she was away from the reception.
    
11. Right before the ceremony, she pulled DH into a private room to talk. He thought they would have a sweet moment but nope. She proceeded to tell him that just because he’s marrying me doesn’t mean he has to take my side, and to always do what is “right”.
    
12. When we were trying to leave at the end of the night she made a public scene insisting I am pregnant (I’m not) and would not take no for an answer.
    
13. During clean up the next day she spent the time decorating her house with my wedding decor and then fighting me over the things I purchased. She did not actually help with any of the clean up.
    

I could go on, but this is what I can think of off the top of my head.

This sub helped me out a lot so thought I'd share my experience in Japan. Hope I can bring a bit of a different perspective because unlike most of the people that seem to post here, we are definitively not early risers and rarely left the hotel before 1pm every day. Still had a great time and crowds were only an issue in a few places.
We're an early 30s Asian-American couple traveling from Germany, so we're coming at this from a bit of an in-between of Western and Eastern perspective. I have been to Japan when I was 15 with family, but remember basically nothing. It was my wife's first time. We had an absolutely wonderful time and both thought it was the best vacation we've had in years.
The trip was pretty last minute (for my standards at least). I started planning the trip from scratch (no flights, hotels or anything booked) in early April and our trip was May 18-30. We spent 5 days in Tokyo including DisneySea, 2 nights in Hakone, 3 nights in Kyoto including day trip to Nara, and 1 night in Osaka. We flew in to Tokyo Narita and flew out of Osaka Itami. We decided to fly from Osaka to Tokyo instead of bullet train back to Tokyo so we didn't have to buy JR rail pass and worry about luggage.
Tokyo

• We stayed in Ginza, which was significantly cheaper than similar hotels in Shibuya or Shinjuku. Maybe it was because I was planning such last minute, but I enjoyed the area just fine. Lots of restaurants and close to Tokyo Station which was convenient.
• Shout out to Star Club in Shinjuku. Had a wonderful Saturday night there drinking til 4am, chatting with other patrons and the super friendly bartender. Mix of locals and tourists.
• T's Tantan Ramen in Tokyo Station was one of my favorite ramen places of the trip (tied with the Michelin star one from Kyoto, but minus the wait). The bowl had a good variety of vegetable ingredients (which didn't seem that common in Japan, most ramen was just noodles and meat) which I really appreciated. Small queue but didn't wait more than 10m.
• The only restaurant reservation we made all trip was at Bon. Vegetarian multi-coursed meal. I would recommend, it was very nice, though sometimes a tad under salted for my taste. My wife loved it though. You get your own little private room to eat, even for two people, which was unexpected and very lovely.
• Asakusa has a tourist center with air conditioning, bathrooms, and an 8th floor view. Nice place for a rest
• Akihabara did nothing for us, as we're not really into anime or games. Pretty skippable if you are similar.
• I thought Ameyoko Shopping District was a disappointment. More like a flea market, it was similar to many Taiwan street/night markets that we've been to before. We also had probably our worst meal in Japan here, at a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant where the food was extremely mediocre. I would have skipped this place altogether and go to Ueno Park or something instead.
• Character Street in Tokyo Station was very fun to explore, we did a lot of shopping there. Nice place to visit before taking the Shinkansen.
• We enjoyed Takeshita Street in Harajuku. As mentioned before we went at around 8pm and it wasn't too crowded.
• When planning I had thought about skipping Shibuya Scramble but I'm really glad I didn't. Something about witnessing the sheer number of people bustling about was so epic and grand. Reminded me of Saturday midnight at EDC (Electric Daisy Carnival) when the atmosphere is electric and everyone is moving from one main stage to another.
• Golden Gai was interesting to look at, but way too claustrophobic for us. Very small alleys and very small bars.
• I enjoyed Tsukiji Market a lot. This is one of the places I would agree with people here and advise you get there early. Take advantage of jet lag and get here before 7am, and it is literally a buffet of delicious fresh foods. (not much choice for vegetarians though sadly). By 8am it was starting to get REALLY crowded. I prefer picking out my sashimi this way as opposed to a restaurant tbh, you can look at many options and pick whatever looks freshest. First time eating Wagyu here, had it on a stick. Delicious. Not the cheapest, but I figured if I ate it at a restaurant I'd also be paying for table service and atmosphere. I'm not big on the "restaurant experience", I'd rather just eat my food and be on my way.
• I thought Hamarikyu Gardens was wonderful. I love city parks where there is green, peaceful nature in the fore ground, contrasted by enormous skyscrapers towering in the background. Hamarikyu Gardens fits that perfectly. Got there right when they opened after visiting Tsukiji Market and it was a perfect way to walk off the big hearty breakfast. ~1 hour at a moderate pace should do it.
• Ginza Corridor after work was very interesting to see around 5-7pm or so. Simply packed to the brim with business folks wearing suits and having a good time after their work day

DisneySea

• We checked the weather and specifically went on a rainy weekday. I highly recommend, it was not crowded at all. Almost all the rides are indoors anyway and most of the queueing is either inside or covered. We got to the park at 2pm and basically rode everything we wanted before the park closed at 9pm with time to spare.
• Popular rides still had 40m-1hour wait, but we used premier pass for Center of the Earth and Soaring. Most we ever waited was 20m for Finding Nemo (similar to Star Tours, all in Japanese but very fun). I checked the app the next day when it was sunny and saw the wait times for each attraction were 3-4x longer.
• Another thing I think the rain helped with was that the premier passes did not sell out. We were able to buy them as late as 6pm to Journey to the Center of the Earth. (Fun ride, but I can't imagine waiting 1.5 hours for it)
• I think Soaring is pretty meh, I'd probably skip it next time. I've been to the one in CA ages ago and remember thinking it was just okay too, but we had extra time so decided to try it here.
• Sinbad was excellent, the ride that most exceeded expectations. It's basically "It's A Small World" but way better animatronics and story telling.
• Indiana Jones is worse than in the one in California (less exciting, no fire effects), but the line was nonexistent so we went on it twice.
• It stopped raining at night too so we were able to catch the Believe show with no issues. It's a good show but it is very long, about 40m. Much longer than I thought. After show is over, there's only about ~1 hour before the park closes, so good time to catch a last ride at one of the popular attractions while the locals are heading home.
• I love how every restaurant has a display in front that shows you what the food will look like. They were all extremely accurate and not at all misleading!
• (not a tip but a rant, is it really necessary to have 10 thousand parking spots when the vast majority of people are going to arrive on Tokyo's world-class public transit system?)

Hakone

• Open Air Museum was really nice on a pleasant day. It's mostly outdoors. We spent a leisurely two hours there, but you could probably do it in one hour at a brisk pace.
• We left our Ryokan at 1pm to do the Hakone Loop and still completed it comfortably with plenty of time spent on shopping.
• Speaking of shopping, Cat Goods near Gora station was a wonderful little store full of cat stuff!! Our shopping list in Japan was basically to buy as much cat-themed home goods at possible, and we went crazy here. They also do tax-free! Recommend this place if cat-themed goods sounds interesting to you, the shop people were super nice!
• We stayed 2 nights 3 days in a Ryokan. I purchased Hakone free pass for 3 days, which was maybe not worth it. The first and last day we only took transport to leave Hakone to Odawara station, so I think it would have been cheaper to use the IC card to pay for it ad-hoc instead of an entire extra "free pass" day. Might be worth looking in to.
• If you have the Freepass, don't tag IC card at the stations. Show your Freepass to the attendant instead. It can't be a screenshot, they need to see the day
• Google Maps was great everywhere except Hakone. For some reason it was especially unreliable here, it led us stray a few times.
• Busses are faster for getting around, but have very little space for luggage and seemed packed with locals. If time is not an issue, I'd ride the Hakonetozan Line with your luggage, much more comfortable and more space.
• If you can spare the money, getting a private onsen was really really nice. Plus you can drink while you chill!

Kyoto

• Had an excellent time at Gion Bar M16, favorite bar experience we went to in Japan. The owner was super friendly and welcoming, and was himself a very interesting person that has lived a full life and travelled all over the world. Very interesting to talk to. He was also very knowledgeable about whiskey and drank whiskey with us while letting us try some different whiskeys and giving recs about what to buy and bring home. Also gave us lots of delicious and interesting snacks while we got drunk together. We also met a friend of the owner there who is a foreigner that has been living in Japan for 8 years, and gave us some recs.
• One of his recs was Eikan-do Temple as a less-crowded temple option. Good rec! We really enjoyed this place a lot. Probably our favorite temple out of the 5 or so we visited. They have this really extensive "shoes-off" wooden walkway on support beams. It felt like exploring a big tree house, because the wooden part went up the cliff as well. The insides areas were also very extravagant and intricate. Not so many tourists, even Sunday middle of the day. I really recommend as well!
• Another of his recs was Men-ya Inoichi (has a Michelin star). You line up when the shop opens to get a ticket, and then come back at a designated time, though there's still a wait before you actually eat. We probably waited ~50m in total, 20m at the beginning and 30m when we returned. Even then, thought it wasn't worth the time. Don't get me wrong it was very good, but IMO not significantly better than other ramen places.
• Kodai-ji Temple was a miss for us, especially after Eikan-do. Thought it wasn't that interesting, would have skipped.
• Kiyomizu-dera was indeed very nice, but very very crowded. Another place I would actually either going early or late for.
• The shopping street in front of Kiyomizu-dera was super fun to browse, but also very crowded.
• Had lunch at this tucked away Soba restaurant in an alley that was very nice, one of my favorite meals in Japan. Owner was friendly and spoke in Japanese to a translator that replayed his words in English. Noodles nice and chewy. Good experience, felt very personal!
• We visited Yasaka-jinja Shrine and Maruyama Park both in the evening and during the day, and much much prefer it when it's dark. Less crowded and there are cute little lamps that are lit up and make the whole place look magical.

Nara

• Arrived in Nara station at ~2:30pm and left at 7pm. Felt like we saw plenty.
• Nothing new to add, the bowing deer are fun to visit and feed, though they can be quite aggressive. We went on Saturday and there was large crowds of children in their school uniforms, but we didn't really mind it too much.
• Isuien Garden and Yoshikien Garden are both very nice gardens, good place to get away from crowds for some peace and quiet.

Osaka

• Didn't spend much time in Osaka, but Dontonburi was fun to walk through and shop.
• Ate at a very nice Okonomiyaki restaurant. It was our first time eating it so can't compare it to anywhere else, but the staff was super friendly and bubbly and we had an excellent time there. They also have a little dice game you can play to "gamble" on getting a drink for free, or "lose" and get the drink double sized and also pay 2x the price
• Shout out to our hotel, Hotel Royal Classic Osaka. We were only there for one night, but my god this hotel was so convenient. Directly connected to the subway station via an elevator, and also has a 24-hour FamilyMart you can enter from the lobby. It was also only 3m walking away from a airport limousine bus, which made going to the airport super easy. If we ever visit Osaka for a longer stay, we would definitely book this hotel again.

Random Tips

• The flipside to getting to a popular tourist spot early, is to get there very late. We visited Takeshita Street in Harajuku at 8pm at night and it was very comfortably not crowded. Also noticed other tourists spots tended to clear up near closing time, like Senso-Ji in Asakusa.
• As everyone says, toilets are generally as clean as you can reasonably expect, everywhere from parks to gardens to subway stations. Nastiest toilet I saw was in Don Quixote at 1am, trash everywhere.
• 7/11 seemed to have English featured more prominently on their products labels compared to other convenience store chains. All the convenience store food options seemed very similar, so I started to favor 7/11 for the language convenience. (FamilyMart had English in super tiny letters on the side of the label lol)
• In one of those small counter seating type restaurants, I saw someone take the wrong backpack when they left (didn't know it was the wrong backpack at the time ). A few minutes later, the person who's backpack was taken got up to leave, and was very confused trying to find his backpack. He spent a long 10m talking to the restaurants folks (in Japanese), before the original guy came back super apologetic. Anyway keep an eye on your stuff. I know Japan is a safe country, but accidents do happen.
• One trick we had was to tie a little charm or hair tie to the handle of our umbrella, making it less likely someone would accidentally take yours from the sea of indistinguishable white plastic umbrellas.
• Yes there's a lot of walking. My feet tend to get damp if I'm out all day and foot powder works wonders, highly recommend it. Picked up this trick while attending music festivals.
• No issues with tax refunds and customs. We packed some of our stuff in carry-on in case they inspected, but nothing happened.
• Used Ubigi esim and it was perfect. I bought 10gb and used 7gb over our trip, doing most of the navigation and planning. My wife bought 1gb and used about 700mb with just random internet surfing. I will 100% be using this service for travel to other countries in the future, not just Japan, it was so damn convenient.

Transportation

• Definitely leave extra time for navigating subway stations, those things are like enormous underground malls.
• Shinkansen app didn't work for our iphone country (Germany), but I was able to use the mobile web browser pretty easily. Great for free, last-minute rescheduling of Shinkansen tickets when we inevitably take too long shopping.
• Apple Wallet Suica / IC card worked like a charm (with AMEX and Mastercard). One thing though it that it can sometimes take up to 1 minute for the money to load onto the account, so don't wait until the very last minute and accidentally hold up the bus.
• Taxis are green when someone is in it and red when they are free (at least in Tokyo?). Confused the hell out of drunk me at 4am in the morning. I think in Kyoto it is orange instead when someone is in them, and the orange/red difference is quite hard to spot from far away.
• On that note, I had sorta assumed the metro runs all night in Tokyo, but this is definitely not the case. They stop service from about midnight to 5am, so keep an eye on the last train if you do intend to catch it. Otherwise you'll have to take a more-expensive-than-usual taxi (captive markets), but not a big deal. We thought it was typically priced in comparison to most other US and European cities.
• We had a choice between a 1 hour or 3 hour layover in Tokyo NRT and we chose 3 hour because we weren't sure how long it would take to transfer from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 in NRT. In actuality it took less than 30m, so the 1 hour would have probably been fine. We didn't mind the extra buffer time to relax though.- Absolutely enormous plane flying between Osaka and Tokyo. Like literally it was the size of a transatlantic plane, with 10 seats in each row, for a sub 1 hour flight, completely full with business travelers (judging by their suits and brief cases).

Food

• We aren't big foodies; we like Japanese food a lot but food isn't really a top priority for us while traveling. Some of our favorite meals were from 7/11 (kelp & bonito flavoured tofu stick, sukiyaki beef over rice, fish flavored cheese snacks, grilled squid. Yum!)
• Most meals were good, if a bit straightforward. At least the places we ate at, main courses seemed to be carb heavy, with a side of meat, and little else. I know we could have gotten side dishes, but the portion sizes were too big for us to order more.
• Very few vegetables in general, and if there were some they were pickled. (Guess it makes sense for an island country). I usually bring fiber pills with me when traveling and do recommend it for Japan too.
• Wife is vegetarian, I am not. Japan is not particularly vegetarian friendly if you don't like tofu, which fortunately my wife does. Most places did have at least one tofu option, so it worked out okay for us. She doesn't follow it super strictly though. A few times she would order a dish and I would just pick out the meat from her bowl.
• Portion sizes were a LOT bigger than I thought they would be. I think maybe we are just small eaters. US and European portions are a little bit bigger I suppose, but Japanese portion sizes were too big even for us. Especially ramen! It was crazy to see folks wolf down an giant bowl of ramen, then ask for an extra helping of noodles with their remaining soup, and finish that up too.
• We only made one reservation beforehand and waited in line over 10m once. Worked out fine for us.
• Restaurants tend to do last call an hour or more before closing, so don't get there too late. Happened to us twice before we learned our lesson, got to a restaurant about one hour before the listed closing hours and they turned us away.
• The Japanese palette seems to be much more subtle than typical western palette, and notably less salty. We often find Asian food at US/German restaurants too salty or saucy. Even then, some of the food we ate was bordering on the minimum range of my taste buds to almost be bland. Just my opinion, most of it was good but sometimes the lack of salt was pretty noticeable to me. My wife tends to like things less salty than me though and she thoroughly enjoyed all of those meals no problem. Soup noodle places like ramen and udon are excluded from this, those were usually perfectly salted to my taste.
• Walking while eating seemed fine. I saw at least 3 different instances of Japanese people doing it.
• Apparently there are no laws banning public drinking in Japan. You can drink alcohol on the street no problem, but I rarely saw people doing that (unlike here in Germany where people seem to take full advantage of it and also leave trash everywhere). I did see a few groups of Japanese people doing it at night in Tokyo, usually near bus stops, and the next morning saw the empty bottles and cans. Guess there are litterers everywhere. We had a beer in the park at night, weren't loud about it and took our trash with us. That was very pleasant.

Hotels

• Hotels always have liquid or foam hand soap! I hate the bar soaps that most Western hotels provide in the room, so I usually bring my own liquid hand soap. Was totally not necessary for this trip.
• Lots of people on this sub have mentioned check-in time being very precise, as in you rarely can check in before the designated time. We didn't experience this first hand. But on the flip side, we did find out that check out time is very precise too! They start calling your room about 15-20m after your check out time. This is in contrast to most American/European hotels that we've stayed at, which are in my experience very lax about their check out times. We can often get away with leaving the room at 1-2 hours after the stated check out time (we're late risers). Not so in Japan.
• Agree with other people's advice that booking a hotel close to a big subway station is probably the most important factor. It sucks having to walk 10m to the station every single day, and it is amazing when it is close. Also being close to a 24/7 convenience store was also very nice for late night munchies.

Language

• We only knew sumimasen, konichiwa, and arigato gozaimasu and got alone just fine (lots of hand gestures!). We do know a bit of Mandarin Chinese though so that was helpful with reading signs.Some places knew Mandarin better than English and would switch to that if they thought we could speak it. Chinese tourism seems like big business (we saw a ton of Chinese tourists everywhere) so I guess it makes sense for people in tourism industry to cater towards that. Announcements (like over train stations) always went Japanese, English, often Chinese, then sometimes Korean.

Luggage Forwarding * I thought it was kind of expensive, but it does make things easier.- ○ Tokyo -> Hakone: 2310 yen- ○ Hakone to Kyoto: 2630 yen- ○ Kyoto -> Osaka: 1940 yen. * I feel like for that price you could take a taxi to and from your hotels to the train station and it wouldn't be much more work. There was plenty of space on the Shinkansen to put smaller checked luggage overhead. Then you don't have to prepack things the day before. * For the first leg Tokyo -> Hakone, we shipped two checked luggage which was about ~32 euros. After that we only shipped one, not two. * The middle ground we found was to designate one suitcase as souvenirs and dirty laundry and forwarded it every time. We would then travel with two carry-ons and one checked luggage. YMMV depending on your number of luggage and ease of carrying them.

UFO caught on police bodycam falling from the sky in Nevada. Minutes later, a 911 call came from residents claiming there were 8 to 9 foot tall creatures standing looking at them in their backyard. https://youtu.be/e07U0ihZS98

UFO caught on police bodycam falling from the sky in Nevada. Minutes later, a 911 call came from residents claiming there were 8 to 9 foot tall creatures standing looking at them in their backyard. https://youtu.be/e07U0ihZS98

I bought some weed back in April that gifted me 4 seeds.
For shits and giggles I germinated annd planted them in pots that I keep on my front porch which gets a ton of natural light, and since it is all windows, it acts as a green house. As of today they are about a foot and half tall.
I was not expecting these things to do anything and I didn’t put them in a grow tent or special lighting, but these suckers are taking off!
I have never grown before, and from what google tells me, I’m about 2 weeks into the vegetative phase.
I’m in upstate NY, and again, per google, it says the flower phase begins after 15 weeks of vegetative. That puts me around the first week of September for flowering I believe.
With that being said, weather can be unpredictable come September. If I am blessed enough to have these things continue to thrive, what would I need to ensure I can bring them inside to finish their flowering?
I’m also not looking to break the bank on equipment, I’m just doing this for fun.
Also, what should I know about transferring plants from outdoor growing to indoor? I don’t want to shock them or anything.

Hi everyone.
To Kill a Predator is a work of fan fiction set in the Nature of Predators universe originally created by SpacePaladin15 whose Patreon you should subscribe to.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Depiction does not equal endorsement.
Hope you enjoy it!
[First] [Previous]
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Memory transcription subject: Martin Russo, Human Refugee
Date [standardized human time]: January 10th, 2137
​
Without the girls, life settles into a boring rut. I talk to them as much as I can on the pad, but they’re busy on Earth, hitting the ground running.
There’s been a lot of ground to cover before they’re caught up to where everyone else will be, particularly for Vilek. She’s often had to pull double-claws of studying, working her fluffy ass off to gain a baseline understanding of psychology in record time. Thiva’s classes on VP by contrast have prepared her well for humanity’s relatively simple technology.
That, and they’ve had to get used to Earth. Earth food, Earth culture, and a planet full of omnivores with forward-facing eyes. I’ve been doing what little I can to help coach and encourage them.
For my own part I’ve been restless. Given that I’m not able to look for a job yet, that physical therapy kicks my ass every other paw, and that I’ve got nothing to do other than look forward to a half-hour of chatting with my friends… I’ve started up on software again. It’s something I can do even while laying prone. Particularly since I have a way to write without using my hands.
What do I do with that, anyway? I can read minds. I can even use the raw data from a full brain scan to extract memories. There’s got to be something useful to do with this. It’s practically the only part of this entire debacle I haven’t bothered telling the UN about.
Honestly after what I’ve been through, I can’t imagine trusting them, or the Venlil government, with this. Bastards would be prosecuting thought-crime by the end of the week.
​
Jarkim’s opened his business a couple of weeks back. Without an actual office, since he plans to simply operate out of Slavik’s farm. As I understand they tolerate it as long as he also helps out in return for food and board. I hope the arrangement works out for the both of them.
I gave Jarkim some help with his online presence. He wasn’t initially sure about the black and white picture of him in a fedora and a tie, or about the business name “Jarkim Krakotl, Private Eye”. But as soon as humans heard about Venlil Prime’s only Krakotl detective they’ve ended up coming to him with their problems.
He sent me a picture of his first solved case, some runaway kid who got lost and reunited with her mother. He was still wearing the hat. No tie, though.
​
Today is my paw off from Chasa’s torments, and it coincides with the launch of another exciting new business venture. So I take the time to visit Mosun.
“Hey Martin! Hold on a minute!” I see the Yotul wrangling a bunch of foam mats around the large, empty room. And its wall-length mirror. Fittingly the place look like the midway point between a dance studio and a martial arts dojo, except for the soft and spongy floor. It’s meant to safeguard against falls.
I glance around the room while he huffs and plops the last few ones down. There’s perhaps thirty-five or forty foam mats scattered on the floor. “So are you being optimistic, or did you get a good reception?”
He looks at me, bouncing with excitement. Though his ears signal a bit of nervousness. “Five Yotul have signed up so far! That’s almost half the Yotul in the entire town! And almost twenty humans! Hanya’s bringing a couple of Gojid friends too, and we’ve got a few Venlil coming along with their humans… Oh, and an Iftali, that was a surprise. Honestly I may be a little in over my head here; I’ve never taught crowds before! I’m not even sure how much will translate across species!”
“So you’ll be learning on the job. I have complete faith in you. Are the Exterminators going to give you any trouble?”
He barks a laugh. “Hah! No, Jarkim had a talk with the magister. I got permission from Vaska’s office to teach the classes in the name of cultural preservation, so those motherfuckers can’t touch me!”
I laugh as well. “You might need to censor your language a bit as a teacher.”
“Combat Dancing is about honesty and expression, Martin. If I can’t live it, how am I supposed to teach it?”
Well, he got me there. “Anything I can do to help?”
He glances at me, his voice gets a little uncomfortable. “Um, I don’t know. Can you carry heavy stuff right now?”
I shrug. “Probably not, no.”
“Then I’ll be fine. You’re not interested in taking the class?”
​
“I think my dancing days are over, for the foreseeable future.” I wryly lift my cane and wave it as a small reminder. It’s wood, and I’m quite fond of it. Chasa found a Venlil craftsman who wanted to be the first to make one for a human, and he made it out of the wood of some kind of tree called Lampan. The color reminds me of mahogany.
His ears droop a bit. “Ah yeah. How permanent is that looking?”
I shrug. “Finger dexterity on the right hand’s likely never going to be the same, but I’ll be able to play video games. Left arm should recover enough for daily use. Leg should get a full range of motion, but I won’t be going jogging. Thankfully I look dignified with a cane.”
He wags his tail teasingly and cocks his head as he regards me. “Do you? …Must be a human thing.”
“Piss off. Mind if I sit in on the class?”
“Of course not!”
Turns out first class of Yotul Combat Dancing is a quick demonstration, and then Mosun talking to the quite large and varied crowd. He talks about the history and cultural significance of Combat Dances to the Yotul, the philosophical underpinnings of the artform, and the mentality to be cultivated in practitioners.
Everyone is listening with rapt attention, and a few of the humans are even taking notes. When he opens the floor for questions, a Venlil asks “Isn’t this an expression of Predator Disease?”
To which Mosun answers “No. Next question?”
Which is honestly as much of a response as that warrants.
I talk with Hanya briefly after the class. She says that she’s been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that human therapy is helping her out. She even talks excitedly about piloting shuttles again, someday soon. I’m glad for her.
​
Once I get back to the house, there’s a man in a suit waiting for me. He’s tall, bald, and has very dark skin. I don’t recognize him. He extends his hand toward me, and I shake it. He speaks English with an African accent, instead of letting the translator handle it. I’d guess western Africa, but I’m hardly an expert. “Bamidele Adeyemi.”
“Martin Russo. Can I help you?”
He indicates the door. “May I come in?”
“Sure. My Venlil hosts aren’t home right now.”
“Of course.”
Once he’s been let in, and I’ve given him something to drink, I wait patiently for him to explain his presence.
“I am the UN liason to the district magister’s office.”
I keep my tone neutral and politely curious. “What happened to Robert McGinley?”
He keeps his tone neutral too, but friendly. He smiles at me. “It was decided that he should be replaced.”
Oh no. Anyway. “Alright. But… No offense mister Adeyemi, but why are you here?”
​
He takes out a pad. “I have some documents that the UN and the District Magister would like you to sign.”
I sigh inwardly and make a quite heroic effort to not sigh outwardly. I look at the pad briefly anyway. As I expected, it’s about making myself legally liable should I speak up about what I’ve gone through. “I’m afraid you are wasting your time. McGinley told me to sign papers like this too, and I told him ‘no’.”
He nods, entirely unsurprised. “I understand you signed similar documents over a smaller… altercation with the Exterminators. Why the difference of response, if I may ask?”
“Because the first time he threatened to have me thrown out of the refugee center if I didn’t.”
Bamidele’s eyes widen briefly. “I see. That does explain why you told him to ‘fuck off’.”
“Yes.” I pause briefly. “…You’ve been polite enough that I don’t want to use the same language. But.”
He laughs briefly. “Haha, yes, I understand. Different circumstances, yes? My predecessor tried the stick. I am here to try the carrot. So tell me, mister Russo, what will it take for you to sign?”
“There’s nothing that…” I pause.
I sit down. I’m briefly quiet. I miss my friends so goddamn much. I swallow, mouth feeling dry as I tentatively reach for the proffered lifeline. “I… hear Sweden’s lovely this time of year.”
He flashes his teeth at me in a broad smile and chuckles pleasantly. “Hehe, I thought you might say that. But… You do realize it is January?”
​
​
Date [standardized human time]: January 12th, 2137
​
The thought of leaving this wretched planet and its wretched food and its wretched government and its wretched ever-present sun makes me feel like I’m already back in Earth’s lighter gravity.
I ended up paying Chasa back for all the pain and suffering she inflicted on me: The largest gift basket I could find online, filled with fruits, candies, and preserves of both Zurulian and human origin.
When I wake up at the start of the paw, my arch-nemesis has sent me two pictures. The first one is a schedule to keep for the next couple of months. In the second picture she’s put pillows and blankets in the basket and is using it as a bed, a paw raised in goodbye.
If the medi-teddies ever learn to weaponize their cuteness, humanity is in real trouble.
Packing is easy. I don’t have a lot. A band shirt from when I went to see ‘Where Angels Fear’, a few bad sketches of fruit, my dad's chess set, my pad, and a neural scanner.
​
Date [standardized human time]: January 13th, 2137
​
The space flight actually lands directly in Sweden, somewhere north of the polar circle at a place called Esrange. I immediately realize that winter’s back on the menu, as the cold makes my left leg and arm ache like hell. It’s the dead of night, too… But I’ve missed night. So has everyone else, as despite the cold people are walking straight out into the snow to just stare up into the starry sky and stare in open awe at the sky, where the stars form a backdrop for the northern lights. I join them.
A poetic whimsy falls over me, making me grin at the cheesiness. It’s like the sky itself is welcoming us back home.
From Esrange we take cars to Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost city. From there it’s a long train ride south. I’ve gotten a sleeper cabin. With the generous stipend from the UN, I have no need to scrimp.
Even so, it takes significantly longer to travel 1400 kilometers across Sweden than it did to travel 16 light-years from Gliese 832. I’ve got almost twenty hours to appreciate the irony.
​
Date [standardized human time]: January 14th, 2137
​
I’m met at the train station in Lund by a man holding a sign with my name on it. His car takes me directly to the university. Everything feels very… ordinary, except I’m a bit dazed at having so many humans around me again.
We arrive a little before 8 in the morning. Excited students scurry to and fro, eager and hopeful for the first day of spring term. The driver is named Markus, and very kindly helps me find my way to my meeting. I’m left outside a door, standing around awkwardly.
The man I’m meeting with is Jonas Falck, and he’s the head of the department of computer science. While the UN has ‘encouraged’ the university to take me in despite it being so close to the term start, the decision remains with him.
I really wanted to see the girls first, but the meeting time was set for me. I desperately wish I had thought to shave beforehand. I’ve been using my beard to hide my weak chin, but it probably looks more unprofessional than-
“Hey, are you Martin Russo?”
Ah, I see.
Mister Falck is holding two cups of coffee and offers one of them to me with a smile. He’s got a full beard, a full belly, hair past his shoulders, and a pink hawaiian shirt to go with his khaki shorts and flip-flops. This man is clearly one of the most talented professionals working in the field today.
​
“So, do you mind if I ask…” He motions to my cane while I take a seat.
“How that happened?”
“Yes.”
“That’s classified. I’m not even joking.”
He nods once, like that was more or less what he expected to hear. He leans back in his chair, which creaks a bit, and takes a slow drink from his coffee while reading on his computer. “So you studied at Columbia University before the Bombing?”
“Yes.”
“And your family lived in New York?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He doesn’t say it unkindly, but he does say it as rote. ‘Oh you’re from one of the places that doesn’t exist anymore? Sorry to hear that.’
I nod awkwardly. “Yes.”
“And you were focusing on studying brain-computer interfacing?”
I feel like a recording. “Yes.”
“It’s very uncommon to add a student this late. The term begins today.”
“Yes.”
“We can’t provide housing for you on such a short notice, for one.”
“I have that handled, sir.”
He scrunches his face up. “Jonas, please. Americans are so formal.”
“Alright, er, Jonas.”
“So, Martin, what I’m asking for is a reason. To take you in right now, I mean, instead of next year.”
I nod. This is thankfully something I had planned for. My hand slips into my pocket, fingering the box holding the scanner electrodes. “Well, Jonas… I think there’s something you should take a look at.”
​
Handling paperwork and basic orientation takes most of the morning. I manage to get morning-and-evening classes to share my time off with the lambchops. That only works because most people don’t want evening classes. Evenings are for partying if you’re a student, so late classes are mostly for adults with jobs.
I end up standing around nervously by the entrance to the university building, counting down the time. I watch people passing by as calmly as I can, still checking my pad every minute or so for any messages and jerking my head around like a bird at anything that’s even a bit of a shade of gray.
I can tell the alien girls are coming even before I see them, since everyone is glancing curiously their way. I straighten my back and shift my weight from foot to foot. I feel like a dog at an airport, waiting for the return of its owner.
They’re looking around as I see them, and Thiva’s the first to spot me. Her ears perk up and Vilek immediately looks to me as well. As they speed up into a sprint, I’m a bit surprised to see them both wearing clothes. Both girls are wearing custom boots made to fit their digitigrade legs.
They’re both wearing coveralls, Vilek’s in a hospital teal and Thiva’s in a bright red. It’s been explained to me that many at the university have a student culture of wearing colorful coveralls that they decorate with patches, called ‘Ovve’, and that Thiva’s red marks her as a mechanical engineering student. Vileks’s teal, presumably, mark her as studying healthcare. Or specifically therapy, perhaps. I need to look it up.
Seeing as computer science students are apparently expected to wear pink ones, I’m thinking I might sit out this grand and colorful tradition. On the other hand according to the Internet it’s an informal rule to cut a bit from the ‘Ovve’ of anyone you’ve exchanged body fluids with and patch it onto your own. So I suppose I could be convinced.
The girls collide with me, thankfully gently. Their tails are wagging like crazy out of the back of their outfits, and they’re clinging to me. I inhale deeply, take in the distinct and pleasant scent of my cute Venlil friends, and cling to them as well. My fingers stroke through their thick fur, and I hear their happy wordless bleating and whistling.
I close my eyes and enjoy the moment, not giving one whit for the passersby watching the scene.
“Oh, girls, I-” Vilek punches me in the arm unexpectedly. The right one, thankfully.
“Ow!”
Even though her ears signal joy and her tail is wagging, her voice is still stern. “We learned what ‘lambchops’ means!”
Ah.
​
The student flat isn’t very expansive, but it’s larger than the one we shared on Venlil Prime. Probably because humans are just plain larger.
It’s currently sparsely furnished. There’s a couple of desks, a couch, a table, a beanbag chair, and a bunk bed. I take my shoes off in the hallway, as the girls do. When in Lund.
They help me unpack. There’s not a lot, but they had already set aside a little corner for me. I’ve got the beanbag chair instead of a desk, which I’m perfectly fine with.
I sigh and lean against a wall briefly. “I’m… so glad to be home.”
Thiva turns her head a little, flicking an ear in question. “You missed being on Earth?”
I chuckle, and pinch her ear-tip lightly. I lean over to give Vilek one too, for fairness. It earns me a pair of bleeps from them, and I go on the offensive to rub their heads and scratch their ears and do everything I can to make the lambchops squeal happily. They thankfully oblige. “I missed being with my herd.”
My friends are safe, they’re here with me, and we all have paths forward. I’ve fought and bled for this opportunity. I’m allowed to enjoy it.
I sit down on the couch with a quiet groan of satisfaction, finally getting to put my cane aside. “So, girls… how are you feeling about Earth so far?”
They grumble immediately. “It is so freaking cold!” “Snow! We do not like the snow!”
“It’s only for another couple of… Months.” They’re undressing right in front of me. I am left briefly stunned.
Oh right they don’t normally wear clothes.
Reminding myself of that doesn’t help. The context is what it is. They’re my best friends and my two favorite girls and they’re stripping naked before me.
My brain fails me. “…Okay, so, uhh. Um. Hmmh. Huh.”
Mother of God there’s nothing different! They’re naked. They’re always naked! It hasn’t been a problem on VP, it won’t be a problem here! Man up!
I take a deep and steadying breath and resolutely refuse to think of patches of white and red on a set of pink coveralls, with pink patches on their matching ones.
“I guess we should… buy some food? And some clothes for me to use? And…”
And they turn their heads toward me, staring at me with one eye each. Side by side. Making me feel like I'm being stared down by a single creature. One with forward-facing eyes. And an orange blush.
They take slow steps closer. Thiva speaks first with an amused lilt to her voice. “Or maybe this is a good time to talk. You know, about the house rules.”
Vilek speaks as well, moving her tail sinuously in a teasing motion. “Relationship statuses.”
Thiva comes in with the finisher, practically purring. “Sleeping arrangements.”
Ah.
​
---
And that's the end! Thank you all so much for reading, and check the comments for a small request from yours truly!
[First] [Previous]

My kiddo has done a fair amount of flying, as we live in Oregon and our family is all on the East Coast. I would say we've had stellar luck with behavior, with ONE red-eye exception when he was a year and a half. Since then we haven't done any overnight flights with him. But in a week, we're going to Scotland. We've broken the trip into two reasonable chunks--a flight from Portland to NYC, and then from NYC to London Heathrow. On the flight back, it's a daytime flight, but on the flight out....red eyes.
What have you all found successful in entertaining your toddler on international flights, and how do you help them get to sleep? I'm considering getting him one of these inflatable pillows to help him stretch out. I've also seen some neat tray table covers that could keep his stuff consolidated and prevent spills. He's 3, 38 inches tall and 36 pounds. We're not super rigorous about screen time at home. He doesn't have his own device, but I usually give him my tablet for movies on long flights.

TWBS Previous Next First
-
---Simone’s perspective---
---Thursday, 4th of January, 2683 Terran Calendar---
---Southern England---
“So… let me get this straight…” I say, frowning at the pair before me “…Within an hour of landin’, you…” I point at the tall, dark haired boy “…were bitten by a king brown snake and were laid up for the next two days, unable to contribute more than advice to Reid while she did all the heavy liftin’… You weren’t able to call an evac because, between the two of you, you’d managed to leave the beacon you should have had here in Graffham… and you think I should pass you for that, do you Privates?”
“Yes, Ma’am!” answers the redhead.
“Why should I pass you for that, Reid?”
“We fulfilled the terms of the assignment: We survived the full five days in the environment we were dropped in using only the allowed equipment and without calling for an emergency evac, Ma’am.” answers the Scot, straight faced, somehow.
“You admit that you would have called an evac if you could have, Private?”
“Yes, Ma’am… but we couldn’t so we didn’t.”
“You admit that it was your own shared stupidity that meant that you didn’t have a beacon with you when you went, Privates?” I ask, drily.
“I… don’t believe lack of stupidity was a requirement of the test, Ma’am.” answers Reid, cheekily.
“Guess again, Private! Lack of stupidity is always a requirement in the Military! Stupid Soldiers are dead Soldiers!” I correct, sternly.
“My mistake, Ma’am.” apologises Reid, hastily.
My anger subsides as I say “Buuut… as you say… you did make it out alive… you didn’t call an evac, even if only as a result of bein’ stranded by stupidity… and…” I take a sniff and then chuckle “…it certainly smells like you two are gettin’ along better than you were when you left…(!)”
“I’m… not sure what…?” starts Reid but I cut her off.
“Don’t play dumb, Private!… You’ve tried to wash it off but I’m half Tshwane… you can’t fool this nose!”
The pair shift uncomfortably before I reassure them “Relax! You’re not breakin’ any rules… So long as this relationship doesn’t negatively affect either of your performances, we have no issue… I also trust this means you two won’t be at eachother’s throats so much… At least, in public… don’t really much care what you’re into doin’ in the privacy of a bedroom… or a cave, as the case may be(!)”
“I think it’s safe to say our rivalry is a thing of the past, Ma’am.” provides Taylor.
“Or shifted onto much friendlier terms, at least…” smirks Reid.
“Good…” I turn to Taylor “…Taylor, now you’ve reached the age of majority, you’re eligible to be moved to a bunk in a shared room…”
His face falls, clearly having hoped I’d forget about that.
“…but…” I continue, causing him to perk back up “…I’m a busy woman and assignin’ you one is able to remain low on my list of priorities… so long as you (or Reid) aren’t givin’ me the impression that you might benefit from more rest, that is!… Do we understand eachother, Taylor?”
The boy gives me a rare smile and answers “We understand eachother perfectly, Ma’am.”
“Good!… You are dismissed, Privates.”
The two of them turn to go.
“Oh, and, Privates?”
They both turn to look at me, expectantly.
“Happy New Year…”
---Esme’s perspective---
---Friday, 5th of January, 2683 Terran Calendar---
“I can’t believe you’ve been sleeping in a conjugal room this whole time!” I grin at the handsome man, currently acting as my mattress in the broomcupboard sized space.
“Technically, it wasn’t a conjugal room… it was designated as a private room for me, since I was a minor…” he smiles without opening his eyes.
“Oh, aye(!) Let’s protect the wee baby boy from any indecency by putting him in the rooms where he’ll be able to hear all the sex through the paper thin walls, every night(!) I see no issue here(!)”
He shakes his head “It wasn’t that bad…”
“Oh it wasn’t, was it(?)… You nasty little perv(!)” I smirk, mischievously.
“Most of the time… people are some combination of embarrassed and considerate enough to keep the noise down… It’s rare that I would have out and out screamers next door… That’s all I meant…”
“Attention all:…” comes Sands’ voice, making the morning wake up call over the PA “…It is now 0630hrs… Time to wake up!… After breakfast, you are to assemble in the yard. Father Christmas came by last night to drop off some late presents for all of you(!)”
---Oskar’s perspective---
I find the crate that has my name on, shaped (ghoulishly) somewhat like one of the wooden boxes that Christians bury their dead in.
I pick it up and carry it aside… it’s heavy!
Looking around for someone who’s done using one of the crowbars that are being passed around, I make eyecontact with Milligan.
He raises the length of metal he holds, proffering it to me.
I take it, appreciatively, and thrust the claw end between the box and its lid.
What is inside does nothing to dispel the ghoulishness of the container’s outward appearance…
The box contains a humanoid figure, almost my exact height and build, rendered in jet black metal with a rippling, wootz pattern.
“Fresh off the forges of Ivaldason and Sons’ Durasteel Foundry, Iceland…” announces Sands, strolling through the throngs of people opening their respective crates “…Between 20 and 30kg each, dependin’ on your proportions… Wearin’ this armour, you become nearly as close to indestructible as it is possible to get without enterin’ the realm of divinity!… These suits are bulletproof and bombproof!… They do have some limitations… they’ll not, for instance, protect you from a long drop and a sudden stop! Your organs will still be rendered into slurry in that case… Neither’ll they protect you from bein' cut in half with a plasmasword!… From now on, you’ll wear these from dawn to dusk! Classes may be taken with your helmets off… Durin’ PT, however, you WILL wear them in their entirety!… It’ll be hard to begin with but, after less time than you think, your bodies’ll have acclimatised to the extra weight… and you’ll find movin’ in these almost as easy as movin’ out of ’em!… This mornin’s workshop’ll be an instructional on how to properly don, remove and maintain your armour!… Do please give it all your attention!"
---Esme’s perspective---
---Tuesday, 9th of January, 2683 Terran Calendar---
This is HELL!
The armour is perfectly fitting and nicely padded… but it’s so fucking heavy to wear that I can’t think about much more than how sweaty I am and how much my muscles ache from the days I’ve already been wearing it!
Sands said we’d get used to it sooner than we thought but, so far, I feel like exhaustion is making me worse, day on day!
I had to go and sleep in my dormroom last night because I was just too exhausted to engage in any… extracurricular exercise with Oskar(!)
He was quite understanding about it… A little too understanding… I wish he’d seemed at least a touch disappointed!
Back in the present moment, the black metal giant (boosted to over 2m by the height he gains from the boots and helmet) rams the tip of his training sword into my solar plexus… the one upside is that I’ll probably get less bruises wearing this armour!
“Hey…!”
“You’re dead, Esme…” is the only answer that comes from that expressionless helmet.
“You not feel like going a little easier on me now, Oskar?!… I am your girlfriend!!!”
“Caring more about you makes me wish to see you better able to protect yourself… So, no… I’m not going to coddle you…”
“Perfectly logical…(!)” I mock in a flat, midAtlantic accent, holding up my right palm, the ring and little finger splayed from the middle and index.
“Change partner!” shouts Sands.
Not too long ago, my heart would have leapt at that instruction and I would have utterly squashed any feeling of disappointment… Now, however, it causes my already flagging morale to vaporise!
Of course… it makes sense… If you only ever fight with one partner, you only ever learn to fight one way…
I shuffle along while Oskar stays where he is.
The next partner I’m up against is Kilroy… I might have a chance of holding my own against him at least!
---
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---
TWBS Previous Next First

Hello, I know this is going to sound absolutely insane but I believe I have an extraterrestrial stalking my home. I moved here with my fiancé and my roommate about a month ago (Ft Lauderdale if that means anything) And we hear strange things, footsteps, whistles, chirps, all this in the middle of the night. My roommate goes to sleep and I do some late night shaving when I see big reflective eyes looking at me through my bathroom window. I run to his bedroom to retrieve one of our firearms and as does my roommate considering I woke him up in the process.
We do a sweep of the outside of the house and see nothing so we go back inside, we hear it climb onto the roof, run around the house, all within about a minute, it repeats this process very quickly. He checks his bedroom window and this creature, very tall, at least 7 foot with a very round head and a lanky body is standing in the corner area of our house, it then blurs over and disappears in an instant. It doesn't match any description of any alien I've heard of.
It reeks of alcohol and it smells kinda funky, not to mention it whispers gibberish in a perfect androgynous voice. We hear mechanical whirring and our house shakes for about 45 minutes before things go quiet and we stand watch until morning. My fiancés family member had a similar experience when he was a child and he describes it as being a midnight blue color and standing over 8 foot tall, being able to phase directly indoors and when light reflects off it, it turns a silver grey color. Me and my roommate both had a symbol that appeared when we would blink, and without a doubt we both saw the same symbol.
We theww up, had horrible headaches and our phones/wifi lost all signal until the morning. Are there any answers i could get from this community? If not point me in the direction of some community that can. I am afraid for my fiancés safety as she means the world to me and I don't want to let anything happen to her. Thank you for your time. (If it means anything we are all between the ages of 18-20)

5 nights at aftons
4pm ,location aftons house,
Golden Freddy does a head turn to look right at Jack.” Who are you¨ Jack shouts across the room.freddy says nothing but still looks at him. Jack runs and runs as fast as he can spamming the elevator button for safety.lucky the door shuts just in time but something doesn't feel right to jack the elevator is not moving then he sees a blur an animatronic he sees but he doesn't know this one.the robot 12 ft high burt skull face razor sharp teeth and claws wires sticking out everywhere ¨who…… who ……… are you¨jack says the robot looks down at him and says ¨death jack death¨ all the sudden it attacks him biting ripping skin off him from the wires.but jack sees a logo that says afton enterprise.bleeding bad Jack escapes the elevator running out the door of the house the robot chasing him but wants he out the door the robot is flung back from something ¨hummmmmmmmm so they can't leave the house¨ jack says taunting the robot so called death.
Jack goes home to his apartment on the other side of town. When he gets home he treats the wounds trying not to scream in pain. And then he just lays down like that. Hoping nothing attacks him in his sleep.
¨hello¨ ¨ what did i do to you¨ ¨everything ̈ .errr errr errr ¨uhhhhh the pain.¨ Jack says looking at the alarm clock hitting snooze. getting out of bed jack turns on the lights to see his bandages came undone and his bed was covered in blood.later that morning jack went to the er to get stitches from the attack the nurse looks at him and says what happened to you jack just says ¨death¨ thats what happened the doctor stitches him up and sends him on his way when he drives by aftons house he sees death still waiting for him to come back in.¨not today he says¨ looking out the window.all the sudan his car exploded throwing jack in the air. Then Jack sees it land mines but why jack thinks to himself falling on the asphalt ¨i just got stitches know this¨jack screams.then he passes out.then he sees a boy getting hurt from fredy at a grand opening william shoving dead kids in the animatronics while wearing the spring trap costume then one drop of water hits the mask triggering the spinlocks crushing his body.jack wakes up to the sound of cop cars and ambulances.¨ Sir sir what happened¨ Jack just pointed at the house and said ¨him¨ the cops go over to the house while the paramedics put him in the ambulance.then cops start running from the house one cop being attacked calling for backup. Then the rest of the cops are dragged under ground by some strange mechanical tentacles.
¨what?¨ zoey says looking at jack¨is something wrong¨.jack says nothing but points behind her.zoey turns around but it's not there.”jack i think you need some rest”zoey says with a corsern face.”no no no i'm not going to sleep”jack says.but just then jack falls asleep to see he's in a room with one closet in front of him with 2 doors by it when he turns around he sees one bed behind him. he sits down waiting for something to happen. Just then he walks to one of the doors with the flashlight he just so happenly found by him. He opens the door to see if he hears or sees anything just then he hears something breathing. He turns on the flashlight to see a fredy with sharp teeth and a messed up body.Just then it runs at him terrified he quickly shuts the door and turns the flash light out. Then Freddy runs in the room and goes out the other door.he wakes up to his alarm which was for some reason set at 6 o'clock. Jack thinks nothing of it and turns on the TV to see the news is talking about the attack yesterday “police dragged under ground by strange tentacles after magor car crash”the headline said.jack didn't want to listen to it so he just turned the tv off.a few minutes later the nurse walks in and checks him out of the hospital.when zoey comes to pick him up he sees the same burnt bonnie he saw that night.when jack got in the car it was gone again.jack thought nothing of it and went on with his day.jack and zoey where trying to figure out where to finger lunch out when zoey says “how bout we go to fazbears pizzeria for lunch” as much as jack does not want to go back there he says “sure”.when they get settled in the restaurant jack sees a new chica.when the waitress comes up the order there food and talk awhile when the food comes out there's a $100 check that say your pay jack quickly takes it and stuffs it in his jacket before anyone notices.When jack and zoey leave the restaurant some guy gives jack a letter when jack gets home he reads the letter saying
Dear jack
I know about what happened with the animatronics that night so I'm giving you a second chance. So i need you to watch my house
willam afton
“Really this fool thinks i'm going to watch the house i almost died in no way”Jack says to him self.there was a knock at his door then when he opened the door it was the landlord “give me your keys you haven't paid rent for a week” he says. Jack doesn't know what to say so his mouth does it for him “5 more days and i'll have your money sir” the landlord responds with “fine but if you don't have the money i'm changing the lock” as he walks away.jack grabs his keys rights his will and goes to the house.when jack enters the house though it's different instead of being a run down dump it was beautiful marble staircase ,golden chandeliers, and instead of the robot death there was a butler at the door. When Jack went into the backyard there was a smoothie stand, a big clean pool and palm trees.william afton walks out and then shows jack the security room. There were 5 flat screen TVs for each part of the house. There were also vent cameras if he pressed shift on the keyboard.the door had 5 layers of plexi glass in case something happened .then willam showed him a secret room with a bed tv bathroom and a fridge full of hot pockets and corn on blue.soon willam left and jacks shift started to be continued.Knock knock knock jack herer at the plexiglass door jack looks to see who it is to see the butler when jack opens the door he is offered a beverage from the butler.jack kindly accept it and looks at the camera “nothing strange yet”jack thinks to himself as he takes a sip of his drink.7 o'clock hits so jack locks the door and takes a nap planning to wake up at 12.the time comes and jack gets up but before he goes in the other room he warms up some hot pockets. When Jack looks at the cameras he sees a shadow of the bonni.jack keeps the door lock just in case if something happens when he looks out the door he sees the skeleton robot waiting for it to open.``really i thought this guy was gone” jack thinks to himself when he sees the same chicka he destroyed at the pizzeria rolling around on a skateboard. Then he sees the thing he fears the most: the burnt bonnie at the door jack almost spilt his drink on him he was so scared.then he goes in his room grabs the sheet of his bed and the roll of tape off the table. Jack puts the sheet on the plexiglass door just to keep him calm during the job.Painting Jack takes a sip of his drink. 4 o'clock 5 o'clock 6 o'clock confetti covers the floor. Good job the camera says you completed your 1st night.when jack takes down the sheet to see if the robot was still there it was gone when he checked every room in the house there were no more robots.with relief jack goes in his room to take a napThe rest of the day Jack sits by the pool drinking smoothies and eating pineapple.his watch goes off 5 o'clock 5 o'clock Jack turns it off and heads inside.when he gets to his room he locks the door and takes a nap. When 7 hits he goes in the other room puts the sheet on the door and watches tick tock on his phone waiting for 6 o'clock when he hears something crawling through the vents jack grabs the nearby ax and waits when the creature comes through the vent he swings when he hears “patron sir are you trying to kill the buttlar” the vent opened and the buttlar stuck his head out and started to come in.”wait how do i know you're actually the butler you could just be a robot”jack says “i have no proof but i also trust you” the buttlar says,the buttlar comes in with a duffle bag.soda,chips,tablets,rubix cubes,and pizza.”dude how much stuff did you bring” jack says “enuf to last the rest of the week”.few hours go by and more confetti covers the floor.congrats the screen says you survived night 2.”this is only going to get harder”jack says plugging in the devices.”there's going to be more of them soon”the buttlar says. “My name's jack”jack says “brysan” the buttlar says sticking out his hand “Knock knock KNock” here at the door.the butler slowly lifts the sheet then braysan jumps back.”what is it?” Jack says looking terrified, brayson says “a…….a……..burnt bonnie suit”.”thank lord im not the only one who sees him”jack says.then the door falls on the ground leaving the sheet up still though.”quick in the vents!”brayson hollers. They quickly throw everything in the duffle bag and climb in.then they see the burnt bonnie suit walking around trying to find them then it says “jack come out” then it hits jack the voice the robot everywhere it was afton.the whole time how did he not figure that out he thinks to himself crawling through the vents.then braysan is gone “braysan!”Jack hollers, then something grabs him,“ahhh!” Jack screams trying to get the grip off then he sees it is just a robotic hand then it pulls him looking at the hand again he sees its covered in blue fur. When the arm stops dragging him he sees himself in the old axols bbq that had been closed for a while after an unknown accident.he sees the old rusted robot suits and stays away from them in case they were dangerous too.jack sees a door with a blood lock (which would require him to give it blood to open) he bangs on the door for help but nothing happens.jack walks over to the old robots to see they had many malfunctions then out of nowhere one turns on and starts singing.then the blood lock door opens and he sees a tall figure who pulls him in. In the room Jack sees braysan in the corner with a bottle of water and bandaging.”What happened to you?” Jack asks, looking terrified at braysan. “The alligator thing got me” he says.jack looks at the man and says “who are you” “names cael i'm the owner of here” jack sits down and starts eating his room tempetar smushed corn on blue from the security room.”how do we get out of here” brayson say “you can't” cael respondes.”the only way in and out are the vents but somethings in there and it doesn't want us leaving” cael says. In the corner of the room jack see vials with things like ink,wood,blue fur,piece of cloth,and metal scraps.”what's that” jack ask “things i got from other areas” says cael.”what do you mean” braysan ask.”have you heard of the backrooms if so it's kinda like that accept more monsters so far i encounter killer dolls animatronics a murder ink monster and old person zombie”but i can't get past the doll.”i think i know who made this world besides you” jack says “what do you mean” cael says “i mean william afton made this nightmare world i saw him he has the burnt bonnie suite on he wants to kill all of us do you understand!” jack hallers. “That's it i'm taking a walk” cael says.when the door closes jack hears a loud slam in the wall and then a few swear word.jack rushes out side with the ax to see caels arm has been ripped off by axol.jack gats cael back in the room and bandages it up.”OK NEW RULE YALL NO GOING OUT ALONE”braysan.Then they hear a sound outside like a blade scraping metal then the door opens.Jack,cael,and braysan stand up fast to fight.then they see a person with 2 swords and one robot arm in his hand.jack looks up in shock and says “I thought i killed you” “what” the person says “i hit you with my car 5 months ago” jack says “that was you” “yes” “then you'll die” the person runs towards jack with both swords by his sides .before he can hit jack cael stops him with the ax and says”he's a survivor he can help us find the way out so lets not kill each other” the person looks and looks angrily and says “fine he can live but one wrong move and he's dead got it” “what's your name” jack ask “orion” “Orion cannon”orion says sitting down with axols arm attaching it to cael with the remaining muscles and bone left when he's done the arm works how cael needs it to like a normal arm.when he gets up he grabs a pull string bag and canteen while putting food in the bag jack ask “what are you doing” “going back to level 3 there's been crying in there for a while trying to find where its coming from” orion says “but what if there's more robots” jack says “dont worry theres not just killing toys like this big blue one and a pink a big spider and lots more” orion answers “but how do you get there” braysan ask “the vents” “then we should all go” jack says “why you have a death wish or something” orion says ¨yes yes i do¨ jack says ¨after all i survived i'm sure i should live till we escape ¨ ¨fine let's go then we got to be back by 8 or were dead¨orion says.they climb up in the vents and start crawling to the next level when they get out they see a abandoned toy factory and here crying¨where is that coming from¨cael ask ¨that's the thing there's no human life here¨orion says. After awhile of walking the floor fell in on cael dropping him straight down when every one checks to see if he alive they hear ¨y'all come down hear and bring flashlights¨ so orion past out flashlights and they all jumped down when they landed they turned on the flash lights to see a girl with ripped up clothes and cuts all over her “Who are you” the girl says looking terrified “orion,jack,cael,braysan.”orion says staring the girl down “were looking for survivors”cael quickly says looking rather nervous “and who are you” braysan says “gabby”the girl says.”ok well you can join us we have food and soda”cael said.”thanks but i'm good”gabby said getting up.orion quickly pulled a sword from his bag and gave it to gabby “how many of those things do you even have”braysan said in shock “about 50 at least” orion said “yall we need to get going we don't have long till it comes out” gabby says “till what comes out” cale says “the spider”gabby said “wait what does it look like”jack says “its pink 4 arms and is plastic”gabby says “kind of like the toy from when i was a kid mommy long legs” braysan replies.”well if that's the thing we need to leave”orion says.”where are you children” a voice says. “RUN!” gabby hallers. The group runs straight to the vent climbing as fast as they can. Eventually they get back to base.”welp we're screwed” jack says “sissy”orion says.”ill show u a sissy after i kick your” “stop!” ceal says “if were going to survive we need to get along last thing we need is orion skinning jack” “so you're saying i'm too weak to beat him in a fight” jack says in anger “no i'm just saying orion will cut your head off your body and cook u over a fire faster than u can say a word” cale says back “know what this is stupid i'm leaving” jack says walking out “well should we remind him of the robots”braysan says “maybe later” gabby responds later y=the group hears bloody scream from outside “orion” cale says “go save him before he bleeds out” “fine but i don't want to” orion responds but when orion walks out he sees its just a cat “O my god your scared of a cat” orion says laffing taking jack back in the room.letter orion tells everyone how jack was scared of the cat.then they get some rest.that morning when they realize jack was gone.”we can't let him die!” gabby says “yes we can we just don't look for him “ orion says “one more negative comet about jack and you'll look for him yourself” cael says in anger.when the group gets there gear ready they head outside when they climb in the vent there was lots of blue fir and blood terrified they followed it.when they got to the end of the trail they see a drop out of the vent when they got out they saw they were in a old studio everything though was black and white and ink was everywhere. After looking around for a while they found bacon soup and a poster that said wilson the slayer of the ink demon.”¨ahh!What was that? ``Cale said, jumping back.''what do you mean"Orion responds "something just ran past my legs".Then a black goo spider jumped at gaby 'get off me! Get it off me!"she screamed "calm down "orion said, cutting it in half with a sword.then the black goo on the floor disintegrated.''wow what was that"braysan said, amazed. "Proof that we were not alone"cale said.``well then let's find the mastermind behind it"braysan said.``bet it's afton"Orion said.after a while of exploring they heard a sound it was laughing not from something funny just laughing like a crazy person. When they looked around the corner they saw jack on the floor in a ball laughing nonstop “we need to get him out of here” cale said slowly going towards jack but then an animatronic face opened up and started screaming at them “that's not jack”bryson said “ya this place must be here to scare and confuse us we need to go back to the shelter before we all go crazy” the group started heading back to the shelter when they cot to the shelter they all got food and went to sleep.``Thump!” what was that gabby said getting out of bed just to see no one was there where did they go gaby touht getting on a jacket heading out just to see all their bodys dead on the floor with jack and some burt rabbit suit standing next to him then she woke up “so should we go back to the mall again to find jack or to the mansion” they heard orion saying “we shouldn't look for jack” gabby said “why” cael responded “this dream i had yalls dead bodys were piled up outside and he was standing there with a burnt rabbit suit next to him” gabby said “i saw that rabbit suit at the mansion he tried to get in the room with us” bryson said.``then we should go do the mansion” cael said packing extra materials in his bag “maybe we could find who is in that rabbit suit” orion said. The group eventually got to the mansion and started exploring they saw the room in shreds the bed was ripped up the tvs ripped off the wall and claw marks in the wall the group headed down stairs and saw a body not anybody a child's body when they got closer the saw it was crying orion pulled his sword out and ask her “what's wrong are you hurt” the little kid said “he's coming” then they saw a burt rabbit suit standing where the kid was. The burt rabbit suit just tilted his head and started waveying at them then they saw jack. Jack was covered in blood with a knife in his hand smiling not like he was happy but like he was crazy then gabby screamed the group looked over and saw the kid dead on the floor with blood oozing out of it. “You monster” Orion said, pulling out a sword and taking a slash the head came off the suit just for them to realize that wasn't the real suit. Jack then charged at Orion with the knife Orion then stabbed him with a sword in the leg making him go to the ground. The group fled while hearing Jack scream in pain “we can't just leave him there” gabby said terrified as they ran “yes we can he just tried to murder us and he killed a child and he's not going to die just be in pain for a while” orion said. When the group got back to the base they all went to sleep.the next morning they woke up and got ready soon they went back to the mansion to see if jack was still there but he was not but the sword was on the ground covered in a green substance. Cael put the substance in a beaker and back in his bag. They headed back and tested what the substance was. It would only respond to heat by trying to get out.”I don't think that was jack you stabbed Orion” cael said. “What do you mean it was his face his body how” orion responded. This substance is alive and we saw the bunny suit was fake so what if jack was fake” cael said. “That makes science” gabby said. Then orion slashed the wall the substance ozzed out of it. “This is all fake” Orion screamed “all of it is”. “Calm down orion there must be a reason” then jack walked through the door fast orion stabbed him in the throat more of the substance oozing out of it and jack smiled before turning into a pile of the green substance. The ozz started crawling away

HOW TO PLAN & WHAT TO EXPECT - JUNE 10, 7PM 4002 S Pope Lick Rd, Louisville, KY 40299
THIS IS A FREE EVENT. Your support of concessions and vendors is what makes this possible. Tremors is being shown on a 40 foot screen, visible from the lawn (not from your vehicle). This is an outdoor event and chairs are not provided.
Film star Conrad Bachmann will be available for Meet & Greets, autographs and photos starting at 7:00PM. Around 8:00PM, we will feature a very special, LIVE Q&A with Conrad before the movie begins. This is a rare experience and one you don't want to miss!
We recommend that you bring a folding chair or blanket. This is outdoors, pack some bug repellent! OFF! wipes & Bug Off! are available in the gift shop. Along with a variety of other items that can improve your experience (including weatherproof mats and blankets).
WHEN TO ARRIVE
The event will begin at 7:00PM and with activities up to the time of the movie. The movie will begin around sunset. This is an outdoor event. We cannot start the movie until it is dark enough for the screen to be visible. We recommend arriving around 7:00-7:30PM to enjoy all the fun, get your place on the lawn and get some tasty grub.
PETS
Furry family members are welcome so long as they remain on a leash, are well behaved (not interrupting others experience), and are not aggressive towards people or other pets. Please be respectful of other guests and cast members. A water bowl is located near the restrooms for our furry guests.
GAME YARD & PLAYGROUND
We have a variety of fun yard games that we welcome you to play. New this year we have 9-hole mini golf and the Battle Bunker! In addition, the playground is open to younger guests. Kick things up a notch with one of our escape games, located in the gift shop. Make sure that you don't miss the Pope Lick Monster statue!
FOOD, BREWS & SOUVENIRS
The Cafe offers a full menu of delicious food, movie theater candy, popcorn, snacks, and non-alcoholic refreshments. For those with dietary restrictions, we have non-dairy and meatless/plant-based options. West Sixth Brewery will be serving a selection of cold beer (must be 21) and Kona Ice will be serving icy treats. We also have Dippin' Dots served inside the gift shop!
We offer a variety of unique souvenirs in our indoor gift shop. PLUS see Goatman memorabilia AND a towering, 10 foot Pope Lick Monster statue. Afterall, it's the only gift shop of its kind in the world!
Please support concessions and vendors! Your support keep these free community events FREE. We thank you for helping us make this possible. All accept cash, credit/debit card, Apple/Google Pay, and contactless payment.
Please help us keep the park beautiful. Please place all trash and recycling in receptacles. Our cast will periodically clean and sanitize surfaces and restrooms throughout the venue.
WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU SOON!

Prompt Engineering. This prompt book will help you learn essential building blocks and
all the techniques to master Stable Diffusion.
The secret for generating good images
A well-written prompt consisting of modifiers and a good
sentence structure. We will also show you all types of modifiers and some magic words.
Well-adjusted Stable Diffusion weights. You can
always use the default, but sometimes fine-tuned weights can generate better results.
This will strengthen your ability to
bring your creative dream images to life.
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Prompt keyword weighting is supported. You can increase the attention of a keyword but not higher than 1.5.
Use the format (example:weight). By default, words have a coefficient of 1 (example: 0.4), they will have a lower priority.
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Attention for words Technique:
Adding "()" in the prompt increases attention to enclosed words, while "[]" decreases it. You can combine multiple modifiers:
- a (word) - increase attention to word by a factor of 1.1
- a ((word)) - increase attention to word by a factor of 1.21 (= 1.1 * 1.1)
- a [word] - decrease attention to word by a factor of 1.1
- a (word:1.5) - increase attention to word by a factor of 1.5
- a (word:0.25) - decrease attention to word by a factor of 4 (= 1 / 0.25)
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You can also use a few words in "()" and "[]". You can also use a few words in "()" and "[]".
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Also you can still use this structure: (example, example :weight), so the weight will increase for several words at once.
Examples: (grayscale, woodcut:1.2); (((blue hair, floating hair, liquid hair, chromatic aberration))); (rutkowski, artstation:0.8); (masterpiece, best quality:1.4); [cute, volumetric fog]
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Please note that to increase or decrease the weight of several words, you need to put a comma between them.
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Start by asking a list of questions

1. Do you want a photo or a painting?
   
2. What’s the subject of the photo? Person? An animal or perhaps a landscape?
   
3. What details do you want to add?
   

a) Special Lighting. Soft, ambient, ring light, neon
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b) Environment. Indoor, outdoor, underwater, in space
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c) Color Scheme. Vibrant, dark, pastel
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e) Point of view. Front, Overhead, Side
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f) Background. Solid color, nebula, forest
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1. In a specific art style? 3D render, studio ghibli, movie poster
   
2. A specific photo type? Macro, telephoto
   

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This is not an all-inclusive list, but will help you get great results when you start.
your prompt crafting journey.
Answer the following questions:

1. Do you want a photo or a painting? => painting
   
2. What’s the subject of the photo? Person. animal, landscape. => a goldendoodle
   
3. In a certain camera position? side view, from bottom, from above, from behind => from behind
   
4. What details do you want to be added? => suit
   

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a. Special Lighting. Soft, ambient, ring light, neon => natural light
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b. Environment. Indoor, outdoor, underwater, in space => in the sky
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c. Color Scheme. Vibrant, dark, pastel => with bright colors
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1. In specific art style? 3D render, studio ghibli, movie poster => by Studio Ghibli

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The order of words is important
The order and presentation of our desired output is almost as an important aspect as the vocabulary itself. It is recommended to list your concepts explicitly and separately than trying to cramp it into one simple sentence.
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The keyword categories are:
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1. Subject: what you want to see in the image, such as a person, an object, a scene, etc.
   
2. Medium: the material used to make the artwork, such as illustration, oil painting, realistic, anime, 3D rendering, etc.
   
3. Style: the artistic style of the image, such as impressionist, surrealist, pop art, etc.
   
4. Artist: the name of a specific artist or multiple artists whose style you want to emulate or blend.
   
5. Website: the name of a niche graphic website that aggregates images of a certain genre, such as Artstation or Deviant Art.
   
6. Additional details: any other modifiers that can enhance the image, such as sci-fi, stunningly beautiful, dystopian, etc.
   
7. Color: the overall color or tone of the image, such as iridescent gold, pastel pink, etc.
   
8. Lighting: the effect of light and shadow on the image, such as cinematic lighting, soft lighting, dark, dark shot, bright, etc.
   

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You don’t have to include keywords from all categories. You can use them as a checklist to remind you what could be used.
A negative prompt is a way to tell the neural network what should not be in the image. You can use words or phrases that describe what you want to avoid or exclude from the image. You can also use weights in negative prompt to increase or decrease the effect of certain words.
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Generally accepted negative prompt is considered: (deformed, distorted, disfigured:1.3), poorly drawn, bad anatomy, wrong anatomy, extra limb, missing limb, floating limbs, (mutated hands and fingers:1.4), disconnected limbs, mutation, mutated, ugly, disgusting, blurry, amputation.
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Realistic negative prompt: overexposed, (deformed iris, deformed pupils, semi-realistic, cgi, 3d, render, sketch, cartoon, drawing, anime:1.3), text, close up, cropped, out of frame, worst quality, low quality, jpeg artifacts, ugly, duplicate, morbid, mutilated, extra fingers, mutated hands, poorly drawn hands, poorly drawn face, mutation, deformed, blurry, dehydrated, bad anatomy, bad proportions, extra limbs, cloned face, disfigured, gross proportions, malformed limbs, missing arms, missing legs, extra arms, extra legs, fused fingers, too many fingers, long neck.
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For positive prompt and negative prompt, I have thought of universal keywords - styles. You may not find them in the examples because they are new. Almost every style has a Negative prompt. It is advisable to write it together with positive prompt.
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An example of how to use styles if you want to create a cat image in a Professional photo style:

1. Positive prompt: (dark shot:1.4), 80mm, cat, soft light, sharp, exposure blend, medium shot, bokeh, (hdr:1.4), high contrast, (cinematic, teal and orange:0.85), (muted colors, dim colors, soothing tones:1.3), low saturation, (hyperdetailed:1.2), (noir:0.4)

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1. Negative prompt: neon, (deformed, distorted, disfigured:1.3), poorly drawn, bad anatomy, wrong anatomy, extra limb, missing limb, floating limbs, (mutated hands and fingers:1.4), disconnected limbs, mutation, mutated, ugly, disgusting, blurry, amputation, over saturated

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For example, if you want to generate an image of a girl with Natural skin:
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1. Positive prompt: girl, (natural skin texture, hyperrealism, soft light, sharp)

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1. Negative prompt: (cgi:0.9), (deformed, distorted, disfigured:1.3), poorly drawn, bad anatomy, wrong anatomy, extra limb, missing limb, floating limbs, (mutated hands and fingers:1.4), disconnected limbs, mutation, mutated, ugly, disgusting, blurry, amputation, 3d, illustration, cartoon, (doll:0.9)

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Here are completely universal styles that you can combine and use in your prompt(I highly recommend using them!):
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Professional photo:

1. Positive prompt for Professional photo: (dark shot:1.4), 80mm, {POprompt}, soft light, sharp, exposure blend, medium shot, bokeh, (hdr:1.4), high contrast, (cinematic, teal and orange:0.85), (muted colors, dim colors, soothing tones:1.3), low saturation, (hyperdetailed:1.2), (noir:0.4)

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1. Negative prompt for Professional photo: neon, {NEprompt}, over saturated

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Natural skin:

1. Positive prompt for natural skin: (natural skin texture, hyperrealism, soft light, sharp)

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1. Negative prompt for natural skin: (cgi:0.9), 3d, illustration, cartoon, (doll:0.9)

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Details:

1. Positive prompt Details: (intricate details:0.9), (hdr, hyperdetailed:1.2)

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Gloomy style:

1. Positive prompt for gloomy style: complex background, stuff in the background, highly detailed, (gloomy:1.3), dark, dimmed, hdr, vignette, grimy, (slate atmosphere:0.8)

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1. Negative prompt for gloomy style: (depth of field:1.3), (bokeh:1.2), (blur), blurred, pink

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Cinematic style:

1. Positive prompt for Cinematic style: (cinematic look:1.4), soothing tones, insane details, intricate details, hyperdetailed, low contrast, soft cinematic light, dim colors, exposure blend, hdr, faded, slate gray atmosphere

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1. Negative prompt for Cinematic style: grayscale, black and white, bw, monochrome

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Horror cinematic style:

1. Positive prompt for horror cinematic style: slate atmosphere, cinematic, dimmed colors, dark shot, muted colors, film grainy, lut, spooky

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Cinematic art style:

1. Positive prompt for Cinematic art style: art by greg rutkowski and artgerm, soft cinematic light, adobe lightroom, photolab, hdr, intricate, highly detailed, (depth of field:1.4)

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Engraving style:

1. Positive prompt for Engraving style: (grayscale, woodcut:1.2), (etching:1.1), (engraving:0.2), {prompt}, detailed

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1. Negative prompt for Engraving style: colored

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Epic painting:

1. Positive prompt for Painting: rutkowski, intricate digital art, soothing tones, (cartoon:0.3), (art:1.4), epic realistic, faded, neutral colors, (hdr:1.4), (muted colors:1.4), (intricate), (artstation:1.5), dramatic, intricate details, (technicolor:0.9), detailed, intricate, cinematic, detailed

examples of works:
good prompt: (dark shot:1.1), epic realistic, portrait of halo, sunglasses, blue eyes, tartan scarf, white hair by atey ghailan, by greg rutkowski, by greg tocchini, by james gilleard, by joe fenton, by kaethe butcher, gradient yellow, black, brown and magenta color scheme, grunge aesthetic!!! graffiti tag wall background, art by greg rutkowski and artgerm, soft cinematic light, adobe lightroom, photolab, hdr, intricate, highly detailed, (depth of field:1.4), faded, (neutral colors:1.2), (hdr:1.4), (muted colors:1.2), hyperdetailed, (artstation:1.4), cinematic, warm lights, dramatic light, (intricate details:1.1), complex background, (rutkowski:0.66), (teal and orange:0.4)
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good prompt: (dark theme:0.9), medieval portrait of a man sharp features, grim, cold stare, dark colors, Volumetric lighting, baroque oil painting by Greg Rutkowski, Artgerm, WLOP, Alphonse Mucha dynamic lighting hyperdetailed intricately detailed, (hdr:1.22), muted colors, complex background, hyperrealism, hyperdetailed, amandine van ray
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good prompt: a demon made with black stone, Giovanni Strazza sculpt style , bokesharp focus depth, shadows, mist, fog, very High detailed, cinematic lighting, Cinematic, high detailed, ultra detailed, Accent Lighting, very god colors, realistic, 8k, HDR
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good prompt: woman, samurai armor, helmet oni evil mask intricate, ornaments detailed, cold colors, metal, egypician detail, highly intricate details, realistic light, trending on cgsociety, glowing eyes, facing camera, neon details, ultra realistic details, portrait full body, japanese atmosphere, global illumination, shadows, octane render, 8 k, ultra sharp
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good prompt: (dark shot:1.1), epic realistic, RAW, analog, A full portrait of stunning woman wearing swimsuit, alluring expression, swimming pool, clear water, wet hair, natural look, no make up, pureerosface_v1, masterpiece that captures the essence and beauty of the woman and water, ((highly detailed skin, skin details, water details)), sharp focus, volumetric fog, 8k UHD, DSLR, high quality, film grain, Fujifilm XT3, art by greg rutkowski and artgerm, soft cinematic light, adobe lightroom, photolab, hdr, intricate, highly detailed, (depth of field:1.4), faded, (neutral colors:1.2), (hdr:1.4), (muted colors:1.2), hyperdetailed, (artstation:1.4), cinematic, warm lights, dramatic light, (intricate details:1.1), complex background, (rutkowski:0.66), (teal and orange:0.4), (natural skin texture, hyperrealism, soft light, sharp)
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good prompt: A flower by Casey Weldon, Olga Kvasha, Miho Hirano, hyperdetailed intricately detailed gothic art trending on Artstation triadic colors Unreal Engine 5 detailed matte painting, deep color, fantastical, intricate detail, splash screen, complementary colors, fantasy concept art, 8k resolution, gothic deviantart masterpiece, (dark shot:1.4), art by greg rutkowski and artgerm, soft cinematic light, adobe lightroom, photolab, hdr, intricate, highly detailed, (depth of field:1.4)
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good prompt: almaty girl, kazakh, Portrait of haute couture beautiful kazakh fashion model , ethereal dreamy foggy, photoshoot by alessio albi, editorial fashion magazine photoshoot, fashion poses, in front of mountain. kinfolk magazine. film grain, (dark shot:1.3), (natural skin texture, hyperrealism, soft light, sharp)
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good prompt: Delicious glowing galaxy cake on a dining table in the kitchen, comfortable light, romantic light, ultra details, photorealistic, realistic, gel lighting, Cinematic, Filmic, medium shot, 4k, Front-light, Cinematic Lighting, volumetric Light, Ray Tracing Reflections, Chromatic Aberration, photography, hyper realistic, 4k, 8k,closeup
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just an example: drunk, creepy santa, muddy, crowded bottles bar, intricate details, hdr, intricate details, hyperdetailed, cinematic, dark shot, muted colors, film grainy, soothing tones, muted colors, technicolor
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just an example: (masterpiece, best quality), (best illumination, an extremely delicate and beautiful), (best illumination, an extremely delicate and beautiful), (beautiful detailed face), (finely detailed eyes and detailed face:1.4), dark fantasy, (young girl, small beasts, 1girl, solo, crazy smile, pale skin, white hair, red glowing eyes, dynamic angle, vampire), (gaint vampire castle in background), (red moon, red sky), pointy ears, fangs, demon wings, demon horns, blood on face, blood rain, blood fog, (depth of field), high contrast, (blood splatter:1.4), full body
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just an example: masterpiece, chinese dragon, long dragon, Loong,fangs,fantasy, mythical, art by( greg rutkowski:0.8), epic lighting, (photo realism:1.2), high quality, highly detailed, masterpiece, epic
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just an example: epic video game key visual, giant armored creature, horde, skeletal army, many approaching in an ancient desert windy dust debris storm landscape midnight moonlight foreground debris (zrpgstyle) (masterpiece:1.2) (illustration:1.1) (best quality:1.2) (detailed) (intricate) (8k) (HDR) (wallpaper) (cinematic lighting) (sharp focus)
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just an example: 1girl, beautiful vintage color, instagram (photorealistic, high resolution:1.4), ((puffy eyes)), looking at viewer, full body (8k, RAW photo, best quality, masterpiece:1.2), (realistic, photo-realistic:1.37),(sharp focus:1.2), professional lighting, photon mapping, radiosity, physically-based rendering, (pale skin:1.2),nsfw, small breasts,nipples, looking at viewer, middle hair, portrait, purple eyes, wet clothes(sliver hair:1.1),bangs, (simple background:1.4), solo, upper body, white background,realistic, (masterpiece:1.4), (best quality:1.4),(shiny skin), makeup, red lips, smile, (skinny,closed mouth,shy:1.3), blackshirt short sleeve, black pencil short skirt,black tight skirt, school unifrom
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just an example: complex 3d render, ultra detailed, beautiful death angel, biomechanical cyborg, analog 150 mm lens, beautiful natural soft rim light, crystal feathers, roots, fine foliage lace, colorful details, Boris Bidjan Saberi outfit, pearl earrings, piercing, art nouveau fashion embroidered, intricate details, mesh wire, mandelbrot fractal, facial muscles, cable wires, microchip, badass, hyper realistic, ultra detailed, octane render, volumetric lighting, 8k post-production, red and white with a bit of black, detailled metalic bones, semi human, iridescent colors, Glenn Brown style, futuristic room, power of the god, high-angle shot, complex body poses
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just an example: the anatomy of a head of lettuce, an ultrafine detailed painting by james jean, behance contest winner, vanitas, angular, altermodern
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just an example: (RAW photo, best quality), (realistic, photo-realistic:1.3), masterpiece, an extremely delicate and beautiful, extremely detailed, CG, unity , 2k wallpaper, Amazing, finely detail, light smile, extremely detailed CG unity 8k wallpaper, huge filesize, ultra-detailed, highres, absurdres, soft light, (((medium hair:1.3), short bang, pink hair, floating hair novafrogstyle)), beautiful detailed girl, detailed fingers, extremely detailed eyes and face, beautiful detailed nose, beautiful detailed eyes, long eyelashes, light on face, looking at viewer, (closed mouth:1.2), 1girl, cute, young, mature face, (full body:1.3), ((small breasts)), realistic face, realistic body, beautiful detailed thigh, business suit, cross-laced clothes, collared shirt, open clothes, in office, detailed office, open cardigan, black thighhighs, miniskirt, black underwear, unbuttoned shirt
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just an example: end of the world, epic realistic, (hdr:1.4), (muted colors:1.4), apocalypse, freezing, abandoned, neutral colors, night, screen space refractions, (intricate details), (intricate details, hyperdetailed:1.2), artstation, cinematic shot, vignette, complex background, buildings, snowy
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anime prompt: (flat color:1.1),(colorful:1.3),(masterpiece:1.2), best quality, masterpiece, original, extremely detailed wallpaper, looking at viewer,1girl,solo,floating colorful water
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anime prompt: (masterpiece, best quality, ultra-detailed, best shadow), (detailed background,dark fantasy), (beautiful detailed face), high contrast, (best illumination, an extremely delicate and beautiful), ((cinematic light)), colorful, hyper detail, dramatic light, intricate details, (1girl, solo,black hair, sharp face,low twintails, red eyes, hair between eyes,dynamic angle), blood splatter, swirling black light around the character, depth of field, black light particles, (broken glass), magic circle
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anime prompt: (masterpiece, top quality, best quality, official art, beautiful and aesthetic:1.2), (1girl), extreme detailed, (fractal art:1.5),(cherry flowers in fractal art:1.3), colorful, highest detailed, upper body, purple hair, purple eyes, large breasts, kimono, bangs, sash, mole, obi, tassel, blush, hair ornament
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anime prompt: (Girlish Painting:1.3), (Ultra detailed:1.3), (Cosy:1.3), best quality, masterpiece, highly detailed, ultra-detailed, 1girl, Emma Watson, unreal engin 5, octane render, (2D:1.2), limited palette flat color, digital painting, artstation, concept art, smooth, sharp focus, art by ross tran, art by greg rutkowski, art by alphonse Mucha, art by Bak Karol, (oil painting:1.16), (acrylic paint:1.16), (colorful:1.5), (watercolor:1.16), by nvinkpunk, kuvshinov, dreamlikeart, samdoesart, modelshoot style, (by Artist Koho Shoda:1.3), (by Artist Mike Mignola:1.3), (by Artist Joop Polder:1.3), (Classicism Art:1.3), (Industrial Art:1.3), (Solarpunk Art:1.3)
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anime prompt: ((masterpiece, best quality)), 1girl, solo, flat chest, chain, cuffs, shackles, broken chain, collar, chained, handcuffs, barefoot, black and white hair, long hair, metal collar, solo, ankle cuffs, broken, purple eyes, very long hair, ball and chain restraint, bound, bdsm
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anime prompt: (Highest picture quality), (Master's work), (ultra-detailed), (Detailed eye description:1.2), masterpiece, best quality, absurdres, original, extremely delicate and beautiful, beautiful detailed eyes and face, 1girl, black hair, cherry blossom, white clothes, looking at viewer, mole, pink flower, solo, (masterpiece:1.4), (best quality:1.4)
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anime prompt: masterpiece, best quality, best detail, 5girls, swimsuit, focus on character detail, character on the front camera, high detail background, bloom, blue sky, high lighting detail, widescreen, 16:9, sea, beach, sunny day, medium hair, red face, megane, smile, sexy pose, realistic finger detail, close-up, portrait, getting wet, random hair colors, standing, erotic, yuri, hentai, nipple, leg strap, sexy hip, see-through, Draw realistic hand, random eye color, erotic face, sexy eye contact, half-naked, random hairstyle, random face, hold breast pussy, megane, pussy cum, small breast, yuri sex, kissing, open mouth, tongue, breasts grab
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anime prompt: masterpiece, high quality, highres, absurdres, ultra-detailed, detailed eyes, 8k, 1girl, colorful eyes, fangs, open mouth, blue eyes, bangs, colorful background, (graffiti mural walls background), looking at viewer, vibrant, contrast, blue hair, white hair, gradient hair, happy, high five, heart symbols
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anime prompt: (extremely delicate and beautiful:1.2),1girl,fashi-girl, bangs, blue eyes, blurry, blurry background, bow, brown hair, closed mouth, from side, hair between eyes, hair bow, lantern, light particles, long sleeves, looking at viewer, medium hair, night, red bow, solo, star symbol, upper body,smile,red lips
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anime prompt: masterpiece, best quality, ultra-detailed, illustration, 1girl, solo, outdoors, camping, night, mountains, nature, stars, moon, tent, twin ponytails, green eyes, cheerful, happy, backpack, sleeping bag, camping stove, water bottle, mountain boots, gloves, sweater, hat, flashlight, forest, rocks, river, wood, smoke, shadows, contrast, clear sky, constellations, Milky Way, peaceful, serene, quiet, tranquil, remote, secluded, adventurous, exploration, escape, independence, survival, resourcefulness, challenge, perseverance, stamina, endurance, observation, intuition, adaptability, creativity, imagination, artistry, inspiration, beauty, awe, wonder, gratitude, appreciation, relaxation, enjoyment, rejuvenation, mindfulness, awareness, connection, harmony, balance, texture, detail, realism, depth, perspective, composition, color, light, shadow, reflection, refraction, tone, contrast, foreground, middle ground, background, naturalistic, figurative, representational, impressionistic, expressionistic, abstract, innovative, experimental, unique
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anime prompt: best quality, masterpiece, high definition, high quality, high resolution, sharp focus, trending on Artstation, 4k, beautiful fantasy spring sunny scenery landscape, celestial japanese temple alone at the peak of a mountain overlooking the landscape below, high point of view
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anime prompt: (flat color:1.1), (colorful:1.3), (masterpiece:1.2), best quality, masterpiece, original, extremely detailed wallpaper, looking at viewer,1girl,solo,floating colorful water
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anime prompt: (masterpiece:1.2), (best quality:1.1), 1girl, transparent, perfect face, black silk stockings, high quality, cute, black hair, highest quality, ultra-detailed, extremely detailed, hyper detail, (intricate detail:1.2), (panties over black pantyhose:1.2), (Japanese sailor suit:1.2), (cameltoe:1.2), (lift feet:1.4), soles, lie down, park, looking at viewer, sun shine
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anime prompt: (masterpiece, best quality:1.1), bird's eye view, asymmetrical, blue ocean, low tide, sea waves, coastal road, sandy beach, piers, sailboats, yachts, ship wake, contrail, cars, tourists, lighthouse, seagulls, horizon, breeze, summer, morning, sunny, cloud, calm, fresh air, depth of field
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anime prompt: masterpiece, best quality, ultra-detailed, illustration, 1girl, solo, fantasy, flying, broom, night sky, outdoors, magic, spells, moon, stars, clouds, wind, hair, cape, hat, boots, broomstick, glowing, mysterious, enchanting, whimsical, playful, adventurous, freedom, wonder, imagination, determination, skill, speed, movement, energy, realism, naturalistic, figurative, representational, beauty, fantasy culture, mythology, fairy tales, folklore, legends, witches, wizards, magical creatures, fantasy worlds, composition, scale, foreground, middle ground, background, perspective, light, color, texture, detail, beauty, wonder
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anime prompt: masterpiece, best quality, 1girl, (colorful),(finely detailed beautiful eyes and detailed face),cinematic lighting,bust shot,extremely detailed CG unity 8k wallpaper, white hair, solo, smile, intricate skirt, ((flying petal)), (Flowery meadow) sky, cloudy sky, building, moonlight, moon, night, (dark theme:1.3), light, fantasy
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anime prompt: masterpiece, best quality, ultra-detailed, illustration,2girls,fantasy, RPG, heroine, devil, final battle, outdoors, epic, dramatic, intense, powerful, dynamic, magic, spells, sword, shield, armor, wings, horns, tail, fire, smoke, light, shadow, impact, movement, energy, determination, bravery, courage, heroism, villainy, evil, darkness, destruction, victory, defeat, redemption, justice, sacrifice, friendship, companionship, teamwork, perseverance, challenge, obstacle, success, achievement, goal-oriented, progress, improvement, realism, naturalistic, figurative, representational, video game culture, anime, manga, Japanese, RPG tropes, character design, animation, special effects, composition, scale, foreground, middle ground, background, perspective, light, color, texture, detail, beauty, wonder
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anime prompt: masterpiece, best quality, ultra-detailed, city, street, gothic, steampunk, illustration, 1girl, (solo), platinum long hair, boots, from behind, vintage, antique, brass, metal, gears, machinery, ornate, elegant, classic, sophisticated, refined, poised, contemplative, thoughtful, curious, mysterious, enigmatic, magical, watchful, intelligent, bookish, contrast, perspective, depth, texture, detail, realism, impressionistic, expressionistic, abstract, surrealistic, innovative, experimental, unique, atmosphere, ambiance, mood, nostalgia, historical, cultural, technological, industrial, fantasy, imagination, creativity, artistry, craftsmanship, skill, precision, detail, composition, balance, harmony, rhythm, colorful, darker, reflection, refraction, foreground, middle ground, background, vanishing point, horizon line, focal point, naturalistic, figurative, representational
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anime prompt: (masterpiece, best quality:1.2), cinematic anime, anime clip of a 3 girls floating in space, universe, milky way, cosmos, planet, stars, astronaut, full body, ultra detailed, beautiful face, finely detailed eyes, extremely detailed, correct anatomy, incredibly_absurdres
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anime prompt: ((masterpiece)), (((gray eyes))), (((blue hair, floating hair, liquid hair, chromatic aberration))), (focus on eyes, shaded, photo, insanely detailed, bloom:1.5), short hair, photorealistic, masterpiece, dynamic angle, highest quality, photorealistic, masterpiece, dynamic angle, highest quality, intricate, Alessandro Casagrande, Greg Rutkowski, Sally Mann, athletic wet punk body, (blue panties), nipples, concept art, 4k, far-off, (medium breasts, portrait, choker, soft), (sadness), (((blue flowers))), (((Night))), high sharpness, extreme saturation and contrast
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anime prompt: ((4k,masterpiece, best quality)), shuimobysim, traditional chinese ink painting, lotus, hanfu, maxiskit, 1girl, solo, white hair, long hair, fox ears, white, bikini, fish, many fish near girl, look at viewer, tease
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anime prompt: 1girl, ((cinematic light)), colorful, hyper detail, dramatic light, intricate details, best quality, (extremely detailed CG unity 8k wallpaper, masterpiece, best quality, ultra-detailed, best shadow), (detailed background:1.4), (beautiful detailed face, beautiful detailed eyes), High contrast, (best illumination, an extremely delicate and beautiful), (girl:1.5), solo, black skirt, blue eyes, electric guitar, guitar, headphones, holding, holding plectrum, instrument, long hair, music, one side up, pink hair, playing guiter, pleated skirt, black shirt, indoors ((caustic)), dynamic angle, beautiful detailed glow, full body, cowboy shot
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Here is a list in my opinion of the most important artists:
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- Agnes Martin - an artist who paints geometric abstract paintings. In stable diffusion, she helps to get the texture of canvas or an object with this texture.
- Jacob Hashimoto - an artist who creates complex worlds from paper, bamboo and other materials. In stable diffusion, he helps to get an interesting background with modular components or bright colors.
- Stanley Donwood - a designer who invents covers for albums, posters and other things. In stable diffusion, he helps to get arts with stable stripes and lines, which is useful for fingerprints or other graphic effects.
- Julie Mehretu - an artist who works with markers, pencils, acrylic and ink. In stable diffusion, she helps to get intersecting lines and layers, if you add the word "eclectic" to the prompt.
- Quentin Blake - an artist and illustrator of children's books. In stable diffusion, he helps to get a cartoon style with simple shapes and expressive emotions. If you add the word "punk" to the prompt, you can get a more daring and unusual style.
- David Palumbo - an artist who creates illustrations in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. In stable diffusion, he helps to get visible strokes and smudges from paint, which gives the art more realism and dynamics.
- Phil Jimenez - a comic book artist, known for his work on Wonder Woman. In stable diffusion, he helps to get increased detail and realism of characters and scenes.
- Geof Darrow - a comic book artist, known for his extremely detailed work. In stable diffusion, he helps to get highly detailed backgrounds with lots of small elements and textures.
- Nicola Samori - an artist who creates dark and gloomy baroque. In stable diffusion, he helps to get splashes, blotches, stains and dirt on the art, which gives it more expressiveness and contrast.
- Ben Templesmith - an artist whose work was adapted into the film "30 Days of Night". He creates covers for books, cards and concepts for films. In stable diffusion, he helps to get a dark and dirty style with bloody accents and fuzzy contours.
- Brandon Woelfel - a photographer with neon photos. In stable diffusion, he helps to get a photographic neon light with bright colors and contour effect at low-res.
- Viviane Sassen - a photographer from the world of fashion. In stable diffusion, she helps to get stylish and aesthetic photos with models in different poses and moods. As we know, almost identical faces are generated in many neural networks. Viviane Sassen also helps to mask the neural network and get unique faces by adding the word "detailed" to the prompt.
- Brian Oldham - a photographer who creates creatively or creatively. In stable diffusion, he helps to get professional, cinematic, creative photos or arts without additional tokens. Just write his name after the prompt.
- Lisa Frank - an artist who makes mega colorful school supplies. In stable diffusion, she helps to get a bright and rainbow style with different animals, stars, hearts and other elements.
- Simon Stalenhag - an artist who specializes in retro-futurism. In stable diffusion, he helps to get a cozy and major style with elements of old technologies, robots, rockets and other things from the past future.
- Iryna Yermolova - an artist from Russia who creates magnificent works in oil. In stable diffusion, she helps to get a classic style of painting with realistic characters and landscapes. If you write her name with I (Irina), you can get a 3D effect on the art.
- Todd Schorr - an American artist who works in the style of pop-surrealism. In stable diffusion, he helps to get Slavic motifs with khokhloma, ear-zagogulinki, molding and other elements of national color.
- Alayna Lemmer - a star of art-station who creates magnificent landscapes, castles and magical creatures. In stable diffusion, she helps to get a fantasy style with detailed and colorful images. She is mandatory for any prompt in the genre of fantasy.
- Andre Charles Boulle - a French artist who makes wood carvings and draws ornaments. In stable diffusion, he helps to get intrigue gold or golden effect on the art by adding low-res.
- Conor Harrington - an Irish street graffiti artist. In stable diffusion, he helps to get an epic staging of a scene or a hero with realistic details and contrasting colors.
- Wangechi Mutu - an artist from Kenya who makes anthropological art with African motifs. In stable diffusion, she helps to get coffee-chocolate arts with different patterns and symbols.
- Patrick Dougherty - an eco-artist who makes sculptures and installations from sticks and seedlings. In stable diffusion, he helps to get a hay-like or wooden effect on the art, if you need to make something out of shit and sticks. It creates anything from branches
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About Modifiers
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Modifiers are words that can change the style, format, or perspective of the image. There are certain magic words or phrases that are proven to boost the quality of the image. In this section, we will talk different types of modifiers you can use in your prompt.
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Photography
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Photography Prompt - Mix and Match!
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Shot type- Close-up; Extreme Close-up; POV; Medium shot; Long shot; At a distance;
Style- polaroid; Tilt-shift; Color splash; Monochrome; white and black;
Subject- Woman; Old man; Grey cat; Bunny; Ferrari;
Lighting- Cinematic light; Sun light; Ambient light; Soft light; moonlight; dramatic light;
Context- Indoor; Outdoor; At night; In the park; Studio;
Lens- Wide-angle; Telephoto; 24mm; EF 70mm; Bokeh; F/1.4; 50mm;
Device-iPhone X; CCTV; Nikon Z FX; Canon; Gopro; Fujifilm XT3 ;
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3D illustrations
Stable diffusion can be used to create any 3D scene or object you can imagine!
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Isometric assets- isometric kitchen in a cutaway box, isometric, tiny, cute, soft smooth lighting, soft colors, 100mm lens, 3d blender render;
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Low Poly- kawaii, low poly, squirrel character, 3d isometric render, white background, ambient occlusion, unity engine;
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Pixar Renders- 3d fluffy Lion, close-up, cute, adorable, cute big circular reflective eyes, long fuzzy fur, Pixar render, unreal engine, cinematic, intricate detail, cinematic;
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3D Item Render- isometric Alarm Clock, isometric, tiny, soft smooth lighting, soft colors, 3d blender render, trending on polycount, modular constructivism, physically based rendering;
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More illustrations
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Vector- living room, vector illustration, Flat Style, pastel color palette;
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Comic- Retro comic style artwork, benedict cumberbatch, highly detailed, comic book cover, symmetrical, vibrant;
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Caricature- Caricature art, spiderman, sitting , chair, drinking beer, on Charlie Hebdo;
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Propaganda- Poster, USSR propaganda poster, Eat Oreo!;
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Psychedelic Art- dear face, Hypnotic illustration, hypnotic psychedelic art, by Dan Mumford, pop surrealism, dark glow neon mystical, Behance;
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Splash Art- mage, channeling arcane magicks, armored, Splash art, mana shooting from his hands, mystical energy in the air, action shot, heroic fantasy art, special effects, hd octane render;
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Stickers- Die-cut sticker, Cute, kawaii, Goldendoodle character, sticker, white background, illustration minimalism, vector, pastel colors;
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Simple feelings modifiers can set the atmosphere of the scene!
Positive emotions
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Cosy- Cosy vintage bedroom, octane render, by weta digital, exotic colorful pastel, ray traced lighting, reflections;
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Romantic- couple shopping, romantic lighting;
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Joyful- Joyful, husky puppy, splashing water, canon eos r3;
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Energetic- Energetic painting, pool with flamingos;
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Hope- Woman, filled with hope, beautiful dress, running, beach;
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Lust- couple, Painting, filled with lust, by mike mignola;
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Peaceful- Japanese city street, peaceful, dreamy, soft colors, studio ghibli style;
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Satisfaction- Old man, looking at viewer, filled with satisfaction, Canon EOS 5D Mark IV;
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Negative emotions
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Depressing- Depressing photo, futuristic park;
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Loneliness- Girl, sitting in window, reading a book, loneliness;
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Grim- lake with ducks, grim painting;
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Regret- man, looking at viewer, painting, filled with regret;
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Suffering- woman, suffering, sitting on a bench, forest, Digital painting, by goro fujita;
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Hopelessness- Man, hopelessness, black and white, looking at viewer, sketch, intricate details;
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Fear- Child running towards the camera, in fear, by atey ghailan, by mike mignola;
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Vibrant keywords: Weirdcore, Acidwave, Dreamcore, Vaporwave;
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Gloomy:
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Liminal Space- Flooded, liminal space,underground city carpark, lighting with lensflares, photorealistic 8k, eerie;
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After Hours- After hours, stairs to the park, complex background, stuff in the background, highly detailed, (gloomy:1.3), dark, dimmed, hdr, vignette, grimy, (slate atmosphere:0.8);
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Brutalism- Building, architecture, brutalism;
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Post-Apocalyptic- Post-Apocalyptic town, houses, cars;
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Magic words:
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HDR, UHD, 64K- Quality words like HDR, UHD, 4K, 8k, and 64K can make a dramatic difference.
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Greg rutkowski- Adds epicness to the photo, often suitable for fantasy art
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Highly detailed- Quality words like highly detailed can make a dramatic difference.
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Studio lighting- Studio lighting could really add some nice texture to the image
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Professional- Adding professional, can greatly improve the color contrast and details in the image
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Trending on artstation- without description
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Unreal engine- a magic word that adds very realistic 3D renderings
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Vivid Colors- Adding Vivid Colors, adds life to your images
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Bokeh- Bokeh blurs the background and highlights the subject. It’s like iPhone portrait mode.
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High resolution scan- Want a historic looking photo? Add "High resolution scan"