My uncle was an odd, lonely man. That one guy you try to avoid at family reunions, the one nobody knows too well but loves to talk about nonetheless.
I think he liked me best because I never really enjoyed badmouthing him. I wouldn't say we were close, but we tolerated one another. At least that's how it was when I was little, we never bothered to stay in contact. I forgot about him by the time I left home. That's why the news of his death caught me completely by surprise.
Uncle Mack was alone in his apartment when he had a heart attack causing cardiac arrest. He fell unconscious and died within minutes.
Then there was me at the time. I had just flunked out of college and the only thing I was actually good at was playing video games. When I was contacted by Mack's lawyer, I was even more shocked. Mack had left me three things: a box of sorted letters addressed to me, all the money he used to own, which to me was a lot, and his bar–the one he had inherited from his father and had worked at all his life.
I'll be frank, I had no idea what to do with the bar but I knew from the very start I'd take it over. I felt kind of honored–this had basically been Uncle Mack's entire life and he was giving it to me of all people. Sure, from what I knew there hadn't been many friends or loved ones in his life to choose from, but it was still flattering to me. Once I read the first letter, I was even more convinced.
"Hi Giulia,
If you're reading this, my bad eating habits have probably caught up to me. Or maybe someone killed me, who knows. As of me writing this, you're fifteen years old. You were the only one to talk to me at the family reunion today. Not for long, but more than just an awkward hello. I notice these things and I appreciate it. That's why I'm trusting you with the most important task anyone in this family is ever going to offer you. You are going to take over my bar. Besides, knowing you, you're not gonna have much of a career anyways, so you might as well.
Once you're done reading this, please go to the bar at your earliest convenience. Take the box of letters with you and stash it away somewhere there. It has some valuable advice you're gonna need down the line. In fact, you will need to read the second letter right after your arrival. You'll find my employees are a bit special.
Anyways, I hope you're doing alright, however this letter finds you. You're a good kid, Lia. Always have been. Besides, the only person you could possibly disappoint by screwing this up is dead so there's no pressure to impress.
Sincerely, Your Uncle Mack."
I wiped my eyes. They had actually gotten a bit watery while I was reading the letter. I folded the letter and tucked it back into the box before grabbing my coat and bag. Mack's bar was a train ride and a thirty-minute walk away from my parents' place, which is where I was residing at the moment. I figured I would probably have to look for a place close to the bar if I really would start working there full time.
When I finally arrived at the establishment, it looked almost exactly the way I had expected. It was just another wall in the row of buildings on the street off to the side from the inner city's market square. A large, bright red double door with a neon sign reading "The New Saloon" above it. It would probably glow if I'd find out how to switch it on. At least I hoped it would glow.
It felt weird, unlocking the door and opening it for the first time, all on my own. Entering and looking around inside felt even weirder. The New Saloon was your typical old-style dive bar. Even completely empty it looked overcrowded. The fabric of the cushion seats was stained and frayed, the walls behind and in front of the counter were plastered with neon beer signs and large framed photos of people I didn't know, some were even in black and white. The floors were dirty and my heels stuck to them when I walked further in. This place was small, shabby and smelly and I loved it.
It was so strange but I suddenly just felt like this bar was mine, and that I needed to take care of it and protect it. Remembering what Mack had told me in his first letter, I pulled the second one out from the box and unfolded it.
"Hi Giulia,
If you're reading this, you're probably at the bar for the very first time! How do you like it? Let me guess, it's ugly and gross but it instantly started growing on you?
Don't worry, it's about to get a lot weirder. You'll find the entrance to the backroom behind the counter. The lightswitch is on the inside of the wall, make sure to turn it on before you head inside because there's stairs leading down right behind the door. It's a death trap. Once you're in there, stand in the middle of the room. Stay away from the walls. You may then say out loud the following words:
Spirits of this house, by the power of the spell that has bound you I command you to serve.
You'll see what happens next. Whatever happens, keep in mind you can order them around. When all the work is done, simply tell them to go back into their room. You've got this.
Sincerely, Your Uncle Mack."
I frowned. That was odd. Was this the prelude to some kind of joke? I walked over to the door behind the counter and pressed down the handle. It swung open with a loud creaking noise and I began to grope around for the lightswitch. A single light bulb down in the backroom came flickering on and I proceeded down the rickety wooden stairs. No bannisters. Risky, especially with the shoes I was wearing. By the time I had reached the middle of the room, my heart was already beating faster than it should. Still, if this was a prank, Mack had been planning it for over five years, and I was not about to ruin it. Besides, no one was watching anyways.
I cleared my throat. "Spirits of this house…" I began, a giggle swinging along in my voice. "By the power of the spell that has bound you I command you to serve."
Nothing. Not a single sound for five whole seconds. I looked around the room. It was completely empty, except for a single door in the wall across from me. Maybe I had been supposed to say it in whatever room was behind that one? Just as I was about to walk over to it, a loud noise came from one of the walls to the side. I spun around to find that it had cracked open. Bits of it were beginning to crumble to the floor as the tear widened. I stared at it with my mouth agape, frozen in place and incapable of comprehending what I was seeing there.
From the crack, a set of long, bony pale fingers reached out into the room, gripping the inside of the wall. My throat was too dry to produce a proper scream, but I couldn't contain a gasp as I staggered backwards until my back met with the other wall behind me. It was then that I felt cold palms rubbing against my neck and hands closing around my shoulders from behind. This time, I shrieked. I whirled around again only to see that there was a hole there too, long, skinny arms slowly moving forward from it, grabbing at me, searching for me.
I glanced around the room frantically. Holes had opened in basically every spare spot. I counted four sets of arms pulling themselves out into the light, followed by similarly slender upper bodies. By the time I finally thought to run back up the stairs and save myself, the people from inside the walls were standing in the backroom, fully emerged from their dark hideouts. I didn't risk another look at them. When I finally reached the top stair, I dashed back into the bar and slammed the door shut behind me. I pressed myself up against it just to keep standing. My knees had grown weak beneath me and I was panting heavily, my mind racing.
Then I heard them; slow, light footsteps making their way up the staircase and stop on top of it. I heard calm, steady breathing coming from the other side of the door. I tensed up and shifted my weight on my feet, leaning up against it to keep whomever was in there from getting out. I was sure this person would start to try pushing it open, but to my surprise, nothing happened. Instead, a voice rang out from inside.
"Excuse me, who are you exactly?" It was a man's voice. I had expected something like a growl, or a hiss, or the groans of some decomposing zombie, but this was distinctly more articulate. It sounded almost polite.
I didn't know what to do other than respond. "Giulia," I stammered.
"Giulia?" The man sounded surprised. "What about Mack? Wait, if you're here…" He sounded quite sad now. "Mack's dead, isn't he?"
"Yes," I replied quietly. "His heart stopped."
"That's… good God." He fell silent and I heard him utter a shaky sigh, almost like a sob. "I'm sorry, would you give me a moment? I need to tell the others."
"Go ahead," I murmured.
"Nevermind, they heard us. So, will you let us out now or…?"
"Who are you? Why were you in there?"
"We work here, actually. My name is Andrik… I do most of the organizing here. I take care of the accounting, our profits, our spendings; I place the orders on most of what we need. Back here with me, I've got Bo, who is our bouncer, and Danika and May, both waitresses."
"You work here?" I repeated. "And you live in the walls? After your shift is over, do you just go down there and melt into the room or what?" I couldn't help but let out a nervous chuckle at the mental image. This was just too absurd. At least I was breathing normally now.
"Pretty much, yes."
I shook my head. "What are you?"
"Well, to explain that you would have to go exactly a hundred and twenty-two years back so it's a long story," Andrik replied. "All you need to know for now is that if you let us out, we'll get the bar up and running right away. We've been working under Mack ever since he took over this place though, so you'll have to excuse us if we're a bit gloomy."
"No, that's fine," I muttered, slowly turning away from the door and carefully pulling it open.
The man in front of me was of normal height, slender and looked to be in his thirties. Despite being dressed in jeans and a simple black t-shirt with the bar's name printed on it in white, swirly letters, he had a very official look to him. Maybe it was the way he stood, straight as a rod with a friendly yet matter-of-fact smile on his face.
"Thank you," he said. Turning back to the room, he raised his voice. "You heard it everyone, Mack might be gone and while that's a downer, our work isn't over; so get yourselves up here and let's get this going again!" His tone carried the flat motivation the coach of a youth sports team might have.
Three more people emerged from the backroom, all dressed exactly like Andrik, all of them that same content little grin on their lips. They walked by me offering polite greetings; the first one, a large, bulky guy giving me a curt nod and the two women that followed smiling brightly. The girls were a little younger than Andrik, maybe in their late twenties. Both had blond hair hanging down their shoulders in wavy pigtails.
That first night the bar was open, I merely watched the backroom people work, following them around while they ignored me. It was eerie. They looked almost like automated mannequins, going about their routine by sticking to preplanned paths; like there were set directions painted somewhere I couldn't see. I soon began to notice other distinctive attributes about them. None of the people from the walls had fingernails. I saw it on the waitresses when they reached for the cups handed to them, on Andrik when he scribbled down notes. However that was not the only thing off about them. All those little details in their faces, the kind of thing you'd normally never pay attention to–they didn't add up.
For example, their eyes didn't lign up. One was always slightly lower than the other, just enough for someone to notice. Their nostrils would differ in width and one of the girls' pinky fingers was the same length as her ring finger. Had I not known that they had just crawled out from the backroom walls, I would have chalked these harmless little oddities up to simple, inconspicuous deformities, but knowing what I knew, it made my skin crawl with uncomfort.
I soon found out that Andrik did most of the talking for them. Bo rarely ever said a word, and all the waitresses did was whisper amongst themselves, giggle and chat with the patrons. Eventually, Andrik waved me over to him behind the counter.
"Alright, to give you a rundown of the place, we have a cash-only system. We rely on our local clientele, but once in a while someone new comes by and then we try and keep them around, obviously. Here's some of our regulars." He pointed at a lady sitting in a corner, weeping over an empty glass of whiskey. "That's Shauna. Comes here whenever she can, only ever orders whiskey. Will not stop crying."
His finger wandered over to an old, short man with an almost disproportionately large head and short white hair. He was sitting at one of the tables as well, talking to two younger women who seemed very much out of place. "That's Tommy. He's likely to start fights but he drinks a lot and tips very generously. Bo throws him out a lot but he's very easy on him, so don't worry."
He finally nodded towards a tall glass of wine standing lonely on the counter right in front of us. "And this is Irene. She can't pay but she's always welcome. She's very nice and she's been here ever since Mack's family started this business."
"Andrik, there's nothing there."
The pale man threw me a confused glance. "What do you mean, she's right… oh! Of course. Don't worry, you'll start seeing her with time. Either way, for now there's actually not much for you to do except read up on barkeeping once you get the chance. However you should start getting acquainted with the regulars. After all, the owner of The New Saloon will always be part of the reason why people come here." He paused as his mouth started to twitch into an almost guileful grin. "I have a feeling they're going to love you."
I retreated into the ladies' room for a quick break. I sat down on one of the toilets and buried my face in my palms. I had no idea what was going on or what I was supposed to do. Andrik had made himself pretty clear when it came to the instructions he'd given me, but all of this was so surreal I seriously considered the possibility of me having suffered some kind of blow to the head and dreaming it. I spent the rest of the night standing behind the counter and observing their every move. Andrik kept to my side mostly, looking at me with the kind of suspicion I probably had in my eyes as well. I couldn't figure him out.
I accidentally-on-purpose walked by the waitresses who were talking to each other in hushed voices, picking up on small bits of their conversation.
"Her blood is weaker than his. Do you think she's–?"
"We shouldn't take any chances. Remember what Mack did when we tried to test him?"
"I do, but this could be our chance to have some fun."
Her words sent chills down my spine. Remembering Mack's letter however, I decided this was not the time to show I was frightened. "You're going to do no such thing," I chimed in from behind them. "I don't care what you are but I promise I'll find a way to make this whole thing very uncomfortable for you guys if you try to pull any kind of weird crap on me."
The looks they gave me were worth my initial doubt. They seemed shocked that I had listened in on them at all, let alone spoken up. I glared at them, holding their gaze and ignoring the trembling of my legs. Their heads lowered, they marched off. When the bar began to clear out and we got ready to close down for the night, I told the four of them to clean up. Of course I helped, but I made sure never to lose sight of a single one of them. I felt like they were wild, hungry animals, waiting for their chance to pounce on me. Whenever I looked up from the rag I was wiping the countertop with, I would find one of them staring at me.
By the time we were done, the place really did look a lot more welcoming. It certainly was cleaner, despite the four workers' angry faces spoiling the mood. We carried the cleaning supplies back into the small storage chamber next to the employee restroom before I went to open the backroom door for them. "Okay everyone, good job today! Thanks a lot, now back inside!" I called out, almost enjoying the feeling of authority as they came trodding towards me and made their way down into the dimly lit basement single-file. Andrik was the last one to cross the threshold. Right before descending the staircase, he turned to face me once more.
"You were keeping a close eye on us," he said quietly. "That's clever. But you're going to need to keep it up and… let's see how long you'll last. Who knows what might happen." He gave me a sly wink with the one eye that was a little lower on his face before following his co-workers. I watched from the top of the stairs as they leaned up against the walls. It was almost as I had expected; their bodies seemed to melt into the holes they had come from, sealing them shut and not leaving so much as a thin crack.
Lacking a better option, I stayed at a nearby inn that night. As bizarre and frightening as all of this had been, I got out of it unscathed. The bar workers and I would end up coming to blows in the future though, more than once. And I wouldn't always be that lucky.
X
Part 2: one of the regulars had a doppelgänger
Part 3: My bouncer and I got beaten up by a little girl.

First Contact - Fourth Wave - Chapter 415

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General No'Drak stared at the holotank, leaning back from the table and pushing the plate to the side. He picked up his pack of cigarettes and opened it slowly, looking at the data that he had been looking over while he ate.
Almost every unit was no longer engaged in fighting. There was some mopup, mostly being handled by the light infantry, mechanized infantry, and the light attack craft units. Third Armor was undergoing refit and examination.
The tanks of Third Armor and First Armored Recon had long lists of malfunctions, errors, and breakdowns, most of them overlapping.
The meme of "Your old tank" and "Your new high tech supertank" had millions of likes, recasts, and other engagement metrics.
No'Drak knew anger when he saw it.
He compared the maitenance lists for the old tanks that Third Armor and First Recon had swapped out after the Telkan Campaign to the current list, then compared it to the new armor that First Telkan Marines and Fifth Powered Infantry Division was using.
Third Armor and First Recon had nearly six times the amount of part and software failures that were standard across virtually 80% of the tanks. The biggest piece was the battlescreen frequency algorithm software had been patched in the field by an enlistedman from 27th Maintenance Brigade.
No'Drak opened the reports on the software. Corps software analysis stated there was nothing wrong with the algorithm, everyone below Corps stated bluntly that the software was trash. The enlistedman from 27th's report was more in-depth. While most of it was formula and went over No'Drak's head, there was one part that he noted.
Every 82 seconds the software restarted at the same frequency before rotating through six different frequencies within a thirty second interval, afterwards randomization improved.
The second part was that the early frequencies all matched the mining lasers used by most mining systems, including Precursor systems.
While the system should have discarded that set of frequencies and not used them further, it did not lock those frequencies out.
Corps Maintenance claimed that the software did and showed simulations where it did so.
The enlistedman had countered that after approximately 185 to 383 seconds it reset completely, wiping out the frequency lockouts and returning to factory baseline.
The One Star General in charge of Corps Maintenance had recommended that enlistedman be punished for insubordination due to fact that when the General replied that Corps simulations did not show that, the enlistedman replied "Actual use is different and you'd know that if you'd been in a tank in the last three hundred years instead of hiding behind a desk."
No'Drak sighed. It was a clear case of insubordination in writing. He wrote a quick recommendation to the enlistedman's commander to fine the enlistedman one narcobeer, require ten pushups, and force the enlistedman to recite the Corps motto ten times at high volume as a punishment.
He then penned a letter to the General, telling him that he would be personally looking over the after action reports regarding the new armored vehicles and armored infantry suits.
Next up was the logistics report. General No'Drak sighed. The current General in charge of logistics was a perfectly servicable subordinate, but he lacked General Tik-Tak's flair for producing two bullets when he had only had an expended shell casing. The General was complaining about nanite depletion, work performance metrics dropoffs, morale issues, retention issues, and, of course, the fact that he had busted black market rings twice and a prostitution ring another time.
General No'Drak just signed the receipt and promised himself he'd look over it real soon.
Clone Warfare was reporting that they were no closer to solving the issues with rapid growth clones and the Born Whole system, and as of the writing of the report the two systems were to be considered unavailable. Simba, Goodboi, and Purrboi production was starting to have problems with neurological system collapse but Clone Warfare was checking the issue to see if it was a possible mutation in the Friendkiller Virus. Additionally, there were now issues with transferring SUDS templates across hardwired systems and it was possible the entire system would go down.
That one was an issue. No'Drak signed the sheets and ordered the entire Clone Warfare Division to be taken out of the order of battle, despite the problems it would cause with reinforcement and replacement.
General No'Drak punched up his Table of Organization & Equipment, looking for an older section. There, 21st Replacement Battalion. He reactivated it, pulled men from retention offices, medical oversight judgement boards, and other places, and ordered the old unit's colors uncased and the unit brought back online.
The FTL needlecast superluminal communications system was back online. He sent memos to the other units within a month's travel distance, advising the other Generals of the issues currently plaguing V Corps (Old Blood) and 7th Army (Old Blood) as well as his ideas on how to mitigate the problems.
He suggested that reactivating 21st Replacement and doing Old Blood/New Blood calls could relieve some tensions, as well as recruiting from the former neo-sapient populations for integrated forces.
He also made sure to annotate that while the various units of 7th Army had not taken many casualties (less then 1% of force levels) during the last few battles it could not be assumed that there would be no serious mass-cal events in the future.
Ge'ermo'o watched with interest. Dealing with force level issues was never a problem in the Great Herd. For every lost soldier there were millions, billions more to take their place. He was interested in seeing how General No'Drak would handle the issue.
The warning was something that made Ge'ermo'o nod.
While there has always been billions of replacements awaiting any Great Herd that took casualties, I can no longer rely on such a depth of replacements any longer. The new tanks being developed for Great Grand Most High A'armo'o will take weeks, possibly months of retraining to use, which means that any replacements brought in from other Great Herd units would require the same training, Ge'ermo'o thought to himself. He quickly opened his dataslate's message application and began drafting a report to Most High A'armo'o that the Great Armored Herd might be facing retention, replacement, and recruiting issues in the near future, highlighting the fact that the new weapons and vehicles required training that needed to take place outside of a combat zone.
Ge'ermo'o nodded to himself as he sent the message.
He was a most observant commander, which allowed him to see issues that others may not.
General No'Drak saw the message go out and opened it. He looked it over and nodded to himself, restraining from looking over at Ge'ermo'o, who was going over the estimated casualties from the long battle to save the planet.
He could tell from the phrasing that what Most High Ge'ermo'o had been suggesting was tantamount to heresy to Lanaktallan sensibilities.
But the Lanaktallan had learned.
More than that. Had applied what he learned to spot a potential problem in the making.
He forwarded it to MI and CID to add to the undoubtably growing files on Lanaktallan and Most High Ge'ermo'o both.
That done he turned his attention back to the map.
Below the mountain still burned 1st Platoon, HHC, 1st Telkan and two other icons.
What is happening down there? he wondered.
He reached out, tapping 108th Military Intelligence Battalion, requesting a situation report. It came back within minutes, complete with video.
No'Drak checked the templates first. Templates for Mantid cryosleep fluids, parts for cryosleep pods, templates for precooked turkey, chicken, goose, and ham. A question of whether or not a suckling pig could be produced by a template-cracked Class III Nano-forge. (No, it could not, not alive) A request for a template of a "Goddess Pele Succulent Fire Walking Roast Pig Feast" for a Class-III nanoforge. A request for templates for UV lights calibrated to solar output of the planet prior to the Precursor AWM attack, templates for a holoemitter that could provide eVR non-hookup works with a "Pre-Attack Surface Park".
It looked weird but No'Drak changed the order of the data requests several times, then went back over the requests one at a time, complete with any images sent back by Casey.
One was a helmet cam from 1LT Vuxten. It showed an armored Sergeant Addox with at least thirty little green mantids huddled around him. Most were asleep, but a good number of them were eating strips of grease dripping still steaming meat.
When No'Drak heard the audio he groaned and turned it off.
"So the kid, right? He totally rocks sixth grade. Letters in track and field and grav-skiing, is voted most popular, even has top mark grades, and his dad, right, his dad decides that the kid deserves the bangingest reward possible," Casey was saying.
No'Drak wasn't falling for that one again.
Instead No'Drak paid attention to the displayed troop stress levels as Vuxten's cam panned over them. They were all well within resting baseline, even if all of them but Vuxten and Addox were paying attention to Casey, who was talking while he was messing with something on his loading frame.
No'Drak opened up a file and started moving data. Pretty soon he had a good idea what was going on.
There was a facility beneath the mountain that dated back to the initial Precursor War. The Mantid upper class had rebelled against the Queens for unknown reasons. The remaining upper class had been relegated to a hell of cryostasis and revival since then. Vuxten and Addox, with the help of that lunatic Casey, were bribing the Mantid upper class remaining with turkey to surrender.
No'Drak shifted his attention, looking at possible exit points for a deep level mining vehicle leaving the facility. He ordered Clone Warfare Division to run off from pigs, turkeys, and other food animals preferred by mantids and have them on standby.
He then copied what he was doing to a memo and sent it to Casey's contact in 108th MI, to forward to Casey.
-------------
"Your blinky is flashing," Private Nulfret said, pointing at the round device on Casey's loading frame.
"Oh, nice," Casey broke off the joke, reaching down and tapping the device while turning over his left hand so it was palm up. The holoemitter implanted in his hand twinkled and he stared at it for a long moment.
"Lieutenant Vuxten, sir," Casey said.
"Go ahead, Sergeant," Vuxten said.
"Commands creating a 'temporary EPOW site with live animals, Mantid rated shelter, and everything else, including psychic dampeners for our soon to be defectors," he said. "Coordinates incoming, but we have a place to take these guys in the sun."
Vuxten nodded. "Do your meme magic. Let's keep memeing these guys to life."
Casey nodded. "I'll get right on it, sir."
Vuxten looked over at Addox, who had every green mantid that had wandered into the room clustered tight around him. "How you doing, Sergeant?" he asked.
"All right. Most of them are asleep. Its hot and sweaty in my armor, but their color's getting better," Addox answered.
"All right. We're going to lay a heating pad on a grav-dolly once the work crew gets back and they can transfer there. We'll put some low power phasic inhibitors on it," Vuxten said. He turned to where 471 and some of the other greenies were gathered together around a data-cable.
"How's it going on your side?" Vuxten asked.
--own this thing-- 471 said. --hemming in vi right now--
--tough security-- 568 said. --five digit password/login single entry combo--
That made Vuxten snort. His pay-card had a six digit PIN and had thumbprint verification.
--oh no how we outclassed-- 834 said. --asking for three digit number only passcode--
"Gotcha. Just taking time to figure it all out. Keep it up," Vuxten said. He moved over and sat down on a large piece of computer equipment that the greenies had cut out of the system and had pulled away.
Is it weird that I miss being enlisted? he thought to himself.
His suit's VI tossed up an image meme. It was blank, just a line in the middle, with "TOP TEXT" at the very top and "BOTTOM TEXT" at the bottom.
Vuxten sighed. They were out of range of everything. That didn't bother him so much, back during the Second Telkan War he'd been deep enough in the jungle enough times that he didn't have communication with anyone else.
But back then it was mostly just keep him and his squaddies alive, follow orders, and fight the good fight.
He knew this was part of the good fight, sitting and watching Casey twiddle with his hologram, Addox pet a little greenie that had stopped in place, turned to look at him, then asked for food, and watching the rest of the platoon sitting around playing cards. Three of them were using their palm mounted holo-emitters to toss a glittering ball back and forth.
Vuxten had seen the training films, knew that despite the urgent feeling to do something that what he was supposed to do, as a leader, was simply project an aura of calm and control. He was tempted to do a maintenance check on his stubber, but knew that would increase his platoon's anxiety and he didn't want anyone else following his example and taking apart their weapon only to have something, anything, attack and catch them unarmed.
Training films are different, he lamented. I'm starting to understand Casey's pink golfball joke and why he keeps starting it over and over. It's not supposed to end. It's supposed to be a kind of touch stone to keep everyone grounded, help pass time, and relax everyone because things have to be going good if a Senior NCO can start the joke over to make sure everyone's in on it, Vuxten suddenly realized. He almost groaned out loud at how obvious the whole thing was.
"Sir," Casey's voice broke into Vuxten's thoughts.
"Go ahead, Sergeant," Vuxten said.
"I need you to come with me. I need to move as far away from those little guys as possible," he said.
"What's going on?" Vuxten asked.
"Finished my meme. Gotta go with the rest," Casey said. "Well, it's less a meme and more a pictograph series to convince those big guys something."
The big human got over and started moving to the far end of the room, on the other side of huge banks of computers. Vuxten followed, curiosity starting to well up. When he got over there Vuxten saw Casey holding a piece of warsteel in his bare hand, his gauntlet sitting on the barrels of the minigun.
"Crank up your phasic inhibitors the greenies installed on your armor to max and max out your psychic shielding as high as you can without passing out," Casey said. He opened his faceplate and took a deep breath, closing his eyes.
"Uh, all right," Vuxten said. "Should I bring over 471?"
"No. Just us, sir," Casey said. He clenched his fist around the piece of warsteel as Vuxten cranked his internal psychic shielding up to almost 140%, the max he could handle before he started getting tunnel vision.
Casey squeezed the warsteel and Vuxten watched as muscle spasms made the muscles along the side of Casey's jaw ripple. Vuxten suddenly smelled dry dusty air, a hint of stale sour human body odor, scorched molycircs and warsteel. His reactor level twitched and he saw his psychic shielding suddenly go amber. Casey was whispering something to himself in a language that Vuxten didn't understand and that his suit's VI didn't translate. It felt like heat was emenating off of Casey, an almost physical pressure against Vuxten that seemed to push through his armor to press against his skin.
WARNING! PSYCHIC DANGER! WARNING!
flashed on his visor, in his cybereye, was announced in his ear.
Casey opened his eye and Vuxten tried to resist stepping back but was unable.
Casey's eye was glowing a bright steady crimson, bright enough to illuminate the eye socket. More, there was a dull red shining from behind the patch. Casey transferred the piece of warsteel to the frame for his minigun and picked up another, squeezing it and then repeating the whole thing twice more.
Vuxten watched as Casey closed his eye, took several deep breaths, and relaxed.
The bar for his psychic shielding's load dropped from reddish amber to yellow to green to blue.
"Everyone OK?" Casey asked, slowly standing up.
"What was that?" Vuxten asked.
"Just bad old memories," Casey said dismissively. "Nothing major, nothing important."
"Oh," Vuxten felt completely out of his element.
"Just don't tell the Colonel you saw me do that, it freaks her out," Casey grinned.
It freaked me out too, Vuxten thought to himself but kept the thought to himself. "So what is that for?"
Casey flipped his face shield back down. "Imprinting a piece of warsteel," he said. He opened his hand and Vuxten saw that it was squeezed like a piece of taffy. "This is going to convince the Mantid big boys not to fight us."
"How?" Vuxten asked.
"So, warsteel can be imprinted by intense exposure to anger, love, fear, other intense basic emotions," Casey said. "So, I just imprinted it with battle fury."
"You're going to have your meme warn them if they fight you'll rip them in half, provide the piece of warsteel as psychic proof, to convince them to go into cold sleep till we can get them somewhere they can be unthawed," Vuxten said. putting it all together.
"You're quick, sir," Casey said. "I don't want to fight these guys, I don't think they want to fight, but getting them to the surface has problems."
Vuxten nodded. "Close quarters in one of the mining machines to travel to the surface. Who knows how they'll react to our battle buddies, you and Addox, not to mention all of us Telkan."
"Exactly, sir," Casey said. He moved over to the little robots he had built. He put a piece of warsteel in each of the robots, putting the warsteel in a grasper claw.
"All right. The pictogram basically says that me and Addox are dangers. We aren't mentioning you or the battle buddies. That we don't want him to get hurt," Casey started.
Vuxten listened to the rest of the plan.
"Sounds good, Sergeant," Vuxten said. "Let's hope it works."
-----------------
Cordexen stood under the air vent, eyes closed, fantasizing about standing in the long waving grain of where he had grown to maturity in the service of the queens. About the warmth of the sun on his carapace. How the wind smelled of ripening grain tended to by the russet and golden mantid of the servitor castes.
In the long forever he had been trapped in the facility he had admitted that given what he now knew, he would have preferred to have become a crop tender, overseeing the gold and russet mantids working the fields to provide grain for the herds.
The little robot rolled back in, beeping.
Cordexen looked up, happy to have his thought interrupted.
The hologram appeared and it took Cordexen a moment to take it all in.
It showed Cordexen next to a cryostasis tube. Then it split in two. One side showed Cordexen refusing. A bipedal primate came in, trying to be friendly. Radiation, marking psychic danger, radiated from the biped's head and Cordexen exploded. On the other side Cordexen got inside. It then showed the primate carrying the cryopod up to the surface where it opened and Cordexen got out to eat turkey in the sunshine.
Cordexen scoffed slightly. After all, he was the premier psychic predator in the galaxy?
The robot beeped and a robotic clamp raised up.
Cordexen recognized it as Substance W.
He reached out with one bladearm and tapped it.
YOU CAN NOT STOP ME! NOTHING CAN STOP ME! YOU CAN'T KILL THIS MOTHERFUCKER! NOBODY CAN SAVE YOU FROM ME! MY HATE KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES THAT YOUR ILK CAN FLEE BEYOND! YOU CAN NOT STOP ME! MY WRATH, MY RAGE, WILL NEVER EVER STOP!
Cordexen was almost overwhelmed by the images that slammed into his mind and threatened to tear him apart like cardboard trying to hold back an atomic explosion.
Ruined cities burning, blasted landscape, scorched skies. The sound of millions screaming in terror and agony. The terrible silence of being the only living thing.
He was wrapped in Substance W, in strength enhanced armor, wading into his foes. Screeching things, warped things, that his fists crushed, his hands tore asunder, that his guns shattered. Their jaws snapped at him, their caustic drool flooded from their jaws, poison billowed around him, fire surrounded him.
He was surrounded, overwhelmed, cut off, alone, by twisted mockeries of life that gibbered and howled and capered and danced even as they killed and destroyed.
But that wasn’t the worst to Cordexen’s senses.
The rage that filled him. The all consuming fury. A need to destroy, to smash, to hammer the enemy into nothing more than carbon paste that would drip from his fists. To howl and bellow his rage and fury at an uncaring universe even as he thirsted for carnage and mayhem.
His thoughts were charged with it, buoyed by it, flooded with it. Images of men and women and children being slaughtered did nothing more than fill him with even more rage, more anger, more fury, stoking into an all consuming fire that burned hotter than the atomic explosions that roared to life around him.
Nothing could quench that all consuming fury, that need to destroy.
It needed fed.
Cordexen slammed back, against the wall, panting. His abdomen heaved with each breath he took and he was aware that he was rubbing his vestigial wings together in anxiety as he stared in horror at the piece of Substance W as it slowly lowered down into the robot.
The front of the robot opened to show more turkey.
He moved forward, picking up the turkey, and went to sit on his command couch.
The robot turned and moved away, taking that piece of unbridled fury with it.
He suddenly found that he did care if he lived or died.
When asked, he would allow himself to be put in cryostasis.
Anything to avoid the creature that had touched that piece of Substance W, infusing it with more than wrath.
Cordexen knew he had tasted another being’s hate.
He did not wish to taste it again.
------------
Vuxten looked at Addox, who had just finished putting the last little green mantid on the grav-dolly, setting it gently on the warming pad. Two privates were covering the little greenies with another warming pad.
“They’re in cryostorage pods and being loaded onto Gobbler,” Vuxten said. “The rest of the pods are already loaded.”
“We’ll load these guys up then,” Addox said. “How long till we get to the surface?”
“Four hours,” Vuxten said. He looked around at the computer and control center. “The computer system will shut this facility down into standby mode in six hours, in case we have to come back.”
Addox nodded. “I’ll just be glad to get out of here.”
“Me too, Sergeant, me too,” Vuxten agreed.
------------------
General No’Drak had just returned from the latrine when the icon started flashing.
“Sir, Adder-One has made surface. They’re requesting mantid capable medical services and evac,” one of his aides said.
No’Drak felt a wave of relief fill him knowing the mountain was going to stay intact.
“May I ask a question?” Ge’ermo’o asked the Treana’ad general.
“Go ahead,” No’Drak said.
“Does it bother you that it seems anti-climatic?” Ge’ermo’o asked. “I have spent the past several days nervously awaiting an explosion that would turn the central mountain range hub into a fiery pit of doom but yet nothing happened.”
No’Drak gave the Treana’ad equivalent of a smile. “Yeah. It’s almost disappointing, isn’t it?”
Ge’ermo’o nodded. “Indeed.”
“Well, let’s find out what they found down there,” No’Drak said. He turned back to his aide. “Get medical teams in there. I want a full debrief as soon as possible,” he said. He turned back to Ge’ermo’o. “Why don’t you accompany me.”
“I would like that,” Ge’ermo’o said.
----------------
Casey stood next to Vuxten, watching the medical personnel unload the cryostasis pods from the massive mining machine. Glory was sitting behind them, mechanics going over her left leg and hip.
“You know, I thought we were going to end up shooting our way out, not bribing them,” Vuxten said.
“Shooting our way out would have been the easy way,” Casey shrugged. “We were ready for that. We got lucky.”
“How so?” Vuxten asked.
Casey looked down at the Telkan officer. “We had an arrangement of skillsets and knowledge that normally isn’t available without prior preparation. Between all of us we had the skills necessary to get out of a jam without having to resort to combat. That’s rare.”
Vuxten nodded and filed the information away.
Next time I might not be so lucky.
[first] [prev] [prev appearance][next]

An old guy hired me to manage his life-sized dollhouse. It's time for my appointment with The Hygienist.

Part 1 | this is part 2 | part 3
The Hygienist appeared in the doorway. He was a tall, muscular man clad in dark navy surgical scrubs. A tinted visor mask obscured the top half of his face, leaving only a wide, open-mouthed grin exposed. His teeth were bleached white but crooked, a combination so bizarre I had to do a double-take. Tufts of gray hair poked out from behind the mask, and the skin on his forearms was covered in liver spots.
“Hello Louisa,” he said, lingering on the threshold, “How do you like the other girls?”
“It’s Lu,” I replied, clenching the swiss army knife in my palm, “And I’d much rather know what the fuck you did to them.”
The man threw his head back, hooting with laughter like a drunk at a rodeo bar. I tried to see beyond the visor, but only the deep-set lines around his mouth and nose were visible. His jaw twitched periodically, as though he had a bad craving for a hit only I could supply.
“I’m happy to show you,” he said, pulling a metal contraption into view.
You know those claw machines kids waste all their money on? The weapon looked a lot like a claw from one of those, only instead of slippery tongs, there were three sharp, steel blades. His right hand was practiced at working the levers, and I noticed the familiar bull creature tattooed on his inner wrist. The blades sliced through the air with sickening ease as the man snapped the device open and shut with just a flick of the finger.
I wasted no time in backing up to the furthest part of the room, coming to a halt behind an armchair with a doll I didn’t recognize. I felt quite helpless then. His mask ensured I would do more harm to myself with the pepper spray, and my swiss army knife didn’t stand a chance against his handheld torture device.
I glanced at the clock, trying to count how long I had before Ronnie arrived. He had promised forty minutes, an hour tops, but I was sure that no more than twenty minutes had passed since I ended our call.
“Something wrong, Lu?” the man mocked.
He lunged at me as I dashed to the next armchair, upsetting some bird ornaments on a small, round table to the side of rainbow-doll's seat. Time slowed as we bopped around the room like some demented version of Tom and Jerry, upsetting the delicate balance of the parlor room's interior. He had the door covered at all times, and I was losing stamina as the chase progressed.
I was running toward the armchair that held the most familiar doll, Cynthia, when I tripped over a rug and face planted with a nasty crack of the neck. I rolled over on my back just in time to see the man grab my left foot and lift my lower body off the floor. He snapped the metal monstrosity inches away from my ankle.
“Want me to trim your legs, Lu?” he wheezed with laughter, “Don’t you want to leave your stump on the world?”
I watched in horror as he teased my left ankle with the blades, inching them close enough to nick the skin. Droplets of blood fell on my face, running down into my eyes as I wriggled like an upside-down trout in a fisherman’s grasp. I wiped the blood away and tried to kick the guy in the balls with my other leg, but he only sunk the tool deeper into my ankle as punishment.
I felt it then, the pain of a thousand beatings compressed into one, impossible sensation spreading through my leg. I screamed in anguish, jerking my body violently, kicking and snarling like a vicious animal. Funny how all pretense of sophistication melts away in a situation like that. How we turn to our latent savage selves for just a shot at postponed mortality.
Was this my fate? Was Vanderley going to become my final resting place? Cynthia and the rest of the girls suggested so, staring me down with those vacant, knowing expressions.
Panic raced through my body as my screams grew louder than the man’s laughter. Louder than the sound of blades striking bone. I was about to succumb to full-blown hysteria when a slight movement flickered at the edge of my vision. I turned my head, desperately hoping to see Ronnie, and felt my despair double as Mrs. Claymore entered the room instead.
I wanted to turn my attention back to the man who was busy mauling my foot off, but something stopped me. It was like someone had turned down the volume on reality. Like a blur filter had been applied to the room, dulling my surroundings. The man’s howls grew distant, soft even, and I felt a warm pull drawing my gaze to Mrs. Claymore’s face, her eyes. Their deep chestnut tones flickered in yellow hues.
“Find your darkness, child,” her voice rang through my mind loud as early morning church bells, “Out of darkness comes light. Out of bad comes good.”
My mind screamed, willing her presence out of my head, but she wasn’t finished.
“Dig deep into the hollows that nurtured you through infancy, the vacancy of tenderness, the depravity of your surroundings. You bathed in darkness for power. Use it now or fall into the abyss of a lesser being’s fate.”
The room snapped back to normal. Rather, it snapped back to the reality where the man known as The Hygienist was digging his fingers into my half amputated foot, licking his lips in preparation for a feast I didn’t want to imagine.
I should have fainted then. From pain, horror, or both. Instead, something clicked into place and I withdrew. Not physically, not right away. I did what I’ve been doing all my life. I closed my eyes, falling deep inside myself. It didn’t take long for me to sink into the void, into that space that harbored all my worst memories. I ran through them like a stack of flashcards.
Uncle Benji flinging me at a wall. Age five.
The social worker stubbing out a cigarette on my shoulder. Age seven.
My cousin Alice sticking me with a used needle. Age nine.
So on, so forth.
I added The Hygienist to the pile of garbage my circumstances had produced. A black swirl of collected darkness, a cackling-chaos that swelled inside my chest. For once, I didn’t soothe or coddle it into submission. I didn’t ‘breathe and count to ten’. I let it stretch in and around me until it grew into an entity of its own, a power that could not, would not be contained.
It was time.
When I opened my eyes, I was no longer hanging upside down. I stood firmly on both feet, my chin raised to the tall ceiling of Vanderley. Above my head, the hygienist screamed bloody murder as invisible forces rotated him in the air like a rotisserie bird.
I began with his eyes. One for my ankle, the second for that stupid joke about stumps. I focused on the tiny vessels and the optic nerve, heating them from the inside like a microwave. I still couldn’t see beyond the mask, but I felt them growing, swelling from the heat. The man started begging for mercy, squirming as both eyeballs exploded in his skull, splattering the inside of the visor mask with a sickening squelch.
“No, please,” he wailed in agony, “Please!”
Next, I started pulling teeth. Eleven total, one for every girl he touched within the confines of this house. The dolls’ lifeless eyes begged me to make him suffer.
I dragged each tooth from the depths of his gums, using it to claw at the skin on his neck and chest as I watched his blood shower down from above. I ended it by unhinging the fucker’s jaw. By shoving a knot of eleven teeth into the depths of his throat, choking out his livelihood with a thick, molar dick of my own creation. His gagging came in violent spurts as he groped at the raw muscle tissue on his neck. It didn’t take long for his body to go limp and sink to the floor at my feet.
The Hygienist was dead.
I had killed him.
Mrs. Claymore appeared at my side as I struggled to steady my breathing. My body was in a state of exhilaration, of mind-numbing ecstasy. My breath came in uneven gasps, a fervent thrill racing through my limbs, pulsating in my fingertips. My whole life, I had made myself small to stay out of people’s way, but now I was larger than all my abusers.
I was larger than life itself.
“Give me the knife, child,” Mrs. Claymore reached for my right hand.
I was surprised to see that I had wedged the swiss army knife all the way through my palm. The wound looked worse than a butcher’s experiment, but I felt only a tickle where pain should be. Mrs. Claymore pulled out the knife in one swift motion.
“Come sit with me, I will take care of your wounds before the numbing wears off,” she said, walking to the other side of the room and removing two dolls from a pair of armchairs. I watched as she laid them out on the floor side by side like two corpses in a twin coffin.
“Wait,” I hesitated, my mind slowly adjusting to reality.
I couldn’t explain what I had just done in any rational sense of the word. And though it felt like Mrs. Claymore had come to my rescue, it didn’t explain why she had led me around Vanderley under false pretenses.
“My dear, if I had wished to harm you, I would have done so already,” she responded to my thoughts, “Now come sit, we don’t have much time before my husband and his friends arrive. You don’t want to meet them.”
I looked at her again. She looked like an impatient disciplinarian wishing to do away with a tedious child. Perhaps I should have feared her then, but the euphoria was already leaving my body as spikes of pain started going off in odd places. I didn’t have much choice.
Besides, for some inexplicable reason, I trusted her.
I hobbled over to the empty armchair at Mrs. Claymore’s side. She went straight to work, lifting my half-amputated foot and setting it comfortably in her lap. She didn’t have any bandages or ointments, and I felt embarrassed for bleeding on her skirt. Unbothered, she closed her eyes, holding out her right hand inches above my injury.
I watched in silence as she drained the blood from my chopped up ankle, sucking it into the palm of her hand. She left only pale, damaged flesh that started to glaze over, the flaps of my skin coming together under a layer of something rubbery and wax-like. Replacing my foot on the ground, Mrs. Claymore repeated the process on my hand.
I wanted to say something, but could only stare as she wiped clean the canvas of gore, leaving behind a drought of flesh, lifeless and clear. The rubbery substance began to spread, as though growing from inside my hand. When she was done, I ran the fingers of my other hand over the faux patch of skin in my damaged palm. It felt oddly familiar.
“Oh,” I said, a horrible realization dawning on me as I took in the room again, “Real dolls.”
Mrs. Claymore was about to reply when someone entered the house, banging the front door as they rushed in. I caught a flash of fear on her face as she threw a glance at the doorway. It was gone a second later when we heard my cousin’s voice calling out.
“Lu?” he cried, his bulky footsteps sliding rapidly across the downstairs floor, “Lu!”
“I’m up here,” I called back, my voice sounding croaky and foreign.
Mrs. Claymore got up from her armchair and walked over to a nearby bookshelf. Though her movements were poised, I noticed there was a briskness about her that was absent before. She pulled a book off one of the shelves and a narrow part of the parlor wall slid open to reveal more bare concrete, just like the space behind the closet mirror wall. The Mistress of Vanderley House stepped inside, turning to close the hidden door behind her.
“Don’t come back here,” she said, before I could stop her, “The Bull Men will know about you after today.”
She was gone seconds before my cousin Ronnie ran into the room. He stopped mid-stride, surveying the macabre display before him. While he appeared strangely calm as he told me to get up and follow him out of the house, I knew him well enough to see he was bubbling below the surface.
We made an odd pair, walking out of that house. Me, drenched in blood and Ronnie, with his stone-faced deliberation. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the pretty white tulips on the ground and the charming cobblestone path. How many other sickening truths lay behind this polished exterior? I turned to look at Vanderley before getting in the car. It just stood there, flawless as ever, as though nothing had ever happened.
There was a heavy silence in the car as we drove away from the house. I was still buried in myself, trying to make sense of everything, and Ronnie was probably trying to figure out what the hell he had just walked in on. This wasn’t the first time he’d pulled me out of a dangerous situation, but it was the first instance where he didn’t have to step in to protect me. The girl in the seat next to him was different from the cousin he grew up with, and he could feel it.
Ronnie didn’t speak to me until after he parked the car in a lot not far from my dorm room.
“What the hell happened, Lu?” he finally asked, keeping his hands on the wheel, staring blankly ahead as though still driving.
“I don’t know,” I told him truthfully.
“Did I not just walk in on you in a room with a dead body in it?”
“You did,” I agreed.
“And the blood?”
“The dead man's,” I admitted.
“Did you kill him?” he spoke through grinding teeth.
“I did, Ronnie. If I hadn’t, he would have killed me,” I put a hand on his shoulder, a gesture I knew would eventually melt the ice. We were only cousins, but he had always been more like a parent to me. The only true guardian I’d ever known.
“So what now, do you need me as an alibi? A character witness?” he asked, his voice strangled with emotion.
“I don’t think so,” I replied, unsure of how to explain that there wasn’t a chance in hell that any of this would be handled through the traditional justice system.
“Will you tell me what happened?” he turned to look at me, concern aging his eyes by decades.
“I will once I sort it all out in my head,” I promised, “For now I have to get cleaned up. I have classes later today.”
“Okay,” he hesitated, “Do you want to meet up tomorrow morning to talk?”
“I can’t, I have more classes,” I said, opening the car door.
We parted then. I’m sure he would have liked to stick around for a while, to make sure I was okay, but I needed space to process the events of the day. Ronnie didn’t like me keeping secrets, but he also knew I rarely did so without good reason. I would probably try to tell him eventually, the parts that made sense anyway.
But first I had to learn the truth myself.
What was I? How did I do those things to The Hygienist? How did Mrs. Claymore read minds and heal wounds? Who was her husband? Who were the Bull Men?
Most importantly, was there even a slight chance that some of the dolls could be alive, buried in wax but sustained through some magic I wasn’t aware of? Was there a way I could get them out of that house? I stared at the patch of silicone in my palm.
I had no choice. I had to go back.
After all, no one had actually fired me from my 9 o’clock shift at Vanderley.
READ PART 3 HERE
^{Part 1} ^{| this is part 2 |} ^{part 3}

In my 28 years of Gaming Experiences... Cyberpunk 2077 is by far the most unbalanced gaming experience I've had to date.

Hi all, I feel like it's time to share my opinions and thoughts after letting this subreddit cooldown for sometime. Around February of last year, I began work on a massive passion project developing https://NETRUNNER2077.net after following this title and being a massive fan of CD Projekt Red from the original Witcher title. When they announced Cyberpunk 2077 would be their next IP I was immensely excited as I'm a huge Cyberpunk genre nerd in all forms from art, movies, anime, philosophies, books, cultural significance and relation, aesthetics and more. So having my all time favorite game company work on a huge open world Cyberpunk "RPG" instantly generated immediate interest.
Now where to even begin?
Please note, I've yet to purposely "finish" Cyberpunk 2077 in hopes of CD Projekt Red making a strong come back later on in the future, and hopes that they'll eventually release a REDKit for modders in order to create some incredible work and help flesh the game world out. I have put around close to 200 hours into Cyberpunk 2077 exploring the different Life Paths and their effects on the world. Lots of walking, No fast travel and tons of time lost in an attempt to "Immerse" myself in the experience. I refused to finish Cyberpunk 2077's Main Story for several reasons. The largest being I'm typically against playing titles that are obviously not complete. On top of that, I've invested so much time and effort into researching, designing, learning web design and working towards building an awesome platform in order to properly cover Cyberpunk 2077 with a safe bet of thinking "This couldn't possibly be bad" only to coming around to reality very shortly after and that this title truly needed ATLEAST another year of development time.
There are aspects of Cyberpunk 2077 that are, in my opinion, worthy of putting it in the all time legendary category of games. Then.. other parts that make games from even 20 years ago look superior. It's a very "unbalanced" experience. So much that it takes the top spot for me personally. My experience of Cyberpunk 2077 is that it feels unfinished and some what rushed in many areas, if that isn't obvious enough already. But the thing is, as many of you probably already know, it just isn't bugs. Features, Content, Weapons, Immersive Elements, AI, RPG Elements and Game Design Systems are flat out missing or just straight up broken entirely.
Here are just a few of the elements that I have a problem with personally..

Weapon Balance - Many weapons are straight up overpowered and unbalanced and easy to find early in the game.
Weapon Variety - CD Projekt Red claimed that the game would have a large variety of weapons - this ended up not being the case with a few showcased weapons not implemented in the game itself although they exist in the game files. Also to note most "Iconic" weapons are just a reskin.
Cyberware Balance & Variety - Same thing as above can also account for Cyberware. Outside of Cyber Arm implants, which has its own bulletin
Very Hard Difficulty - Feels like a joke when compared to a lot titles out there. This is coming from someone who chose Style over Substance in all three playthroughs, typically never using a Jacket, Helmet or Mask. I'm no means great at games. This doesn't help with the extremely bugged out AI.
Perk Balance and Design - All around, most perks feel unrewarding and feel vastly unbalanced, once again making it pretty easy to feel overpowered pretty quickly early on, especially if you end up going down the Quickhacking Sub Skill Tree.
Pedestrian, Water and Car Damage Physics / Collision needs a serious second look - Water as of Patch 1.1 is still a pretty much nothing more than a transparent texture.. fire a bullet, a person, hell.. a fucking car and there is not a single pinch of reaction from that what so ever. The collision from bullets, other cars, people and objects is just bad for a 2020 game.
UI - I'm usually not one to complain about an unintuitive UI but it's quite clunky that takes some time to get around and use to.
Artificial Intelligence - It's either extremely bugged or just barely there. It's very bare bones in EVERY NON SCRIPTED aspect of the game. This has already been covered a thousand times so there's no need to go deep into detail with this. Vehicles, Police, Pedestrians, Etc.
Lack of Immersive Elements - One of CD Projekt Red biggest selling points for many fans was making it sound like there would be many ways to Immerse yourself in Cyberpunk 2077. That is not the case outside of World Design, World Building and Story Telling. It's really hard to actually "Immersive yourself and Roleplay" You can't sit at a bar and grab a drink in real time. You can't grab food anytime you like and eat in real time, the few vendors there are in the game completely rip you out of the game world and into a standard UI vendor menu. Installing Cyberware is just a click of a button in a menu after the initially Eye and hand implant, There's bare minimum interactivity with NPC's or the world itself for that matter, Not a single soul uses an umbrella that I've witnessed when it rains in Night City, There's little to no sense in danger outside of the repetitive Gang hotspots... the list could go on and on with this one.
90% of the choices you make during Cyberpunk 2077 feel like they have little to no consequence - While it's true that there are SOME choices you make in this game change certain outcomes (For the most part - the end of the game as reported by many) It feels like a very bare bones system that doesn't seem fleshed out at all. The majority of the time you're only given the "Illusion of Choice" This was very disappointing to witness. Life path decisions feel utterly meaningless later on down the road.
Side Quests are typically very short when compared to Witcher 3 - On top of that, there are a handful of stunning Side quests but it was very disappointing when a large majority of them lasted around 5-10 minutes at most. If you're looking for another Baron equivalent quest line.. It ain't here chief.
The Main Quest is far too short for a game that attempts to coin itself as being "RPG" - Regardless of not finishing, its pretty obvious that you do a small handful of Main Story Quests (Outside of the Optional ones) and you've reached the end.
Life Paths do not largely impact your overall experience and the way the game and story unfolds - Outside of the VERY beginning of the game, which can roughly take around 10 to 20 minutes to do.. and maybe a single quest depending on your lifepath, They ended up being extremely disappointing. You really aren't missing out on doing multiple life paths as you can basically "choose" your ending at the epilogue of the game and just restart from a save and make a different decision to see different outs. AKA making all the decisions you made throughout the game feel meaningless because in the end, its only what you choose during the epilogue that really matters.
A Second Note on Life Paths and Dialogue Impacting Secondary and Third Playthroughs - Very few side main quests can make a small difference by the end and there is no tension build up for your dialogue options that will lead to consequences that make you afraid of your choices later down the story.
What the hell happened to Meredith Stout? - If you went down the route of siding with Meredith Stout during the Maelstrom Mission and have followed Cyberpunk 2077 for some time you were probably completely thrown off as to how cut off that whole "follow up" went down. Very disappointing.
Dynamic Vehicle Chases / Fights are not a thing and were removed from the game - The one Scav chase in the beginning of the game is scripted.. and that's about it, hell.. you can just sit in the vehicle and watch it crash into the wall without doing a single thing. What the hell? Sorry guys, If you choose to mess with gangs.. they're not going to hunt you down, they aren't going to mow you down while you're in your vehicle. It was all bullshit.
Gangs / Corps will ignore the actions you take against their gang / corp and there are no repercussions for your actions against them at any point in the game - This goes with the one above, but I figured I'd expand on it more. Remember when we thought siding with Maelstrom would cause dire consequences in the long run with Meredith and Militech? Guess what? it definitely isn't a thing. You can go about your business in Night City and not have to worry about that for a split second your entire playthrough, no matter who you decide to fuck over.
Side Gigs are typically just filler content - Very little variety and the only way to really extend your playtime if you choose to not walk the streets of a dead feeling night city attempting to immerse yourself in the world. Which is totally okay if there were also other things to do, but for the most part its just generic Ubisoft tier filler content. There are a very SMALL amount of unique ones with actual dialogue.
Netrunner Enemy Types - The worst they do is upload a low quality damage hack and that's it. Half the time they scan your location and nothing happens. No cool shit like having to tap a button repeatedly to stop you from pulling the trigger on yourself after being hacked.
Pacifica is obviously unfinished - Well, it's not hard to tell that Pacifica wasn't complete after the game came out, I fully know the lore behind what happened to Pacifica, but I don't see how it's acceptable that there are literally unfinished areas from game development.
MAX-TAC and Trauma Team were epic during the early Scav Hideout mission, but that's it - Not much else to say here other than they had some really cool "scripted" events during and after that mission.. but other than that you'll see Trauma Team with their ships in the same exact spots you find them and MAX-TAC basically just spawn in as higher tier cops when your wanted level is high enough.
Cyberpsycho Quest line was a missed opportunity - Quite a disappointing quest after tracking down 17 Cyberpsychos regardless if you choose to let them live or kill them. They could of gone deep into some gritty cyberpunk writing and mystery with this but their approach to this was pretty underwhelming and surface level with no depth other than some logs you find, but this can be said about MANY of the quests during the game.
Collecting Cars is just more checkmark optional filler - Hey? Want another vehicle? Let me flood your quest list and phone letting you know you can GPS right to the location and pick it up. Outside of the few hidden vehicles in the game, Collecting cars was pretty disappointing. You literally walk up to location and buy them, no interactivity with NPC's, just click and buy. Might as well of just given a option to have the vehicle self deliver to the non existent garage where all my other cars reside right?
The Garage outside your Megabuilding serves no purpose and doesn't store your vehicles - Can't find your vehicles there now can you? Yeah..
The 6 Month Montage felt like a giant slap in the face, quite possibly cut missions from early game and is the exact SAME no matter what life path you choose - Going down any life path will grant you the exact same Street Kid themed montage. It really feels like these were cut missions that would of fleshed Jackie Welles as a character out so much better.
Cyberpunk 2077 feels more like a decent "Action Adventure" Game rather than a true "RPG" - Not too hard to see this. While it has RPG elements and Dialogue, it's definitely not on the level of Dues Ex, Vampire Bloodlines, Divinity, Elder Scrolls, Fallout (3 & NV). After you exit the prologue it is all downhill after that.
There isn't much to find and see outside of map markers - While there are a handful of secrets, schematics and weapons it doesn't feel very rewarding when finding these things because of how the weapon, items, currency and game design elements were implemented where things are either easily replaced or you're already easily overpowered as it is.
Cyberpunk tries to be too many things and falls short of most of them - With the Ambitious goals, talk and promises.. The one thing I hoped it would be was a truly Ambitious RPG with some really good Immersive elements. I definitely wasn't expecting the world, but it's just sad as to how many elements it falls flat on.
Black Market Cyberware isn't a thing - You see those four options you have for Cyber arms? Yep, That's it. Nothing else, Everything shown through trailers is what you get.
Brain Dance was a MASSIVE missed opportunity - It's pretty obvious that there was at one time far more to brain dance outside of story missions. Hell, it could of found a way to replace the Gwent Mini Game, but alas - In the end it was used for only story missions and not a single side experience on its own.
Night City just feels like a extremely gorgeous backdrop to a Somewhat Linear story - I've already covered several reasons as to why I feel this way.
It feels more like "Johnny's Story" rather than V's Story - While the writing is indeed excellent most of the time. I personally feel like this story is more about Johnny rather than V.
The sense of urgency after the prologue really makes it hard to "Role Play" V correctly. This conflicts with previous statements made by CDPR "Really wanting players to Role Play the character"- The way this was approached was quite confusing, as CDPR offers this massive world yet having a huge urgency that you need to figure out a solution before you die in a few weeks.
The World does not feel "Alive" by any means.. Lack of Dynamic Events - The world itself just feels pretty dead outside of flying vehicles and ads going off every 4-5 seconds. There is VERY little dynamic content like you see in RDR2 where they put a huge emphasis on the world feeling "alive" and never knowing what could happen.
Customization is severely lacking from a world that begs for more of it - Luckily if you're on PC, a lot of these issues have been solved with customizable Cyber arms, More tattoos, Hair Styles, Face and Neck Cyberware and more. If you're on Console though, you're sadly shit out of luck. The lack of visible Cyberware for V was very surprising. No visible Cyber legs, No visible Netrunning gear outside of "Suits", etc.
Jackie Welles was a brilliant character that was quickly thrown away - Let alone the massive spoiler they decided to showcase via the 2019 E3 CG Trailer, It was extremely disheartening to know that saving Jackie was never an option seeing as we were barely given any time with him and a wasted opportunity for possible great plot points. This could of been remedied by actually going through the missions played out in the 6 month montage. For players unfamiliar following Cyberpunk 2077 for so long, I would assume losing Jackie wasn't near as impactful for them.
Cyberware Arm implants are just alternative weapons for the most part - Which pretty much become useless unless you choose to use Gorilla Fists the whole game. No Utility from them, No useful tool elements, Just weapons that become obsolete very fast.
For a Dystopian World that is hyper sexualized, there sure is a lack of sexual content - Not hard to miss this, You have two Joy Toys and two high end JT's later in the game to choose from in the entirety of Night City outside of the selection of Story related characters you come across. Hell, even a lot of characters that dance on poles in the world are fully clothed. Let alone any real Adult themed clubs.
Trains were a missed opportunity - Let's face it, there were obviously systems in place at one point in development to have an actual train system where you could ride around Night City and be able to enjoy the huge vistas that it offers. Now you can just watch one from a distance disappear right through a building.
Verticality? Sort of..? - Take your Home Megabuilding for example and also prime example of cut areas and content. There were suppose to be several areas of verticality to explore in the world and areas and this is just not the case anymore.
"You'll never run into cool areas where you'll want to get in there but can't" - Yeah, that was definitely not the case now was it? There are several areas you would think would be accessible but just aren't or at any point in the game are.
Acid Rain? Yeah.. No. - Remember this? Yeah I haven't witnessed it either. But hey, at least there's acid fog right?

Then you have this huge dystopic metropolis of a city which looks absolutely phenomenal. I think it'll truly go down in history for its amazing design and the techniques they used to craft this insanely dense city. There's truly nothing like visiting Night City and it surely is a unique experience from a VISUAL and AUDIO design standpoint. The writing is solid most of the time as well. It really just feels like they had a very direct deadline and were forced to wrap systems up after changing the core game several times over and over again which caused loads of bugs in the code. I really hope when I come back to this game in a year it'll be quite different but after what CDPR pulled I find it extremely hard to trust and have faith in them.
I had so much faith and love in this company that I ended up spending countless months building, designing, and launching NETRUNNER 2077 almost single handedly but after playing Cyberpunk 2077 for weeks, I couldn't even bring myself to write a review over it. Honestly, I would've been way too critical and harsh. Especially after having to monitor and dissect everything that was "said" to be in the game and how systems were suppose to "work" and it ended up being nothing like that what so ever. At this point and time I have no motivation or confidence to continue the platform due to the recent events and actions of CDPR's upper management as well as the highly manipulative marketing that made Cyberpunk 2077 only a glass half full of what it was intended to actually be.
I made sure to set my expectations accordingly from what was told from developers to fans via interviews, deep dives and what was reported to sources that was approved by CDPR. With that and the EXTREMELY misleading marketing, it leaves an extremely sour taste in my mouth. I really want to have faith that they can turn this title around, but something feels off. I understand from a legal perspective that they probably cant at the moment. I just hope one day that this game can truly live up to its potential. There is an incredible foundation set, but it's ultimately up to CD Projekt Red if they choose to deliver their originally intended vision.
For other upper management in game development out there possibly reading this- if your game isn't finished, please market it correctly as an "Early Access Game" and not a finished product. That is straight up lying and deceiving fans and consumers out there. It isn't right, and needs to stop.

AITA Best of 2020 Awards RESULTS!

Weightlifthing Fairy is amazing

Everything we're taught about of poor posture is pretty much wrong. Here are hidden causes.

Category	Winner	Runner Up	Prize
Best NTA Judgement Comment	personofpaper's Comment	snausagefestivus' Comment	AITA Mod Award
Best YTA Judgement Comment	redheadriot's Comment	sluaghlock's Comment	AITA Mod Award
Best ESH Judgment Comment	redditDK2's Comment	N/A	AITA Mod Award
Best NAH Judgement Comment	desperately_lonely's Comment	N/A	AITA Mod Award
Best INFO Judgement Comment	dos-stinko-uno-pinko's Comment	N/A	AITA Mod Award
Sassiest NTA Judgement Comment	tasunder's Comment	N/A	AITA Mod Award
Most Empathetic YTA Judgement Comment	therapy_works' Comment	N/A	AITA Mod Award
Most Amusing Comment With A Valid Judgment	baby_rhino's Comment	N/A	AITA Mod Award
Most Persuasive Comment	brecollier's Comment	N/A	AITA Mod Award
Most Well Known User	WebbieVanderquack	N/A	AITA Mod Award
Most Consistently Empathetic and Constructive User	WebbieVanderquack	N/A	AITA Mod Award
Champion of New	CarlosFer2201	N/A	AITA Mod Award
Best Thread of 2020	AITA for telling my sister that she should have expected to be outshone by her best friend at her wedding?	AITA For going out my bedroom window at 1AM during a storm to climb over to my neighbour's bedroom to fix his loudly banging window so I could sleep? He was not happy to see me hanging out there, silhouetted against the street lamp. Frankly he made quite an undignified fuss about it.	N/A
Most Wholesome Thread	AITA: I asked my trans daughter to choose an Indian name	AITA for letting my brother call me "dad" and refusing to tell him the ugly truth?	N/A
Most Interesting Thread	WIBTA for asking my mom if she lied, and I had an older brother who died?	AITA for telling my sister that she should have expected to be outshone by her best friend at her wedding?	N/A
Most Difficult Decision To Make	AITA for saving one sisters life and not the other?	AITA for wanting to take care of my best friend’s children after she passed away?	N/A
Nicest Person Who Was An Asshole	AITA for not saying anything about the underwear	AITA For going out my bedroom window at 1AM during a storm to climb over to my neighbour's bedroom to fix his loudly banging window so I could sleep? He was not happy to see me hanging out there, silhouetted against the street lamp. Frankly he made quite an undignified fuss about it.	N/A
Biggest Asshole	AITA for euthanizing my daughters emotional support animal for her own sake?	AITA for not thinking the joke my family played on my GF was a big deal?	N/A
Biggest 180 In An Update	AITA for telling my sister that she should have expected to be outshone by her best friend at her wedding?	AITA for praising my son differently than my daughter?	N/A
Lowest Stakes Post That Still Had A Conflict	AITA for eating too many cucumbers	AITA for not participating in my friends "scheme" to convince a restaurant to buy his ketchup?	N/A

I r not a doctor and this ain't medical advice.
More of an informative (I hope) post for those in pain and frustrated. Maybe something to give you guys more of a background/backbone? in learning about the possible causes for your postural issues.
If you've done your stretches and got your standing desk and have results this post isn't for you, keep scrolling go away. This post is for those who have consulted, done the stretches, the yoga, the exercise, have the pain and soreness, tried back braces and every gimmick, chiropractic, massage, and are still having problems. I am here for you fam. I hope this can help someone.

The Misinformation:

As it stands from my viewpoint, as a 30 something millennial woman, posture is wholly and fully the 'fault' of the person suffering from poor posture. We're told to stand up straight and stop slumping. We call people geeks and mouth breathers and hunchbacks as though these people are purposely contorting themselves into these ugly pelvic-forward positions. Hint, it is not within your power to make a controlled effort every second to adjust to 'correct' posture, if it were, no one would have bad posture. If this is you, it likely hurts very much when you get your shoulders back, if you can even do that at all. My main point here is this is not your fault. You did not choose this. This is healable, and treatable, you just haven't found the right information yet and we gonna open those doors. In your search for health, be kind to yourself and go into treatment with compassion. This. Is. Not. Your. Fault.

cOmPuTeR nErDs ThO

The main thing we're told is that uppelower crossed syndrome are the fault of computers. Let me just tell you this is utter bullshit. I mean, does sitting as an adult exacerbate existing issues? Oh god yes. Do the exercises you see on those hip youtuberz channels, tackling nerd neck and pelvis tilt, help? They might help with symptomatic pain relief, maybe. But they are not going to fix it provided you have one of the "hidden" causes I'll list below.

Tech/sitting has never, literally never ever, been proven to cause poor posture. If we look at the social issue of sitting for long periods of time (which absolutely is terrible for posture, again) that shit starts in school, not in the fucking workplace. And there are consequences which I'll get into. But for now I want to make it absolutely clear--when your PT or massage therapist tells you with absolution that your desk job is CAUSING your posture issues, get a new therapist. And if you work in an office, look around you. Plenty of people sitting at desks have good or great posture.

Here is a pretty scathing article that rips apart the "studies" done on computer nerd neck. (It cites several other resources too.)
My final word about this is again--sitting exacerbates and certainly doesn't help poor posture. Don't avoid treatment if you sit a lot. You'll still need to counter that sitting time with other things. But let's delete the 'computers=cause' incorrect narrative.

Ok asshole, so what're the real problems?

Well gee whiz Freddy I'm glad you asked. It could be a few different things. Might be one of these, might be a combo. I can categorize them into what I call the 'big two' and after telling you the signs and symptoms of each, that's up to you to inspect.

Any, probably most, of these will come with pain, muscle tension, tightness, inflexibility. For that reason I'm not listing that as a separate symptom. All of these things go into a basket with pain. They may also come with uppelower crossed syndrome. A syndrome is nothing but a set of symptoms, so if you have these plus hyperkyphosis, hyperlordosis, a pelvic tilt or whatever else, that's all a part of it.

Symptom list 1:

A weak, recessed chin
A hooked nose or nose with a 'bump'
Allergies, sinus issues, snoring
Piss poor sleep, or suspected sleep apnea
History of dental extractions, or orthodontic appliances
Mouth breathing

Symptom list 2:

Thoracic breathing (your shoulders and chest lift when you breathe in)
Digestive issues
Hank Hill butt - if you don't know, just google it okay
Anxiety or depression without appropriate life stress
Catching yourself 'tensing' your shoulders, or other muscles like your jaw

List one is a facial structure issue, and thus an airway issue, impeding your posture. Your airway is impaired and you are standing in a way to circumvent that.
List two is a nervous system issue. Your body is in (probably chronic) activated stress response and the nerves are on a feedback loop of putting your body into a fight/flight prepped state, and your posture is 'fixed' in that position.

Facial Structure:

I won't get into the deep and sometimes iffy/controversial science of it, but I highly recommend this video if you're new to the fascinating topic of recent human facial structure changes. If you have a facial structure issue this could be ANY number of things. Common culprits are here:

Allergies or nasal structure issues (polyps, etc) that caused you to mouth breathe early on
A tongue tie, where the tongue doesn't reach the roof of the mouth, making the palate narrow
a tongue thrust reflex (from bottle/paci/thumb sucking) also narrowing the jaw and palate
Condylar Resorption, look into it especially if you have the weak chin...essentially the jawbone gets smaller over time, and that puts the tongue farther into the airway.
dental extractions or orthodontic work. Any removal of teeth causes the bone to shrink, and braces usually result in the mandible being recessed. Obviously orthodontic work is your biggest clue that you do have a facial structure issue. Unfortunately orthodontists usually (and there are exceptions) don't look at, assess, or even talk to you about your airway.

All of the above have one thing in common. The tongue, when not positioned against the palate, spread out evenly with the mouth closed, and breathing nasally, result in the tongue ending up moving into the airway's space. The airway will narrow. As a result your head will naturally lean forward. This actually is my area of expertise, I work in EMS and have seen a lot of respiratory distress/respiratory failure. Obviously, mostly acute, but some chronic patients as well. Learning your head forward doesn't make you a nerd. It makes you reaching for air. To pull the tongue up and out of the way of the trachea. Whether you can't do that because your tongue won't lift, your mandible is recessed, or the other things I've mentioned, you will 100% not cure your forward head posture (which domino-effects into the shoulders, back, hips) by doing exercises or ducking your head back like a turtle.
What do?
Do your research and find out exactly what the structural issues might be. You may need nasal surgery, jaw surgery, a tongue tie to be cut, or palate expansion if that's an option. The goal here is reforming the upper airway structures so that you can properly position your tongue, breathe through the nose, and not have your tongue strangling you. By the way if these do sound like you, I suggest a sleep study. You probably have sleep apnea.
One more EMT bit of info -- snoring is disordered breathing. Snoring is dangerous. Snoring can be deadly. That's another topic. Don't make fun of snoring or treat it like a joke or nuisance. If your spouse or child were choking in their sleep it wouldn't be funny. Treat snoring for the warning sign that it is. In EMS if a patient is snoring we immediately take steps if possible to rectify it. So should you.

Stress:

oboah, this one's fun. Not really, it's depressing. Knowledge is power though.
The CNS is a telephone you might say. The sendereceiver are the brain and body. When people say 'mind over matter' they're idiots. It's not a one way system. In other words, your brain doesn't just tell your body what to do... your body tells your brain what's going on and it responds. So things like actions, sensations, emotions...they all start in the physical body independent of the brain.

Breathing

Let's talk about breathing for a minute. The proper way to breathe for humans, all mammals, and in fact most animals, is via the diaphragm. Reddit is so limiting because this would be where I physically show you the mechanism of action of breathing, but best I can do is a jpeg.
The volume area of the lungs is the lower portion, and this is where most of our gas exchange should occur. But--increasingly studied alongside covid--it's interesting that most of us are breathing incorrectly. We're not even using the majority of our lung surface area and making the stumpy, shorter branches at the top oxygenate our whole blood load. Most adults breathe incorrectly. Children and babies usually breathe correctly!!! Why? Good question Tammy.
Diaphragmatic breathing occurs when the nervous system is at ease. When an animal is chillin' and enjoying the sunrise. Predator or life threat appears and the nervous system gets activated, we are no longer going to be able to use that slow, deep mechanism of ventilation. Cue thoracic breathing. Short breaths that pull in oxygen and offload CO2, in preparation for the fight or flight. (Freeze can be associated with thoracic breathing, but I digress.)
The biggest problem that happens between good kid breathing and bad kid breathing is trauma and school. Remember how I said that sitting is bad? Sitting, in school, makes proper breathing difficult. Add to that the atmosphere where kids are feeling self conscious, judged, worried, and 'tucking in', or sucking in their stomach because they want to look good...maybe add in the aforementioned tongue tie or mouth breathing, and thoracic breathing becomes the default.
This creates a negative feedback loop because at the beginning I told you that the body tells the brain how to react. If the body is breathing in a stressed state, the brain gets the message that there's a threat. Whether or not that threat is real, or even if it is something like 'a lot of homework' the pattern continues. Stress, prepare for fight/flight. Anxiety. Short term, these maladaptive behaviors can be corrected. Long term, it's hopeless little Jimmy. Sorry.
So, this can occur even if you don't have childhood trauma. If you do have childhood trauma, I'd almost guarantee you that your breathing is improper if not completely incorrect. But there are plenty of people I work with, am friends with, have had as patients or otherwise who will have insane panic attacks and tell me through tears or in awe that they had a great childhood and were anxiety-free. Probably they weren't, but also, if they had a good time as a kid, their nervous system was not aware of it and has taken the controls.
Back to posture. Let's look at the back and hips. We're talking psoas.

Psoas

Cut from this awesome article:
Structurally, your psoas muscles are the deepest muscles in your core. They attach from your 12th thoracic vertebrae to your 5th lumbar vertebrae, through your pelvis, and then finally attach to your femurs. Your psoas muscles allow you to bend your hips and legs toward your chest, move your leg forward when you walk or run, flex your trunk forward when you bend over to pick up something from the floor, and stabilize your trunk and spine during movement and sitting.
The psoas muscles support your internal organs and work like hydraulic pumps, allowing blood and lymph to be pushed in and out of your cells. They are vital not only to your structural well-being but also to your psychological well-being because of their connection to your breath.
There are two tendons for the diaphragm (called the crura) that extend down and connect to the spine alongside where the psoas muscles attach. Also, the diaphragm and the psoas muscles are connected through fascia that also connects the other hip muscles. These connections between the psoas muscle and the diaphragm literally connect your ability to walk and breathe and also how you respond to fear and excitement. When you are startled or under stress, your psoas contracts. In other words, your psoas has a direct influence on your fight-or-flight response. During prolonged periods of stress, your psoas is constantly contracted. The same contraction occurs when you sit for long periods of time, engage in excessive running or walking, sleep in the fetal position, or do a lot of sit-ups. All of these activities compress the front of your hip and shorten your psoas muscle.

Pelvic Floor Muscles

I don't know personally how this works or what it feels like for men but I personally had no idea that my pelvic floor was CONSTANTLY CLENCHED until I got into a specific stretch and the whole area 'relaxed.' Like an opposite kegel. It was then that I started noticing that my hamstrings, glutes, and even lower abs were constantly clenched as well. This specific issue is finally gaining ground and called 'nonrelaxing pelvic floor dysfunction'. Read more here.
Not only will the hypertonic floor muscles cause postural issues but this is also linked to things like recurrent UTIs, painful sex, constipation, shy bladder. We're just focusing on posture right now but again if you're not sure if this is you, I'm just giving you more info.
WAT DO, AGAIN
Do your research. I'm not putting all of your posture issues on stress. But I can say that you can stretch, get daily massages and do all the yoga you want, if you're still breathing thoracically you're still going to have tight muscles. Again, most of the information from PTs and so on is pain management, not treatment of the structural situation. (This goes for chiropractors too, wherever they fall on the spectrum of legitimate to complete wacko....you can have 100 adjustments but it's all a temporary movement when the connective tissues of your body are trained to be tight by the CNS.)
Pay attention to your breathing. Correct it. Scan your body for clenched muscles and look into body work for the psoas muscles. I'll drop some therapeutic modalities in here for the google-challenged.
Polyvagal theory.
Somatic experiencing.
Again a plug for that great article on the psoas and trauma.
My post on /CPTSDNextSteps that has amazing suggestions for body-based trauma healing in the comments. (Thank you again to that community love u)
We as a society are not trauma-informed and the fact is, most of us have fucking trauma. Part of that is the sad state of reality and part of it is because our brain will always carry the amygdala along with it, or we wouldn't be alive, and so we're more or less programmed for states of stress. Something as simple as breathing incorrectly or having a little snip of tissue on your tongue can cause debilitating health issues. Sounds insane but again....the CNS is wired to adapt quickly and almost wildly in the face of death. It doesn't care about how sore you are or that you can't pull your shoulders back.
I'm not telling anyone to stop their PT or massages or foam rollers or aromatherapy. I want people to know the difference between managing pain, and the actual structural and physiological issues behind poor posture that I've pretty much never seen addressed collectively, as a whole, and I've been to PT, chiros, back specialists, pain specialists, trauma therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, dentists, orthos, ENTs, the whole fuckin' 9. So take what you'd like from it and hopefully it helps a little.
That's all I got, bye

I keep finding the same dead dog everywhere I go...it gets worse.

The first time I saw the dog, it looked so peaceful, like it was asleep. I would have believed it too, if it wasn’t for the thin stream of blood that trickled out of its mouth. It lay on its side concealed by some undergrowth, too perfectly placed to have been hit by a car. I felt tremendous pity - I had always loved animals. It’s eyes were open slightly, somewhat glassy and grey, like they had been covered by thin strips of tape.
Other than the small dribble of blood, there were no other signs of injury - the dog looked in perfect health. I observed its glistening coat, it was jet black in colour and in pristine condition. Its claws were long and serrated, the colour a deep, devastating black that matched its fur. The dog was clearly owned, although I couldn’t find a collar.
Something didn’t feel right about this.
I don’t know whether it was the sadness I felt for this poor creature or whether it was just pure curiosity but I found myself leaning ever closer to the face of the animal. Hoping to find anything that could indicate who he belonged to.
That was when I saw its teeth.
They were the most terrifying things I had ever seen. They were prematurely rotten and disgustingly yellow, the colour of yolk. The look of the teeth didn’t at all match the flawless condition of the dog. They were as sharp as little needles, capable of ripping out your throat in a split second. I don’t know why I thought that but I did.
Suddenly all the sorrow and pity that I had felt just moments ago dwindled as quickly as the setting sun. I wanted nothing more than to just get out of there as fast as I could. I felt anxious and I couldn’t shake this feeling in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t help but think that something bad was going to happen. Something really bad.
You may think me ridiculous. It’s nothing but a dead dog right? A corpse couldn’t possibly hurt me, right?! Wrong. I didn’t know at the time but that dead dog would bring unrelenting chaos into my life. Everything about my unremarkable life was about to change. I guess it has become remarkable, in a way. But, I digress.
I got out of there pronto. As I walked, hastily toward the main road, I got the overwhelming feeling like I was being watched. I desperately needed a drink, I needed something strong to bury this horrible feeling that twisted itself into my heart. My stomach was in knots, it felt like I had a thousand worms squirming around inside.
I lived right next to a little corner shop, conveniently named Not Just Groceries - it was one I frequented very often. It was owned by Mr Perkins, a nice and timid man. I got on with him well. He even sometimes knocked the price down just for me, like I said, nice man. I decided I wanted to see a friendly face tonight. The incident with the dog had shaken me to my core and I didn’t know why.
I walked in expecting to see the friendly face of Mr Perkins but I was greeted with a man that I had never seen before. I was taken aback. The expression that enveloped my face was one of bewilderment.
“Can I help you, sir?” He asked, innocently.
“Sorry, who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Mr Massoud, the shop owner.” He said, eyeing me up suspiciously.
I felt this strange panic bubble up within me. Where was Mr Perkins?
“Mr Perkins owns this shop. You’re not Mr Perkins.” I said, the alarm that dogged my voice was apparent. I could see his expression change from concern to annoyance.
“There is no Mr Perkins here. I own this shop, always have. Now either buy something or leave.”
“What the fuck is happening? Mr Perkins has owned this shop for 20 years. I saw him just yesterday. Why are you lying to me?” I said, I was probably coming across like a deranged lunatic but this wasn’t right. None of what’s happened tonight has been right.
“Okay, you need to leave, now. I will call the police.” He said, lifting his mobile phone to his ear.
I backed away, not knowing what else to do with myself. I left the shop and ran home. I couldn’t get my head around the insanity that I had witnessed. The peculiar corpse of the dog and it’s innocuous placement kept bothering me. Then the real cherry on the cake was the fact that Mr Perkins seemed to not exist. He had apparently just vanished.
When I got home, I scoured the internet - mainly trying to find any evidence that Mr Perkins was real. Maybe he sold the shop, moved away. I couldn’t accept the fact that Mr Massoud was the owner. That he has always been the owner. No, that couldn’t have been true.
I was friends with Mr Perkins on Facebook - I know how sad that must sound. Being friends with your shopkeeper but he was as I mentioned, a very pleasant man and had always given me money off. I liked him. I searched for his name - Paul Perkins and it came up with nothing. Apparently there was no one that I was friends with called Paul Perkins, he didn’t exist.
I felt like I was losing my mind, the fear gripped me so tight, it was unyielding - as if my heart and chest had been tied with a rigid and stiff rope. I couldn’t breathe. This has all got to be a bad dream that I just failed to wake from - I pinched myself just to be sure. I desperately needed a drink.
I went to my cupboard and found a half drunk bottle of whiskey - exactly what I needed to drown out the intrusive thoughts. I opened the cap and downed the whole bottle - it didn’t take long for it to take effect. My vision blurred and my thoughts danced wildly, like a drunken sailor in a bar. Before I knew it, my face had planted my feathered pillow and I passed out.
When I woke up the next day, the events of the previous night were a blur, cloudy. I couldn’t remember much after the whisky obscured my panicked mind. I did remember the dead dog and the fact that Mr Perkins no longer existed - that had forever been etched into my brain, scratched into it with a blunt needle.
I called in sick to work, I just couldn’t face it. I decided to call my sister, Mel. She knew Mr Perkins - she had to remember him too.
“Hey Tony, what’s up?” She sounded surprised. I didn’t call her very often.
“Hey Mel, need to ask you something. Do you remember the shop near my place, Not Just Groceries?” I asked, I tried my best to conceal the anxiety in my voice.
“Yeah, sure, I remember. The one owned by Mr Messoud? Really nice man.” She said idly.
My heart dropped into my slippers.
“No Mell, Mr Perkins. It was owned by Mr Perkins, don’t you remember?” I asked.
“No, Tony. Who’s Mr Perkins?”
I hung up the phone then.
That night was the second time I saw the dog.
I went for a walk, to clear my head. I went by Not Just Groceries and I saw Mr Massoud. There was still no sign of Mr Perkins - it was as if he had been wiped clean from the face of the earth, all traces erased. He was picked apart molecule by molecule and obliterated from everyone's mind except my own. I didn’t know how this was possible but something deep within me told me that it had something to do with that dead dog. It had to.
I was strolling through the local park when I encountered it again. It wasn’t as pleasant as the first time, not as tranquil. The corpse of the dog looked gruesome this time, decayed and its jet black fur had wilted and thinned out. As I approached, the smell that travelled up my nostrils was rancid - like rotten eggs with a hint of sulphur. I nearly vomited.
My god, the eyes. It’s eyes were missing, spooned out and in their place, I saw two fathomless, putrefied holes caked with clotted blood. From within, crawled out thousands and thousands of maggots - all writhing and squirming amongst the dead flesh. The corpse of the dog was moistened by a substance I didn’t recognise - an oozing, foul liquid that seeped into the dogs skin.
I was horrified, mortified even.
I reported the corpse and went home. I didn’t know what else to do. I needed a friend, someone to talk to, someone to get me through this nightmare. I tried to call my friend Mike - a guy I knew from work, he was a close friend.
”The number you dialled is not in use”
This had to be some sort of mistake. A sick fucking joke someone was playing on me. I texted Mike but the text went undelivered. I then rang my boss, Clara. I was running out of options here.
“Clara”, I said when she answered the phone.
“Tony? Is that you? It’s late. What’s happened?” She asked. What I was doing wasn’t ok, I was out of line and inappropriate but I needed to be sure.
“I’m sorry Clara but have you heard from Mike?”
“Mike? Who’s Mike?” She said, her voice sounded groggy and I could hear slight concern plague her meek voice.
That was all I needed to hear.
I hung up on poor Clara and rushed to Mike’s house - I knew where he lived, I’d been there to visit countless times. The memories of us chugging beer on a Friday night swirled in my mind. Mike was real. When I got there - his house wasn’t there. Instead, I was met with an empty field. What the fuck? Mike had vanished. Just like Mr Perkins. I knew then it had something to do with that disgusting corpse, that decayed dog. I just knew it.
I did think about calling the police but I didn’t think there was any point. I knew in my heart that no one would believe me. I didn’t even have any proof. Something told me that the corpse of that dog only appeared when it needed to - for what purpose I didn’t know. People were disappearing, being wiped out from the face of this earth - people that I knew and I had no way of proving it.
I walked home, dejected and feeling helpless. I didn’t know what to expect next - I knew that whatever this was, wasn’t over and I felt it deep in my withered bones that I would see the dog again. I didn’t know that it would happen that very same night.
When I got home, in fact.
I walked through my door and there it was. The smell enveloped my whole flat, consumed it. That same moth-ball like smell I had inhaled earlier that night. The dog lay in the middle of my floor, it’s insides were on the outside - blackened organs were strewn across my carpet. It was in the worst state of decay, I had never seen anything quite like it. The flesh had hardened and stiffened, rigor mortis had set in. The fur had all but gone and the skin underneath glistened in the moonlight, completely mummified.
I saw the body stir and my blood chilled when I realised what it was.
The dogs insides were completely enveloped by maggot larvae, they were fucking everywhere. Covering the dog from head to toe. Bottle fly larvae crawled from within it’s mouth, in the crevices of it’s blackened teeth.
I ran to my bedroom and locked the door. My heart raced, threatening to explode out of my chest. My thoughts were in utter disarray. This couldn’t possibly be real and yet it was. The corpse was there, somehow. I turned to face my bed and I nearly fainted when I saw my bedside table. I kept a picture of me and Mel there, from when we were kids. She was no longer in the photo. Gone, vanished, just like the rest of them.
The sorrow that hit me then was unimaginable. Not Mel, not my sister. I didn’t have anyone left - she was my whole world, my life and now she was gone.
I heard movement outside the door, a faint stir - footsteps. Someone was walking around just outside my bedroom door. Someone on four feet.
I feared that I was next, I could already feel myself fading.
Would anyone even remember me?
TCC

You're only my boss when I'm scheduled to be here

First time posting, English is first language so I'll probably make mistakes, but if it bothers anyone that's not my problem.
Back story ; After returning home from a deployment my husband wanted to keep a promise made to our daughter to quit smoking so we looked into vaping. Like anything else he does, we researched the heck out of it and learned everything you possibly could. During this process we would shop at a local owned store where my husband met and became friends with the owner, also former military.
After a while it became difficult to ever find his shop open so would have to seek out other places that didn't know what they were doing as much. After a few years of his homecoming we were tobacco free, and he was starting school so looking for a part time job. The owner was looking for decent people to work and we thought we now understood why he was hardly open. Hard to stay open when you can't keep employees. That should have been the first red flag. So they work out a deal and hubby starts school and a new job. Shortly after hubby starting , the other part time guy will be quiting for a full time position elsewhere leaving owner to look for another employee. Deciding to help my husband while he is working and going to school I offered to learn the business side and come onto the team. Side note, I've helped run and manage businesses previously so have excellent experience. My husband too worked as a high level management and we both were over Inventory in previous jobs.
The characters Boss- the owner Hubby- my husband Me - should be obvious
So my husband and I are both working opposite hours and he's going to school. The job itself is easy as long as you know what you are dealing with and help others understand as well. I'd open in the morning, boss would come in mid day and hubby would close. This went on great for a while until the boss just quit ordering product. After several times of hearing "sorry that hasn't been ordered yet" our clientele and profits dropped tremendously. This should have been red flag number 2. Hubby and I both just kind of waited for the doors to close and were trying to figure out our next step.
After a couple of months of this, and us trying to get him to simply place orders, he FINALLY decided to get a loan and properly stock and update the store. Like I stated previously, boss and hubby had become friends and we believed in helping get people off of tobacco, so we spent weeks, and some of our own money, helping remodel and fix the shop. It went from a small time looking operation to appearing as though we had investors. Between hubby and I, we were able to get a good variety of products and organize everything. We even had a system that would let us know when we got low so orders could be put in. We were basically his business partners at this time and he wanted to eventually hand the business over for us to manage while he ran his other "side" business.
So how does he repay weeks of us putting in our own time to help get things running smoothly? He drops our hours, leaving us about $700 short a month. This should have been red flag number 3, but apparently we aren't seeing them. Still, with my husband and I managing things, products stayed stocked, and we were making 20 times more in a day than previously. My husband had access to the company card, worked with merchandisers, and made the orders. I kept track of the shelves, noting what needed ordered, and that what was in the system is what we had in store. Along with learning about new products and what would work for our customers and customer retention. We both excel in this.
The problem though, is that 700 a month is a big loss when trying to go to school and take care of a family so hubby had to quit school and start a full time job. Right before he's to begin his new job Boss gets sick and is in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Knowing that with the business loans he can't afford to pay us for full days for 2 weeks, and that he also can't afford to be closed, we offered a reduction in pay to help keep his business open during operation hours so he could just get better and not worry. His return is where things go wrong.
Upon returning, hubby begins his new job, which means I'm working more hours myself and managing the shop myself. This is when I learn, boss doesn't like the opinions of women. We actually test this when my husband would stop by while boss and I were both there, and suggest something, I myself had just a few days before only for him to do it upon hubby's "suggestion". Ok, that's ridiculous but growing up around mostly guys, It doesn't bother me. However we do amuse ourselves by seeing how many times we can get things I know needs done by my husband "suggesting" something he disregarded from me just days before. Every. Single. Time.
Anyways, this also begins his decent from a decent, caring business owner into a "sell at all costs" jerk. He refused to put in orders, customers would only come by when I was working (he always questioned why I had 2-3 times as many sales than him when I worked half the time he did), shorting my pay. Customers loved us because we listened to their needs to help find what would work best with their lives and that's one reason they LOVED coming to us. He has now decided that he's going to push whatever item he thinks they should want, order tons of these things while ignoring the needed items that customers ACTUALLY wanted. They would walk out frustrated, not feeling comfortable with him being pushy, and without normal stock items that they came in for. Oh, no. It's beginning to look like how he previously ran things when he almost had to close the doors. What flag number were we at again? So I'm doing everything I can for customer retention but that's hard when you don't have things to sell them.
This also is where him showing up late to open was becoming a daily thing. Sometimes he'd call and ask me to go in and open 15 MINUTES before opening time because he's running late. We are in town, he is not. However, sometimes he wouldn't and we'd get calls from customers that were personal friends, asking why we were not open. He would often ask me the day of, if he needed me to cover his shift, giving me no time to plan for it so I eventually had to tell him he needs to let me know the night before. We have 4 kids and a home to run, his business is not my entire life, to which he states, "Your job comes first". I laugh and say, "yea, no. I'll see to later" and leave. I'm thinking it was a joke, had no clue he actually thought this way so didn't think anymore on it.
He comes in to releave me one day and as I'm heading out he asks if I can work a double the next day. I tell him no, we had plans out of town with family and we'd be leaving as soon as I clocked out. This didn't sit well with him and he states confidently that "well I informed you a day before like you requested". To this I respond " you asking me the day before doesn't mean I'm available to do so. This is my normally scheduled time off and we have plans that were made a long time ago". He gets mad and I leave, no longer caring. The day comes and a friend that is a customer, bought something boss pushed because he refused to purchase what he needed, and the friend wound up in the hospital directly due to that. Now I'm mad. Oh look, there's all those flags I didn't see previously!
So for starters, I quit answering his calls to open because he was running late. I'm wasting my gas and time only to not be paid because I wasn't scheduled and he'll "be there shortly". It's no longer my responsibility to make sure it's open on his time.
The last straw. The AC unit goes out in the building. He won't purchase a window unit temporarily and he refuses to make the building owner fix it. Now, I have many health conditions, several make it so I can not be in excessive heat. This is in June of that very hot summer. I'm soaking my feet in bowls of cold water, rushing to the bathroom to splash more on my face and hair. It's about this time I informed him of the customer that was in the hospital because of months of his refusal to order products and he finally decided to do something. He decided this, early in the morning on a day my husband had scheduled off work 2 months prior because I had Dr's appointments and we had home repairs we needed the time to get done. Things had been so hectic that he literally had to schedule a day, 2 months out, so we could do these things.
Fall out ;
I'm getting ready for my first appointment. I receive a text asking me to come in for a couple of hours and go over product orders. I tell boss that I have appointments that day and that we have things at home we have to get done so I will not be able to come in until my shift starts at 5. He goes ballistic. Continues to text nasty stuff and how I'm the one that wanted this stuff ordered. Me, Trying to explain that I've tried for months to get this done and that he can't just last minute decide I need to cancel important Dr. Appointments and hubby's planned day off because he FINALLY decided to do what needed to be done After ignoring me for so long. Hubby, ticked at his treatment of me, goes in with me when I start my shift. We all "talk" and clear the air and he apologized, giving me the night off. What I don't find out until we leave is that when I went to the bathroom he told hubby "I just don't understand, I'm the boss". Hubby stares at him for a minute, annoyed, and finally told him "You are only her boss when she's scheduled to be here, outside of that not you or anyone else is her boss" He had this look like he honestly didn't understand. And this was my breaking point.
The petty revenge ; I quit. Most customers won't deal with him and due to low stock we'd already lost 30%of what hubby and I built up so this left him with less than 1/2 of his customers. Before he knew I had quit, I removed myself as an admim over all the social media sights, my husband had already quit running the website for the business. Yes I also ran all of our media and relations. My final night, I shut the store, put my keys in a secure place that he could find, and text him they were there.
He now had to figure out how to do everything himself. He does not know how to advertise, organize, track inventory, run social media pages and as stated above, he cannot get there on time to open. Add in that it's the dead of summer in the Midwest and no air conditioning, he was back down to the sales before hubby and I took over. I walked out in August, with a feeling of relief that after 4 years, I had done all I could and it was no longer my problem. I loved my job majority of the time there but that last year was miserable. January, 5 months after I walked out, the business closed. It was sad as it had been a part of this small town for a very long time,and because of everything we put into it and the friendships that came from the customers there.
I did however, feel justified in walking away from something that hurt others. Boss closing doors allowed for another business to grow. The gentleman that owns it asks our opinions, listens to what we suggest and does just that. He's very kind and cares about his customers. He knows that we understand the business and know what we are talking about. Even though we are just customers, he takes what we say to heart, he educates himself on that and finds that it would help him greatly. Due to the stressors from my previous job and being forced to work in excessive heat with my conditions I have physically been unable to work since , otherwise I would be working for new business as an adviser as he's offered. We've also been asked by dozens of people, to start our own shop, even offering to help get us started. We however are moving past that, hubby works for a really good company and is back in management. He loves his job and it allows me to be an at home mom for now. We do rescue work with animals and have moved to a farm. Not sure how this ends for him. He posted about trying to get his pilots license but nothing since then. I don't wish him ill and he isn't a bad guy. A bit insensitive and doesn't understand business management. Growing up with older brothers and in a military family, I can handle Insensitive. An unwillingness to run your own business though, I'm not ok with that.

Theory: The Hogwarts founders sacrificed themselves in order to establish a protection for students at Hogwarts.

(First off, I'm aware that I'm putting way too much thought into creating an in-universe explanation for plot armor. Don't judge me. I have a lot of time on my hands. If you don't want to read all this, just read the bolded parts)
The most important spell used in the Harry Potter books was the one Lily chose to cast over Harry. By specifically choosing to die out of love rather than choosing to live (that's why James's sacrifice did nothing), she created a protection for Harry capable of overpowering Avada Kedavra, the most powerful spell known to wizards. Harry then later chose to make that same deliberate sacrifice for his friends, causing all of Voldemort's spells to be harmless against them.
The Founders of Hogwarts chose to sacrifice themselves in order in order to cast that same protection spell over the grounds of Hogwarts, to protect the students there.
The books themselves even hint at it pretty clearly. Dumbledore mentions that "The castle is a stronghold of ancient magic" (notably, the only other time Dumbledore specifically mentions ancient magic is when he is explaining Harry's protection to him). When Ron discusses how Sirius broke into Hogwarts, Hermione says that "This castle is protected by more than walls.". Finally, Hagrid tells Harry that "Gringotts is the safest place there is-- 'cept maybe Hogwarts."
It seems strange how people regard Hogwarts as safe, given the hundreds of underage witches and wizards with zero training all trying to do magic and make potions. Yet, when there was a single death (Myrtle), people flipped out, and considered closing the school. That indicates that death was incredibly uncommon.
The Founders' spell altered situations and probability to help students escape mortal danger or severe harm
This is basically required to just run the school, even without any of Harry & co.'s hijinks. Students repeatedly test new spells on themselves and others in class, and brew potions that can turn toxic with even a small mistake. They deal with dangerous creatures on a near daily basis, and their one sport literally features hitting opponents with a 40 pound metal ball to try and knock them off their broom to a 50 foot drop. The protection spell makes sure all those situations end up safely (at least relatively so).
Let's just run through a list of examples:
Pre-HP books:

Tom Riddle attempted to use the Basilisk while at Hogwarts, and Dippet mentions a series of attacks, yet Myrtle is the only death. We can assume there was a series of fantastic coincidences that managed to save them, just like his second attempt.

Philosopher's Stone

Neville falls about 30 feet off his broom, and is completely fine
Harry's broom is bewitched by Quirrel/Voldemort, a powerful dark wizard, yet manages to hang on.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione get through a series of deadly traps, and take on Quirrel/Voldemort in person. Yes, Voldemort couldn't kill Harry, but the deadly plants, vicious chess pieces, and poison definitely could. Ron got crushed brutally by a stone chess piece and was fine.

Chamber of Secrets:

During Riddle's second attempt, via diary, crazy coincidences kept happening: Colin is looking through a camera, Mrs. Norris is looking at a puddle, Ernie is looking through Nick, etc. How could six people/animals/ghosts (along with all the students from the first time) be that lucky?
Ron carries around a defective wand for his second year, which constantly does spells wrong and backfires, eventually exploding with the force of a grenade. Despite that, there's never any permanent harm.
Hermione takes a bad polyjuice potion, something that is explicitly stated to be deadly, or at minimum, horrifically painful, yet it's only a minor inconvenience. She also managed to brew Harry and Ron's perfectly, despite it being an incredibly difficult potion to make, even for skilled witches and wizards.
Harry gets hit by a giant flying piece of metal, falls 40-50 feet to the ground, and only ends up with a broken arm.

Prisoner of Azkaban:

Harry is attacked by dementors, somehow manages not to get his soul sucked out, and falls over a hundred feet, being conveniently caught by Dumbledore (who apparently didn't decide to save him the other time he fell off his broom).
Malfoy is attacked by Buckbeak, and receives only a minor injury. He deliberately insulted a deadly, 600 pound beast with razor claws while Hagrid was halfway across the paddock, he should have been ground weasel meat.
Lupin turns into a werewolf and rampages across the grounds, yet no one ends up being harmed, not even Sirius, who was a far smaller dog.
Harry is surrounded by dozens of dementors, the most we've ever seen in one place, and manages to pull off the patronus charm. Yes, he had the whole confidence boost, but that's still an insane achievement, especially for a wizard his age.

Goblet of Fire

First off, literally every Triwizard task. Seriously, they had to take on a dragon, dive into a dangerous lake, and go through a deadly maze. Even with all the "precautions" Dumbledore and the others took, it was still beyond dangerous.
Snape mentions to the students that he's going to test their antidote knowledge by poisoning one of them. Knowing Snape, that's likely not a joke.
Malfoy got turned into a ferret, then bounced off of the walls and ceiling. Hilarity aside, that should probably have resulted in a lot of broken bones and bruises, or even death.
Barty Crouch used imperio to control Krum to attack Fleur and Cedric, but left them both alive. Why would he bother doing so? Krum used crucio, Avada Kedavara wouldn't have been out of the question.

Order of the Phoenix

Umbridge tortures Harry by magically carving letters into his skin, which he never received medical help for (besides Hermione giving him some weird pus after a few times).
Fred and George release flaming explosives into Hogwarts specifically designed to destroy things, as well as a full size swamp. Somehow, nobody got third degree burns or died.
Montague was stuffed into a broken vanishing cabinet by the Weasley twins, and was trapped in a weird limbo. He then splinched his way out into a toilet (horrible brain image), but miraculously survived.
McGonagall gets hit full on by five stunning spells. Madam Pomfrey flat out says that she should have died, especially with her age.
Umbridge is flat out willing to use Crucio on Harry, and is only stopped by a really transparent distraction by Hermione

Half Blood Prince

When Draco sneaks poison into Slughorn's gift for Dumbledore of mead, Slughorn instead decides to keep it, but not drink it. Thus, the poison is kept directly next to the man best suited to counteract potions, as well as who keeps a number of bezoars handy.
It's unclear exactly where Katie is when she touches the cursed necklace, if she's on Hogwarts grounds or not, but she touches only the smallest bit of the necklace through a hole in her glove, surviving an otherwise deadly curse. Her survival also acts as a warning mechanism to save Dumbledore.
Draco attempts to hit Harry with the Killing curse in the bathroom, but misses, at very close range
Harry hits Draco with sectumsempra, a curse that slices open the body, and can't be healed by magic. At that exact moment, who's walking by but Snape, the one person in the castle who knows how to heal those wounds.
During the battle at the astronomy tower, none of the Hogwarts students or Order members die. That's despite the fact that they're facing an elite Death Eater hit squad, who have all committed numerous murders. The DA members had Felix Felicis, but the Order members didn't. Bill came out the worst, with only some facial scarring.
Dumbledore's death. Yes, he died. But note that he's not trying to save himself, and purposefully put himself in a position where the odds were stacked highly against him, even with manipulation by a protective spell. Had he attempted to survive, he likely could have.

The Deathly Hallows

The general activities of the DA at Hogwarts. Seriously, you had a handful of teenagers going up against brutal torturers and killers, and emerging with only some cuts and bruises.
The Battle of Hogwarts. Obviously, this seems like a bit of a hole in the theory: Plenty of Hogwarts students and allies died. But as we've seen throughout the series, any spell has it's limits, and it can't protect everyone. In addition, it's just a matter of chance. The spell can make it more likely that a student can dodge a hex, or a curse will miss them, but when it's happening hundreds, thousands of times, eventually their luck runs out. In all honesty, the fact that they managed to do as well as they did was incredibly impressive. The defenders only had about 20-25 trained, adult witches and wizards along with a bunch of teenagers, while the Death Eaters had a small army that was highly trained, with powerful dark magic.

How did this happen?
Let's get into the details now.
The four founders were the "most skilled witches and wizards of their age". Given that they apparently built and enchanted Hogwarts alone, that seems like a fair assessment. They also all had a dedication to passing on their knowledge to future generations. However, a school full of kids learning magic is gonna have a lot of inherent dangers. Add on the persecution of witches and wizards at the time, and threat of dark wizard attacks, and there's plenty of potential reasons their school could collapse in a matter of years without them there to defend it. Unless... they could defend it forever somehow. Once the castle was done, by sacrificing themselves, they could protect students for as long as the enchantment stood. For Hufflepuff, this was done out of kindness and concern for others. For Ravenclaw, it was practicality and logic. She was already sick and dying, and her sacrifice could let numerous others seek wisdom. Gryffindor was known for his bravery and nobility, he'd likely jump at the chance to sacrifice himself. The only one who wouldn't was Slytherin, whose self interest prevented him from the sacrifice. This may very well have been the reason he left the group, an argument over whether or not to cast the enchantment. (Interestingly, Slytherin is the only founder we have specific knowledge on his death and burial site). The spell likely required some preparation, as it was extremely complex. That long time preparing may even have been the reason Ravenclaw was sick. In the end, all three founders sacrificed themselves, in order to ensure a better future for their students.

Something sinister happened when I was visiting my grandpa in Siberia as a child. To this day I don’t quite understand it

I’m from Russia, so please pardon my grammar. I’m so confused and looking for answers, I have posted this many times on Russian supernatural forums but still haven’t found any clues. This happened about 15 years ago, I was 11-ish at the time. Me and my parents lived in a relatively large city in Ural. The city is famous for its massive industrial complex and polluted air, which is particularly evident in summer. So every year my parents would send me on a visit to my grandpa in Siberia for 2 or 3 weeks so that I could breathe some fresh air.
Even though it meant that I would spend some of the sweet summer days away from my friends, I always eagerly awaited these trips. Thing is, my grandpa was one of the most interesting people I’ve met to this day. He was an archeologist and specialised in Slavic mythology and rituals. Aside from the fact that he was obviously very knowledgeable in history and culture, he travelled the whole country and had most entertaining stories from his expeditions. He was like a real life Indiana Jones to me. 20 years ago his team discovered a massive network of ancient villages in Siberia, so they built a permanent research camp with all the facilities, they even had showers and electricity. Junior staff members lived in tents and temporary buildings, and academic officers like my grandpa had wooden cottages.
It was a remote, very isolated location, so the route to the camp was not an easy one. That year my dad and grandpa agreed that dad would drive me to a small Siberian town in his car, where grandpa would pick me up. After 10 hours of driving (I was sleeping most of the time) we met up with grandpa at the arranged location. We went to a local buffet where dad and grandpa exchanged latest news. Then grandpa said to me: «well, pioneer, time for us to hit the road». Dad went back to his car to have a nap before driving home, and we headed to a river pier, where my grandpa’s colleague waited for us in a boat.
«Let me introduce you», grandpa said. «This is my grandson, %username%, he is a very smart lad. And this is Stepan Petrovich, he specialises in ritual burials. This spring we discovered an amazing mound on the bank of the river, 1 hour away from our camp. A very untypical one, too, so Stepan Petrovich is helping us make sense of it». I gave Stepan Petrovich a polite nod, to which he responded: «What are you, a girl? Men shake hands». He had a very firm handshake. I had mixed feelings about Stepan Petrovich, he seemed a little gruff, and to be honest I was a little afraid of him, and wished he wasn’t with us. But then he and grandpa started exchanging stories and anecdotes, and I realised that he was a fun guy, just a little rough around the edges. I even started to tell him my school stories, like when we pranked our teacher by covering the chalkboard in wax, and he seemed to like them.
After 2 hours of sailing we finally arrived. A spectacular landscape opened before my eyes: a huge mound right on the bank of the river. It looked so monumental and fearsome in the setting sun. I would think that I travelled back in time, if not for the researchers’ tents surrounding the hill. «There it is, magnificent, isn’t it?», my grandpa said. One of the staff members helped us park the boat, greeted me, then addressed my grandpa: «Valentin Bogdanovich, we need you to take a look at something before the shift ends». «Sure, just a moment», he replied. «Stepan Petrovich, will you please show our young fella around, I’ll be right back and we all will head to our camp».
So we went on a little tour with Stepan Petrovich. «Your grandpa is a great researcher, so I assume you know some basics about the culture of ancient Slavs. This burial we have here is a very large one. Usually collective burials are associated with military clashes, they contain remains of fallen warriors. Well, it’s not the case here. Looks like an entire village of peaceful serfs was pillaged by a forest fire, but we also consider the possibility of a mass offering. The corpses are burnt but not cremated, which is not typical. What is even more unusual, instead of regular ritual weapons there are iron sickles, one per a body. Some militant cult might have raided the village and made a mass sacrifice». He made a spooky face. Usually scary stories didn’t impress me much, but the atmosphere of a Siberian summer night did the job. I felt uneasy.
Soon my grandpa came back and we were on our way to the camp. The camp was at the edge of a forrest, about one hour away from the river, separated from it by an enormous field of wild rye. «Grandpa», I said. «If this village was pillaged by a militant cult… is it theoretically possible that their successors are still hiding out there in the forest?» Grandpa gave Stepan Petrovich a condemning glare. «You old bandit, how dare you scare a child?» Stepan Petrovich responded with a guilty look: «sorry, professor, I’m just not used to being around children, I’ll watch what I say».
We arrived at the camp. After 10 hours of resting in my father’s car I didn’t feel sleepy at all, so my grandpa decided to throw a little party to celebrate my arrival. Me, grandpa, Stepan Petrovich and a few staff members gathered around the campfire. I felt a lot more relaxed in a large group, so I suggested a contest for the scariest story. «Well, we are scientists who study mythology, so it would not be easy to beat us», grandpa chuckled. «By the way, do you know why people come up with scary stories? You see, we are a lot smarter than animals, which makes us both powerful and vulnerable. Our perception of reality is so acute, it would be insufferable for us to cope with all the bad things that can happen, if not for our ability to come up with explanations. For example. Our ancestors really liked saunas, but even something as fun and relaxing as bathing can be dangerous. A person could overheat and have a cardiac attack or something. Ancient Slavs had a strict set of rules when it came to bathing. First of all, you must never go to a sauna alone. Second, you must not fall asleep in a sauna. And most importantly, never bathe after the sunset. All these rules make sense if you think about them rationally, because violating them could result in a fatal accident. But our ancestors came up with another explanation. They believed there was a demon who came to those who broke the rules. The demon kissed them and exhaled hot air into their lungs, killing them. This is the power of the collective unconscious».
«These rules really do make sense if you think about them», I replied. «And I can understand where this legend is coming from. But why does the demon only come after midnight? Why do all bad things in scary stories always happen after midnight?» «Well, nights are dangerous because our perception is not that good, even ordinary things can appear scary in the darkness. But our ancestors believed that midnight was not the only dangerous time of the day. There were four “borderline times”, when the line between the natural world and the spirit world blurs: midnight, sunrise, sunset and midday. Did I ever tell you about the Midday Lady? The Midday Lady is the spiritual manifestation of a hot day, when it is too dangerous to work in the fields, because of potential sunstrokes. During that time of the day serfs would shut down any field works and go back home to wait out the midday. If you stay in the field, or even worse, if you fall asleep there, the Midday Lady would kill you».
The following few days in the camp were nothing but entertaining, I didn’t feel worried even though we were stranded in a Siberian forest near an ancient burial. Being surrounded by rationally thinking adults focused on their work had a relaxing effect on me. Most of the time we were in the camp. Grandpa worked for 5-6 hours every day, and I spent this time exploring his amazing library. Then we would dine with other researchers and go on a little hike around the camp. Every other day we went to the excavations. Grandpa supervised the works, while some of the junior staff members entertained me with their recent discoveries - under a strict condition that I’m not allowed to touch anything. There were ancient tools, household items, even some remnants of traditional clothing. In the evenings we would sit around the campfire and tell stories. I was having a good time.
Something strange happened on day five or six. Me, my grandpa and most of the crew went to the mound that day, and two people stayed to look after the camp. When we came back they told us about the incident. They were on the side of the camp nearest to the forest when they heard the sound of breaking glass. They rushed to the other side to see what happened, and soon enough they noticed that a few houses had broken windows, all on the side that was facing the field. This scared the hell out of me, I seriously believed that the dead were disturbed by the excavations and were warning us. Grandpa reassured me that cheap glass probably collapsed because of hot weather. Contrary to popular belief, summers in Siberia can actually be pretty hot, and this particular summer was unusually hot. Just in case these were some hooligans or wild animals, Stepan Petrovich suggested to have more people look after the camp. This never happened again, and I almost forgot about it. The real incident happened four days before I left.
It was a bright, extremely hot, windless day. Grandpa finished his work on the excavations early and we were rushing to the camp to be on time for lunch. I said “see you there” to other staff members, took my backpack and we headed to the camp. Five minutes later we heard one of the staff members calling my grandpa out loud. He said «probably something important, go to the camp, I’ll catch up», and headed back to the excavations. It was 20 minutes later, right when I was in the middle of the field, when I felt something strange.
It was like a wind but not quite. It is hard to explain, but it felt like a moving field of static electricity. The weeds in the field didn’t move and it was dead silent, but I felt an invisible wave move and touch me. And then I got the feeling that I will never forget. Out of nowhere, I suddenly clearly realised that I’m dying. I couldn’t breathe, time froze, my heart was beating fast. I tried to calm myself, I said to myself: “just relax, this is probably just a panic attack from being alone in this ominous setting”. But it didn’t help a bit, I knew it was a lie. “I’m dying, just like that, without any apparent reason, and no one will find me in these tall weeds”. And then I saw Her.
First I saw a shining orb of light moving towards me from the other side of the field, very rapidly. For some reason I immediately understood: the moment it reaches me, I die. I tried to breathe, I tried to move, but I was paralysed. When the orb got closer I started to see a silhouette. It looked like a person, but it didn’t walk, it didn’t even fly, it kind of just teleported through space. It moved really strange, like a thunderbolt. I know this sounds weird but I’m trying to describe it precisely. 5 meters away from me it stopped. It looked like a young woman, blonde and very pale. She was naked and held a sickle in her hand. And she was so beautiful, she was painful to look at. I even thought, “now I’m ready to die, I will never ever see anything as beautiful”. She didn’t look angry or hostile, more like curious, but there was something off about her. In a moment I realised: she didn’t have pupils. Her eyes were just all white. It was a strange feeling, I was scared, I didn’t want to die, she was an obviously evil creature, but the very idea that she would go away plunged me into despair. Next thing I remember is I heard some noise, some regular, “earthly” noise, perhaps from moving weeds. She turned her head in the direction of the noise and started to move there. I blacked out.
I awakened with a very severe headache, and my body felt like a staffed toy. At first I didn’t understand where I am. I was still in the field, but now the sun was setting. I felt lost, like I woke up from the most wonderful dream, and at the same time I felt relief from escaping a certain death. I didn’t know what to do, but I wanted to shake this feeling off, and I wanted to be around people. So I forced myself to get up. I saw a dark silhouette in the distance and thought that it was probably my grandpa searching for me, I was too exhausted to fear anything anymore, so I headed in that direction. It was my grandpa.
I called him, but he didn’t respond or move. He was doing something strange, it looked like he was dancing or more like having a stroke, his whole body was shaking, and he kept mumbling something inaudible. As I approached him, I started to discern something above his head, it was like a swirling cloud of concentrated darkness, some black mist, floating 2 meters above my grandpa’s head. Then I heard noises of the approaching crowd an saw some flashlights in the distance. The cloud melted and disappeared, and grandpa fell to the ground.
It was a group from the camp, they were very worried. They picked up my grandpa and rushed to the camp, they talked about how hard it would be to get an ambulance here. A nurse in our camp examined grandpa and concluded that it was a sunstroke. For some reason I didn’t tell them anything about what I’ve seen. It might sound odd, but I didn’t want anyone to know about the lady in the field. Grandpa regained consciousness in a couple of hours. He looked very confused, didn’t recognise people, and couldn’t explain what happened.
He fully recovered by the next morning, but he changed. Most of the time he was as fun and kind as usual, but from time to time he kind of froze, and just looked into the void for a few minutes. When I tried to ask him if something was wrong he didn’t respond, just gave me a very grim look. It was nothing like him, he honestly looked as though he could kill me. It was dreadful. And then he just went back to normal, made jokes and told funny stories. One time I asked him carefully if he remembers what happened in the field. He got very annoyed and said that I’m a grown up now, and I shouldn’t be afraid of some supernatural bullshit. We both just had a sunstroke in the field, and that’s it. I never asked him about it again.
In two days I departed. Grandpa gave me a hug, wished luck in school, and said that he would see me on winter holidays. «I was happy to see you, pioneer», he said. He didn’t come for winter holidays. As my father told me, «he doesn’t feel like being around people right now».
I’m recalling the words of my grandpa now. “Our perception of reality is so acute, it would be insufferable for us to cope with all the bad things that can happen, if not for our ability to come up with explanations”. I wonder if I as a kid made up this story to help me cope with grandpa’s sudden change and quick death. Or maybe it’s the opposite, and I’m trying to pretend that he died of natural causes, and I never saw what I saw. I changed too, not as much as my grandpa, but something is wrong with me. Sometimes I feel like I can’t experience happiness and beauty the way other people do. I just wish I could see Her again, for a brief moment.
The following summer was the first time I had mixed feelings about visiting grandpa. I was even going to tell my parents that I’d rather go to a summer camp with my friends this year. But I didn’t have to do it. In June grandpa died. He decided to take a midday nap and had a cardiac attack. When I was 16, my father told me that there was in fact a criminal investigation of his death due to suspicious circumstances. A few windows of his house were broken, as though someone broke in.

jokes for kids about animals video

Funny animal jokes. Here you will find great collection of funny, silly and corny animal jokes for kids of all ages, teens and adults who do not want to grow up. This funny collection of friendly and good jokes, riddles and puns about animal are clean and safe for children of all ages. Kids will laugh out loud when they hear these jokes about animal! This funny collection of friendly and good jokes, riddles and puns about sea animal are clean and safe for children of all ages. Kids will laugh out loud when they hear these jokes about sea animal! LoL! Back to Animal. Dolphin 16 Fish 34 Penguin 21 Sea animal 14 Shark 17. How did the lobster get to the ocean? Jokes can make a sad person feel happy. Try to remember a few, so you could use them to make your children smile when they are sad. You could also plan a chocolate shake party with kids on the weekend and make them laugh at every single joke on animals. Recommended Articles. Funny Dad Jokes For Kids, Assuring A Laugh Riot Animal Jokes for Kids. Enjoy our range of hilarious animal jokes for kids and laugh along with the neat humor and classic jokes related to all our our friends living in the animal kingdom. Find jokes about elephants, cats, butterflies, fish, birds, cows and more. Read on and check out all our funny jokes about animals. Giant list of animal jokes, puns, and riddles. Clean jokes for kids and people of all ages. We've got shedloads of funny jokes for kids on our site. Yep, we've pulled together an awesome collection of over 3000 kids jokes, whether you're a kid yourself or you're a little older with an awesome sense of humour. These jokes are easy to remember, appropriate for kids but also we added at the end animal jokes for adults. Scroll and read more of these funny animal jokes to make your day. Send them to your family or friends to give them a good laugh too! We are sure you will also love those jokes collection we got. Children love animals more than they love most things. From puppies in the park to cats that live at home or the bunny rabbits that dominate the most beloved storybooks, some of the first words children learn have to do with all sorts of animals.So it’s only logical that animal jokes are a great contender for the first jokes your kid learns. Distractions; Jokes; 110 of the best jokes for kids that are genuinely funny With the Easter holidays here, and no guarantee of good weather, no parent wants a house of bored children on […] It is no surprise that children love animals more than anything in the world. From cats that live in your home to puppies in the dog park, or even bunnies that dominate most of the fairytales and kids’ stories, some of the first words that kids learn are based on animals. So it is obvious that the first jokes they learn and enjoy the most would be based on animals as well!

80 Funny Animal Jokes for Kids That Will Make Them Laugh ...

jokes for kids about animals

jokes for kids about animals - win

So a video, joking about an anime with women with massive breasts being the plot, is for kids????

What anime would you show to somebody who is 'misinformed' and prejudiced about anime and assumes it's for kids who like action and jokes?

My uncle left me a shifty little bar in his will. The employees here sleep in the backroom.