B&b spoilers dirty laundry
Subnautica: Descend into the Depths
2013.09.20 16:28 uwe-strayan Subnautica: Descend into the Depths
Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero are open world underwater exploration and construction games developed by Unknown Worlds Entertainment.
2010.09.23 06:06 innnikki X-Men
Welcome to the official X-Men subreddit. The home of all things X-Men on reddit, be it comic books, film, television, gaming or any other medium that Marvel's mutants have inspired people over the last half-century.
2012.08.19 11:35 JakeTheGunslinger Competitive Halo
A haven for all things based on the Halo Championship Series and the Halo esports scene, including all games from the franchise from Bungie's Combat Evolved to 343's Halo Infinite.
2023.04.01 21:28 Dry-Engineering9655 Dirty Laundry
 | submitted by Dry-Engineering9655 to dalle2 [link] [comments] |
2023.04.01 21:14 Cutecutter1 To Patients, Herpes Can Be Devastating. To Many Doctors, It’s Not a Priority.
Thought this group would find this article from the NYT interesting. Here's a link to the article but I c/p it below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/well/herpes-treatment-stigma.html
Feb. 18, 2023
Leer en español
Billions of people live with the infection, but there has been scant progress for treatments and tests.
When Lauren went to her doctors with stinging clusters of sores on her genitals, she assumed the pain was from a urinary tract infection. But at the OB-GYN, her doctor swabbed the bumps and told her that the rash was herpes. “No,” she remembered responding. “It’s not.
At the time, Lauren, who asked that her last name be withheld in order to talk about personal health issues, was a 19-year-old college student. She was in a two-year monogamous relationship with her second-ever sexual partner — a guy who occasionally dealt with an errant blister on his lip.
They hadn’t known that oral herpes could induce cold sores, and that HSV-1, the virus that causes oral herpes, could be transferred to the genitals. Lauren’s boyfriend was convinced that she had cheated on him, and he broke up with her, she said
Lauren became withdrawn and almost failed out of college. “You think, Why does anything even matter anymore?” she said. “I’m never going to date. I’m never going to have a boyfriend.”
That was in 2013. Over the last decade, Lauren has had only a few additional outbreaks, none as painful as her first. The mental strain — the depression she fell into after the diagnosis, the fear that future partners wouldn’t accept her — has been, by far, the hardest part of managing the disease. “It attacks your self-worth,” she said.
Herpes is extremely common: The World Health Organization estimates that 3.7 billion people live with HSV-1, some oral and some genital. And cases like Lauren’s, where HSV-1 spreads to the genitals during oral sex, have sharply increased over the past two decades, said Dr. Jonathan Zenilman, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who specializes in sexually transmitted infections.
But herpes isn’t a top priority for researchers, said Dr. Larry Corey, a professor and virologist at Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle who has studied the virus. It isn’t even the top priority among those who study sexually transmitted infections, he added. “The disease has been sort of ignored by both the pharmaceutical industry as well as the medical research establishment,” he said.
There are several potential reasons for this, experts theorize, including the relatively mild physical symptoms for most patients, clinicians’ reluctance to discuss sexual health and how hard it is to develop a vaccine for herpes.
“The fact that a lot of the toll is psychological makes physicians not that interested in it,” said Dr. Anna Wald, a clinical virologist and a professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
There has been little progress on more accurate tests, vaccines or additional treatments over the last few decades, Dr. Wald said. Part of the challenge is that the herpes virus can hide inside neurons that are shielded from the immune system, making the body’s immune response insufficient at eradicating the virus, she said — that’s why herpes remains in a person’s body for life. Vaccine attempts, so far, have not stimulated an immune response that can control the virus or prevent infection, she said.
If a patient does not have symptoms, doctors typically diagnose herpes with an antibody test that is frequently inaccurate. Up to half of positive commercial test results could be false, according to past research. There is another antibody test, called the herpes Western blot, that scientists consider the gold standard in diagnosing herpes — but the test is only available through the University of Washington, which can be cumbersome and expensive for patients to obtain. Testing is typically reliable when a patient has symptoms; doctors can swab a lesion and run a highly sensitive molecular test.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force doesn’t recommend routine genital herpes screenings for people without symptoms, in part because false positive rates are so high. On Tuesday, the task force reaffirmed its recommendation. In a related paper, a group of doctors wrote that the recommendation was, in part, based on “psychosocial harms” associated with false positives on herpes tests.
And so the virus continues to spread essentially unchecked — exacerbated by just how ineffective the most widely available tests for herpes are, said Terri Warren, a nurse practitioner who has researched herpes.
As cases circulate, patients are left grappling with a diagnosis that can be psychologically devastating, Dr. Zenilman said.
“You can control the symptoms,” he added. “But lots of people feel stigmatized, dirty.”
Those who contract HSV-1 may develop blisters on or around their mouths or, in some cases, on their genitals. HSV-2, the other predominant strain, is usually characterized by one or more lesions around the genitals or the rectum. In the United States, around one in six people between the ages of 14 and 49 has genital herpes, and over half of adults have oral herpes.
Antiviral medications help reduce the amount of the virus a person sheds, lowering the chance that someone with herpes will pass it on to a sexual partner. Some patients take antivirals daily; others only take medication when they have an outbreak. But the risk of spreading herpes is never zero. The disease lingers in the body, putting the onus on patients to disclose their diagnosis to anyone with whom they have intimate contact.
When Lauren started dating after her diagnosis, she found herself staying in relationships for longer than she might otherwise, scared nobody else would want to be with her. “I thought I was going to die alone,” she said.
Brittany, 29, who asked that her last name be withheld in order to discuss her personal health, only thinks about her HSV-2 when she scrolls through a dating app. In the two years since she was diagnosed, she’s only had one outbreak. Still, when she looks at each profile, she wonders how the man would respond to learning about her diagnosis. “I just worry so much that people are going to judge me,” she said. “That no matter how I present it to them, I’ll still face rejection. That weighs heavily on me.”
Some men have told her, flat-out, that they would never date someone with herpes, but what bothers her, too, are the ones who say, “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
“I don’t want people to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I wake up every day and I’m fine.”
Scientists have worked on herpes vaccines in fits and starts since the 1970s, said Dr. Harvey Friedman, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine who has studied the disease for over 40 years. But past attempts have failed, for reasons researchers are still trying to uncover.
Because herpes has been around for so long, the viruses have evolved alongside us, making them more difficult to eradicate, said Christine Johnston, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine who has studied herpes.
There are new vaccines under development. Dr. Friedman is working with BioNTech on an HSV-2 vaccine candidate that was given to the first human subject in December. But none are in late-stage clinical trials, said Dr. Ina Park, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of “Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of S.T.D.s.” “There’s nothing anywhere close to prime time,” she said.
“It’s one of the biggest secret societies in the world,” said Ms. Dawson, a novelist and writer who often speaks publicly about her experience with herpes.
Courtney Brame, 34, started the herpes education advocacy organization and podcast Something Positive for Positive People after his own HSV-2 diagnosis. He’s seen how the disease “completely shatters a person’s identity,” he said, partly because of how central sexuality can be to someone’s self-worth. “They don’t feel like they have anything to contribute to a relationship now, just because they have herpes,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Who’s going to want me now that I have this?’”
Mr. Brame has seen this in his own life. He was once messaging a woman on Tinder who brought up her struggle with chronic asthma; when he disclosed his own chronic condition, she stopped responding. But more often than facing rejection, when he shares his diagnosis, he said, he gets a different response: Women share that they, too, have herpes.
Herpes stigma stems in part from the idea that people with the infection have done something “wrong,” Dr. Park said. But you can exercise every precaution and still get it, she added — condoms do not entirely prevent transmission, and you don’t even need to have penetrative sex to contract the virus.
Though condoms can reduce the risk of transmission, not everyone with herpes will use a barrier method in long-term, monogamous relationships. In 2021, Something Positive for Positive People conducted a survey of over 1,000 people diagnosed with herpes; around 66 percent said a partner had consented to sex without a condom or other barrier method. And there is little research on how the virus spreads between women who have sex with women, Dr. Park said.
Medical providers, in general, often don’t receive extensive education on talking to patients about sexual health, Dr. Johnston said. When it comes to herpes in particular, “health care providers can be really insensitive about it and minimize it,” she said. “This is thought of more as a nuisance than a serious infection.”
“Clinicians don’t want to deal with this,” Ms. Warren said. “It involves people talking about sex. They’re crying, they’re going to have to talk about various specifics like is oral sex OK, is anal sex OK — I don’t think they want to go there,” she said.
Without support from doctors, or medical innovations to cure the infection, people with herpes are left “dealing with two viruses at the same time,” as Ms. Dawson put it. “You’re dealing with the physical symptoms of the virus,” she said, “and you’re dealing with the mental strain.”
Dani Blum is a reporter for Well.
submitted by Cutecutter1 to Herpes [link] [comments]
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/well/herpes-treatment-stigma.html
To Patients, Herpes Can Be Devastating. To Many Doctors, It’s Not a Priority.
📷By Dani BlumFeb. 18, 2023
Leer en español
Billions of people live with the infection, but there has been scant progress for treatments and tests.
When Lauren went to her doctors with stinging clusters of sores on her genitals, she assumed the pain was from a urinary tract infection. But at the OB-GYN, her doctor swabbed the bumps and told her that the rash was herpes. “No,” she remembered responding. “It’s not.
At the time, Lauren, who asked that her last name be withheld in order to talk about personal health issues, was a 19-year-old college student. She was in a two-year monogamous relationship with her second-ever sexual partner — a guy who occasionally dealt with an errant blister on his lip.
They hadn’t known that oral herpes could induce cold sores, and that HSV-1, the virus that causes oral herpes, could be transferred to the genitals. Lauren’s boyfriend was convinced that she had cheated on him, and he broke up with her, she said
Lauren became withdrawn and almost failed out of college. “You think, Why does anything even matter anymore?” she said. “I’m never going to date. I’m never going to have a boyfriend.”
That was in 2013. Over the last decade, Lauren has had only a few additional outbreaks, none as painful as her first. The mental strain — the depression she fell into after the diagnosis, the fear that future partners wouldn’t accept her — has been, by far, the hardest part of managing the disease. “It attacks your self-worth,” she said.
Herpes is extremely common: The World Health Organization estimates that 3.7 billion people live with HSV-1, some oral and some genital. And cases like Lauren’s, where HSV-1 spreads to the genitals during oral sex, have sharply increased over the past two decades, said Dr. Jonathan Zenilman, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who specializes in sexually transmitted infections.
But herpes isn’t a top priority for researchers, said Dr. Larry Corey, a professor and virologist at Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle who has studied the virus. It isn’t even the top priority among those who study sexually transmitted infections, he added. “The disease has been sort of ignored by both the pharmaceutical industry as well as the medical research establishment,” he said.
There are several potential reasons for this, experts theorize, including the relatively mild physical symptoms for most patients, clinicians’ reluctance to discuss sexual health and how hard it is to develop a vaccine for herpes.
“The fact that a lot of the toll is psychological makes physicians not that interested in it,” said Dr. Anna Wald, a clinical virologist and a professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
There has been little progress on more accurate tests, vaccines or additional treatments over the last few decades, Dr. Wald said. Part of the challenge is that the herpes virus can hide inside neurons that are shielded from the immune system, making the body’s immune response insufficient at eradicating the virus, she said — that’s why herpes remains in a person’s body for life. Vaccine attempts, so far, have not stimulated an immune response that can control the virus or prevent infection, she said.
If a patient does not have symptoms, doctors typically diagnose herpes with an antibody test that is frequently inaccurate. Up to half of positive commercial test results could be false, according to past research. There is another antibody test, called the herpes Western blot, that scientists consider the gold standard in diagnosing herpes — but the test is only available through the University of Washington, which can be cumbersome and expensive for patients to obtain. Testing is typically reliable when a patient has symptoms; doctors can swab a lesion and run a highly sensitive molecular test.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force doesn’t recommend routine genital herpes screenings for people without symptoms, in part because false positive rates are so high. On Tuesday, the task force reaffirmed its recommendation. In a related paper, a group of doctors wrote that the recommendation was, in part, based on “psychosocial harms” associated with false positives on herpes tests.
And so the virus continues to spread essentially unchecked — exacerbated by just how ineffective the most widely available tests for herpes are, said Terri Warren, a nurse practitioner who has researched herpes.
As cases circulate, patients are left grappling with a diagnosis that can be psychologically devastating, Dr. Zenilman said.
“You can control the symptoms,” he added. “But lots of people feel stigmatized, dirty.”
How herpes got sidelined
Herpes can be severe in certain cases: Babies can contract neonatal herpes from their mothers, putting them at risk for severe complications and even death. For people who are immunocompromised, outbreaks can be more prolonged and painful. In the vast majority of cases, though, people will have very mild symptoms, and many will have none. That’s part of the reason the infection is so pervasive: People pass it onto partners without knowing they have herpes.Those who contract HSV-1 may develop blisters on or around their mouths or, in some cases, on their genitals. HSV-2, the other predominant strain, is usually characterized by one or more lesions around the genitals or the rectum. In the United States, around one in six people between the ages of 14 and 49 has genital herpes, and over half of adults have oral herpes.
Antiviral medications help reduce the amount of the virus a person sheds, lowering the chance that someone with herpes will pass it on to a sexual partner. Some patients take antivirals daily; others only take medication when they have an outbreak. But the risk of spreading herpes is never zero. The disease lingers in the body, putting the onus on patients to disclose their diagnosis to anyone with whom they have intimate contact.
When Lauren started dating after her diagnosis, she found herself staying in relationships for longer than she might otherwise, scared nobody else would want to be with her. “I thought I was going to die alone,” she said.
Brittany, 29, who asked that her last name be withheld in order to discuss her personal health, only thinks about her HSV-2 when she scrolls through a dating app. In the two years since she was diagnosed, she’s only had one outbreak. Still, when she looks at each profile, she wonders how the man would respond to learning about her diagnosis. “I just worry so much that people are going to judge me,” she said. “That no matter how I present it to them, I’ll still face rejection. That weighs heavily on me.”
Some men have told her, flat-out, that they would never date someone with herpes, but what bothers her, too, are the ones who say, “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
“I don’t want people to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I wake up every day and I’m fine.”
Scientists have worked on herpes vaccines in fits and starts since the 1970s, said Dr. Harvey Friedman, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine who has studied the disease for over 40 years. But past attempts have failed, for reasons researchers are still trying to uncover.
Because herpes has been around for so long, the viruses have evolved alongside us, making them more difficult to eradicate, said Christine Johnston, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine who has studied herpes.
There are new vaccines under development. Dr. Friedman is working with BioNTech on an HSV-2 vaccine candidate that was given to the first human subject in December. But none are in late-stage clinical trials, said Dr. Ina Park, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of “Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of S.T.D.s.” “There’s nothing anywhere close to prime time,” she said.
‘One of the biggest secret societies’
When Ella Dawson, 30, contracted genital HSV-1 in college, she started to post openly about her diagnosis on social media. To her surprise, people came out of the woodwork to share their stories — friends, relatives, even a cashier who worked at the grocery store on campus. Many told her that they had never disclosed their diagnosis to anyone other than a sexual partner.“It’s one of the biggest secret societies in the world,” said Ms. Dawson, a novelist and writer who often speaks publicly about her experience with herpes.
Courtney Brame, 34, started the herpes education advocacy organization and podcast Something Positive for Positive People after his own HSV-2 diagnosis. He’s seen how the disease “completely shatters a person’s identity,” he said, partly because of how central sexuality can be to someone’s self-worth. “They don’t feel like they have anything to contribute to a relationship now, just because they have herpes,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Who’s going to want me now that I have this?’”
Mr. Brame has seen this in his own life. He was once messaging a woman on Tinder who brought up her struggle with chronic asthma; when he disclosed his own chronic condition, she stopped responding. But more often than facing rejection, when he shares his diagnosis, he said, he gets a different response: Women share that they, too, have herpes.
Herpes stigma stems in part from the idea that people with the infection have done something “wrong,” Dr. Park said. But you can exercise every precaution and still get it, she added — condoms do not entirely prevent transmission, and you don’t even need to have penetrative sex to contract the virus.
Though condoms can reduce the risk of transmission, not everyone with herpes will use a barrier method in long-term, monogamous relationships. In 2021, Something Positive for Positive People conducted a survey of over 1,000 people diagnosed with herpes; around 66 percent said a partner had consented to sex without a condom or other barrier method. And there is little research on how the virus spreads between women who have sex with women, Dr. Park said.
Medical providers, in general, often don’t receive extensive education on talking to patients about sexual health, Dr. Johnston said. When it comes to herpes in particular, “health care providers can be really insensitive about it and minimize it,” she said. “This is thought of more as a nuisance than a serious infection.”
“Clinicians don’t want to deal with this,” Ms. Warren said. “It involves people talking about sex. They’re crying, they’re going to have to talk about various specifics like is oral sex OK, is anal sex OK — I don’t think they want to go there,” she said.
Without support from doctors, or medical innovations to cure the infection, people with herpes are left “dealing with two viruses at the same time,” as Ms. Dawson put it. “You’re dealing with the physical symptoms of the virus,” she said, “and you’re dealing with the mental strain.”
Dani Blum is a reporter for Well.
2023.04.01 20:52 AnonomousUserHere AITA for making a "your mom" joke?
I know this sounds a little silly when you ready the title but please here me out my friend and family members have been making feel like shit & I would like an outside opinion.A little context I 17 female, had my friend also 17 female come over to hang out with me and my family.While cleaning up after we were done eating me and my friend (who we'll call 'Sarah')got into a play arguement you know the usual kind of banter you would hear from roudy teens. During the play argument I had made a joke saying "this is why your mother doesn't love you"(mind you a little more context me and this friend have been close for years and often make these kinds of jokes to one another almost on the daily) she kinda looked at me for a second before sitting on our couch for a while beforegoing upstairs into our guest bedroom. After about an hour or two she finally came back down stairs and sat down on the couch next to me and put her headphones in and wrapped herself in one of our many blankets.No big issue maybe she's tired I kinda shrugged it off and after about 20 minutes or so my step father who had been sitting on his recliner started to mess with Sarah by making loud noises, messing with her blanket ext usual dad kind of behavior. After a minute or two Sarah finally responds with "omg what I'm trying to listen to my music" I had looked up from my phone and snockered a bit and jokingly said "yea dad grandmas trying to sleep" to which Sarah gave me a dirty look and said "man fuck you." before turning over on the couch again. After a few more jokes were made trying to get her to cheer up I noticed that she was giving me the cold shoulder. She would talk to my stepfather and be happy while talking with a smile while when I made a comment along the same lines as him all I got was a rude stare a scoff or an eye roll. Sensing that I probably wasn't needed there I grabbed my things and sat on the staircase playing on my phone. Eventually my stepfather asked if I had done something to upset her to which she replied with "no it's just when she made that joke you know about my mom not loving me it just really upset me " I who was sitting on the staircase got a little peeved by this comment but brushed it off.she then proceeded to say "oh yea I know she was joking but you know....and now she's upstairs sulking " Sarah then said she was going to check on her laundry and flipped on the light switch to the stairs only to realize I was sitting there and her face looked about as shocked & as pale as a ghost before rushing to sit back down again. I had then decided to just go to my room at that poing. As I was in my room Sarah had knocked on my door and asked if I wanted a certain item to which I had just Promptly replied with "no." To which Sarah replied with "look just because your pissed doesn't mean you have to ruin it for everyone else "before slamming my door. And now I'm wondering if I was the asshole and if I should apologize or not so please AITA?
submitted by AnonomousUserHere to AmItheAsshole [link] [comments]
2023.04.01 20:41 Subtifuge Wicked new D&B track, inspired by / heavily sampling Dirty Harry.
 | submitted by Subtifuge to Drumnbass [link] [comments] |
2023.04.01 20:34 IndieRex Part XVI: Yon (Lockbury Henge and the Mines)
 | Welcome to Part 16 of The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: Reimagined, an expansion and alternative take on the The Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign. Previous entries: submitted by IndieRex to wildbeyondwitchlight [link] [comments]
Foreword: This post contains spoilers for The Wild Beyond the Witchlight IntroductionGreetings travelers of the frigid expanse of Yon! When we last left off, the party had made their way up into the Shimmerstorm Mountains and taken a rest for the evening.Today we will cover the party's continued journey through the mountains as they meet the korreds of Lockbury Henge, descend into a new location known as The Howling Mines, and finally encounter the small but industrious brigganocks. As a reminder from last time, we are skipping the Fey Beacons location as I am breaking up that content into parts elsewhere. Let's dive in! Lockbury Hengehttps://preview.redd.it/tjgivz62gbra1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=a773744fcfef40bf9cfe2682e3c57c804deb4b42Lockbury Henge is a great time to level up your players to Level 7, though I leave it to you whether this is when they first arrive at the megaliths or once they say their goodbyes to the korreds. We'll be running this area a bit differently as we can make this area more of a hub for select events:
The Korred VillageRead the following as Argantle and the group arrive:As you follow Queen Argantle, you soon find yourself standing in front of a small village of sorts nestled into the side of a mountain. The homes here are made of stone, each with a beautifully decorated roof made of intricately designed tiles. It's clear that a lot of care and attention has gone into their creation. There are dozens of Korreds, each with their signature wild black hair, milling about and glancing in your direction.Queen Argantle will leads the party into one of the dwellings, the interior of which is simple, with the furniture all crafted from stone. She will invite the party to sit and shares the information from the book that she would typically give at Lockbury Henge itself. As the discussion continues, at this point the "Distant Racket" event should play out as Argantle heads outside to investigate and subsequently also shares the info listed there as well as the additional pieces below:
Gleam If the players seek out the high elf acrobat, she will beseech them for help. They may notice though that she's missing her shadow... Gleam will share the following:
While in the village, the party should find that while they're not merchants per say, the korreds do have some of their craftwork available for sale (1 of each):
While I chose not to use it at all, this could also be a good place for the Evil Kite event (but again swapping out the goblins for korreds). Staying the Night If the characters take a long rest in town I recommend having this event play out. It's an alternative take on an idea from Korred Clans by Dan Kahn. On that note, if you're looking to expand this area even further, Dan's supplement dives into all of the different clans. During the evening the players should hear the shuffling of multiple pairs of hooves outside. This is a group of young korreds, one of a which with a shaved head, trying poorly to sneak outside. If the party confronts them they will explain that:
The Howling MinesOnce the party is ready to depart, Queen Argantle and/or Gleam and guide the group to the nearby entrance down into the interior of the mountains to The Howling Mines and the next step on their journey.https://preview.redd.it/c5u76d4hgbra1.png?width=736&format=png&auto=webp&s=aa3867cc4780dac86eb4341a56807548bb82c811 When the group enters read the following: As you step into The Howling Mines, the first thing you notice is a low, mournful wail that seems to echo from everywhere and nowhere at once. The rocky walls are lined with massive, shimmering stones that glow with an inner light that fills the cavern with a soft, otherworldly radiance of blues and purples.The walls inside the mines are made of solid rock and are on average 30 feet tall. An examination of the walls reveals a cluster of 1d3 leaves of moonwort, a silver-leaved herb that when consumed makes the user become partially incorporeal for 1 hour. While partially incorporeal, the creature has resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. Once inside there is a single winding path for the players to follow deeper into the mines. A Treacherous Path After a short while of the party walking deeper inside and marveling at the interior read the following: The path ahead of you narrows, the walls now tightly closed in from both sides while icicles hang down from the ceiling to almost the floor like a maze of sharp teeth. The icicles glisten in the light of the mines, and look brittle enough to shatter at the slightest touch.Whereas the mines have been spacious so far, there is only this narrow 10 ft high corridor ahead. With a successful DC 14 Perception check a player can discern this narrowing is temporary, and the passage opens back up soon after. With a 20 or higher, they will hear what sounds like movement beyond the passage as well. While the icicles hanging down the path ahead are a barrier of sorts, they can potentially be avoided. Any character who makes a successful DC 15 Acrobatics or Stealth check can weave through icicles or duck down and make it out to the other side without breaking any. On a failure, a character knocks into a set of icicles causing them to break off and crash to the ground. This will alert crystalline sentinels and lookouts ahead in the next room to the party's presence, causing them to immediately attack once the players come out the other side. Once through the obstacle, the players will be be brought into a path continuing deeper into the mines. I used this map by FairyTale Maps to represent it. There are 3 crystalline sentinels and 5 crystalline lookouts (see below) that will attack any intruders, but if the players successfully did not break any of the icicles, the party will be not be spotted by the creatures when they first arrive. These golems once were tasked with overseeing work done here in the mines, but this area has long been stripped and abandoned for greener pastures. You might allow your players to bypass fighting the crystalline sentinels and lookouts altogether if they have a way to sneak by. If they are defeated though, an examination of the bodies of the crystalline creatures will provide chunks of ore worth 50 gp for each sentinel and 20 gp for each lookout. A search of the area should also uncover the following:
https://preview.redd.it/fadoltwogbra1.png?width=812&format=png&auto=webp&s=b2b964332910a3c9d04d3cd6f0535d8b67110326 https://preview.redd.it/yf06grupgbra1.png?width=158&format=png&auto=webp&s=78138361693102eaf999b0b19290d19080e83573 https://preview.redd.it/3fw15epqgbra1.png?width=823&format=png&auto=webp&s=394711f7edc4d47c7229fb2fdb42188878a8f603 Gorgenal, the Mummer Soon after making their way past the golems, the party will come across a chamber with a locked thick iron door that blocks their progress further into the mine. On the walls of the room, there is a panel with six levers (that can only be moved in the up or down position; they start up by default) labeled with numbers from 1 to 6 and a single button. The players must figure out the correct sequence of levers to pull in order to unlock the door (which is 4-2-5-6-1-3). The button resets all of the levers back to the up position. As they search the room, there are three main clues to solve the puzzle but you can feel free to add more as needed:
The faint sound of a lively tune in the distance echoes through the chamber. The music leads you to a hooded figure, their fingers expertly dancing over the holes of a flute. The man is slender with a sharp nose and dressed in a patchwork of mismatched furs and hides.A player with a passive perception of 16 or higher will notice Gorgenal does not cast a shadow. This is because it was severed by Endelyn's Scissors of Shadow Snipping, though he will not share as much. If the players introduce themselves, the man will do so in kind: "I am Gorgenal of the Greyhawk Mummers," he says in a sly voice and with a slight bow. "Perhaps you've heard of me?"As mentioned earlier, as we are not using the Fey Beacons section I am breaking that content into other sections, starting with one of the mummers, Gorgenal, who - unlike the book, is not a peryton. Gorgenal will share the following information:
If the party accepts his help as a guide, he leads them down a series of twists and turns, dodging and weaving through the mines until they reach: A narrow stream of water winds through the ground here, shimmering in a spectrum of colors from vibrant teal to deep purple. A statue of carved of ice sits at the end of the stream. The statue depicts a humanoid creature with thick fur covering its body and its hands are elongated into long claws through which the water releases down into the stream like a miniature waterfall.
The potential exception here is if the party showed any interest in stagecraft and taking part in Endelyn's plays. In that case he may be inclined to safety lead them out to Brigganock Mine and give directions to Motherhorn. The Ambush Soon after the path leads into a small chamber of the mines filled with a light fog. The trap consists of a ghost of the mines (see below) and three shadow (variants) that are shadows snipped by Endelyn. While the howling noises of the mines are indeed a natural phenomenon - the increase in volume here is from the ghost. At your discretion one of the shadows could be Gleam's, which means it's destruction would lead to the restoration of the imprisoned Gleam's actual shadow. As soon as the fighting begins Gorgenal will drink a potion of invisibility. https://preview.redd.it/cj54phizgbra1.png?width=823&format=png&auto=webp&s=2895f1f23063db85d3fd8dffa419318496b4e945 You can use this map for the ambush encounter The Mineshaft Once out of the ambush on their own, it will take the party a few more hours of travel through the mines until they reach the final chamber. Light spills through an opening in the rock wall in this large chamber clearly marking the path forward. While a clear exit lays ahead of you, there is also a large, vertical platform that sits in the back of the room with an intricate control panel set into it.The platform is a steam powered elevator that leads down to a lower level of the mines where the dragon Zephyrum nests.
The exit meanwhile leads directly to Brigganock Mine, which is most likely course of the action here. Zephyrum's Lair If the party takes the elevator from the mine shaft down, they are brought into a lower level of the mines. As you make your way in, you come across a small alcove that has been converted into a living area of sorts. A bedroll has been laid out on the ground next to a small fire pit and an assortment of basic supplies.This is Gorgenal's home for the nights where he is keeping watch over the mine and Zephyrum. As the party examines the area, eight winged beasts with antlers will circle and wheel around them, before landing and watching them quizzically. If the players learned of the perytons from Gorgenal and aren't putting two and two together that these are his old troupe, allow a DC 12 History check to connect the dots on their behalf. If the party has a spell such as speak with animals they can learn of the peryton's plight, and that they have stayed near their old partner Gorgenal out of boredom. If not, consider placing a scroll of the spell among Gorgenal's belongings - he may need to speak with them on occasion after all. The perytons will also share that:
Similarly, the characters can also impress the perytons by putting on a performance of their own. Impressing the perytons requires the performing characters to succeed on a DC 15 Charisma (Performance) group check. Any character who received an acting lesson from Candlefoot in the Witchlight Carnival has advantage on this check. If the group check succeeds, the perytons regard the characters as kindred spirits. In the case of a good show (by the mummers or the party), the perytons will warn them of the dragon and Gorgenal being further ahead. As a part of this they will share the dragon's resistances and immunities and its main abilities (tunneler, spider climb, debilitating breath, hold person). Zephyrum After a short trek past the camp site read the following (though if the group was warned by the mummers and is being sneaky, you may choose to exclude the last sentence): As you venture deeper, you are suddenly confronted by a massive, fearsome creature that bursts out from the rock wall with a fierce roar. Its scales are a deep, iridescent blue that shimmer and sparkle in the dim light of the mines, creating an almost mesmerizing display of color. Despite its beauty, there is no mistaking the raw, primal energy of a deadly predator that radiates from the creature's piercing gaze. Its muscles are coiled, and you can feel the cool wind of its breath on your skin as it snarls and prepares to strike.If Gorgenal is alive, he will also be here watching over the dragon. They will both attack the party on sight. Gorgenal uses the bard (MotM) stat block (but with a Charisma of 18, spell save DC of 16, and double the hit points), while Zephyrum is a young sapphire dragon (Fizban's Treasury of Dragons), though a young blue dragon (Basic Rules; but substitute it's lightning breath for the cold breath from a young white dragon) can work as a substitute. If they are defeated, the players can loot Zephyrum's hoard which contains:
Cold Iron Cold iron ingots can be used to craft a cold iron weapon. Recommended locations include the Woodcutter's Axe in Vale Crossing, Arctis Tor, and once the party travels back to their home city after Yon (Waterdeep for my campaign). You may choose to allow it to happen by other means - especially if you have a character well versed in smithing. It takes two ingots to enhance an existing weapon (similar to silvering a weapon), or you may choose to allow a new weapon to be made with other ingredients mixed in. Cold iron weapons have the following properties:
Brigganock MineOnce out of The Howling Mines (see the mineshaft section above), the party will soon find the entrance to the Brigganock Mine (the two are connected), and should hear the tapping, etc. from the book. Things should play out as written until the confrontation with Molliver and the brigganocks where we will need to change what is told to the party.When speaking with Molliver he will instead share the following information and will similarly order the release of any captured characters if convinced appropriately. If the party helped Elkhorn and Strongheart earlier in The Fields of Spring, they can use that to their advantage to win over Molliver.
Once pleasantries are done, Molliver and the brigganocks will lead the group back towards Wish-Come-True to meet with Obud. During the trek, Molliver will share the additional tidbits:
Once at the grotto things will play out mostly the same except:
Tunnel to Motherhorn Once the party has defeated Zephyrum (or otherwise convinced Obud), he will lead the party to a permanent illusion in the basement wall of the lodge. This secret tunnel leads out of the mines and back out to the Shimmerstorm Mountains near Motherhorn. As an additional reward I had Obud allow each party member to take a stab at mining. Each player should roll a D12 and receive the reward below (based on tool proficiencies you may allow a +1 or +2 to the roll):
A final note. The book suggests that if the korreds and brigganocks are allied an assault could be made on Motherhorn. This is less in line with the concepts we're going for (plus the play is a ton of fun) so I might avoid this altogether. An alternative for team up action could be them all helping the party to defeat Zephyrum and Gorgenal and thus free the mountains of the hag's influence. ResourcesI have highlighted some of the resources I used for this portion of the campaign below.Art
What’s Next? After coming out of the mines to the other side of the Shimmerstorm Mountains, our party will find themselves at the doorstep of Motherhorn, the amphitheater of horrors. As alway |
2023.04.01 20:28 Laika0405 1972d soundtrack links (spoilers for ending songs!!)
I saw some people asking about it so I figured I would post them here, I'll take it down if its off-topic
Paul Robeson - Joe Hill
Communist Party USA - CPUSA Anthem
Pete Seeger - Solidarity Forever
The Weavers - Which Side Are You On
theProject - The Popular Wobbly
Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin'
Phil Ochs - Love Me, I'm a Liberal
Simon & Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence
The Doors - The End
Edwin Starr - War
If you don't care about spoilers then here are the ending songs
Jane Fonda - Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine in (The 5th Dimension)
Tom Hayden - The Only Living Boy in New York (Simon & Garfunkel)
Ron Kovic - Goodnight Saigon (Billy Joel)
Bobby Seale - The Revolution Will Not be Televised (Gil Scott-Heron)
Edward Sadlowski - Lookin' at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song) (The Beach Boys)
submitted by Laika0405 to thecampaigntrail [link] [comments]
Opening Song
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer - Fanfare for the Common ManOld Left
Pete Seeger - The Commonwealth of ToilPaul Robeson - Joe Hill
Communist Party USA - CPUSA Anthem
Pete Seeger - Solidarity Forever
The Weavers - Which Side Are You On
theProject - The Popular Wobbly
New Left
Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock - The Star Spangled BannerBob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin'
Phil Ochs - Love Me, I'm a Liberal
Simon & Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence
The Doors - The End
Edwin Starr - War
If you don't care about spoilers then here are the ending songs
Ending Songs
Angela Davis - All Along the Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)Jane Fonda - Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine in (The 5th Dimension)
Tom Hayden - The Only Living Boy in New York (Simon & Garfunkel)
Ron Kovic - Goodnight Saigon (Billy Joel)
Bobby Seale - The Revolution Will Not be Televised (Gil Scott-Heron)
Edward Sadlowski - Lookin' at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song) (The Beach Boys)
2023.04.01 20:16 Freakniqe Billie eillish should be apart of the new squad
I don’t even know the story of 6 besides spoilers I’m waiting to crunch in on it but multiplayer is fun, maybe she could have more of a carmine role part of kaits new squad. I remember around gears 3 Drake…fuck Drake was due to voice as Jace but eventually lead to Michael B Jordan instead let’s gets lit gears wassup
submitted by Freakniqe to GearsOfWar [link] [comments]
2023.04.01 19:42 BergerOfTheWest Sometimes I believe good play counters subs…
 | 4 kills, 2 of which I soloed 2 subs. Terrible MM, but made the most of it. submitted by BergerOfTheWest to WorldOfWarships [link] [comments] |
2023.04.01 19:30 DaCoffeeKween Cleaning with ADHD
How do you all clean?
Today is my "big clean day" both me and my husband have adhd. It presents different in both of us and I also have OCD.
I am a housewife/SAHM/maid. I live with my husband and another person we rent out a room to. He pays to have the common areas cleaned cuz it's just easier that way. (There is a lease he has his own expectations ) I have a set schedule each week for laundry and dishes and clean messes as I see them. Though we do a "big clean" the first weekend of every month.
People think it's weird I do all the big stuff all at once "you're home all day just clean it then?" "why do you make your husband help he has a job?" Well this works for us. I'm currently pregnant and there is a lot I can't do now and for some of the tasks it's always been easier for my husband to do them as it requires lifting or an area that he wants to keep a certain way. I only vacuum and sweep and mop once a month (unless it gets really gross) because it only really needs it once a month. We also use this time to scrub the toilets and sinks and other stuff that builds up grime. We take time to change the bedding.
Should this be done more often? Maybe, but it's not convenient to do so. So what do you all do? Do you do a bug clean or break tasks down so it's not a full day?
The full day one helps both me and my husband set a mindset of cleaning and we use that as a reason to do extra things we've set off during the month too. The reward for me is a clean home that feels totally reset. This way it's not just "I cleaned that but that is still dirty" I'd end up task jumping until the whole house was clean anyway. This way that is the plan and I can schedule in breaks and I have my husband to help me gage when to take breaks so I don't hurt myself. If I do this alone I'm likely to try and lift or clean things I shouldn't and I'll end up stressed and having an anxiety attack.
Stories appreciated! Judgement is not! This is how we live and it is not for you to decide what works for us!
submitted by DaCoffeeKween to ADHD [link] [comments]
Today is my "big clean day" both me and my husband have adhd. It presents different in both of us and I also have OCD.
I am a housewife/SAHM/maid. I live with my husband and another person we rent out a room to. He pays to have the common areas cleaned cuz it's just easier that way. (There is a lease he has his own expectations ) I have a set schedule each week for laundry and dishes and clean messes as I see them. Though we do a "big clean" the first weekend of every month.
People think it's weird I do all the big stuff all at once "you're home all day just clean it then?" "why do you make your husband help he has a job?" Well this works for us. I'm currently pregnant and there is a lot I can't do now and for some of the tasks it's always been easier for my husband to do them as it requires lifting or an area that he wants to keep a certain way. I only vacuum and sweep and mop once a month (unless it gets really gross) because it only really needs it once a month. We also use this time to scrub the toilets and sinks and other stuff that builds up grime. We take time to change the bedding.
Should this be done more often? Maybe, but it's not convenient to do so. So what do you all do? Do you do a bug clean or break tasks down so it's not a full day?
The full day one helps both me and my husband set a mindset of cleaning and we use that as a reason to do extra things we've set off during the month too. The reward for me is a clean home that feels totally reset. This way it's not just "I cleaned that but that is still dirty" I'd end up task jumping until the whole house was clean anyway. This way that is the plan and I can schedule in breaks and I have my husband to help me gage when to take breaks so I don't hurt myself. If I do this alone I'm likely to try and lift or clean things I shouldn't and I'll end up stressed and having an anxiety attack.
Stories appreciated! Judgement is not! This is how we live and it is not for you to decide what works for us!
2023.04.01 18:55 throwRA1a2b3c4d1 This is where I cross the line
 | This is a comment from a snippet from Lala’s podcast with Scheana as a guest. We cannot keep making excuses for ADULTS. 18 to 30 is a very big big big difference. submitted by throwRA1a2b3c4d1 to Vanderpumpaholics [link] [comments] This just ain’t it y’all. Her being “young” isn’t the reason why she did what she did. This wasn’t a bad decision. Her and Sandoval lied about who they were for YEARS. They lied to the viewers but we expected that. They lied to their friends and loved ones in real life. No excuses. They need to both fully take accountability. Sandoval will always need someone to stroke his very small and delicate ego. Rachel will always need to play baby and dumb to get away with what she really wants. She really is the female Schwartz. |
2023.04.01 18:47 dullboy1605 How would you change the Dirty Laundry format?
Currently the show relies on the stories, which honestly usually aren't that good and forces them to use clickbait-y hooks. "Woke up in Lizzo's bed" -Bought a bed Lizzo owned. "Almost got killed by lightning" -Cycled during a storm. "Had a 3-way kiss" -through cling film. "Used to sell drugs" -worked at a pharmacy. "Used to work in porn" -worked in a video store. "Suspended for drug use" -caffeine. "Was almost institutionalised" -school called their mother.
I always love the cast/hosts & DO definitely have the talent to make a great parlor show, but this isn't the right format and they were probably closer with Paranoia. I've read comments by Sam saying they wanted to emulate WILTY without explicitly copying it. A lot of the fun of WILTY is watching people improvising a story, and watching others pick it apart; but in Dirty Laundry you usually have 4 improv comedians and give them no opportunity to do improv.
I don't have the answer but my suggestion is a Balderdash-like format. The prompt is read out and then each player tells the story of how it happened to them (obviously only one is true, the rest are improvised). Players dissect/debate, then each player votes in secret for whose story they think is true and players earn points based on how many votes their made up story gets. This would showcase the improv talent a lot more, the clickbait titles would now be functional because they're vague, and the quality of the true stories doesn't have to carry the whole show anymore.
submitted by dullboy1605 to dropout [link] [comments]
I always love the cast/hosts & DO definitely have the talent to make a great parlor show, but this isn't the right format and they were probably closer with Paranoia. I've read comments by Sam saying they wanted to emulate WILTY without explicitly copying it. A lot of the fun of WILTY is watching people improvising a story, and watching others pick it apart; but in Dirty Laundry you usually have 4 improv comedians and give them no opportunity to do improv.
I don't have the answer but my suggestion is a Balderdash-like format. The prompt is read out and then each player tells the story of how it happened to them (obviously only one is true, the rest are improvised). Players dissect/debate, then each player votes in secret for whose story they think is true and players earn points based on how many votes their made up story gets. This would showcase the improv talent a lot more, the clickbait titles would now be functional because they're vague, and the quality of the true stories doesn't have to carry the whole show anymore.
2023.04.01 18:37 CromaShin [THEORY] (Part 1 of 2) Exposing the Secret of Sweet Oasis
![[THEORY] (Part 1 of 2) Exposing the Secret of Sweet Oasis](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/XBOcYkYaVc0T-gQlkRias4oKMyDRd9ZbKSkRnOca9DI.jpg "[THEORY] (Part 1 of 2) Exposing the Secret of Sweet Oasis") | Hi NSWERS, welcome back on our logbook in this journey through MIXXTOPIA. I'll be the one who guides you NMIXX feats and stories. This post covers the EXPERGO Pre promotions Era and its content: Concept Story Films, Mixxletters and other media. The 2nd part will be about the MVs and Lyrics breakdown and I will wrap up everything with a conclusion and theories about what's next. submitted by CromaShin to NMIXX [link] [comments]
1st Anniversary RecapIt's been a while so we should recall our memories for a moment, let's do a quick resume of a year long lore.O.O Era 7 girls discover a whole new world that expands as they imagine it, called MIXX. They can reach it by opening their eyes "for real". But something is off in the real world, called FIELD, a pirate ship lands on a misty park, cars start levitating, ethereal fish flow out from MIXX to FIELD, Jiwoo stands out of the Donut Shop. DICE Era NMIXX take their journey on a ship towards MIXXTOPIA, a place in MIXX where "everything you imagine becomes real". In this world, represented this time by a board game, they face enemies who set up traps, just like the Cat. This enemy, born out of the girls' fear, in the end gets defeated. In MIXX, where they played this game a big tornado occurred mostly due to the overload of negative feelings gathered. Emotions here can become physical, that's IMPETUS. Bae drops a Green ball, previously a die, in an orange juice lake. bloom a flower named \"growth\" Docking Station: DeclarationAdventure heads toward freedom. No, adventure is heading toward danger. Following new possibilities, we walked from the real world "FIELD" to the new world "MIXX". It wouldn't have been possible on our own. We met a lot of new friends along the way. Lion, whale, jellyfish and also cats. We soon grew close, collecting the pieces of emotions that bloomed with each of our steps, we pushed our way forward. "MIXX" is growing as big as our imagination, If we reach "MIXXTOPIA" like this, will everything we want coexist? That may not be true, something green and overly sweet is deceiving us and getting in our way. Sweet things seem good, but they stop us from imagining. People whose existence was denied wish to stay in the maze of 0 and 1 rather than take on an adventure. Whenever we're scared, we hold the hand of who's next to us, we feel connected. I become more myself because of you, and you yourself because of me. So nobody feels lonely or left out, we hope to mixx even more. It's now your turn to awake.The video resumes the first chapter of NMIXX story. Starting from O.O we se Nmixx reaching MIXX in O.O, the domino, the ship in the sky between the seas, the creatures of this new world. In DICE they meet the cat(s) and start collecting the emotions felt during the journey (IMPETUS). MIXX is represented here by a orange juice lake with orange trees growing on the side, fish floating in the air. This is a new chapter of the story, New Frontier has ended. Nmixx gained experience in the MIXX during the fight with the cat powered by their fears, overcame those feelings and defeat the feline enemy. A docking station is a harbor, a dock where their ship can be welcomed and docked. A docking station is also the devices on a Space Station that permit another spacecraft to connect and exchange useful materials or astronauts. This station is of course located in Mixxtopia, the place they want to reach. But the path is not so easy, a new problem comes up. This green thing is deceiving them and people in the FIELD. They want to save those people by awakening them (spoiler it's us, we are dolphins). "people who existence was denied wish to stay in the maze of 0 and 1 rather than take on an adventure" is a curious sentence. Who has denied those people to exist? Why do they wish to stay in the maze of 0 and 1? Since they stay in the maze of 0 and 1, which means probably they don't take any chance or bold decision, it means they exist there, so they are forbid to exist in the MIXX? or in the FIELD? We'll see. Secret of Sweet OasisIn this video Reporter Oh Haewon goes live to tell us about Sweet Oasis. This is the hottest candy brand and it sells just one type of round green candy at the same address of the Donut Shop in O.O. There are rumors about this shop and NMIXX want to break into the shop to investigate more. "Does curiosity cause fear? The Cat sends a sudden private message... The broadcast ends. NMIXX manage to sneak into Sweet Oasis. Here they find lots of candies and in a locker, some classified documents with a picture of a cat and a post it with "Maximize Fear" written on it. There is also a date February 19 1971, a place, Florida, US and a person A SURGEON / Graduation from Harvard. Those documents are marked as Check. Let me tell you what those documents are about: this person, "A SURGEON" made an experiment on the cat pictured to maximize the fear, this experiment was a success and DICE events happened. We'll get to know this "surgeon" in a moment.the forbidden fruit THE FAMOUS JIWOO CUT-SCENE Jiwoo is about to eat a green candy but the scene cuts off. Then we see the post-credit scene in O.O of Jiwoo outside the Donut Shop. Inside the Sweet Oasis a wind blows on the candles and someone rings at the doorbell, the door gets warped and unlocked. First of all, let's understand what eating a green candy implies: we are said that it stops you from imagining and we know that MIXX is accessible only through imagination and it expands with it. We need to acknowledge that inside the Sweet Oasis shop Jiwoo is still here, whether she has eaten or not the candy. But we see also another Jiwoo outside the Donut Shop. Let's start making different scenarios:
https://preview.redd.it/xuaz29q5vara1.png?width=1392&format=png&auto=webp&s=394c52f7558518b56395fb96c9adda0b8d624b1b There is a little bit stretched theory: there is a gold pin with "NAILS" and a hand on Jiwoo's beret. In the ENTWURF Limited Edition Album there are holographic cards with a hand with long nails in the background preying on NMIXX. This correlation between NAILS and the fact that last year she made a fake NMIXX logo and captioned the drawing in reversed made some people to believe that the Cut-Scene Jiwoo is evil and started the XXIWN alter-ego theory. I can't prove this theory right or wrong because Jiwoo has always been suspicious but it's also part of her personality. Only time will tell the real truth of the Cut Scene. MIXXLETTERSThe investigation starts. NMIXX release news updates about their discoveries in the green candy shop. The articles are pretty self-explanatory.VOL. 01 There is this new store that only sells green candy. Those super popular candies make your mind go blank and make you feel perfect, if you don't take them, you feel excluded. Due to their excessive sweetness and the fact that turn tongues green those candies are totally chemical, "artificial" as the YouTube Short says. Note that the logo, the Green Eagle, was also a square in the DICE gameboard. At this point it's pretty much confirmed that this store is an enemy. VOL. 02 NMIXX through their investigations find that the owner of the Donut shop has changed. The new owner sells only one type of candy, instead of various doughnuts and candies. "NMIXX have a clear memory of PICK AND MIXX as a vision of it welcomed them the day they took their first step into MIXX" this sentence it's not well written I think, but the idea behind it is that NMIXX remember the old store when they went to MIXX for the first time. They don't know how the store changed and who is the new owner. This clarifies that the owner is another person and not the same of Pick N Mixx. The girls find a uniform with boots, an apron and a raincoat left by the owner on a wall in a secret room. This outfit is used in factories where you get often dirty because you are handling splashy, fluid substances. For this reason, who produces the candies is the owner itself. Nmixx also uncover the name of the store clerk, MONOPOLE, and confirm he/she is a follower of the owner. What "follower" means and implies it's still unknown. VOL. 03 Nmixx confirm our theory about the DICE cat and explain it. MONOPOLE made experiments on a cat, maximizing its fear. NMIXX played with this cat and fought the manifestation of their inner fear, overcoming also big waves and tornadoes sent to them. When the cat regained its normal size, a green dye was spotted on its tail. This green dye was made with lots of negative emotions. In the Sweet Oasis secret room Nmixx found documents about increasing Nmixx's inner fears and eliminate Nswer diversity. Monopole has been watching Nmixx for a long time and caused all the troubles they had. VOL. 04 Apparently, some of us Nswers had been trapped inside a bottle by Monopole in his secret room. As Nmixx say, this is not the first time we were trapped: some dolphins were caged inside frames in that blue and cloudy room in DICE as well. Nswers who were stained by the green dye slowly turn into green candy, losing their diversity. So Nmixx is planning to rescue those sleeping Nswers in a brilliant, lovely and whimsical way. "upgrading the Tap Tap system and developing new various inventions" says Kyujin, the Engineer, while Haewon the Captain is "devising various plans to go to MIXXTOPIA". What do you think their plan will be? We'll uncover it on the MV section. this shop once sold various flavored doughnuts, now just one green candy PICK NMIXX YouTube Show This show is different from NMIXX In Wonderland because this time it's all scripted, since it's an escape room, so they literally played as themselves in the lore and investigated on the green candy shop. The plot follows the articles written on the Mixxletters: NMIXX enter SWEET OASIS to investigate its popularity. The clerk, Monopole welcome them. To order the candy they open a box with GREEN as a password. A message says that the candy "gives you a sweet taste that calms down your inner anxiety". In each riddle they solve there will be a piece of dolphin. They will find all the pieces and save the dolphins. They watch an adv of Sweet Oasis... "The only candy that can captivate you. Meet Candy from Sweet Oasis. Multi-colored donuts and candies are so common! Our candy offers a fantastic experience like meeting an oasis in the desert with only one taste. Sweet sold by Sweet Oasis are so sweet that you can't think of anything. It's a perfect candy in color and taste. You can also feel complete after eating this candy. Try before you fall behind the trend." Then solve the next riddle by ordering 9 books: 1. The pain of sadness 2. Don't be angry 3. How to heal fear 4. How to control one's sadness 5. Three Faces of Anger 6. My Joy 7. Joy is forever 8. Between Joy and Sadness 9. The Secret of Dolphins. When ordered, the books form the word IMPETUS. Except the last one, that book is a diary from a dolphin: there are pictures of the DICE sky room with dolphins inside the frames. The dolphin says he tasted the green candy, he felt confident and perfect but also suddenly sleepy. NSWER = dolphin, so an NSWER was trapped and they need to save him. A wave of green candies falls from the stairs, together with a capsule. This capsule has a picture of a Fake Green potion that leads them to the corridor. The girls find Monopole studio and secret room. In the middle of the room a table is filled with clues, dots and links. The colored wires form 1202 which is the password for a cabinet. Monopole is coming for them but NMIXX hide so she decides to report the intrusion to the manager, the owner of Sweet Oasis, after leaving another diary page of the dolphin diary on the table. "I used to love imagining things. Imagining is always fun but strangely, obsessively I keep thinking about one thing repeatedly. Why am I like this? To think of it, where am I? I was in the store a minute ago, it smells excessively sweet. I can hear the machine...it's dark..." On this table NMIXX find information about them, the recipe of the Fake Green, its effects (terror, fear, hallucinations), photos of the sky room in DICE, one with dolphins in the frames and another with almost all empty frames. That's why Nmixx is here, to save those remaining Nswers. In the next room of the corridor there are puzzles themed by Wisdom, Love and Courage from the Concept Story: Blue, cloud and white flower is Courage, Red, apples and orange is Love, Yellow and candles is Wisdom. Solving a riddle, they find another diary page where the NSWER talks about his friend acting strange, deep sleeping, he's worried that something bad will happen so he must tell other people but can't because he's falling asleep too. In the last riddle box they find the frames seen in the DICE scene. They fit the dolphins inside them. After saving NSWERs the intruder alert triggers, the security system is activated and they can't escape unless they find the password, which is expérgo320. They escape bringing NSWERs and a sample of Fake Green. https://preview.redd.it/a5uhz658vara1.png?width=703&format=png&auto=webp&s=d470f08ff132a460e8639c42a371fdb276a31cf8 Now let's watch the table closely, starting from top left. Identikits for every member, an article about their career as singers. Picture of the green optical illusions seen in the XXIWN twitter account, "Experiment", "symptom" "hallucination" "fear" "who?" "why?", screenshots from the warped black and white setting of DICE, "success!", a map of the Land of Oz, an ad of a travel to Paris, the Fake Green illustration, a pair of blue glasses, "green", a tornado, a photo of Nmixx looking at the pictures on the Nswer's diary just found, the same pictures of DICE with and without dolphins in the frames, photos of Pick N Mixx shop inside and outside, the previous candies and the new green ones, a vandalized version of O.O album cover with a green smile, "space", "world", "target value", "0? 1?", a screen with a maze of 0 and 1 and "password", the recipe: 1,5g salt, 30g sugar, 50g the Fake Green. What we can deduct from this table is that Monopole and/or her boss is stalking NMIXX since O.O, he "experimented" this Fake Green thing and caused hallucinations and fear as symptoms to Nwers and Nmixx. He's correlated with XXIWN since he knows about the green illusions and the graffiti campaign occured that time. We still can't say he is XXIWN because we don't have an actual proof since these are just clues he has on his table, but it could be since in the Mixxletter it's called "organization". The blue (green) glasses are the glasses everyone in Emerald City, where Oz lives, must wear (because Oz is deceiving the citizens in seeing everything green). The tornado is how Dorothy came to Oz and it's what happens in DICE. He knows that NMIXX rescued and will rescue the dolphins he trapped in the frames so they must be eliminated. The photos of the old shop show that he knows how it was. I discussed the meaning of 1202 in the O.O [THEORY] but I found another reference related to TWWOO: the name in the car plate is the name of the actress who portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West, Margaret Brainard Hamilton. For this reason we can consider the car "evil" as it carries an antagonist name. Basically he's the enemy who caused the misadventures to NMIXX and trapped NSWERS. Story Concept FilmsDizziness From FreedomAnxiety. Does it come from 'within you'? Or does it come from the outside? Freedom. Inside freedom. We feel anxiety since... we always have to make our own 'choices'. Facing new, unheard senses that grew threw the apertures of freedom to blossom a flower named 'growth'. We must make a choice on our own, once again. In the midst of endless chaos and disarray, we will eventually find... The path that I truly desired. https://preview.redd.it/scocq0r9vara1.png?width=1392&format=png&auto=webp&s=c34ce04f275e709d7b4f47562593dd92a0ff74d1 This one is pretty intense. In this video we see a group of youthful friends dealing with the emotions everyone feels at that age. During that age you can choose your entire future life just by choosing a different school or job, endless possibilities. You can also be overloaded by all this freedom, maybe you made a wrong choice and you want to go back but it's too late, maybe you are taking too much time to choose, this can cause the "dizziness from freedom" the video is talking. Haewon is in the middle of her crossway, which can be her life until now. She must pursue her dream and take a step forward on the path she's taking. Kyujin entered an alley with several doors, those doors represent the choices she can make. After making a choice she can only continue that way, the other doors disappear. Yes, the traffic light switching from 7 to 6 it's clearly a reference to Jinni. By making new choices and facing new unheard senses they are growing. In this dizziness caused by the chaos of endless choices they will find the path they truly believe. "does anxiety come from within you or from the outside?" this question also appeared on the JYPE site as "The most important question, does that huge shadow that threatens you come from the ‘outside’? Or from ‘within you’?. That time in my DICE [THEORY] I said this shadow was their inner fear and they brought it into MIXX. Now we are asked again where does this emotion come from. From the Youtube Show we can say it comes from inside because a message said that the green candy calms down your inner anxiety. Kyujin is alone on the rooftop, Jiwoo is alone in the bathroom, Haewon is crossing the road alone, everyone dealing with their own worries. But Nmixx are alone together, they gather at the end to see the fireworks, a metaphor to say that they made their choices, grew their (fire) flower until it blossomed. fireflowers Wisdom, Love, Courage When wisdom touches our eyes we can sort out the lies and false minds. When love touches our lips, the imagination becomes reality. When courage touches our fingertip, it shall grant us the power to truly push forward. At the end of the long and winding road, 'wisdom' found 'love' and 'love' grew 'courage'. It all exists inside us. You, and I. As long as they lie inside our souls, we will love our own self... And love each other. A flaming heart behind curtains, six blindfolded girls on the other side of the curtains, with the same long light blue dress. Lily and Bae with light hair colors stand in front, behind them Jiwoo and Kyujin with black hair but with one side on the front and the other o the rear, finally Haewon and Sullyoon with both black hair on the back. Haewon and Sullyoon start whispering in the ear: Sullyoon to Jiwoo, Haewon to Kyujin. Bae holds Kyujin's hand, and writes 니, it's not clear because she writes the ㅣ in the same spot as ㄴ, it could also represent "LI", or 4, or the occult symbol of Jupiter... Seems that Kyujin isn't aware, like if she is in trance, and Bae had to move Kyujin's hand herself. After this ritual, on the flaming heart, flowers and grass blossom. The girls enter in a new mental state and dimension. They find each other divided in couples, one in every room. The couple Jiwoo-Lily (whispered by Sullyoon) appeared in the Wisdom room, Sullyoon-Haewon (the whisperers) in the love room and Kyujin-Bae (whispered by Haewon) in the courage room. The couples take each other's hand and walk towards the garden at the center of this space. As they join all their hands together the MIXX fills the empty space. This world has a purple moon on the ground, dolphins (we NSWERS), floating islands and mini planets, green hills and a grand heart-shaped tree, a rainbow crosses the entire sky. We switch to reality again, Haewon is still whispering to the blindfolded Kyujin. Wisdom room Let's dive into this deep symbolism and break it down: First of all Nmixx is seated in a very designed way, converging to the iron flaming heart. In a ritual-like manner they blindfold themselves and two start whispering. Whispering in the ears was a way to initiate new acolytes in a cult during the mesopotamian era. (see this paper for further information) The priest(ess) will whisper incantation to the cult followers under a drug induced trance. That's why Bae has to move Kyujin hand herself in order to write something. We don't know if Lily did the same for Jiwoo. After this sign the iron heart blooms and the girls enter MIXX. Their blindfold falls off, but we know that in reality they still have it as seen in the end of the video. So this means they are in MIXX with just their mind or spirit. In this space they are divided in couples and spawn in a designed room. The whisperers together in Love, the whispered by Haewon in Courage and the whispered by Sullyoon in Wisdom. "When love touches your lips" is a way to say "when you talk about love" and here imagination becomes reality. It's the 2nd comeback and we still have problems defining what this means, is it a switch of dimensions? in the way the imagination is their new reality? or the imagination materializes in the reality, merging with it? It's probably both but let's say for this time that their new reality is the imagination, the MIXX. They open their eyes here, they are awake here, they are living here, as far as they keep being in trance in the other (real) reality. Love room In the Wisdom room walls are blue and cloudy to represent the sky, three esoteric symbols appear on a wall, one has an eye surrounded by the Venus symbol, one represents the Sun and an overlapping circles symbol behind Lily's head possibly a Flower Of Life. The girls are surrounded by candles and flying rocks which represent wisdom of course. Their pathway and facade are golden (yellow). The Love room has twilight colors, an orange tree and a heart with spikes and 6 surrounding stars. Here apples are floating around the room, symbol of love. The flaming heart with spikes is with no doubt a reference to the Sacred heart of Jesus. This catholic symbol represents the boundless ardent love for mankind and the spikes represent the passion of Christ. The six stars can easily represent Nmixx but the meaning behind that could be deeper. But why twilight? Well, in the greek mythology there is a golden apple garden protected by Hesperides, a group of nymphs protect in the farthest west where the sun sets. Its pathway is red. The Courage room is totally blue with curtains made of strings. On the wall a symbol of the moon and its phases. White roses are floating around. Those white flowers represent innocence, purity, which have little to do with courage though. Same goes for the moon which means in most of the cultures change, the cycle of life. Its pathway is blue. Courage room In TWWOO (movie) a Red Brick Road appears but it's never said where it leads, a Blue Brick Road is never mentioned neither in the book. I will not take in account other canon sequels of TWWOO because I doubt SQU4D themselves went that far. Anyway, blue and red lands in TWWOO exist. NMIXX reach the garden and the MIXX, very similar to the sky islands in O.O, starts expanding as they imagine. They are now happy together in this dreamy and quirky world. Why is Jiwoo so extra? She's the first to open her eyes, she rapidly looks towards Lily, she taps her on the shoulder and at the end she's the only one laughing hard. Knowing her Famous Cutscene, this is pretty suspicious. Their outfit must be mentioned: they all wear the same dress, which can be the uniform the cult has to wear in those rituals. But why are we talking about cult stuff, are we in Midsommar? Weren't we on a cruise toward a new world? On a DICE photocard of Kyujin there was this phrase Don't you stop a shining whisper, and now she's being whispered in ear by Haewon. Now we know those phrases are spoilers for the next comebacks. Deductions
Mid ConclusionsThis first [THEORY] part was all about the Sweet Oasis shop, what they did to Nswers and Nmixx. The next [THEORY] post will discuss how they saved Nswers and opened their eyes in MIXX.TWWOO will remain as a reference concept since they based the enemy of NMIXX on the Wizard of Oz himself. This is not the end! a part 2 is already written and scheduled to be posted in a few days, the right amount for you lore enthusiasts to study well, let the knowledge solidify and prepare for the next course. Stay tuned!!! I hope you enjoyed this era until this moment, see you in the comments and in a few days again. Bye! NewJeans' OMG |
2023.04.01 17:33 thr000wawayk Adult life is kicking my ass and the suicidal ideation is coming back
I (21F) had a rough childhood. The details of it are too long to get into, but I was getting beat by my dad into my 20’s if that’s any indication. I didn’t know if there was a better world on the outside of it, but I saved up all my money to move to Europe and go to university. This simultaneously ended the long distance phase of my relationship with a boyfriend in that same country. On the way to that journey some pretty interesting things happened to me. I interned at a top tech company, I started life in the country I chose, and I got close with my roommates.
My boyfriend who’s 2 years older was able to get well paying jobs and it all culminated to him purchasing a condo this month. Because of this, we spend a lot more time together. I also however, am struggling to find a job, trying to learn the language, paid my mom a portion of my student loans to help her as she said she was struggling and then found out she did shit like get monthly payments for e-bikes and a timeshare.
Simultaneously I lost my job after 3 shifts. The woman they assigned to train me was a ukranian woman who didn’t speak English and was… impatient to put it conservatively. I have 475 euros in my bank account, and a small part time job that pays me 400 a month.
Now that my boyfriend has a place I’ve been here more often. We typically get in a couple stupid spats a day about who’s vacuuming correctly or potentially a careless thing I did. Today I accidentally mixed dirty laundry and clean laundry. Something I’ve done before. Two days ago while trying to get groceries out the car, I opened the door too wide and hit the neighbors car. Took some paint off my boyfriend’s door. At this point I’m just feeling like a liability. If we have a couple incidents a day I won’t blame him when he leaves. They don’t last for more than a minute or two but I’m prepared for him to get weary. We’ve talked a lot about me moving in but I don’t really know anymore if I’m capable.
This is my first year living on my own and at this point I don’t know if I can make it the way I have been. I can’t move home as my life with my parents and family was horrible and I swore to myself I’d get this degree but I don’t know if I’ll succeed at anything I set out to do at this rate.
If I can’t I genuinely feel I might just kill myself. I worked hard to be with my boyfriend after 2 years long distance and worked hard to get into university here. I just don’t know anymore. I don’t feel secure.
submitted by thr000wawayk to TrueOffMyChest [link] [comments]
My boyfriend who’s 2 years older was able to get well paying jobs and it all culminated to him purchasing a condo this month. Because of this, we spend a lot more time together. I also however, am struggling to find a job, trying to learn the language, paid my mom a portion of my student loans to help her as she said she was struggling and then found out she did shit like get monthly payments for e-bikes and a timeshare.
Simultaneously I lost my job after 3 shifts. The woman they assigned to train me was a ukranian woman who didn’t speak English and was… impatient to put it conservatively. I have 475 euros in my bank account, and a small part time job that pays me 400 a month.
Now that my boyfriend has a place I’ve been here more often. We typically get in a couple stupid spats a day about who’s vacuuming correctly or potentially a careless thing I did. Today I accidentally mixed dirty laundry and clean laundry. Something I’ve done before. Two days ago while trying to get groceries out the car, I opened the door too wide and hit the neighbors car. Took some paint off my boyfriend’s door. At this point I’m just feeling like a liability. If we have a couple incidents a day I won’t blame him when he leaves. They don’t last for more than a minute or two but I’m prepared for him to get weary. We’ve talked a lot about me moving in but I don’t really know anymore if I’m capable.
This is my first year living on my own and at this point I don’t know if I can make it the way I have been. I can’t move home as my life with my parents and family was horrible and I swore to myself I’d get this degree but I don’t know if I’ll succeed at anything I set out to do at this rate.
If I can’t I genuinely feel I might just kill myself. I worked hard to be with my boyfriend after 2 years long distance and worked hard to get into university here. I just don’t know anymore. I don’t feel secure.
2023.04.01 17:14 hallach_halil Halil's top 10 edge defenders of the 2023 NFL Draft:
 | submitted by hallach_halil to NFL_Draft [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/hbha5vhkbara1.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=d0ec1434879d20a97c12a552bbddead5d24c5c3a This officially marks the halfway point of our positional draft rankings. We’ve already broken down the top running backs, linebackers, wide receivers, cornerbacks and most recently offensive tackles. So now it’s time to look at this massive group of edge defenders, which is a much better way to classify these prospects, rather than calling them 4-3 defensive ends or 3-4 outside linebackers. Due to how hybrid NFL fronts are these days anyway, I like to lump those together, although I will mention their best schematic fit a few times and talk about how versatile coaches can be in how they deploy these guys. We have a consensus top-three overall prospect headlining this group, but I don’t believe EDGE2 is too far behind him, especially when you look at what the NFL typically values. After that, I kind of look at the class having three tiers, where the first one consists of four names, who I all have first-round grades on, then the three guys in the next group I think deserve top-50 consideration and after that, there’s at least another four I consider day-two prospect. However, even beyond that point, there are several intriguing players, who I think can have legitimate roles at the next level, with varying degrees of physical upside compared to pro-readiness. Just to clarify – Northwestern’s Adetomiwa Adebawore, Auburn’s Colby Wooden and Michigan’s Mike Morris I have all labelled as “IDL”. That list will come out next week. For now, let’s get into this edge class: https://preview.redd.it/ayqtb0gmbara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a3f926c59264bf4ec01bf719bc4d63c1d65ca4ac 1. Will Anderson Jr., Alabama6’4”, 245 pounds; JR The number two defensive end recruit in 2020, Anderson had a phenomenal debut season with the Crimson Tide, racking up 52 total tackles, 10.5 of those for loss, seven sacks and a forced fumble, but he completely blew it out of the water as a sophomore, with 31(!) TFLs and 17.5 sacks, along with three passes batted down. He couldn’t quite live up to those insane numbers last year (17 TFLs and ten sacks), but did have a pick-six and made his presence felt, making him a first-team All-American and the SEC’s Defensive Player of the Year for back-to-back seasons. + Flashed to me more and more, as I was watching offensive prospects against Alabama for the 2021 draft already, when he was just a true freshman + Plays with a ton of energy and urgency + Has a lot of power in his lower body and consistently plays with great leverage + If you leave tight-ends trying to seal him on the backside, Anderson will routinely ride that guy into the scrum and negate cutback lanes, if not tackle him and the ball-carrier together + Will gladly accelerate into pulling guards and build up the force to create knock-back at contact + Displays the short-area twitch and range as a tackler to take care of both options on zone-read plays + Wasn’t asked to do drop into coverage a whole lot, but looks comfortable peeling off and take away throws to the flats, plus he had a very impressive on-field workout at the combine, where his change-of-direction and ability to flip his hips looked better than a bunch of the legit off-ball LBs + Not at all somebody who’ll take plays off or take a break on the sideline to stay fresh, as he averaged 55.6 snaps per game over these last two years + Has that cat-like quickness off the snap and immediately stresses the foot speed of offensive tackles in their pass sets + Off that, he has the flexibility to dip underneath the blocker’s reach or go through that guy if he sells out for speed and gets too tall + Highly advanced with his hand-usage for such a young player, creating leverage by riding them upwards or opening up the edges of the blockers’ frame by swatting them away + Excels at converting speed to power, while regularly lifting up the outside arms of tackles and ripping underneath it, to create a mor direct angle for himself + Alabama had him in some tighter alignments and even some 4i/5-techniques, where he realized when tackles slid too far outside as he widened his angle, that he could attack the wrist of their inside hand and take the direct angle towards the quarterback + Really understands how to finish his rushes and not just force quarterbacks to move off the spot + Relentless in his effort to continue to free himself from blocks and chase around quarterbacks deep into plays + Gladly crashes into the shoulder of a guard and opens up a lane for one of the D-tackles or linebackers to loop around + Had a historically great sophomore season statistically, when he led college football with 81 pressures and had four sacks in the Mississippi State game alone, when he just went bonkers – Last season the production was down a little bit, but you routinely saw offenses roll away from Anderson and try to find ways to mostly negate his impact by play-design – Still has some room to fill out his frame and become a more physically overwhelming player – As good as he is at defeating the hands of blockers, he would benefit from not even letting them get on him or just dictating reps by being the one to establish first meaningful contact – There’s definitely to diversify this pass-rush arsenal, largely relying on the burst off the ball and ability to transfer that momentum into power, along with pushing arms off himself, rather than actually setting up more detailed moves – As great as Anderson has been for the Crimson Tide, the one skill he still needs to add is that knack for knocking the ball out of the hands of the quarterback, as he has totaled just one forced fumble through his first two seasons First and foremost, I don’t look at Anderson as a generational type of prospect, since that’s a term that gets overused anyway. That doesn’t mean he’s not great. He’s still top-three on the my board and should in no way make it out of the first five packs. I just don’t look at his as this crazy freak athlete. Still, the burst and quicks off the ball, the leverage he plays in the run game, how good he already is with his hands and his effort are all top-tier. To me he’s a true 3-4 outside linebacker with room to take on more duties in zone coverage and has room to become a more diverse pass-rusher. He may not become a perennial All-Pro, but he will be a strong run defender day one and should deliver double-digit sacks in more years five of his rookie contract than not. Unless you’re desperate for a quarterback, I just don’t believe there’s a way you’ll regret picking him anywhere. He can be the face and leader of your defense for the next decade. https://preview.redd.it/8wg8dhshcara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a4ce3918061fc5cfe7615af667ae8f38940afc0f 2. Tyree Wilson, Texas Tech6’6”, 275 pounds; RS SR A top-500 overall recruit in 2018 for Texas A&M, Wilson was a small part of the rotation with the Aggies for two years (22 tackles, 4.5 for loss, three sacks), before transferring in-state to the Big 12. In his first season as a full-time starter with the Red Raiders, he recorded seven sacks and 13.5 tackles for loss (2021). This past season he was a second-team All-American, thanks to 61(!) tackles, 14 for loss, seven sacks, a fumble forced and recovered each. + This guy has an insane combination of length (35 and 5/8-inch arms) and power, with the want to just blow into people in front of him + Largely played the 5-technique in three-man fronts for TTU, along with moving out over the tight-end or sliding inside depending on the side, which didn’t necessarily lend itself to major production + You routinely see him drive offensive linemen backwards near the point of attack or squeeze them into the action from the backside + When he’s actually lined up on the outside-shoulder of tackles and presses off with that inside arm to set the edge, it’s beautiful + Takes tight-end assigned with blocking him as a personal vendetta, literally pan-caking some guys who try to seal him away from the action + Even on combo-blocks, if he attacks the chest of the guy across from him, he manages to not open up legit lanes inside of him + You combine that with his explosiveness in short areas and he can crash through the reach of blockers on slants, to be disruptive and get initial contact on the back + The fact he only registered 38 total tackles in ’21 is laughable, considering how many stops he forced, by just riding somebody into the ball-carrier and made that guy stop his feet behind the line of scrimmage – Last year that number expectedly jumped up to 61, despite only playing ten games + Watching last year’s game against TCU, he was single-handedly destroying run schemes and actually knock a likely top-50 pick at guard in Steve Avila back at contact on a kick-out block, in order to get the TFL + When Wilson sells out for the bull-rush, he can ride tackles or guards back into the quarterback’s lap in devastating fashion, especially from tilted alignments + You see him lift up large men and then show the quick burst to get around those guys before they can get those foot back on the ground – He straight-up trucked the Houston left tackle in 2021 + However, what’s most impressive about him rushing the passer is his uncanny ability to re-gain his balance, even when caught in odd positions and seemingly about to fall to the turf + He can win around the corner with a downward chop and flatten better than many speed-based outside rushers + Plus, he’s so damn long that you constantly see him be able to swipe away the reach of blockers + For a 275-pound man, his ability to add a little shake and jump inside of tackles when rushing from wider alignments is pretty freaky + Truly has the versatility to rush basically anywhere from a zero- to a wide-nine technique – Frequently was reduced inside over guards on passing downs, where he displayed his incredible balance to somehow stay on his feet as he’s getting banged around + The Red Raiders also used him on some delayed stunts up the A-gap, where his closing burst to the QB really popped, Yet he will also gladly do the dirty work and launch himself into interior guys and enable somebody else to come free + Recorded a career-best 50 pressures on just 261 pass-rushing snaps, with a 22.3% pass-rush win rate – His block-recognition is very basic and you regularly see him just bang into bodies (Once I even saw him almost follow a tight-end on a drag route, since that’s who he initially put his hands on, even though that clearly wasn’t his responsibility) – In particular, recognizing angular blocks and anchoring against them is something he needs to learn, in order to not make the job on the second level harder – Other than slicing through one shoulder of his man or going for the straight-up bull-rush, there’s not much of a pass-rush plan to speak of – Simply has to do a better job of attacking one half of the blocker when he isn’t tasked with some kind of slant/stunt – And while it helps him fight off blocks, he doesn’t utilize his length pro-actively to avoid having hands land inside his chest I’m kind of glad that Wilson didn’t participate in the combine events, because I didn’t want to seem like a prisoner of the moment and pump him potentially the first defensive player of the board, in the way it happened with eventual top draft pick Travon Walker going to Jacksonville last year. I was much more in with him coming out of the summer, considering he was in so much more productive and I felt his impact much more regularly, despite playing a similar role as Walker did at Georgia. The violence he plays the game with combined with the alien-like physical skill-set is just crazy to watch. His ability to recognize plays, the hand-placement and how he sets up his rush-moves all need work, but you can’t teach what he brings to the table and I already saw him beat up offensive lineman I know will play for NFL teams, even if you think the Big-12 competition isn’t up-to-par. I’d have no problem with him being drafted from number five onwards. My only question is why it hasn’t totally clicked for him yet as a fifth-year senior. https://preview.redd.it/itlxanhocara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eb66c3a916219ea37391e1b806bcbecb7c22ac38 3. Myles Murphy, Clemson6’5”, 270 pounds; JR The number one defensive end and a top-10 overall recruit in 2020, Murphy recorded 12 sacks, 25 tackles for loss and five forced fumbles through his first two years with the Tigers. This past season, he was basically right on par with his sophomore numbers (11 TFLs, 6.5 sacks, two passes batted down and 1 FF), but was recognized as first-team All-ACC for it, after being second-team the year prior. + Such a physical, disciplined run defender, who can re-set the line of scrimmage against drive blocks from tackles + You see him sort of shock blockers at contact with the force in his hands, especially at the point of attack + Attaches to the hip of the tackle blocking away from him on like wide zone runs and flatten once he sees an opportunity to run down the ball-carrier + Refuses to be sealed on the backside by tight-ends, crashing hrough that C-gap and chases after the ball, or even if by alignment he can’t quite gain that inside lane, at least rides those guys down the line and at times into the lap of RBs looking to cut back + Happily throws his body around and creates traffic, crashing into pulling linemen, slipping blocks and starting piles, to where the ball-carrier has to stop and redirect + Can just jolt up tight-ends/H-backs sifting across the formation + Realizes when there are opportunities to work across the tackle’s face and create an angle towards the ball + When nobody puts a hand on Murphy early on, his short-area explosion to attack down the line and create traffic in the backfield, as offenses try to read out something and/or have a player coming across the formation, pops off the screen + Displays great awareness for screen passes and routinely chases down the designated target + Heavily asked to read-and-react, rather than being allowed to shoot upfield, Yet even when his approach didn’t lend itself to getting home to the QB, Murphy consistently condensed the pocket off the edge and took away space to move around back there + When he was able to just attack from these wider, at times tilted alignments and explode off the snap, his get-off and ability to put tackles on skates when they had to overcommit to his speed was eye-opening + Has a nasty long-arm to punish blockers trying to give him ground and sit back on him + Plus, once he feels those guys lean into him, he can quickly swat their hands away and corner around, or take the inside path if he initially connects with the inside pec of the tackle + Displays a strong push-pull maneuver to open up a path for himself to get to the quarterback, along with the flexibility to come through cleanly – He did so when reduced inside on passing downs as well + Quick to crash through the inside shoulder with the rip if tackles overset him or if he feels them lose balance/the inside foot is lifted off the ground + Continues to work as a pass-rusher and eventually finds a way to get through – Has an impressive secondary burst when he seems to get into stalemates momentarily and then swats away the hands of the blocker + His closing burst when used as a looper across multiple gaps and that ability to curve his path towards the QB are pretty scary + On 687 pass-rushing snaps these last two years, along with the 14.5 sacks, Murphy had another 61 other pressures – Overall I’d like to see Murphy be more pro-active with defeating the hands of blockers initially and taking control of snaps himself, where his freakishly small 8 and ½-inch hands may come into play – There’s definitely room for improvement in terms of bringing his hips through contact, locking out and keeping his head up, to track the ball-carrier – Doesn’t quite have the speed to win cleanly around the corner with third and fourth step, or hit ghost moves to great effect – Allows athletic tackles to land punches inside his chest too regularly and force stymie his rush – Notre Dame sophomore Joe Alt was able to negate him pretty well – His high-end reps are freaky, but they’re too few and far between Looking at the Clemson defense as a whole, I feel like everybody’s 2021 tape was significantly better than what they put out there this past season, when they switched away from DC Brent Venables – and that’s especially true for Murphy. You still saw the talent flash and some plays that make you think he can be a top-ten pick, but you’d like to see more consistency from a three-year player. There are definitely some technical things that he needs to really work and he won’t be putting up big sack numbers with clean wins early on. Nevertheless, the explosion off the ball, the force he can unleash on blockers and how he keeps working, there’s a lot of upside. If Murphy learns how to maximize his power and then can work off that, if he takes of reps early on, he can be a problem to deal with off the edge. https://preview.redd.it/a661tmo0dara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9962e1acb97608737174ea2be41028fa097e6e93 4. Lukas Van Ness, Iowa6’5”, 265 pounds; RS SO Just outside the top-1000 overall recruits in 2020, Van Ness redshirted his first year at Iowa, before taking over as an instant impact player for the Hawkeyes over the following two seasons, racking up 19 sacks and 15 tackles for loss- Last season he was recognized as second-team All-Big Ten for his efforts and his name has been rising throughout the pre-draft process. + Has great length and moves freakishly well for his size, with a six-pack around 275 pounds + This kid plays like a bulldog foaming at the move, with that antsy ankle twitch as he’s waiting for the ball to be snapped + Regularly lands his hands inside the chest of the tackle on run-downs and locks out, to keep them right there at the spot and not allow movement on drive blocks + Whilst tussling with blockers, you see him squeeze down lanes and somehow find his way to the ball + Once he’s taken care of his original assignment, he can then rip through or yank them to the side to get in on the action + There are snaps on tape, where Van Ness is lined up in the A-gap and holds a combo between the center and the guard coming in on angle right there in place, dropping the backside knee and anchoring like a 300+ pounder + You see him slip through when combo-blocked by the tackle and tight-end on multiple occasions + Constantly chases after the ball, even when it gets outside the numbers and gets involved on some tackles 10+ yards downfield + Was regularly lined up inside on passing downs but also at times in short-yardage, because of his explosiveness off the ball allowing him to challenge guys up the field and then the quick-twitch he has to get around them – Iowa put him in the A-gap late against Michigan whilst being down by two touchdowns for example, because of the havoc he could create penetrating into the backfield + Van Ness’ natural power frequently challenges tackles in their pass-sets when he digs into the frame and makes them walk backwards + When he comes up out of four-point stances especially, how low he initiates contact and can roll his hips to create that momentum is pretty nuts + You see him run the loop at times whilst long-arming the tackle and basically circling around them, without being taken off track at all + Has some eye-opening reps, where he converts speed to power and puts tackles on skates if not place them on their butts on his way to the quarterback + Off that, by riding guys past the QB, he can open up a direct path for himself, as well as give a little stutter-step and knife inside of blockers to great effect + The natural force this guy presents makes him a great asset as a set-up man on different twists and games up front + Regularly fights off blocks late and has the secondary burst to run down scrambling quarterbacks + His ability to take a couple of steps, plant hard off the outside foot and falling off into the hook zones is pretty darn impressive + Recorded 46 total pressures across 271 pass-rush snaps as a second-year player, working against a pretty strong slate of tackles in the Big Ten + At the combine, he ran a 4.58 in the 40 at 272 pounds and finished second among edge defenders in the three-cone (7.02) and short-shuttle (4.32) – Looks like a big kid out there too often, where he ends up on the turf – Needs to play with his eyes more so – Van Ness is a very good run-defender because of his ability to own his space, but he’s not actively reading and countering the first steps of blockers – Has to do a better job of rushing half the man and timing up his hand-swipes for some clean wins around the edge – His pass-rush arsenal is super narrow right now and he starts so many reps by just going all-out for the two-hand bullrush instead of setting up stuff throughout games – Played 50+ snap in just one career game and we’ll need to see if he can bring it quite the same way with a larger workload For anybody familiar with how the Iowa program hands out playing time, understanding that seniors are awarded starts, the fact that Van Ness never was part of the eleven out there for the first snap isn’t an issue, since he did play the most altogether and was clearly the “dude” up front. The natural leverage he plays with and the power he can unleash on blockers is rare. Now, he’s far from a finished product, lacking any finesse or planning to his rushes, while having room to improve in terms of pro-actively responding to run concepts. If he learns to attack half the man more regularly, the production will come at the next level. I also believe he has the body to put on 20 pounds or so and become a very effective base D-end in a 3-4 system, with alignment versatility on obvious passing downs. https://preview.redd.it/lk0wfof5dara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f1cc152a62d2e236b7f3619b16d041dbe48595d5 5. B.J. Ojulari, LSU6’3”, 245 pounds; JR A top-100 overall recruit in 2020, the brother of now-Giant outside linebacker Azeez Ojulari flashed as a true freshman, before really jumping onto the scene in year two, recording 54 tackles, 12 for loss and seven sacks. Even though B.J.’s numbers were slightly down last year (8.5 TFLs and 5.5 sacks), the SEC recognized him as first-team all-conference, in part because he also had a fumble forced and recovered each. + Saw a similarly diverse usage as another comparable player profile in Jaguars first-round pick K’Lavon Chaisson did at LSU + Brings tremendously long arms at 34 and ¼ inches, to keep blockers away from his frame + Has clearly worked on his balance/sturdiness to not get blown out of his space against combos with the tight-end and just being caught in traffic + I like his leverage coming out of a three-point stance and you rarely see tight-ends create vertical push against him + Can take that one step underneath tackles who set too wide on him on outside zone and similar concepts and follow through with those lanky limbs, to flash in the B-gap + Tightly attaches to the hip of the tackle zone-blocking away from him whilst keeping his shoulders square to redirect if necessary, as well as potentially slipping the TE sifting across the formation + Packs a sudden dip of the outside shoulder to slip pullers who try to kick him out, in order to create traffic in the backfield + Displays the agility to shuffle with the mesh point on zone read plays and then quick burst to corral the quarterback pulling the ball + Realizes when facing play-action, so he can quickly swat away the hands of the tackle and dip underneath + Was frequently dropped out into the flats or hooks, where he displays active eyes and sees crossers coming his way, At times he also matched RBs coming out of the backfield and + The most technically advanced pass-rusher in this class, with pretty much all the clubs in his bag and the mindfulness to find what fits and how to stack them moves on top of each other + Takes those long strides up the arc and really bend low to the ground, to give a small area to strike at for tackles + Packs a wicked ghost move, where he can really drop his shoulders and slip underneath the reach of tackles, at times also as a follow-up move to actually win the corner, as blockers are about to get him past the point he can flatten + Yet while he can threaten with his speed, he understands how to pace his rushes accordingly + Has some legit wiggle, combined with the length to create issues for tackles by being able to go either way + Last season he was able to string together stutters, jab-steps, cross-overs and more together, to keep the guy across from him guessing + When he uses the long-arm, barely anybody can beat his reach, plus the he’s so quick to get to his second hand-combat + A few times you see him stab at the inside shoulder of tackles and follow through with the outside arm to open up a path for him up the B-gap or win cleanly on up-and-unders + Looks more like a wide receiver when he plants off the outside foot on stunts and loops across the formation, where he’ll flash up the QB’s face in a hurry + Racked up 103 combined pressures over his past two seasons (701 pass-rushing snaps) with the Tigers, according to PFF – Lacks the frame to really set the tone and own his space at the point of attack against drive blocks in the run game, too often offering space by going around his man when facing powerful run blockers – Away from the action, he gets too close to his blocker and loses vision of the backfield at times, allowing runners to cut all the way back and defeat contain that way – Once blockers are able to get a tight grip on him, Ojulari doesn’t have the violent hands to knock the arms away and disengage – Does show a promising long-arm, but is still learning how to effectively convert speed to power, lacking that thump at contact to really make an impact – You see him get guided past the quarterback or his rush stall when he takes a more direct angle, as tackles are able to cut off his path Ojulari a bendy, undersized pass-rusher in his brother Azeez of, who has that lanky kind of build but has learned to play above his weight-class. The one thing I worry about – he’s a 3-4 outside linebacker only and if you make him this hybrid defender, with no defined role early on – like similar players have been treated in the past – that may hold up his development. Either way, he should be an effective designated pass-rusher right away, because of how far advanced he already is at setting up and executing a variety of moves in effective fashion. He may never be dominant at the point of attack in the run game, but he’s gotten a lot better at defending his space and can create negative plays in that regard. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Ojulari turned into the second-most productive edge rusher from this draft. And he should absolutely be a first-round pick. https://preview.redd.it/1lf1uf38dara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a70e0d38d6058c9521006e18566f002510fea940 6. Nolan Smith, Georgia6’3”, 235 pounds; SR The number one overall recruit in the 2019 class, ahead of even Kayvon Thibodeaux, Smith was a rotational player over his first two seasons with the Bulldogs, recording 39 tackles total and 2.5 sacks in each of them, before taking over a starting spot in ’21 for that dominant Georgia defense. He racked up 53 total tackles, eight of those for loss, 4.5 sacks, three forced fumbles and an interception. A torn pec limited Smith to just eight games this past season, yet he still recorded seven TFLs and three sacks across those, and helped set up his team for winning back-to-back national championships. + Plays the game with a team-first mindset, an incredible level of toughness and the admiration of all his teammates + Displays great speed out of his stance, to where at times when he’s left unblocked on the backside of RPOs and quarterbacks try to throw the backside bubble alert, he can almost bat down the pass + Maximizes his length and transitions his weight into blocks, when trying to set the edge + Very good ab grabbing cloth and pulling guys off himself after fitting his hands initially + Can toss TEs to the outside and step right into the C-gap to wrap up ball-carriers on off-tackle runs + Georgia put an extra defender outside of Smith at times, where he was in like a 7-/8-alignment, yet was able to point the inside foot horizontally and slant across the tackle’s face almost cleanly, to track down the back running the other way, covering an insane amount of grass in a couple of steps + Doesn’t shy away from taking the direct angle and crashing into pulling guards, who have nearly 100 pounds of weight on him at times, where it can actually be those guys taking the worse of the collision + Such a hyper-active player overall, who tries to find ways to affect plays and being involved on 53 total tackles in 2021 across 499 snaps is indicative of that – His effort and speed in pursuit are excellent + Has elite acceleration off the ball with great snap anticipation in designated passing situations + Packs a nice two-handed side-swipe, to defeat the hands of tackles and flatten towards the quarterback + Has shown he can win inside and out, at times tilting his rush on purpose, to give himself that two-way go, plus then he can hit those sudden shoulder dips to reduce the surface area for blockers + The same thing I mentioned with slants towards the B-gap, how much ground he covers laterally with that one step to slice inside on up-and-unders really stands out at times + Shows the quick change-of-direction to get back to his contain responsibility, after initially trying to find a path inside as a rusher + Displays that reactionary suddenness to take the B-gap when he realizes it’s open, at times when the O-line is busy with selling the run-fake + While the sample size was obviously a lot smaller for Smith, his 18.6% pressure-per-rush was actually the best of his career (19 on 102 pass-rush snaps) and PFF awarded him with a pass-rush win rate of 25.5% + Shows good patience as a zone-dropper and seems to understand where his eyes should be, and has a couple of snaps where he carries the tight-end towards the safety + Put up the second-fastest 40 time among edge defenders in combine history (4.39), with an insane 1.52 ten-yard split – His size measurables are all in the bottom-17th percentile, playing at a slender 235 pounds (especially at the core and hips), with arms below 33 inches and just nine-inch hands – Could still do a better job of getting his base pointed towards where the ball is coming from and shifting his weight into the blocker – Too narrow in his two-point stances and necessitates a slight step backwards when trying to get off the ball – Lacks a little bit of that power element, to take advantage of tackles getting tall and onto their heels, by converting his speed into force – Overall his pass-rush toolbox could still expand, heavily relying on his speed to win around the edge and not showing reliable counters off it This is one of the best pure football players in this entire draft. When you come to Georgia, you’re not going to blow away people with insane sack production, because you rarely are allowed to just line up wide and attack up the field. I don’t believe he’s going to be a legit alpha pass-rusher, but he’ll give you everything he has throwing his body around in traffic, he’ll make some key plays when peeled off in coverage and he’s going to be a leader for your defense vocally as well as by example. I’m interested to see if he can become more impactful when he does transition to power, because going forward and laterally, he can certainly stress tackles, but it’s that threat of being able to go through those guys that he hasn’t really shown yet. https://preview.redd.it/q6ehhl7cdara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bc72765638f374ab845a16cd1267352b8cb93772 7. Keion White, Georgia Tech6’4”, 280 pounds; RS SR Just a two-star recruit at tight-end for Old Dominion back in 2017, White spent year on the offensive side of the ball before converting to the defensive line. In his one season at D-end with the Monarchs, he put up 62 total tackles, 19 of those for loss, 3.5 sacks and ones across the board for INT, fumbles forced and recovered. He nearly lost two full seasons after that, due to COVID cancelling ODU’s year and then after transferring to Georgia Tech, he missed the first eight of 12 games in 2021 with an offseason injury. In ’22 he put up 54 tackles, 14 for loss and a career-best 7.5 sacks. + Even without having seen White at full health for two years, Bruce Feldman put White at number 20 of his “Freaks List”, with 21 MPH of GPS-tracked time, along with some other impressive testing numbers + Would be a freakish mover for a true edge, but has the natural strength and plenty of experience lining up inside + With nearly 34-inch arms, he has the length and power to lock out and keep vision through blockers in the run game, plus then he has the ankle flexibility to circle around the guy in front of him, when he has a chance to get a hand on the ball-carrier + You see White get banged from the side by the angular man of combo blocks and somehow maintain his balance, to not get uprooted from his area + He has some plays against the run, where he can penetrate and just blown things up blindly, as well as completely cave in the backside when guys just try to seal him off + Georgia Tech would slant him across the tackle’s face and he would be able to track down the ball-carrier going away from him on wide zone at times + Not somebody you can expect to create movement against on kick-out or sift blocks, at best ending in stalemates and mostly he slips off those + You see White pull blockers off himself late and get involved on tackles frequently + Features some ridiculous change-of-direction, which shows up against bootlegs, reverses, etc. + If you leave him unblocked as the read-man on invert veer for example, with how quickly White can blow up the mesh point, there are times where neither option is able to really accelerate once they commit to having the ball + When he can rush from wide alignment and has that runway off the ball, you can see the acceleration he has up the arc + Offers impressive flexibility in his lower half, to drop his knees and ankles, in order to corner his rushes, plus even when he starts to stumble at times, he can continue on that arc + It’s pretty crazy at times when White is long-arming a tackle and it seems he’s about to go past the QB, but somehow he’s able to circle back around with his feet way outside of his frame and he finds a way to get there + Flashes a rapid spin move to free himself off contact late, at times after bouncing around bodies + Delivers significant knock-back when banging into linemen who try to give him ground and you see some flashes, when he does convert speed-power-power that really pop off the screen + When you cut down the length White has to cover, slanting into the A-gap, he can blow through one shoulder of the guard or center and create pressure right up the QB’s face in a hurry + White’s skill-set can be used to set up front game, where he can crash across gaps on stunts, where he pulls bodies with him and frees the lane for a guy from the other side or the second level to loop around + Recorded 30 hurries and four more QB hits along with his 7.5 sacks last season across 276 pass-rushing snaps + The Yellowjackets peeled him off the edge as a hook or flat dropper every once in a while, even though he doesn’t seem super comfortable with it right now, just because he didn’t really do it at Old Dominion – At this point certainly lacks an awareness for run schemes and needs to learn countering the first steps of the O-line – Too often you see blockers be able to get the outside foot around him and seal him on outside zone or reach-block on perimeter-oriented plays, as well as him trying to jump inside and allowing opportunities to get out to the edge – Has to work on his hand-placement when trying to free himself of the reach of blockers and dictate rushes – Doesn’t currently rush with a legit plan or sets up his moves accordingly, winning largely based on his natural talent and not threatening blockers laterally – Will already turn 25 right around the end of the 2023 NFL regular season and it has yet to really click for him You just don’t see many 280+ pound humans move at the pace White can. The size-speed-power combination is off the charts and some flashes of that natural talent are blinding. Unfortunately, considering he’s currently projected to potentially go late in the first round to a contender, he may end up celebrating his 25th birthday as his team makes the playoffs and he’s still looked at as more of a project, who can’t be a major contributor at that stage. The ability to diagnose plays and pro-actively use his hands to take control display aren’t there yet. That doesn’t mean at all that he won’t get there one day – you just need to know what you’re investing into. The potential is right up there with anybody outside the top-three for me at least and I think he actually be best suited playing head-up or inside the tackle on early downs, where he can doesn’t have to worry about as much going on around him, in favor of just crashing into blockers and create problems. https://preview.redd.it/roniy6zgdara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f391784bce2c748bba7424827d92054ee11572c4 8. Will McDonald IV, Iowa State6’4”, 240 pounds; RS SR The rest of the analysis can be found here! https://preview.redd.it/3wpwv6eqdara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=01281b366d9633d5b92ae272e7ea45e67cf569b2 9. Felix Anudike-Uzomah, Kansas State6’3”, 255 pounds; JR https://preview.redd.it/lzwetacxdara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=df786dee1946a86833543efe8637fea5dab43216 10. Tuli Tuipulotu, USC6’4”, 275 pounds; JR Just missed the cut:https://preview.redd.it/rd7nxqc1eara1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=036a722ab38ab8454f5c6e6bbe396966aff22f90 Derick Hall, Auburn6’3”, 250 pounds; SR Isaiah Foskey, Notre Dame6’5”, 265 pounds; SR Nick Herbig, Wisconsin6’2”, 235 pounds; JR The next few names:K.J. Henry (Clemson), Byron Young (Tennessee), Andre Carter II (Army), Isaiah McGuire (Missouri), Nick Hampton (Appalachian State), Yaya Diaby (Louisville), Zach Harrison (Ohio State), Jose Ramirez (Eastern Michigan) & Dylan Horton (TCU) If you enjoyed this breakdown, please consider checking out the original piece and feel free to check out all my other video content here! Twitter: @ halilsfbtalk Instagram: @ halilsrealfootballtalk |
2023.04.01 17:06 pdfodol What I bought, ought, and brought on my international trip
tl;dr at bottom for top 3 of each category
I took a 16 day European trip with my wife from U.S.A through England, France, and Germany and back to U.S. But in Germany we had to stay longer as strikes cancelled my plane and could not get out till days later.
What I bought
just before the trip. While I’m not happy that I bought so much for a trip. A lot came in very handy and some obviously won’t have to purchase again.
These are listed in most useful at top to least useful at the bottom.
These are things that I should buy or consider on a future trip.
Obviously what I packed for the trip but the list below does not include what I bought just before the trip. These are in order of most used at the beginning to the least used at the end.
Electronics
My Top 3 of bought, ought, and brought.
Bought: #1 Vessie Move, #2 rain jacket, #5 Universal plug adapter
Ought: #17 travel insurance, #18 Vessi for my wife, #19 waterproof packable backpack for wife.
Brought: #28 power banks, #48 zipper sweater, #36 ear plugs
submitted by pdfodol to TravelHacks [link] [comments]
I took a 16 day European trip with my wife from U.S.A through England, France, and Germany and back to U.S. But in Germany we had to stay longer as strikes cancelled my plane and could not get out till days later.
What I bought
just before the trip. While I’m not happy that I bought so much for a trip. A lot came in very handy and some obviously won’t have to purchase again.
These are listed in most useful at top to least useful at the bottom.
- Vessi Everyday Moves shoes. Man for me personally I can’t give these shoes enough credit. They saved my feet so much through all the walking we did. It makes me rethink my work shoes. After work the bottom of my feet will be sore and kill me. But these shoes I never had feet that hurt, yes, my calves did, but not my feet. Also my feet stayed dry as it rained for about 14 of the 16 days we originally planned. Link: https://vessi.com/products/mens-everyday-move-onyx-black
- Rain jacket. Yeah I never had a rain jacket. Sure I have umbrella’s but where I live it only rains maybe 100 days of the year. So I just need an umbrella. The rain jacket was so nice to have as I didn’t have to juggle an umbrella in crowded touristy areas. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CPLW4L3?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- Airalo Esim. I bought a regional Airalo esim that worked all over Europe for the 16 days a 5gb is perfect as long as your not doing a lot of wireless calling or video calling. It was easy to install and I have done it for Mexico before and will continue to buy in the future. Link: https://www.airalo.com
- 1 Lightweight water repellent travel chino pants. I wear blue jeans all the time and have for the past 28 years. But I needed something more lightweight as I was trying to keep 15lbs and under in my carryon for Singapore air. These pants are amazing. The are comfy, a tad stretchy, quick drying, water repellent, and have zippers on the back pockets that have a small flap over them to better conceal and another “hidden” pocket on the side of the leg. I am definitely buying more. Link: https://a.co/d/bRfsuBN
- A universal plug adapter. Was definitely useful as it had 4 usb plugs + type C and works for US, EU, UK, and AUS. Would be nice to have a second one. Maybe more of a dumb one in case of electronics malfunction. link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095BJFBW9?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- A 10L sling bag for personal item. I wanted a personal item bag that would fit on pretty much every single airline as best as I could. My bag is 9.84” x 3.9” x 15.4”. I like the sling as I could easily swing it around to my chest and easily grab my water bottle for quick drinks. The second best part of the size was it fit under the small space under the seat of the ICE train as well. The other nice part was when I was carrying it around in the Louvre my shoulder was getting sore and I can easily change the strap to go over a different shoulder. I like this bag. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GSTM8G8?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- A luggage scale. While I didn’t have to do carryon only. I wanted to and the airline Singapore like a few others restrict a carryon to 15lbs. So I bought one and knew exactly how much my carryon and personal item weighed. I also brought it with me on the trip. So when I fly back I can rearrange things that I bought (I also packed an extra bag in my carryon as well). Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0822GDHYJ?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- A new sleep mask. So I have bought a couple before hand but never found one that I really liked. The first one was a sleep mask with a outward mold for the eyes so your eyelashes/eyelids don’t tough the mask. But the straps on these would hurt my ears. So I bought one that was super soft and fully covered ears as well but it had no eye mold. Then I found one that has the eye mold and the strap doesn’t hurt my ears. So I’m happy with this one. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R558RLV?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- Selfie stick/tripod. I bought this specifically for Paris and England. So my wife and I could take shots of us in front of major tourist attractions without handing our phone to a stranger and then them running off with it. Definitely came in handy. If you are anti selfie stick bring/buy a disposable camera just for the photos that you want taken of you in front of an attraction. This way they are less likely to steal it. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K5QVJV3?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- Laundry detergent paper sheets. Yes this is laundry detergent that is like a paper sheet. You just tear off how much you need depending on if a light load or normal. This was nice as some of the Airbnb or the hotel we stayed at either had no laundry soap or only gave us 1. Some of the washers in Europe were so small that we had to do multiple loads (even though we didn’t bring much). So this was nice to have. There are many it there this is just the one we bought because of a sale. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B81BPZNS?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- A small clear travel pouch for toiletries. I wanted a small pouch just for some long haul plane essentials. In this pouch I had a toothbrush, toothpaste, floss picks, moisturizer, deodorant, ear plugs, travel size body wash, and a couple cough drops (if needed). I was trying to find a particular size and I looked up clear pencil case pouches and found this park of four. I like it because it fits in my personal bag right next to my Beats over the ear headphones and my wife’s Vera Bradley tech case perfectly (I measured Before hand) Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098NVNWYX?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- Compression socks. Don’t know if they were necessary but my wife needed some as she is pregnant and the doctor suggested them. So we found a pack of six and wore them on our long haul red eye flight. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F1LJPNN?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- 1 ft 90° iPhone cords. Usually when I go on vacation I bring some 6’ iPhone cords so we can charge our phones by the bedside. But they can be too long when we’re out day tripping. So I wanted some short cords. Also my wife makes her fanny pack as her purse and there is a slot for her phone. But the phone won’t fit in with a regular cord as it has to be angled. So I got some 90° ones and have been really nice. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0916VZJJ1?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- Travel camping clothesline. I bought this in case if the Airbnb’s didn’t have a drying rack as some didn’t have dryers or the drying racks were not substantial enough. We used it once maybe twice. Was fine except a bit awkward to adhere it to something in an apartment that won’t break what it’s attached to because of the weight. We’ll see if this gets used again. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074QKYGTT?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- Apple air tag. These were a Christmas gift, but we wanted some for travel in case we had to check our carryon luggage or if we brought checked luggage on this European trip (we didn’t check bags). But I put one in my carryon and one in my wifes. I slid mine in a zipper pocket in the back of my carryon to better conceal it. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0932QJ2JZ?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- Travel floss pick case. Okay so these were the least necessary item on the list. It was just nice to have a case for floss picks and not having them jumbled in a bag. But hey it’s getting used and I can put more in. If I want to put the ones in there that I regularly buy and not the ones designed for the case. I may need to sand down a piece of plastic inside the case to fit my usual generic ones. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PV3539R?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
These are things that I should buy or consider on a future trip.
- Travel insurance. For international trips and to cover what my travel credit card may not.
- Vessi shoes for my wife. Her bottom of feet were hurting even with new gel insoles. My feet did not hurt with the Vessi’s I bought. Will be buying her a pair.
- A packable waterproof backpack for my wife. We found out my wife’s current daypack is not waterproof.
- A new raincoat for my wife that actually is waterproof
- A waterproof backpack cover. Like a shower cap but for your luggage. We found out my wife’s packable day pack was not waterproof. Which got me thinking what if we were caught in the rain with our carryons. How would or clothes be protected if it was a hard rain and can’t get under shelter. Think I will be buying these and keep them with the bags. Link: https://a.co/d/5KyYFx7
- A second but maybe “dumb” universal plug adapter. Link: https://a.co/d/gKDA6r8
- An umbrella. We didn’t pack this due to constraints with weight and space. Though we did have rain jackets, until my wife’s jacket started ripping. We bought an umbrella in Paris.
- Portable fan. While it was 40°F - 50°F in all the places we went. Most didn’t have air conditioning and it was still pretty warm at night where you toss and turn a couple times. Would have been nice to have.
- More cough drops. I only brought just one single one as an emergency. Well near the end of our trip my wife needed some and 1 was not enough. Maybe I would do 4 but no more. We did buy a pack when we could.
- More blister bandaids. We had 4 of them and used them up already. I would like to try a rule of 2 per person plus 2 more.
- My quick dry towel which is a swim chamois. I had bought this for my Kauai trip as I like to wear rash guards and bathing suits so I can jump in the water any time and easily dry off. This little towel while small really soaks up water! But since it rained like 14 days of this trip it would have been nice to have so that I could wipe the water off a bench and sit down to enjoy a pastry with my wife or just sit and not in water. What actually I did was took off my rain jacket and laid it on the bench for my wife to sit. While I got a bit cold. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0742R14NQ?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
Obviously what I packed for the trip but the list below does not include what I bought just before the trip. These are in order of most used at the beginning to the least used at the end.
Electronics
- 2 power banks + cords. We use the smaller form factor power bank when out and about, but will use the bigger one on flights or at the airport. Bigger power bank Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MBQPV91?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share smaller power bank link (does not come with wall adapter): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PXMF52C?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- Three 6’ iphone cords (two for phones, 1 extra for TV adapter)
- 1 iPhone to TV adapter + hdmi cable. I like having this so I can watch my favorite shows from my phone to the TV. Why not just a chromecast? Well I can’t chromecast my downloaded videos if wifi is spotty to the chromecast. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009WHV3BM?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- Phone holder for flights. This was a nice upgrade from the flat foldable but only sits on a flat surface phone holder. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07T8KL6C6?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- Headphone splitter + 3.5mm to lightning cable converter plus 2 old wired apple earbuds. This way my wife and I can watch videos together that I downloaded on my phone.
- Old beats noise cancelling over the ear headphones.
- Travel power strip. This was a Christmas gift a while ago. Good if an outlet is to far from the bed or not enough wall outlets. Link: https://a.co/d/4tGSVkT
- Refillable water bottle. I have a Travel Kodi cup that is similar to a Yeti.
- Ear plugs (for the plane, but good thing I had them for an Airbnb in London as you could hear the road noise a bit to well.
- Charles Schwab debit card. I got this because it refunds ATM fees worldwide and it’s another account that I can keep extra money in and if it ever gets compromised my main account at a different bank won’t be messed with.
- A packable day backpack. This has been nice to take on day trips when I don’t want to unpack my personal item bag to go somewhere or to have another bag if we bought to much. Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D373JGV?ref=ppx\_pop\_mob\_ap\_share
- 2 travel Kleenex packs. Runny noses and more.
- Nail trimmer and clipper kit. Came in handy for when having a hang nail or a nail broke even though I clipped them before the trip.
- Ibuprofen + melatonin. Many countries you cannot get ibuprofen over the counter. So good to bring your own. I always carry any pills in their original box (I do not like putting them in these travel pill cases.
- Swimsuit (use for Baden Baden spa)
- Moisturizing cream. For the plane trip with the dry air and during my trip if needed. Maybe get a solid lotion bar like this. So it does not count against liquids. Link: https://a.co/d/gHBFySV
- Face mask. Just in case if I cough on the plane or a confined transportation, or if some business still requires it.
- 6 underwear and socks
- 4 t-shirts
- 3 pants
- 1 zipper sweater (It’s all about layers and getting those layers off easily.
- 2 pajamas
- 1 long sleeve shirt
- 1 windpants/ lounge pants (did not use)
My Top 3 of bought, ought, and brought.
Bought: #1 Vessie Move, #2 rain jacket, #5 Universal plug adapter
Ought: #17 travel insurance, #18 Vessi for my wife, #19 waterproof packable backpack for wife.
Brought: #28 power banks, #48 zipper sweater, #36 ear plugs
2023.04.01 16:59 GasStationJack We don't celebrate AFD at the gas station (ALL THE UPDATES)
April 1st. 1:45 AM
Holy crap, this is nuts!
Okay, try and stay with me here. I’ve only got like fifteen minutes before the next spirit shows up, and I really want to get this all down before it’s too late.
So, just like Jerry--I mean, the spirit, or god, or whatever it was--said: At one in the morning, I got a special visitor at the gas station.
This one didn’t appear in a cloud of fog. There was no crack of lightning or flickering lights. On the hour, I heard that same noise--the mystery chime. Just once this time. One in the morning.
It came in the form of an aura. A blinding white light. If it were outside, you could probably notice it from orbit. But it was contained here in the gas station, and it was coming entirely from the bathroom. I could only see the radiance of it poking out from the space below the door, but I could feel the brightness, like it was burning a piece of my soul. I’m sure if I’d looked directly at it, my eyes would have burned out of my sockets. It was only there for a few seconds. Then, I heard the toilet flush. And the light was no more.
When the bathroom door opened, I was not prepared for who I was about to see. The man--the spirit--who emerged looked young. He was clean shaven, with red hair on top. He wore a tan overcoat on top of a black half-turtleneck. When he saw me, he smirked.
“Rick Astley?” I asked, barely able to contain my surprise.
“No,” he said in a British accent. “I am the spirit of April Fool’s past.”
“Long past?”
“No. Your past. Assuming you are…” he pulled a notepad out of his coat pocket and flipped it open to one of the pages. “...Jack.”
“That’s what the name tag says. May I be so bold as to inquire what business brings you here?”
“Your welfare, Jack.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
The ginger spirit crossed the room, doing an unnecessary dance as he moved. He clapped his hands, shimmied, and then he was standing on the other side of the counter. He reached out to me and said, “Rise, mortal. Walk with me.”
“I’m actually good here.”
He put his hands on the counter and leaned in close, close enough that I could clearly hear him as he whispered, “I’m a spirit. I come from a realm beyond your comprehension. Do you really think I came all the way here to give you the option to say you’re ‘good here’?”
He had a point.
“Okay then,” I said, standing. “How does this work?”
“Take my hand. We are going on a little adventure, to another time and place. We are going somewhere you’ve seen before. And we are going to find the moment you lost faith, the moment you abandoned the magic of the holiday season.”
I took his hand. A spring-loaded buzzer hidden in his palm let out a mechanical whirrr as it simulated a low-voltage electrical shock.
“Got ya!” he laughed. (Not surprisingly, he was the only one laughing.) I waited patiently for him to remove the gimmicky toy, then let him take my hand again. “Alright, now on to business. I want you to think back. Remember the moment you want to forget the most… remember the worst April Fool’s Day of your life.”
“Well, this ought to be fun,” I thought aloud.
Right then, the gas station disappeared. The spirit and I were suspended in nothingness. The world, the universe, and even our bodies had ceased to be… And just as suddenly, it all came crashing back. Only now, we were someplace else.
The walls were wood panels covered in posters and work orders tacked wherever space allowed. A man in the corner sat behind a cheap plastic desk that looked like it had been picked up from the side of the road. He was a heavy set guy, sweating through his button-up shirt despite the box fan blowing air at his face from a couple feet away. It was much more humid in this place. The smell of cigarette smoke wasn’t enough to cover the pungent odor of dead fish that filled the air. Flies buzzed past us as I looked at the spirit. He looked at me and smiled.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Do not worry,” the spirit said. “Nobody here can see you. They are but shadows; shadows of what has been.”
“Yeah, I get that. But I have no idea where we are.”
“Does this not look familiar to you?” the spirit asked. His inflection made it seem like this was a rhetorical question, but the look in his eyes told me he was desperately hoping I would make the connection soon.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m lost.”
The Rick Astley spirit retrieved his notepad, thumbed through the pages, and stared at something written there. He poked out his bottom lip and furrowed his brow.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
His face shot up. “What? Oh, no, no, nothing’s wrong. It’s just… Are you sure you don’t know this place?”
“Why would I lie?”
“So, you’re positive this isn’t your foster home from when you were in sixth grade?”
I laughed. “Look around. Does this look like a foster home? I think it’s some kind of business.” I walked up to the wall and inspected the work orders that adorned it: tiny, yellowing sheets of paper with information typed onto it in cryptic shorthand. Nothing any average person would understand, except for the stamps on each that said either “closed” or “open.”
“BUS HOUSE. 3 JOB. 2 OUT.” - Closed.
“VIP DEN. 5 JOB. 5 OUT.” - Closed.
“UNDERGROUND VB. 5 JOB. ALL DEAD.” - Open.
“I’m sorry,” the spirit said. “This is actually quite embarrassing. In all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never taken someone to the wrong past before. Here, let’s return and start over.”
The phone on the desk rang. We watched as the heavy set man answered it. In a gruff voice, he said, “Yeah? … What the hell does he want? … Okay, send him in.”
The spirit reached for me, but I pulled back. “Wait,” I said. “I want to see where this is going.”
“It’s not a television show, Jack. This is someone’s worst memory. It’s way better than TV.”
Right then, the door opened. I instantly recognized the young man who entered. He wasn’t in sixth grade, but there was absolutely no denying that this was a younger me.
“What the fuck?” I said.
The look on the spirit’s face (or, I guess, Rick Astley’s face) told me that he was genuinely confused by this turn of events.
The younger me appeared to be in his late teens, perhaps early twenties. He had short hair, camo pants, and a black long-sleeved shirt. He must have been sweating his ass off in this weather, but he kept a professional look on his face and approached the man in the corner.
“Mr. Leechman. My name is-”
“I know who you are.” The heavy man leaned back in his chair and managed to look down his nose at the younger me while looking up at him. “You’re Tommy’s kid brother.”
“Yes sir.”
“Look, it’s a damn shame what happened to him. They ever find the guy who hit his car?”
“No sir.”
“Damn shame I tell ya. You know what, they outta make it to where a hit-and-run is an instant death penalty. But you know those pussies in the government would never do something like that. No, that would make too much sense.”
“I suppose so.”
The spirit and I closed in on these shadows from the past.
“Listen,” the heavy guy continued. I could see new sweat forming on his face. “I sent Tommy’s last paycheck to his address.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“What is it, then?”
“Before the accident… Tommy, he told me he might be able to get me a job. And, well, with the funeral and everything, money is getting tight. I was wondering, I mean… I know I can’t take on his role right away, but I am a quick learner. I’m not afraid to work hard and get dirty and-”
The heavy man scooted his seat back, scraping it loudly against the floor. “Hold on!” he said. “What exactly did Tommy tell you about this job?”
“I know all about exterminating. Tommy showed me how to use the different poisons. I helped him fumigate our aunt’s condo when she got fleas. I know how to-”
“Listen, Kid,” the heavy man stood up. “I ain’t gonna bullshit you. This job requires a certain skill set, and you ain’t got it.”
“Now wait a second, Tommy said-”
“Tommy’s dead, Kid. It don’t matter what he said.”
The younger me screamed, “IT MATTERS TO ME!”
Silence filled the room. A long, unnatural silence. The two men stood in place, unmoving, unblinking, unspeaking. It felt like the most intense stare down in history. But then I noticed the black fly--swollen and fat--stuck in place in midair right in front of my face. It wasn’t just the scream that brought the moment to a screeching halt. No, time itself had literally stopped.
“Enough!” The spirit screamed the word like it was poison he wanted out of his mouth. “Cut the crap, Jack. How are you doing this? What is this place?”
I poked the suspended fly, but it remained frozen. Something told me that a Mac truck wouldn’t have been able to pull it out of place. The force of time, of what was already written, was not something mortals could ever hope to overcome.
I said the only thing I could think of. “I have no idea what’s going on here. But I can tell you one thing. This never happened.”
“Do you think I’m playing around here?” asked the spirit dressed like 80’s-musician-turned-meme Rick Astley. “I’ll have you know I take this job very seriously.”
“I’m sure you do.”
He ran a hand through his voluminous red hair and took a deep breath. Then, he circled the room twice, stopped, and smiled. “I got it! This isn’t your past at all.”
“Well, yeah. Obvs.”
“No, in a sense, it is. But this isn’t your your past.”
“I don’t follow.”
“There’s a terminus point in the finite curve near the gas station. We must have accidentally fallen through a gap. This is a remainder in a galactic equation that should have been rounded off. I’ve heard of this happening before, but…” The look on my face must have told him he needed to dumb it down just a bit further. “Okay, this isn’t the correct universe. We’re in a version of your past that could have, but never did occur. You see, it might sound complicated to you, but-”
“Nah, I get it. Multiverses are all the rage in movies and television right now. I’ve already had it explained to me a thousand times.”
“Yes, but have you ever had it explained in terms of updog?”
“What’s ‘updog’?”
“Not much! What’s up with you?!” The spirit laughed joyously, then snapped his fingers, bringing the whole scene back to life. The fly buzzed past my face, I watched as it landed in a web in the corner of the ceiling where it promptly tangled itself up before being set upon by a shiny black spider.
“So, we should probably go back home, right? Considering this isn’t even a real memory?”
The spirit held up a finger and repeated my words back to me, “Hold on, hold on. I want to see where this is going.”
The door opened without a knock, and a tough-looking guy took a step into the room. As the younger me turned to face him, I registered the momentary realization on his face. He knew he messed up. He pushed too hard. And now he was about to get bounced. This guy looked like he was no stranger to busting heads. Scars on his face, ears misshapen like he had a history of amateur boxing, hands at his sides clenched into fists… and a deepset scowl that looked like it was the only expression he was capable of making.
“It’s okay, Bruno,” the heavy set man said calmly. “Our guest was just about to leave.”
“We got a problem, Boss.” Bruno’s voice sounded like a bag of rocks. (What does a bag of rocks sound like, you might ask. Well, Bruno’s voice, of course. I don’t know how else to put it. You had to be there. It was deeply unsettling.)
Bruno took a step to the side. The younger me understood without being told. It was time for him (or me?) to leave. He did so without another word. I went ahead and started to follow, but the spirit caught my arm.
“Hold up,” he said.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’ve sat through enough boring childhood memories that I know when something juicy is about to happen, and that’s most certainly not going to be with the young man walking away. He’s a B story, at best. But look at these two! They’re like cartoons! So well-realized! What’s their deal? Who is Bruno? What do they do here?”
The younger me was already out the door. Bruno closed it behind him.
“Shouldn’t we follow… you know… me?”
“Don’t be so selfish,” the spirit said. “After all these countless eons, I deserve to go off the rails just a little, don’t I? As a treat! Just a little treat!”
I didn’t have time to answer before the heavy man began speaking. “What’s the problem?”
Bruno answered, “He’s here.”
“Already?!”
“Plane must have landed early. He wants to start the job by sundown.”
“Shit! How many does he need?”
“He’s calling this a seven job. Guzman and Florida are on call. They can get here in ten minutes.”
“What does that bring us to?”
“Five. Six if I go, too. He’s not gonna be happy if we can’t provide him with the team he paid for.”
“You think I don’t know that?! Shit!”
“I got some mercs on their way out of East City, but they won’t be here before day’s end.”
“You know he isn’t a patient man.”
“What about him?” Bruno pointed at the door with his thumb. “Tommy’s kid brother, I mean. With me and Guzman on the team, all we need are warm bodies to pad the numbers. Why not give the kid a shot?”
“He doesn’t know what we do here.”
“Really? You mean Tommy never… You mean he thinks Tommy died in a car accident?”
Drops of sweat were dripping from the boss’s face onto his desk. He closed his eyes and made a pained expression, like someone was crushing him from the inside. “Alright.” With that word, he fell into his chair. “Get the kid back in here. I’ll call Guzman and Florida.”
“What do you want me to tell him?”
“Tell him only what he needs to know.”
The two of them froze in place. Once again, time had stopped.
The spirit let out a wild laugh that morphed into the words, “Ooooh hoo hoo, this is exciting, isn’t it? What do you think is happening? What are mercs? Do you think he meant mercenaries? I genuinely don’t know where this is going! Uncertainty is such a beautiful thing, isn’t it?”
“Well, I am glad you’re enjoying yourself. But I don’t share your sense of curiosity or adventure, and I genuinely don’t see why I have to be here for any of this. How about you stay and keep doing this, and I go back to the gas station?”
“That’s not how it works, Jack. Your mind is powering this entire expedition. Come on, let’s see what happens next.” I didn’t mean to groan as audibly as I did, but the spirit didn’t take offense. He just smiled, retrieved his notepad, and continued, “I’ll make a deal with you. Let’s stick with this thread. The other option is we untangle this time knot and go visit your foster home that year your brothers stole your pants and locked you outside for the day. Remember? The police were called.”
“Why would you-”
“I’ll just write up a report saying we went to the correct memory. The visits to the past are mostly just a formality anyway. The only spirit journey that ever matters is the spirit of April Fools yet to come. I’m only here to familiarize you with the concept. So what do you say? Care to go off page for a little longer?”
I threw up my hands. “I mean, you’re the supernatural entity here. I’m just the schmuck who’s along for the ride.”
“That’s the spirit!” he said with a punch-inviting grin. “Pun intended!” He raised his hand, and with a snap of his finger, the world shifted.
The air was suddenly hotter. The lights dimmer. I shook my head until my bearings returned, slowly, lazily… And then I saw them. Bruno stood near a set of lockers, the younger me sat on a bench next to him. It was a small room, stuffy, like we were underground.
“I know this is a lot to process,” Bruno said.
The younger me didn’t seem phased. “No, I always knew Tommy was into something. He had too much money for an exterminator. I just thought… you know, maybe it was drugs.”
Bruno opened a locker and began pulling out gear: tactical boots, kevlar vest, ammo pouch… “These were his,” he said. “They should fit close enough for one job. Impress the big guy, and we’ll bring you back for the next one.”
“Who is he?”
“Listen, Kid. You gotta get those questions out of your system before you see him. This guy is the real deal, but if he catches a whiff that you’re an amateur, he might call the job on the spot. What you do here tonight is simple, shut the fuck up, follow my lead. I tell you to jump, jump. I tell you to shoot, shoot. I tell you to run…” He pulled an automatic rifle from the locker next. The younger me took it without hesitation.
“Anything else I should know?”
“Someone might try to test you. If anybody tells you that you remind them of someone they knew in the army, that’s code to make sure you’re on the same team. They tell you that, you respond, ‘I need a drink.’ You got that?”
The younger me nodded.
“Ready?”
That voice almost made me jump. I’d forgotten the spirit was still here with me.
“Ready for what?” I asked.
“Well, this part feels like filler, doesn't it? Let’s get to the action already, okay?” He pointed at the door behind me.
“It’s your show.”
He reached for the handle, and despite his early proclamation that these were merely shadows of things that once were, he succeeded in interacting with it. It turned. The door swung open. He stepped through, and I followed.
Now, on the other side, we were transported to a different time and place--neither very far from the previous time or place. We were outside now. Mosquitos buzzed in the humid air as the sun set behind a cloudy horizon. There were seven men lined up, standing at attention next to a black SUV. Bruno took one end, the younger me on the other. They were all armed to the teeth. The five in the middle stood tall, battle-worn, confident. Everything about them exaggerated the contrast from me--the runt on the end pretending he knew what he was in for.
They weren’t alone, though. There was another man with them. The big guy himself. He had dark skin and a thick, black beard. A mountain of a man, full of muscle, exuding an air of sheer power. If it came down to a fair fight between him and the seven men at attention, well, I sure wouldn’t bet against him.
When he spoke, the hairs on my neck bristled. “Alright, ladies, I see some new faces here so I’m gonna keep this quick. My name is Benjamin, and I’m not going to carry any of you. Tonight, we have a single target. Weaknesses are standard, which means bullets will do the trick. Stay off the coms unless there’s a surprise. But there won’t be any surprises. Any questions?”
Bruno was the only one who dared speak. “What’s the target look like?”
“Unclear, but we ought to know it when we see it. At last report, it took the appearance of a human: park ranger named Preston Creekbaum. Six two, brown hair, medium build. But that was over twelve hours ago, so the target will not look like that anymore. Any other questions?” There were none. At least, none spoken. “Good. Load up.”
The scene froze in time. “What the fuck is happening?” the spirit asked. There was far less excitement in his voice this time around. “This thread, it… continues for a while. How is that possible? A pocket reality like this should have fallen apart after a few minutes, but the story goes on and on… I can see a long road out in front of us, but it shouldn’t be possible.” For an interdimensional cosmic spirit, he sure sounded rattled by the unknown. (Kinda ironic, really, when you think about it.)
“So, what now?” I asked.
The spirit checked its watch. “We’re actually running out of time.”
“How? How could we possibly be running out of time?”
"I only get an hour with you. I need to finish this up before the Spirit of April Fool’s Day Present gets his turn. And that guy gets pissed when he has to wait.”
“That only raises further questions.”
“Do you mind if we step on the gas a little with this story?” I shrugged. He smiled. “Good. Fast forward mode activated. And do me a favor, keep your eyes open for a hammerfore.”
“What’s a hammerfore?” I asked.
“Driving nails!” he laughed obnoxiously. With a snap of his fingers, we were transported to a clearing in the middle of a tangled forest. The mercs were gathered in a circle around a bloated corpse in a ranger’s uniform.
“That’s the guy, right?” one of the men said.
“STOP!” screamed Benjamin as he ran towards the group. “Get away from it before-”
One of the eyes on the corpse exploded to the sound of a wet pop, and a skinny, pink, serpentine creature--about the size of a garden snake--leapt out of the body. It latched onto Bruno’s face. He screamed and tried to grab the creature, but it was too fast. Bruno fell to his knees as the pink snake burrowed through his skull.
Benjamin shoved one of the mercs out of the way, bellowed “STAY BACK,” then unloaded a magazine of high caliber rifle bullets into Bruno’s dead body, tearing it to shreds. When the gun was empty and the shooting had stopped, the men looked at one another.
One of them ignored the big guy’s previous command and stepped over to the wet, meaty puddle of bones and viscera that had once been Bruno and said, “Holy shit. What was that thi-”
The snake erupted out of the gore with the sound of a loud “SCREEEE!!!” It hit the man who stood too close square in the neck, then disappeared under his skin. His face went ghost-white as blood spurted from the hole, but he didn’t fall down. His eyes glazed over, and he turned to face the others in short, stiff steps.
Benjamin hollered as he loaded a new magazine into his gun, “SHOOT IT! IT’S CONTROLLING HIM! IT’S-” The man with the snake in his neck lifted his rifle and pointed at the other mercs. Shadows of the past or not, I instinctively hit the ground before the next round of bullets began flying.
The sudden silence wasn’t the most unnerving thing that had just happened, but it was up there. When I opened my eyes, I could see bullets trapped in place in mid-air.
“Holy flipping shit,” said the spirit. “This is not what I was expecting.” He checked his watch again. “We’re almost done here, but I gotta see where this ends.”
He snapped his fingers, and we were gone. The muddy earth below me turned hard and cold. The air turned stale. It took me a second longer to realize that we were indoors. I rolled over and got to my feet. This was a small cabin, hardly more than a shed. Benjamin sat near the fireplace, a roaring blaze keeping the cramped room entirely too hot. He held a blade over the flames, the tip glowing red hot.
There was only one other person from this timezone in the room: the younger me. He was covered in blood, but he was breathing. It didn’t take a detective to figure out the rest of the crew wasn’t as lucky. His shoulder wept a steady stream of blood onto the cabin floor until Benjamin pressed the heated blade into place, cauterizing the wound to the sound of a blood-curdling scream.
“Good work today, Kid,” Benjamin said, handing over a flask. The younger me took and drank freely. “Sorry about your crew.”
Eventually, the younger me managed to get out the words, “It’s okay.”
The big guy pulled two cigars from his jacket, leaned over, and lit them in the fire. He clamped the first between his teeth, then handed the other to the wounded kid on the floor. The younger me didn’t hesitate to take the celebratory smoke.
“The thing is,” Benjamin said, pausing to take a puff. “This didn’t turn out the way any of us expected. Men died who didn’t need to. Wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. It was the creature’s fault.” The younger me dropped his cigar and flask, then began to violently cough. His face turned bright red as the coughing became shallower and shallower. He struggled to breathe, fighting the constriction in his neck, but it was no use. He struggled in silence, desperate for air, for one more breath, but none would come. “Yeah, it was the creature’s fault. But I told your boss, I told him what I needed. I needed a seven man crew. I needed seven pros, but he only gave me six. I saw Bruno watching you. His head wasn’t in the game, because he was babysitting when he should have been paying attention. Now, I ain’t sayin’ that’s the reason they’re all dead. I just want you to understand why I can’t let you walk out of this one.”
His words didn’t matter. The young man on the floor couldn’t hear him any more. Benjamin picked up the flask, made sure the top was on, then stuffed it into his pocket. “Sorry, Kid. But it is what it is.”
“Wait a second,” the spirit said loudly. “So… you died?! What the hell?”
Benjamin pulled a cellular phone from his pocket. I took a step closer. Close enough to see the number he dialed, but it was just a saved contact named “HQ.”
“Benjamin,” he said into the receiver. “Password Echo, Alpha-”
He froze with his mouth still open, tongue on his teeth, staring straight ahead.
“Well, this has been interesting, to say the least.” I was getting so tired of this spirit. At least I didn’t have to deal with him for very much longer. “But it’s time for us to get back to your shitty real life as a boring gas station attendant. Shall we?”
He snapped his fingers, but this time nothing happened. The world didn’t vanish. We stayed put. Exactly like I wanted.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in my most innocent voice.
“Nothing,” he lied. “Sometimes, it takes a couple of snaps for it to work,” he lied again.
He snapped, and the world stayed as it was. He could snap again, and again, but as long as I had my wave disruptor on, nothing would ever change. I removed the device from my pocket. The spirit looked at it and laughed. “Nice camera phone,” he said. “But I’m afraid you can’t take any pictures here. These memories are only in your mind. They don’t show up on film and cannot be recorded.”
I adjusted the settings on the disruptor to only cancel out the S wave frequencies. To the spirit, it probably looked like I was texting. He continued to smile at me nervously, until I executed the new routine, causing the memory to resume from right where we left off.
“-Tango-nine-seven-nine-two-Victor.” The spirit jumped as Benjamin resumed talking. The big guy stood and started for the door. “Status report. Target has been neutralized. Local team was compromised. Witnesses terminated. Request immediate evac.” He stepped out into the cold night air and slammed the door shut behind him so hard dust fell from the ceiling.
“This is, unusual, but not unheard of,” the spirit assured me. “I have everything under control.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think you do.”
Right then, I woke up, gasping for air. Not the me that was standing, talking to the spirit. The me on the ground. I gagged and fought and strained against the poison constricting my muscles. I fought hard against whatever the hell that asshole Benjamin had put in that flask. A morsel of air broke through the floodgates, and that’s when I knew I wasn’t about to die. I tried to scream, but it wasn’t time for that yet. My heart pounded and my lungs begged; every part of me wanted nothing more than to stay alive. It was nothing but luck and sheer force of will that saved me that day, as I struggled against death long enough to take another breath. And then another.
The spirit shouted, “Holy fuck! You survived!”
“Of course I survived,” I said. “How else would I have been alive for us to meet?”
The spirit shook his head, like he thought I just wasn’t getting it. “But this didn’t happen! This is an alternate timeline, one where you never worked at the gas station, but instead became a monster hunter or something. It’s not like-”
This time, when the words froze midsentence, it wasn’t from any kind of magic or parascience. It was because I rolled up my sleeve to show the spirit how wrong he was. The gears turned quickly once he saw the old scar on my shoulder. The burn from when Benjamin cauterized my wound all those years ago. The spirit couldn’t have known exactly what was happening, but he was smart enough to try and run.
He went for the cabin door. I stayed close behind. We passed through together, and into another scene from my memory.
It was only four years later, but I had gone from a young man to a world-weary soldier. I was sitting in the recruitment office of The Institute. The commander stood behind the egghead scientists. They’d listened to my entire story without judgment--the reason for my medical discharge. And they told me something I’d never heard before. They believed me. And they wanted to help me.
The spirit hooked a right and went for the closest door. If this were really The Institute, it would have led to a balcony overseeing the compound’s hundred acre grounds, but it wasn’t. Instead, it took us to another memory:
A classroom. Only two people in this memory. My commander pointed at the picture on the projection that took up the entire wall. It was a photo of a young man sitting behind a cash register.
“Jack Townsend,” my commander said. “You’ll find his dossier to be interesting reading. You need to study him. Imitate. Do what he does, live how he lives, think how he thinks. The spirits must believe that you are him.”
The spirit spun on his heels. There were no other exits in this room. I had him cornered. It was time to go on the offensive.
Finally.
I wrapped my fingers into the silver-plated knuckles and delivered a clean haymaker across his temple. If the spirit had been human, it would have put him in a coma at the least. Thank God the nerds were right; silver was enough to put him down. He moaned up at me from the floor, telling me that he wouldn’t be a problem any more.
Good, I thought to myself. I have a lot more work left to do tonight.
I reset the disruptor to the preprogrammed settings. Next stop, April Fool’s Day. One year ago. I grabbed the spirit by his leg and dragged him back through the doorway.
We were transported to the special species containment unit in the sub-basement of the Liscov Institute. There were two other people in this negatively-charged Ferriday cage built from nonmagnetic titanium and silver. They couldn’t see us, but they knew we were here.
My commander looked at the me from one year ago, then nodded. The old me programmed the disruptor with our exact coordinates. I’d been studying the tech for the greater part of the last decade, and was intimately familiar with all of its settings.
“Now,” my commander said, “explain this to me again.”
“In one year’s time,” the old me elaborated, “I’ll return to this point in the timeline and drop off the anomaly. It will remain trapped inside these walls for exactly one year. After the temporal energy has worn off, we open the cage, and he is powerless to escape.”
The spirit sat up. “What?! No, you can’t leave me here for an entire year! I’ll go mad with boredom!”
“I'm sorry,” I lied.
“Wait!” he shouted, tears in his eyes. “At least let me have a henway before you go!”
“What’s a henway?” I asked.
He laughed maniacally and answered, “About three pounds!”
I pressed the button on my device, transferring me back to the original timeline.
Anyway, I’m sorry. I know that was a slog to read, but part of my job infiltrating this place was acting just like Jack, and for some reason Jack writes down every single thing that happens to him in this stupid laptop. I had to keep up appearances, didn’t I?
Oh, I just heard that weird chime again. Twice this time. 2:00 already. I guess that means I gotta go.
Like I said… this is nuts!
April 1st, 2:10 AM
I’m just going to go ahead and say it: That was fun.
It’s not every day a decade-long plan to apprehend multi-dimensional anomalies pans out so successfully. In fact, it was such a success, I don’t even need to continue writing. I’m done. So why do I continue? I suppose this is my victory lap. Or maybe I spent so much time trying to get inside of Jack’s head that I felt a certain sense of duty to finish his blog entry.
Don’t worry, by the way. If you actually liked that guy for some reason, he’s still alive. He’s just tied up and gagged in the storage room, which is a lot more than I can say for the spirit of April Fool’s Day Present.
She appeared right on time, wearing a dress made of red and yellow flowers. She didn’t try for the same grand entrance as her predecessor. And if it weren’t for the fact that her head was actually that of a white deer’s skull-complete with empty eye sockets and a missing lower jaw--I would have categorized her entrance as being perfectly ordinary.
I don’t know how she talked with that setup, but she managed just fine. I let her go through the same movements as the other anomalies. The whole, “You don’t look like I was expecting,” was starting to get really old, but whatever. She eventually got to the point, took my hand, and told me we were going on a journey to see the ones I cared about most on this April Fool’s Day. She thought that meant we’d arrive at Jack’s home, where his sick roommate was adorning the house with birthday decorations and burning a cake (yeah, I read the whole file). But instead, we went to exactly where the ones I cared about the most--my brothers in arms at The Institute--were waiting.
We arrived inside the containment field in the sub-basement of the institute. The spirit didn’t even get another word out before the shackles went into place. As the guards took her away for processing and testing, I approached my commander.
He smiled at me and asked, “Did you get what you were after?”
“Benjamin’s passcode: Echo, alpha, tango, nine, seven, nine, two, victor.”
“Excellent work.”
Together, we approached the Ferriday cage. I scanned my fingerprint on the monitor, opening the cage for the first time in one year. We found him slumped in the corner, muttering to himself over and over… “Never gonna give you up…” etc. etc.
Alright boys and girls, that’s about the last you’ll ever hear from me. If we never see each other again, it will be too soon. Remember, watch your back and never trust anyone.
-Special Agent Brick Roscoe,
Liscov Institute for Societal Advancement
April 1st, 2:58 AM
Hey guys. It’s Jack here. The real Jack, I mean.
Yeah, I just finished reading all of that crap the other guy wrote. I hope none of you fell for it. His attempts at imitating me were embarrassing, to say the least. I mean, voice like a bag of rocks? What does that even mean?
I digress…
Mr. Roscoe jumped me last night and stuffed me in the closet with nothing to keep myself occupied except a bunch of audiobooks. I’m not entirely upset that I missed the spirits, but I’d be lying if I said the agent’s account didn’t make me feel sorry for the poor ghosts.
Oh shit, that means I’ve got to explain to the next one why their friends are MIA. Crap. This really is the stupidest day of the entire year, isn’t it? God I wish I could have stayed home.
Oh great. I just heard three chimes.
Wish me luck.
April 1st, 3:30 AM
They were actually pretty cool about it. But I had to fill out some paperwork--an incident report or something. Then they gave me a voucher for two free spirit journeys in the future, which I am almost positive I won’t use. The spirit of April Fool’s Yet to Come did show me the future, though, and it was exactly what I expected.
Death and destruction, wanton violence, polar ice caps melting, all the puppies dying, Brendan Fraser getting his Oscar revoked… you know, the worst of the worst, and it’s all somehow going to be my fault.
I asked the spirit (who, by the way, looked nothing like the grim reaper--no, it actually took the form of a little girl in a sun dress carrying a six-foot scythe) if these images were the shadows of things that will be, or if they were the shadows of things that only may be.
The spirit actually gave me an answer.
“The future isn’t set in stone. It can be avoided, but doing so will require either a lot of luck, or a lot of snoo.”
I’d learned long ago that luck wasn’t something one could ever count on, but I was a little confused by her statement.
“What’s ‘snoo’?” I asked.
“Oh, not much. What’s new with you?”
Anyway, happy April Fool’s Day, y'all.
-Jack
submitted by GasStationJack to TFTGS [link] [comments]
Holy crap, this is nuts!
Okay, try and stay with me here. I’ve only got like fifteen minutes before the next spirit shows up, and I really want to get this all down before it’s too late.
So, just like Jerry--I mean, the spirit, or god, or whatever it was--said: At one in the morning, I got a special visitor at the gas station.
This one didn’t appear in a cloud of fog. There was no crack of lightning or flickering lights. On the hour, I heard that same noise--the mystery chime. Just once this time. One in the morning.
It came in the form of an aura. A blinding white light. If it were outside, you could probably notice it from orbit. But it was contained here in the gas station, and it was coming entirely from the bathroom. I could only see the radiance of it poking out from the space below the door, but I could feel the brightness, like it was burning a piece of my soul. I’m sure if I’d looked directly at it, my eyes would have burned out of my sockets. It was only there for a few seconds. Then, I heard the toilet flush. And the light was no more.
When the bathroom door opened, I was not prepared for who I was about to see. The man--the spirit--who emerged looked young. He was clean shaven, with red hair on top. He wore a tan overcoat on top of a black half-turtleneck. When he saw me, he smirked.
“Rick Astley?” I asked, barely able to contain my surprise.
“No,” he said in a British accent. “I am the spirit of April Fool’s past.”
“Long past?”
“No. Your past. Assuming you are…” he pulled a notepad out of his coat pocket and flipped it open to one of the pages. “...Jack.”
“That’s what the name tag says. May I be so bold as to inquire what business brings you here?”
“Your welfare, Jack.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
The ginger spirit crossed the room, doing an unnecessary dance as he moved. He clapped his hands, shimmied, and then he was standing on the other side of the counter. He reached out to me and said, “Rise, mortal. Walk with me.”
“I’m actually good here.”
He put his hands on the counter and leaned in close, close enough that I could clearly hear him as he whispered, “I’m a spirit. I come from a realm beyond your comprehension. Do you really think I came all the way here to give you the option to say you’re ‘good here’?”
He had a point.
“Okay then,” I said, standing. “How does this work?”
“Take my hand. We are going on a little adventure, to another time and place. We are going somewhere you’ve seen before. And we are going to find the moment you lost faith, the moment you abandoned the magic of the holiday season.”
I took his hand. A spring-loaded buzzer hidden in his palm let out a mechanical whirrr as it simulated a low-voltage electrical shock.
“Got ya!” he laughed. (Not surprisingly, he was the only one laughing.) I waited patiently for him to remove the gimmicky toy, then let him take my hand again. “Alright, now on to business. I want you to think back. Remember the moment you want to forget the most… remember the worst April Fool’s Day of your life.”
“Well, this ought to be fun,” I thought aloud.
Right then, the gas station disappeared. The spirit and I were suspended in nothingness. The world, the universe, and even our bodies had ceased to be… And just as suddenly, it all came crashing back. Only now, we were someplace else.
The walls were wood panels covered in posters and work orders tacked wherever space allowed. A man in the corner sat behind a cheap plastic desk that looked like it had been picked up from the side of the road. He was a heavy set guy, sweating through his button-up shirt despite the box fan blowing air at his face from a couple feet away. It was much more humid in this place. The smell of cigarette smoke wasn’t enough to cover the pungent odor of dead fish that filled the air. Flies buzzed past us as I looked at the spirit. He looked at me and smiled.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Do not worry,” the spirit said. “Nobody here can see you. They are but shadows; shadows of what has been.”
“Yeah, I get that. But I have no idea where we are.”
“Does this not look familiar to you?” the spirit asked. His inflection made it seem like this was a rhetorical question, but the look in his eyes told me he was desperately hoping I would make the connection soon.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m lost.”
The Rick Astley spirit retrieved his notepad, thumbed through the pages, and stared at something written there. He poked out his bottom lip and furrowed his brow.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
His face shot up. “What? Oh, no, no, nothing’s wrong. It’s just… Are you sure you don’t know this place?”
“Why would I lie?”
“So, you’re positive this isn’t your foster home from when you were in sixth grade?”
I laughed. “Look around. Does this look like a foster home? I think it’s some kind of business.” I walked up to the wall and inspected the work orders that adorned it: tiny, yellowing sheets of paper with information typed onto it in cryptic shorthand. Nothing any average person would understand, except for the stamps on each that said either “closed” or “open.”
“BUS HOUSE. 3 JOB. 2 OUT.” - Closed.
“VIP DEN. 5 JOB. 5 OUT.” - Closed.
“UNDERGROUND VB. 5 JOB. ALL DEAD.” - Open.
“I’m sorry,” the spirit said. “This is actually quite embarrassing. In all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never taken someone to the wrong past before. Here, let’s return and start over.”
The phone on the desk rang. We watched as the heavy set man answered it. In a gruff voice, he said, “Yeah? … What the hell does he want? … Okay, send him in.”
The spirit reached for me, but I pulled back. “Wait,” I said. “I want to see where this is going.”
“It’s not a television show, Jack. This is someone’s worst memory. It’s way better than TV.”
Right then, the door opened. I instantly recognized the young man who entered. He wasn’t in sixth grade, but there was absolutely no denying that this was a younger me.
“What the fuck?” I said.
The look on the spirit’s face (or, I guess, Rick Astley’s face) told me that he was genuinely confused by this turn of events.
The younger me appeared to be in his late teens, perhaps early twenties. He had short hair, camo pants, and a black long-sleeved shirt. He must have been sweating his ass off in this weather, but he kept a professional look on his face and approached the man in the corner.
“Mr. Leechman. My name is-”
“I know who you are.” The heavy man leaned back in his chair and managed to look down his nose at the younger me while looking up at him. “You’re Tommy’s kid brother.”
“Yes sir.”
“Look, it’s a damn shame what happened to him. They ever find the guy who hit his car?”
“No sir.”
“Damn shame I tell ya. You know what, they outta make it to where a hit-and-run is an instant death penalty. But you know those pussies in the government would never do something like that. No, that would make too much sense.”
“I suppose so.”
The spirit and I closed in on these shadows from the past.
“Listen,” the heavy guy continued. I could see new sweat forming on his face. “I sent Tommy’s last paycheck to his address.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“What is it, then?”
“Before the accident… Tommy, he told me he might be able to get me a job. And, well, with the funeral and everything, money is getting tight. I was wondering, I mean… I know I can’t take on his role right away, but I am a quick learner. I’m not afraid to work hard and get dirty and-”
The heavy man scooted his seat back, scraping it loudly against the floor. “Hold on!” he said. “What exactly did Tommy tell you about this job?”
“I know all about exterminating. Tommy showed me how to use the different poisons. I helped him fumigate our aunt’s condo when she got fleas. I know how to-”
“Listen, Kid,” the heavy man stood up. “I ain’t gonna bullshit you. This job requires a certain skill set, and you ain’t got it.”
“Now wait a second, Tommy said-”
“Tommy’s dead, Kid. It don’t matter what he said.”
The younger me screamed, “IT MATTERS TO ME!”
Silence filled the room. A long, unnatural silence. The two men stood in place, unmoving, unblinking, unspeaking. It felt like the most intense stare down in history. But then I noticed the black fly--swollen and fat--stuck in place in midair right in front of my face. It wasn’t just the scream that brought the moment to a screeching halt. No, time itself had literally stopped.
“Enough!” The spirit screamed the word like it was poison he wanted out of his mouth. “Cut the crap, Jack. How are you doing this? What is this place?”
I poked the suspended fly, but it remained frozen. Something told me that a Mac truck wouldn’t have been able to pull it out of place. The force of time, of what was already written, was not something mortals could ever hope to overcome.
I said the only thing I could think of. “I have no idea what’s going on here. But I can tell you one thing. This never happened.”
“Do you think I’m playing around here?” asked the spirit dressed like 80’s-musician-turned-meme Rick Astley. “I’ll have you know I take this job very seriously.”
“I’m sure you do.”
He ran a hand through his voluminous red hair and took a deep breath. Then, he circled the room twice, stopped, and smiled. “I got it! This isn’t your past at all.”
“Well, yeah. Obvs.”
“No, in a sense, it is. But this isn’t your your past.”
“I don’t follow.”
“There’s a terminus point in the finite curve near the gas station. We must have accidentally fallen through a gap. This is a remainder in a galactic equation that should have been rounded off. I’ve heard of this happening before, but…” The look on my face must have told him he needed to dumb it down just a bit further. “Okay, this isn’t the correct universe. We’re in a version of your past that could have, but never did occur. You see, it might sound complicated to you, but-”
“Nah, I get it. Multiverses are all the rage in movies and television right now. I’ve already had it explained to me a thousand times.”
“Yes, but have you ever had it explained in terms of updog?”
“What’s ‘updog’?”
“Not much! What’s up with you?!” The spirit laughed joyously, then snapped his fingers, bringing the whole scene back to life. The fly buzzed past my face, I watched as it landed in a web in the corner of the ceiling where it promptly tangled itself up before being set upon by a shiny black spider.
“So, we should probably go back home, right? Considering this isn’t even a real memory?”
The spirit held up a finger and repeated my words back to me, “Hold on, hold on. I want to see where this is going.”
The door opened without a knock, and a tough-looking guy took a step into the room. As the younger me turned to face him, I registered the momentary realization on his face. He knew he messed up. He pushed too hard. And now he was about to get bounced. This guy looked like he was no stranger to busting heads. Scars on his face, ears misshapen like he had a history of amateur boxing, hands at his sides clenched into fists… and a deepset scowl that looked like it was the only expression he was capable of making.
“It’s okay, Bruno,” the heavy set man said calmly. “Our guest was just about to leave.”
“We got a problem, Boss.” Bruno’s voice sounded like a bag of rocks. (What does a bag of rocks sound like, you might ask. Well, Bruno’s voice, of course. I don’t know how else to put it. You had to be there. It was deeply unsettling.)
Bruno took a step to the side. The younger me understood without being told. It was time for him (or me?) to leave. He did so without another word. I went ahead and started to follow, but the spirit caught my arm.
“Hold up,” he said.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’ve sat through enough boring childhood memories that I know when something juicy is about to happen, and that’s most certainly not going to be with the young man walking away. He’s a B story, at best. But look at these two! They’re like cartoons! So well-realized! What’s their deal? Who is Bruno? What do they do here?”
The younger me was already out the door. Bruno closed it behind him.
“Shouldn’t we follow… you know… me?”
“Don’t be so selfish,” the spirit said. “After all these countless eons, I deserve to go off the rails just a little, don’t I? As a treat! Just a little treat!”
I didn’t have time to answer before the heavy man began speaking. “What’s the problem?”
Bruno answered, “He’s here.”
“Already?!”
“Plane must have landed early. He wants to start the job by sundown.”
“Shit! How many does he need?”
“He’s calling this a seven job. Guzman and Florida are on call. They can get here in ten minutes.”
“What does that bring us to?”
“Five. Six if I go, too. He’s not gonna be happy if we can’t provide him with the team he paid for.”
“You think I don’t know that?! Shit!”
“I got some mercs on their way out of East City, but they won’t be here before day’s end.”
“You know he isn’t a patient man.”
“What about him?” Bruno pointed at the door with his thumb. “Tommy’s kid brother, I mean. With me and Guzman on the team, all we need are warm bodies to pad the numbers. Why not give the kid a shot?”
“He doesn’t know what we do here.”
“Really? You mean Tommy never… You mean he thinks Tommy died in a car accident?”
Drops of sweat were dripping from the boss’s face onto his desk. He closed his eyes and made a pained expression, like someone was crushing him from the inside. “Alright.” With that word, he fell into his chair. “Get the kid back in here. I’ll call Guzman and Florida.”
“What do you want me to tell him?”
“Tell him only what he needs to know.”
The two of them froze in place. Once again, time had stopped.
The spirit let out a wild laugh that morphed into the words, “Ooooh hoo hoo, this is exciting, isn’t it? What do you think is happening? What are mercs? Do you think he meant mercenaries? I genuinely don’t know where this is going! Uncertainty is such a beautiful thing, isn’t it?”
“Well, I am glad you’re enjoying yourself. But I don’t share your sense of curiosity or adventure, and I genuinely don’t see why I have to be here for any of this. How about you stay and keep doing this, and I go back to the gas station?”
“That’s not how it works, Jack. Your mind is powering this entire expedition. Come on, let’s see what happens next.” I didn’t mean to groan as audibly as I did, but the spirit didn’t take offense. He just smiled, retrieved his notepad, and continued, “I’ll make a deal with you. Let’s stick with this thread. The other option is we untangle this time knot and go visit your foster home that year your brothers stole your pants and locked you outside for the day. Remember? The police were called.”
“Why would you-”
“I’ll just write up a report saying we went to the correct memory. The visits to the past are mostly just a formality anyway. The only spirit journey that ever matters is the spirit of April Fools yet to come. I’m only here to familiarize you with the concept. So what do you say? Care to go off page for a little longer?”
I threw up my hands. “I mean, you’re the supernatural entity here. I’m just the schmuck who’s along for the ride.”
“That’s the spirit!” he said with a punch-inviting grin. “Pun intended!” He raised his hand, and with a snap of his finger, the world shifted.
The air was suddenly hotter. The lights dimmer. I shook my head until my bearings returned, slowly, lazily… And then I saw them. Bruno stood near a set of lockers, the younger me sat on a bench next to him. It was a small room, stuffy, like we were underground.
“I know this is a lot to process,” Bruno said.
The younger me didn’t seem phased. “No, I always knew Tommy was into something. He had too much money for an exterminator. I just thought… you know, maybe it was drugs.”
Bruno opened a locker and began pulling out gear: tactical boots, kevlar vest, ammo pouch… “These were his,” he said. “They should fit close enough for one job. Impress the big guy, and we’ll bring you back for the next one.”
“Who is he?”
“Listen, Kid. You gotta get those questions out of your system before you see him. This guy is the real deal, but if he catches a whiff that you’re an amateur, he might call the job on the spot. What you do here tonight is simple, shut the fuck up, follow my lead. I tell you to jump, jump. I tell you to shoot, shoot. I tell you to run…” He pulled an automatic rifle from the locker next. The younger me took it without hesitation.
“Anything else I should know?”
“Someone might try to test you. If anybody tells you that you remind them of someone they knew in the army, that’s code to make sure you’re on the same team. They tell you that, you respond, ‘I need a drink.’ You got that?”
The younger me nodded.
“Ready?”
That voice almost made me jump. I’d forgotten the spirit was still here with me.
“Ready for what?” I asked.
“Well, this part feels like filler, doesn't it? Let’s get to the action already, okay?” He pointed at the door behind me.
“It’s your show.”
He reached for the handle, and despite his early proclamation that these were merely shadows of things that once were, he succeeded in interacting with it. It turned. The door swung open. He stepped through, and I followed.
Now, on the other side, we were transported to a different time and place--neither very far from the previous time or place. We were outside now. Mosquitos buzzed in the humid air as the sun set behind a cloudy horizon. There were seven men lined up, standing at attention next to a black SUV. Bruno took one end, the younger me on the other. They were all armed to the teeth. The five in the middle stood tall, battle-worn, confident. Everything about them exaggerated the contrast from me--the runt on the end pretending he knew what he was in for.
They weren’t alone, though. There was another man with them. The big guy himself. He had dark skin and a thick, black beard. A mountain of a man, full of muscle, exuding an air of sheer power. If it came down to a fair fight between him and the seven men at attention, well, I sure wouldn’t bet against him.
When he spoke, the hairs on my neck bristled. “Alright, ladies, I see some new faces here so I’m gonna keep this quick. My name is Benjamin, and I’m not going to carry any of you. Tonight, we have a single target. Weaknesses are standard, which means bullets will do the trick. Stay off the coms unless there’s a surprise. But there won’t be any surprises. Any questions?”
Bruno was the only one who dared speak. “What’s the target look like?”
“Unclear, but we ought to know it when we see it. At last report, it took the appearance of a human: park ranger named Preston Creekbaum. Six two, brown hair, medium build. But that was over twelve hours ago, so the target will not look like that anymore. Any other questions?” There were none. At least, none spoken. “Good. Load up.”
The scene froze in time. “What the fuck is happening?” the spirit asked. There was far less excitement in his voice this time around. “This thread, it… continues for a while. How is that possible? A pocket reality like this should have fallen apart after a few minutes, but the story goes on and on… I can see a long road out in front of us, but it shouldn’t be possible.” For an interdimensional cosmic spirit, he sure sounded rattled by the unknown. (Kinda ironic, really, when you think about it.)
“So, what now?” I asked.
The spirit checked its watch. “We’re actually running out of time.”
“How? How could we possibly be running out of time?”
"I only get an hour with you. I need to finish this up before the Spirit of April Fool’s Day Present gets his turn. And that guy gets pissed when he has to wait.”
“That only raises further questions.”
“Do you mind if we step on the gas a little with this story?” I shrugged. He smiled. “Good. Fast forward mode activated. And do me a favor, keep your eyes open for a hammerfore.”
“What’s a hammerfore?” I asked.
“Driving nails!” he laughed obnoxiously. With a snap of his fingers, we were transported to a clearing in the middle of a tangled forest. The mercs were gathered in a circle around a bloated corpse in a ranger’s uniform.
“That’s the guy, right?” one of the men said.
“STOP!” screamed Benjamin as he ran towards the group. “Get away from it before-”
One of the eyes on the corpse exploded to the sound of a wet pop, and a skinny, pink, serpentine creature--about the size of a garden snake--leapt out of the body. It latched onto Bruno’s face. He screamed and tried to grab the creature, but it was too fast. Bruno fell to his knees as the pink snake burrowed through his skull.
Benjamin shoved one of the mercs out of the way, bellowed “STAY BACK,” then unloaded a magazine of high caliber rifle bullets into Bruno’s dead body, tearing it to shreds. When the gun was empty and the shooting had stopped, the men looked at one another.
One of them ignored the big guy’s previous command and stepped over to the wet, meaty puddle of bones and viscera that had once been Bruno and said, “Holy shit. What was that thi-”
The snake erupted out of the gore with the sound of a loud “SCREEEE!!!” It hit the man who stood too close square in the neck, then disappeared under his skin. His face went ghost-white as blood spurted from the hole, but he didn’t fall down. His eyes glazed over, and he turned to face the others in short, stiff steps.
Benjamin hollered as he loaded a new magazine into his gun, “SHOOT IT! IT’S CONTROLLING HIM! IT’S-” The man with the snake in his neck lifted his rifle and pointed at the other mercs. Shadows of the past or not, I instinctively hit the ground before the next round of bullets began flying.
The sudden silence wasn’t the most unnerving thing that had just happened, but it was up there. When I opened my eyes, I could see bullets trapped in place in mid-air.
“Holy flipping shit,” said the spirit. “This is not what I was expecting.” He checked his watch again. “We’re almost done here, but I gotta see where this ends.”
He snapped his fingers, and we were gone. The muddy earth below me turned hard and cold. The air turned stale. It took me a second longer to realize that we were indoors. I rolled over and got to my feet. This was a small cabin, hardly more than a shed. Benjamin sat near the fireplace, a roaring blaze keeping the cramped room entirely too hot. He held a blade over the flames, the tip glowing red hot.
There was only one other person from this timezone in the room: the younger me. He was covered in blood, but he was breathing. It didn’t take a detective to figure out the rest of the crew wasn’t as lucky. His shoulder wept a steady stream of blood onto the cabin floor until Benjamin pressed the heated blade into place, cauterizing the wound to the sound of a blood-curdling scream.
“Good work today, Kid,” Benjamin said, handing over a flask. The younger me took and drank freely. “Sorry about your crew.”
Eventually, the younger me managed to get out the words, “It’s okay.”
The big guy pulled two cigars from his jacket, leaned over, and lit them in the fire. He clamped the first between his teeth, then handed the other to the wounded kid on the floor. The younger me didn’t hesitate to take the celebratory smoke.
“The thing is,” Benjamin said, pausing to take a puff. “This didn’t turn out the way any of us expected. Men died who didn’t need to. Wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. It was the creature’s fault.” The younger me dropped his cigar and flask, then began to violently cough. His face turned bright red as the coughing became shallower and shallower. He struggled to breathe, fighting the constriction in his neck, but it was no use. He struggled in silence, desperate for air, for one more breath, but none would come. “Yeah, it was the creature’s fault. But I told your boss, I told him what I needed. I needed a seven man crew. I needed seven pros, but he only gave me six. I saw Bruno watching you. His head wasn’t in the game, because he was babysitting when he should have been paying attention. Now, I ain’t sayin’ that’s the reason they’re all dead. I just want you to understand why I can’t let you walk out of this one.”
His words didn’t matter. The young man on the floor couldn’t hear him any more. Benjamin picked up the flask, made sure the top was on, then stuffed it into his pocket. “Sorry, Kid. But it is what it is.”
“Wait a second,” the spirit said loudly. “So… you died?! What the hell?”
Benjamin pulled a cellular phone from his pocket. I took a step closer. Close enough to see the number he dialed, but it was just a saved contact named “HQ.”
“Benjamin,” he said into the receiver. “Password Echo, Alpha-”
He froze with his mouth still open, tongue on his teeth, staring straight ahead.
“Well, this has been interesting, to say the least.” I was getting so tired of this spirit. At least I didn’t have to deal with him for very much longer. “But it’s time for us to get back to your shitty real life as a boring gas station attendant. Shall we?”
He snapped his fingers, but this time nothing happened. The world didn’t vanish. We stayed put. Exactly like I wanted.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in my most innocent voice.
“Nothing,” he lied. “Sometimes, it takes a couple of snaps for it to work,” he lied again.
He snapped, and the world stayed as it was. He could snap again, and again, but as long as I had my wave disruptor on, nothing would ever change. I removed the device from my pocket. The spirit looked at it and laughed. “Nice camera phone,” he said. “But I’m afraid you can’t take any pictures here. These memories are only in your mind. They don’t show up on film and cannot be recorded.”
I adjusted the settings on the disruptor to only cancel out the S wave frequencies. To the spirit, it probably looked like I was texting. He continued to smile at me nervously, until I executed the new routine, causing the memory to resume from right where we left off.
“-Tango-nine-seven-nine-two-Victor.” The spirit jumped as Benjamin resumed talking. The big guy stood and started for the door. “Status report. Target has been neutralized. Local team was compromised. Witnesses terminated. Request immediate evac.” He stepped out into the cold night air and slammed the door shut behind him so hard dust fell from the ceiling.
“This is, unusual, but not unheard of,” the spirit assured me. “I have everything under control.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think you do.”
Right then, I woke up, gasping for air. Not the me that was standing, talking to the spirit. The me on the ground. I gagged and fought and strained against the poison constricting my muscles. I fought hard against whatever the hell that asshole Benjamin had put in that flask. A morsel of air broke through the floodgates, and that’s when I knew I wasn’t about to die. I tried to scream, but it wasn’t time for that yet. My heart pounded and my lungs begged; every part of me wanted nothing more than to stay alive. It was nothing but luck and sheer force of will that saved me that day, as I struggled against death long enough to take another breath. And then another.
The spirit shouted, “Holy fuck! You survived!”
“Of course I survived,” I said. “How else would I have been alive for us to meet?”
The spirit shook his head, like he thought I just wasn’t getting it. “But this didn’t happen! This is an alternate timeline, one where you never worked at the gas station, but instead became a monster hunter or something. It’s not like-”
This time, when the words froze midsentence, it wasn’t from any kind of magic or parascience. It was because I rolled up my sleeve to show the spirit how wrong he was. The gears turned quickly once he saw the old scar on my shoulder. The burn from when Benjamin cauterized my wound all those years ago. The spirit couldn’t have known exactly what was happening, but he was smart enough to try and run.
He went for the cabin door. I stayed close behind. We passed through together, and into another scene from my memory.
It was only four years later, but I had gone from a young man to a world-weary soldier. I was sitting in the recruitment office of The Institute. The commander stood behind the egghead scientists. They’d listened to my entire story without judgment--the reason for my medical discharge. And they told me something I’d never heard before. They believed me. And they wanted to help me.
The spirit hooked a right and went for the closest door. If this were really The Institute, it would have led to a balcony overseeing the compound’s hundred acre grounds, but it wasn’t. Instead, it took us to another memory:
A classroom. Only two people in this memory. My commander pointed at the picture on the projection that took up the entire wall. It was a photo of a young man sitting behind a cash register.
“Jack Townsend,” my commander said. “You’ll find his dossier to be interesting reading. You need to study him. Imitate. Do what he does, live how he lives, think how he thinks. The spirits must believe that you are him.”
The spirit spun on his heels. There were no other exits in this room. I had him cornered. It was time to go on the offensive.
Finally.
I wrapped my fingers into the silver-plated knuckles and delivered a clean haymaker across his temple. If the spirit had been human, it would have put him in a coma at the least. Thank God the nerds were right; silver was enough to put him down. He moaned up at me from the floor, telling me that he wouldn’t be a problem any more.
Good, I thought to myself. I have a lot more work left to do tonight.
I reset the disruptor to the preprogrammed settings. Next stop, April Fool’s Day. One year ago. I grabbed the spirit by his leg and dragged him back through the doorway.
We were transported to the special species containment unit in the sub-basement of the Liscov Institute. There were two other people in this negatively-charged Ferriday cage built from nonmagnetic titanium and silver. They couldn’t see us, but they knew we were here.
My commander looked at the me from one year ago, then nodded. The old me programmed the disruptor with our exact coordinates. I’d been studying the tech for the greater part of the last decade, and was intimately familiar with all of its settings.
“Now,” my commander said, “explain this to me again.”
“In one year’s time,” the old me elaborated, “I’ll return to this point in the timeline and drop off the anomaly. It will remain trapped inside these walls for exactly one year. After the temporal energy has worn off, we open the cage, and he is powerless to escape.”
The spirit sat up. “What?! No, you can’t leave me here for an entire year! I’ll go mad with boredom!”
“I'm sorry,” I lied.
“Wait!” he shouted, tears in his eyes. “At least let me have a henway before you go!”
“What’s a henway?” I asked.
He laughed maniacally and answered, “About three pounds!”
I pressed the button on my device, transferring me back to the original timeline.
Anyway, I’m sorry. I know that was a slog to read, but part of my job infiltrating this place was acting just like Jack, and for some reason Jack writes down every single thing that happens to him in this stupid laptop. I had to keep up appearances, didn’t I?
Oh, I just heard that weird chime again. Twice this time. 2:00 already. I guess that means I gotta go.
Like I said… this is nuts!
April 1st, 2:10 AM
I’m just going to go ahead and say it: That was fun.
It’s not every day a decade-long plan to apprehend multi-dimensional anomalies pans out so successfully. In fact, it was such a success, I don’t even need to continue writing. I’m done. So why do I continue? I suppose this is my victory lap. Or maybe I spent so much time trying to get inside of Jack’s head that I felt a certain sense of duty to finish his blog entry.
Don’t worry, by the way. If you actually liked that guy for some reason, he’s still alive. He’s just tied up and gagged in the storage room, which is a lot more than I can say for the spirit of April Fool’s Day Present.
She appeared right on time, wearing a dress made of red and yellow flowers. She didn’t try for the same grand entrance as her predecessor. And if it weren’t for the fact that her head was actually that of a white deer’s skull-complete with empty eye sockets and a missing lower jaw--I would have categorized her entrance as being perfectly ordinary.
I don’t know how she talked with that setup, but she managed just fine. I let her go through the same movements as the other anomalies. The whole, “You don’t look like I was expecting,” was starting to get really old, but whatever. She eventually got to the point, took my hand, and told me we were going on a journey to see the ones I cared about most on this April Fool’s Day. She thought that meant we’d arrive at Jack’s home, where his sick roommate was adorning the house with birthday decorations and burning a cake (yeah, I read the whole file). But instead, we went to exactly where the ones I cared about the most--my brothers in arms at The Institute--were waiting.
We arrived inside the containment field in the sub-basement of the institute. The spirit didn’t even get another word out before the shackles went into place. As the guards took her away for processing and testing, I approached my commander.
He smiled at me and asked, “Did you get what you were after?”
“Benjamin’s passcode: Echo, alpha, tango, nine, seven, nine, two, victor.”
“Excellent work.”
Together, we approached the Ferriday cage. I scanned my fingerprint on the monitor, opening the cage for the first time in one year. We found him slumped in the corner, muttering to himself over and over… “Never gonna give you up…” etc. etc.
Alright boys and girls, that’s about the last you’ll ever hear from me. If we never see each other again, it will be too soon. Remember, watch your back and never trust anyone.
-Special Agent Brick Roscoe,
Liscov Institute for Societal Advancement
April 1st, 2:58 AM
Hey guys. It’s Jack here. The real Jack, I mean.
Yeah, I just finished reading all of that crap the other guy wrote. I hope none of you fell for it. His attempts at imitating me were embarrassing, to say the least. I mean, voice like a bag of rocks? What does that even mean?
I digress…
Mr. Roscoe jumped me last night and stuffed me in the closet with nothing to keep myself occupied except a bunch of audiobooks. I’m not entirely upset that I missed the spirits, but I’d be lying if I said the agent’s account didn’t make me feel sorry for the poor ghosts.
Oh shit, that means I’ve got to explain to the next one why their friends are MIA. Crap. This really is the stupidest day of the entire year, isn’t it? God I wish I could have stayed home.
Oh great. I just heard three chimes.
Wish me luck.
April 1st, 3:30 AM
They were actually pretty cool about it. But I had to fill out some paperwork--an incident report or something. Then they gave me a voucher for two free spirit journeys in the future, which I am almost positive I won’t use. The spirit of April Fool’s Yet to Come did show me the future, though, and it was exactly what I expected.
Death and destruction, wanton violence, polar ice caps melting, all the puppies dying, Brendan Fraser getting his Oscar revoked… you know, the worst of the worst, and it’s all somehow going to be my fault.
I asked the spirit (who, by the way, looked nothing like the grim reaper--no, it actually took the form of a little girl in a sun dress carrying a six-foot scythe) if these images were the shadows of things that will be, or if they were the shadows of things that only may be.
The spirit actually gave me an answer.
“The future isn’t set in stone. It can be avoided, but doing so will require either a lot of luck, or a lot of snoo.”
I’d learned long ago that luck wasn’t something one could ever count on, but I was a little confused by her statement.
“What’s ‘snoo’?” I asked.
“Oh, not much. What’s new with you?”
Anyway, happy April Fool’s Day, y'all.
-Jack
2023.04.01 16:17 Juia_Darkcrest Why is Blaine so obsessed with Jon's character
Spoilers...Kinda
So in the most recent episode. Sawyer, male human bard (Blaine) seems keep bringing up Euphingenia's, older female centuar cleric (Jon), bust. Like a lot.
So this is a bit out of character for him, so the question is why? My theories are;
A - Blaine is just trying to make Jon uncomfortable or troll him for some reason
B - Saywer has a horse/boob fetish...odd but not unreasonable in the D&D world.
C - growth in Blaines playstyle developing a character that is actually isn't socially inept like his last two in other campaigns and he is just enjoying this.
D - Other
So I have no real idea what is going on with this character but would love to hear your thoughts!
submitted by Juia_Darkcrest to RedWebPod [link] [comments]
So in the most recent episode. Sawyer, male human bard (Blaine) seems keep bringing up Euphingenia's, older female centuar cleric (Jon), bust. Like a lot.
So this is a bit out of character for him, so the question is why? My theories are;
A - Blaine is just trying to make Jon uncomfortable or troll him for some reason
B - Saywer has a horse/boob fetish...odd but not unreasonable in the D&D world.
C - growth in Blaines playstyle developing a character that is actually isn't socially inept like his last two in other campaigns and he is just enjoying this.
D - Other
So I have no real idea what is going on with this character but would love to hear your thoughts!
2023.04.01 16:06 stellarfriday Do I suck it up and make a chore list or should I have a more in depth talk with my significant other?
My boyfriend (23M) and I (22F) live with another couple who are our roommates. In my last relationship it largely failed due to the fact I felt like I never got help around the house, even if I asked for it. So thats kinda why this situation I feel is bothering me I don’t want to be in my 40s someday married to a crappy partner.
So anyways, every since we moved in together, I clean all aspects of the house once a week. This includes the kitchen, the floors, our room, and our bathroom. It has been this way for 9months. I feel like the only time he reaches out to help me with these chores is when I look visibly stressed out or upset about things being dirty or gross. He does help with dishes and stuff but thats mostly when I do a lot of the cooking, when we cook together I am usually left to do the dishes. I can’t recall the last time he did all of our laundry by himself. (I also get annoyed that I put away his laundry, and he will just leave my stuff out like come on Ik you know where this stuff goes!) After we got a dog he has not helped but maybe twice making the lick mat and filling his kong for him.
Anyways, every time I tell him I feel like I do all of these things by myself for us he just says well don’t do crap for me anymore I will do it all myself. Which is annoying because I just want him to be able to recognize that I want to make this a partnership thing not a one person does all thing. Or he will say well all you have to do is ask for help, or give him a list of things to do. And idk that makes me feel like a dictator or that he is a child I create a list of tasks for and I think that just gives him reason to eventually resent me.
Should I just suck it up and make a list instead of expecting him to act like an adult and just take over some responsibilities without me asking? Especially when its on a weekly schedule where I do the same tasks on the same days?
TL;DR: Should I make a chores list for my boyfriend every week?
EDIT: Thanks to everyone for their helpful comments and suggestions! I just had a conversation with him, and we found a resolution and are each doing a set of chores that we designated to each other based off our preferences and frequency! He also apologized about me having to bear the mental load and not recognizing how much I was doing, because the list made that more evident to him.
submitted by stellarfriday to relationships [link] [comments]
So anyways, every since we moved in together, I clean all aspects of the house once a week. This includes the kitchen, the floors, our room, and our bathroom. It has been this way for 9months. I feel like the only time he reaches out to help me with these chores is when I look visibly stressed out or upset about things being dirty or gross. He does help with dishes and stuff but thats mostly when I do a lot of the cooking, when we cook together I am usually left to do the dishes. I can’t recall the last time he did all of our laundry by himself. (I also get annoyed that I put away his laundry, and he will just leave my stuff out like come on Ik you know where this stuff goes!) After we got a dog he has not helped but maybe twice making the lick mat and filling his kong for him.
Anyways, every time I tell him I feel like I do all of these things by myself for us he just says well don’t do crap for me anymore I will do it all myself. Which is annoying because I just want him to be able to recognize that I want to make this a partnership thing not a one person does all thing. Or he will say well all you have to do is ask for help, or give him a list of things to do. And idk that makes me feel like a dictator or that he is a child I create a list of tasks for and I think that just gives him reason to eventually resent me.
Should I just suck it up and make a list instead of expecting him to act like an adult and just take over some responsibilities without me asking? Especially when its on a weekly schedule where I do the same tasks on the same days?
TL;DR: Should I make a chores list for my boyfriend every week?
EDIT: Thanks to everyone for their helpful comments and suggestions! I just had a conversation with him, and we found a resolution and are each doing a set of chores that we designated to each other based off our preferences and frequency! He also apologized about me having to bear the mental load and not recognizing how much I was doing, because the list made that more evident to him.
2023.04.01 15:51 dj_boy-Wonder The hardest night so far
It’s 1:00 AM and I’m sitting in bed in tears.
Earlier my wife and I had a massive fight, I had a panic attack unlike one I have ever had before I’ve been told some very confronting things that have challenged how I feel about my contribution to our relationship. Some of the habits I have taken up since being sober such has having a nap on a weekend afternoon have started causing some issues about how my wife feels about our time together… there’s a lot more to it for sure and I’ll keep my dirty laundry in its basket but let’s keep this on drinking for now… believe me when I say that the knowledge that there is a bottle of wine in the fridge outside weighs heavily on my mind…
I sat there for hours after the fight wanting the world to swallow me, I’ll introduce myself to Satan I’ll even help dig just get me out of here… I have adrenaline firing off sporadically and my body is sore and wants to quit
But I’m crying right now not because of any of this… I’m sitting here, a 35 year old man baby, in my underpants… cold… weeping silently… because as midnight ticked over it marks the longest time in 20 years that I have been sober… 91 days… today was hard but I did it…. Thank you for listening when I needed it most. I love you guys
Iwndwyt
submitted by dj_boy-Wonder to stopdrinking [link] [comments]
Earlier my wife and I had a massive fight, I had a panic attack unlike one I have ever had before I’ve been told some very confronting things that have challenged how I feel about my contribution to our relationship. Some of the habits I have taken up since being sober such has having a nap on a weekend afternoon have started causing some issues about how my wife feels about our time together… there’s a lot more to it for sure and I’ll keep my dirty laundry in its basket but let’s keep this on drinking for now… believe me when I say that the knowledge that there is a bottle of wine in the fridge outside weighs heavily on my mind…
I sat there for hours after the fight wanting the world to swallow me, I’ll introduce myself to Satan I’ll even help dig just get me out of here… I have adrenaline firing off sporadically and my body is sore and wants to quit
But I’m crying right now not because of any of this… I’m sitting here, a 35 year old man baby, in my underpants… cold… weeping silently… because as midnight ticked over it marks the longest time in 20 years that I have been sober… 91 days… today was hard but I did it…. Thank you for listening when I needed it most. I love you guys
Iwndwyt
2023.04.01 15:21 FHLBot FC Union Berlin vs VfB Stuttgart - Bundesliga, 01-Apr-2023
Match: FC Union Berlin vs VfB Stuttgart
Competition: Bundesliga- Round 26
Date: 01-Apr-2023
Time: 13:30 GMT Convert to local time
Venue: Stadion An der Alten Försterei (Berlin)
Referee: F. Badstübner
Do not post any spoilers, follow the rules, and make sure to upvote the contributors if you liked their content.
submitted by FHLBot to footballhighlights [link] [comments]
Competition: Bundesliga- Round 26
Date: 01-Apr-2023
Time: 13:30 GMT Convert to local time
Venue: Stadion An der Alten Försterei (Berlin)
Referee: F. Badstübner
2023.04.01 14:59 Jedicarus1218 Anne Boonchuy Moveset
 | Warning! There will be spoilers for Amphibia present here! submitted by Jedicarus1218 to smashbros [link] [comments] Hello, battlefield of Nintendo! Jedicarus returning in what feels like years! For my first post of 2023, I wanted to do a little April Fools Moveset to celebrate the prank filled day. In context of an April Fools moveset for me, it is a Moveset on a character that’s not from video games and is instead from another piece of media. For my first April Fools and overall character Moveset, I will be doing… https://preview.redd.it/fyfpa9jft9ra1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=ad844c3d615b741bc0845a2779a643c8031697df Anne Boonchuy Emerging from the wild unknown with the frogs and toads, Anne Savisa Boonchuy (90) thought her life couldn’t get much crazier until she stepped foot into Smash. Though she’d rather not fight, she will ribbit ribbit jump into the fray with fierce determination and athletic ability at her disposal. Under the right circumstances, you can unleash hidden calamitous power to devastate the battlefield! Emblem https://preview.redd.it/6tjnekmht9ra1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=bd149ffdf98c58d23b5479239b85d00bfb11a657 Moveset Neutral attack a three hit combo where Anne starts out with a straight kick (3%), then a rear straight punch (2%), and ends it off three lower kicks and a rear high knee (4%, adding up to 9% damage in total) Side tilt performs a straightforward kick (like in S1 E18 where she took out the toad conductor). Deals 12% damage Up tilt uppercuts with her elbow. Weak, but very combo heavy. Deals 4% damage Down tilt does a sweeping kick like the one she used to beat Polly in their little spar in S2 E13. Held leg does 7% while the foot held deals 5.5% Dash attack a sliding kick, tripping fighters at small percentages. Deals 7% damage Forward smash a strong sword slash similar to Link’s own forward smash (14% at the hilt, 15% at the blade, 16% at the tip) throws out a very strong kick that functions as a reflector (16% clean foot, 14% clean leg/mid foot, 12% mid leg/late foot, 10% late leg, 1.8x reflected projectiles) Up smash Somehow brings out a massive hammer to swing upward. Lacks range, has slow startup, and Anne will briefly stumble back due to the weight, but it is incredibly strong in both damage and knockback. References the third temple strongly throws out an uppercut. Still lacks range and has slow startup, but Anne will no longer stumble (both deal 16% damage) Down smash A kneeling inward slash in front of herself followed by a kneeling outward slash behind her (17%/16%/14% and 12%/11%/10%) Punches the ground beneath her, causing calamity energy to spark from her and damage anyone close (15%) Neutral aerial a midair elbow drop that will hasten her descent, but only slightly and not as much as her down air. 12% damage when clean and 6% when late Forward aerial swings her sword in a downward motion forward. 8% damage Back aerial turns around to do an upward slash behind herself. 9% damage Up aerial a bicycle kick. 7% damage Down aerial will dive straight down with a jumping kick (14% on clean foot while 12% on clean leg/late) a diving punch (16% on clean hand while 14% on clean arm/late) Grab grapples the fighter in a clinch Pummel punches them in the side. Deals 1.6% damage Forward throw sends the fighter back with a headbutt. Deals 9.1% damage. Back throw briefly grabs the fighter’s leg and then throws them aside (9%) Anne will just straight pick them up and throw them behind her (11.835% damage) Up throw despite being a “string bean”, she uses her athleticism to toss the fighter upward. Deals 8% damage when normal, 11.3% damage when calamity form Down throw grabs them by the neck to slam them down. During her up and down throws, her eyes glow blue, implying that she is using some of her calamity energy to perform these moves. Deals 8.9% damage when normal, 12.2% when calamity form Floor attack (front and back) kicks behind her and then punches as she gets up in a dance pose similar to her team up attack with Sasha. Deals 8.6% damage Floor attack (trip) rather unorthodoxly, she uses her tennis racket to trip fighters near her before getting up. Even she’s surprised that this actually worked and deals 5.5% damage Edge attack while getting up, she swings her sword upward in a disarming motion rather than a full on attack. References S1 E18. Deals 9% damage Additional factors Wall Jump? Yes (Both) Wall Cling? Yes (Calamity Form) No (Normal) Crawling? No How many jumps? 2 (Normal) 3 (Calamity form) Specials Neutral special Serves up! Anne will get out her tennis racket to swing a serve shot that functions as a reflector. Is very weak as a straight attack, but it functions similar to Mario’s cape. Deals 8.2% damage and reflected projectiles have 1.6x the power Turquoise trajectile Anne will throw her sword and then call it back to her after reaching a certain distance. Deals 10% damage when close, 8% damage when far, 11.6% damage when clean smash throw, 9.1% damage when far smash throw, 4% damage when returning to Anne Side special Bold Dash Anne runs forward with an upward sword strike, then an overhead one, and ends the combo with a thrust forward. References True Colors and both her side and neutral specials have her eyes briefly glow blue. Upward strike and overhead strike both deal 2.85% and the thrust deals 4.75%. Azure assault Anne immediately dashes forward to deliver a calamity power enhanced punch that sends anyone hit by it upward. References S3 E1 and deals 10% damage. Up special Drag-Anne fly Rides a human sized dragonfly by its legs and hangs on for dear life until the dragonfly is hit and she’s left helpless, clings onto a ledge, or lets go via the B button. Lapis Leap Anne simply charges straight up, damaging anyone in her path. If the B button is pressed again, she will charge into the nearest opponent. This charge is almost a guaranteed shield break, but if she misses, she’s left vulnerable and the combination of two portions of calamity energy being burned out to use it (one for the jump and one for the charge) makes it the most expensive special move. The leaping charge deals 11% damage while the second charge deals 20% damage Down special Anne’s Power Throughout the fight, Anne will have an empty meter with the blue calamity gem depowered that slowly fills up as she takes damage. When it’s filled up, the gem regains its blue hue and you can tap into Anne’s Calamity powers, granting Anne immense strength and a notable speed boost. When the B button is pressed again, she will say “Enough!” and create a short ranged blast that pushes any fighters away from her. Using any of her specials will deplete a small portion of her calamity meter and when it runs out, Anne will be significantly weakened for 45 seconds. The blast deals 4% damage, but makes up for it in sheer knockback, albeit weaker than Cloud’s Finishing touch Final smash One Last Hurrah Anne will tap into the full power of her blue calamity Gem to transform into her outfit from the Hardest Thing with calamity energy sparking from her. If it hits anyone, Anne flies straight up into outer space to summon a giant energy tennis racket to serve an equally huge tennis ball that splits into multiple Domino missiles that explode onto the smashers and the word “ACE!” appears when the explosions clear up. Deals 58% damage. Extras Entrance Anne is transported into the battlefield through calamity energy before she shortly gets up after her eyes briefly scan her surroundings. Boxing ring title The blue heart of calamity Idle Animations Attempts to get leaves out of her hair Briefly has her fists on her hips with a smile and cocked up eyebrow Will begin to slightly hover a few feet off the ground before descending Cross her arms briefly Taunts Up taunt She dabs, something she has done a few times in the series… yes, it is cringe, but she’s 13. So of course, she’s gonna be a little cringy. Side taunt Anne strikes a pose and then gestures the opponents to bring the fight to her. Down taunt does a segment of the Plantar hunting dance. No, you can’t hypnotize and disorient fighters with this. Victory animations Left: Anne is shown sitting beside Sprig with the two of them reading Up: suddenly lands in her calamity empowered state before returning back to normal and smiling. References the season 3 intro. Right: Anne cheers “Woo!” with her arms stretched out similar to one of her renders and when she beat the Mudmen Music: Anne’s theme (Amphibia’s outro. Plays continuously) Costumes Costume 1 default Costume 2 default (Season 3) Costume 3 Red Anne’s shirt remains a gray color, but it is much darker and the skirt gains a similar color. Her shoe and chest armor become red, her shirt collar becomes black, her socks become light gray, the trim/emblem on her armor turns white, and her hair becomes blonde. References Sasha Waybright in season 2 and her calamity energy even turns pink. Costume 4 Brown Anne’s shirt becomes brown with the sleeves becoming light gray and the flame emblem turning pink, her light blue Jean shorts become green, her jacket becomes faded blue, socks become a lighter green, and her sneakers become gray. Hair becomes black. References Marcy Wu and Calamity Energy becomes green). Costume 5 Gray Anne’s shirt becomes a light blue, skirt becomes light brown, her shoes become black, the shirt collar becomes teal, armor becomes gray and the trim/emblem becomes a darker blue. Hair becomes blue and Anne even gains freckles. References Terri and calamity energy becomes white. Costume 6 Green Anne’s shirt becomes light green while the sleeves become golden and flame emblem turning black with her shorts, the jacket becomes a darker forest green, socks become pink, and her sneakers become light gray with dark blue stripes. Hair becomes orange. References Sprig and calamity energy becomes gold/yellow. Costume 7 purple Anne’s shirt becomes black, the skirt becomes red, her shoe and armor become a dark purple, shoes become a light gray, and the trim/emblem become orange with the emblem being replaced with an eye. Anne’s hair also becomes black. References Darcy and calamity energy becomes orange. Costume 8 Yellow Anne’s shirt becomes yellow with her sleeves becoming yellowish white and flame emblem becoming a tyrannosaurus skull, her shorts become brown, the shoes become darker shades of purple and gray, and the jacket becomes black. Her hair becomes black and gains red glasses. References Dr. Jan and calamity energy becomes gray. Stage https://preview.redd.it/wu3bgmubt9ra1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=784ce1141a4aa5b6a68e4ef752dff0d7649ba746 Wartwood The main setting of Amphibia season 1, Wartwood is often slow to accept, and even slower to respect. Something that is sort of the way to describe Wartwood: slow. Sure, you can slightly bounce off the tarp of the Grub & Go to gain a small jump boost and there’s the statue of Wartwood’s previous mayor in the center of what the fighters are allowed to brawl in, but Wartwood is pretty calm compared to the usual hijinks that happen… though that might be because you are the hijinxs going on in Wartwood. Music Welcome to Amphibia (extended remix) Rather be (instrumental) Heartstomper (remix) No Big Deal (remix) Anne’s Power (remix) All In (Mix between its score) One Last Hurrah (original) You’d be surprised what makes its way back to you (Extended credits during the Hardest Thing) Conclusion and overall overview And that is the full moveset for what I think Anne Boonchuy in Smash Bros could potentially look like! Before I end this off with some questions, let’s go over an overview of Anne’s overall toolkit! Strengths A Strong String bean In spite of her small weight, Anne Boonchuy still hits like a truck with certain moves and combo setups, especially when she’s in her calamity form. Hop ‘til you drop Anne has plenty of mobility options to go with from being able to wall jump and overall having pretty high jump height. It also helps that most of her moves also assist in her overall momentum and agility. The Power of the Box Anne’s calamity form in its entirety brings a lot of physical power that Anne can use to quickly end brawls whenever they’re used right, both in attack timing and situations. Weaknesses … Is still a string bean Though Anne is usually fine after slapstick in Amphibia, Anne’s agility and power comes at the cost of having less durability and being even more prone to slapstick than she already was. Not Marcy level klutzy, but could react faster It is true that Anne has plenty of agility-based options and can get out of some really sticky situations, her actual movement speed outside of calamity form is only slightly above average and some of her attacks are likewise affected by this. A powerful price Though Calamity Anne is strong and fast, her new attacks are easily telegraphed and can leave her for an easy punish if they miss should you react fast enough. Add in that her calamity meter doesn’t charge very quickly to prevent over reliance as well as her being significantly weakened for a long time and you have a gimmick that’s awesome, but requires to time to fully master. End of Moveset So what do you guys think? Anything you would change or would you keep it the same? Please tell me in the comments below! Of course, I will be doing actual movesets and not just April Fools ones of non video game characters that may or may not be annual releases. But it is also a limited time series since I have planned SIXTY-NINE official additional slots and I don’t want to go further than that because it’s more than enough. Anyways, Happy April Fools, everyone, And I’ll see you guys next game! Peace ✌🏻! |
2023.04.01 14:36 Delicious_Touch8884 [DA2 Spoilers] Aveline
I'm only really putting a spoiler because not sure how many people haven't at least looked up Aveline.
So the thing is, I'm replaying DA2 again, and I even still, to this day, have no idea why Bioware doesn't allow players to romance Aveline, considering they A, gave us the ability to flirt with her and B, their reason for why Aveline doesn't date the MC is just so weird.
I mean, really, they write a damn good character, gave us players the option to get super attached to her, then make it so we can't be with her, even though it would make a lot of sense and she even seem actually ok with it, as from how her dialogue plays out. I am just curious if anyone might have any theories why Bioware wouldn't allow for the romance.
Thing is, she is my second most favourite NPC in DA2, only after Isabela, and one of my top 5 favourite characters in all of DA, so just thought it be fun to come up with theories as to why they decided to ax her from being romanceable or if someone has an uncle of a friend of a friend of a co-worker of a co-worker of that co-worker, who has a acquaintance of an acquaintance who they only know through rumours from a three generations removed relative who told them they had a friend who used to work at Bioware and knows the reason why Aveline is non-romanceable, please share.
It's eating me up.
submitted by Delicious_Touch8884 to dragonage [link] [comments]
So the thing is, I'm replaying DA2 again, and I even still, to this day, have no idea why Bioware doesn't allow players to romance Aveline, considering they A, gave us the ability to flirt with her and B, their reason for why Aveline doesn't date the MC is just so weird.
I mean, really, they write a damn good character, gave us players the option to get super attached to her, then make it so we can't be with her, even though it would make a lot of sense and she even seem actually ok with it, as from how her dialogue plays out. I am just curious if anyone might have any theories why Bioware wouldn't allow for the romance.
Thing is, she is my second most favourite NPC in DA2, only after Isabela, and one of my top 5 favourite characters in all of DA, so just thought it be fun to come up with theories as to why they decided to ax her from being romanceable or if someone has an uncle of a friend of a friend of a co-worker of a co-worker of that co-worker, who has a acquaintance of an acquaintance who they only know through rumours from a three generations removed relative who told them they had a friend who used to work at Bioware and knows the reason why Aveline is non-romanceable, please share.
It's eating me up.