#and every once in a while it will re inflate

[pomegranatebat]

The truth behind silcos ass

#KA POW #one day it just happened #and every once in a while it will re inflate #and make a fart noise when he sits as it deflated #arcane #silco #art #animation #silco arcane

[genderqueerdykes]

Ditch Etsy for Good: A Disabled Etsy Seller's Experience

i started my Etsy store in August of 2022. I was in desperate need of income at the time, as I am disabled, and waiting for my full disability payments to come through. I currently make $245/month off of a general assistance program that's meant to "help" while you're waiting for those payments.

I needed, at the time, $900/month for my studio apartment, because I was on a month-to-month lease, and could not re-new it, as I was the secondary renter, and my abusive ex whom I could not contact was the primary renter. They needed his signature to renew the lease, or else I was on month-to-month status, which meant they could increase my rent to whatever price they saw fit at any point.

I was struggling to stay alive. I had a bunch of kandi supplies I had gathered over the years, pony beads, string, all that kind of stuff. So i accrued some extra supplies to make other types of necklaces and chokers. Keep in mind my level of poverty, and the level of inflation in 2022. I was having to accrue supplies secondhand, from thrift stores. Everything I bought and sold was upcycled, save for the few times I could afford things to fill in the gaps from craft stores.

After I gathered supplies, I went to work. I spent countless hours making all types of jewelry. Not really sleeping. Just countless hours of stringing beads, if I woke up in the middle of the night from a bad dream or stress about homelessness, I would go back to work. I've been homeless before. Several times. Never lived on the street or in a shelter, but I have lived in hotels, cars, crashed on couches and have run from getting kicked out for making little money endless times.

I drank a lot of coffee and ate very little. Eating consumed time, time that I didn't have. Once I was done making things, it was time to photograph every. single. item., then edit them, and upload them to Etsy. I had to create listings for each individual item, all of which cost $0.20 to create, and again to renew when it ran out in 3 months if not purchased. There was already a start-up cost.

Shipping made my life a nightmare. Etsy charged me for each and every single label. I tried free shipping at first, as it's a huge draw for customers, but labels were around $3.69 from my state to the mainland United States at the time, creeping ever closer to $4. For anywhere else it would easily come to $10 or more, international shipping was easily $20 - $40. Even if the customer paid for shipping I still had to go through the process of purchasing a label.

This didn't account for the fact that I had to purchase printer, ink and paper at some point to keep printing these labels. Ink is wildly expensive and your cartridges run out faster than they should. They are rigged to flag as empty when they're not. This also does not account for ink and paper lost when the printer does something in error, which is often. The office at my apartment complex was willing to print labels and packing slips for me for a while, but they cut me off after a few months.

The biggest kick in the teeth was the processing time for my payments. Because I shipped my first few orders without tracking labels. Etsy put a hold on my money for the next 3 months. They would take a random amount of time to process each payment. I could never figure out the schedule. My money would sometimes take days or weeks to arrive when I set Etsy to a "daily" payment schedule. It was torture. I was sweating over not having money constantly, and missing payment deadlines left and right.

I was getting orders at every hour of the day. I didn't "clock out" of this job. I had to change the notification sound of the Etsy Seller app on my phone because when I heard it, I would panic. I wasn't excited, I was filled with dread. It was never ending, and I was constantly stressed about getting orders out on time. I never had time to rest. I didn't get days off. I was on the job 24/7. Unless you completely uninstall the Etsy app and refuse to check it fora while, you can't really clock out of this job.

This isn't even touching the fact that Etsy also takes a cut out of every single sale you make, meaning you have to jack up your prices wildly either to make free shipping reasonable so you're not losing money on each sale, or you have to play a dance of figuring out what the best balance between shipping and item costs are, which is time consuming. It's a lot of math and comparing against your niche's market.

Etsy has an ads feature, which you must again pay for, where they will run ads for your products in random banner ads and whatnot. You are charged if one customer clicks the ad, not purchases something, meaning this is a complete fucking scam. The minimum is $1/day and you are forced to subscribe monthly. You can cancel at any point, but sometimes it takes a full day for this to cancellation to go through. The Etsy Ads feature sucks ass. I received exactly 2 orders through their service and kept it on for a few weeks here and there. It's horrid. You do not receive a significant enough boost in traffic to make the investment worth it. Also consider how many people use adblockers these days. This isn't hard to see.

The amount of time you have to spend promoting and boosting your own shop, buying supplies, creating and photographic products, uploading them to the website, and everything else in between is not worth the amount of money you make. You do not turn a profit unless you are selling very high end products like fine jewelry and antiques. Anyone else in the bottom rungs loses money through one avenue or another, Etsy finds ways to make the entire process draining and expensive for the seller.

The also will not provide you a 1099 document to file your taxes for your earned income unless you have made over $25,000 in one year on Etsy, which is literally impossible unless you make, as I said, fine jewelry. The average Etsy seller does not make this much in one year. We do not make a liveable wage, yet Etsy pretends like we do.

I didn't realize how draining it was to run this store until I put it in vacation mode. I'm shutting it down as soon as I'm able to. I could not handle the pressure of orders coming in in the middle of the night. I could not handle the pressure of not being able to remember which bracelets I could wear, and which ones were up on the store. Or which ones I could give to friends freely without having to issue someone a refund because I made a mistake. The worry of sending the wrong customer the wrong product was constantly on my mind. Every review that came in made me scared I had fucked up or provided an inferior product. I was distraught, broken and scared.

Now I'm much more free. The piddly jackshit amount of income I made was not worth it at all. I don't think I made back the cost of supplies and I definitely was never compensated for the sheer amount of labor I put into my products and orders. Etsy just kept kicking me while I was down and now that they have made it so that you are unable to file a class action lawsuit against them, they are only becoming more tyrannical.

Etsy does not care about their small sellers. They only care about the big cash cows who bring in big views and line Etsy's pockets with the Etsy Ads program. If you're too poor too keep up they'll chew you up and spit you out. Fuck Etsy. Fuck the lack of respect for their sellers. Fuck them for holding my money randomly for 3 months because I didn't know tracking labels were REQUIRED in their eyes. Fuck Etsy for never letting me know when I was getting paid, and for paying me on such an irregular schedule. Fuck Etsy for the fucked up fees and expensive shipping labels.

Fuck Etsy for everything. Let them go. Cut the cord. Navigate to Ko-Fi or somewhere else. Let this horrid site fucking die.

#our writing #our shop #our store #etsy

[onceuponapuffin]

Fanatic Intervention Part 11!!

Okay so I had Life being Life, then a bit of Writer's Block (sort of), then a bit of a hangover, BUT I GOT IT DONE. So here we go.

Beginning || Previous || Next

************

When you wake up the next morning, you once again find Anathema sitting at the large dining table surrounded by her books and tools. This time, though, Aziraphale and Crowley are with her. Aziraphale has his tiny glasses on and is flipping through a book, a cup of tea next to him, no doubt cold. Crowley is on his phone, and you can hear the sound effects of Candy Crush from here. He has a mug in front of him too, but it’s steaming and smells of coffee.

“Good morning,” Anathema says to you.

“Morning!” You respond, heading into the kitchen. Here, you can see that someone has bought a box of bagels, and you help yourself to one and make a coffee before returning to the dining room and having a seat across from Anathema.

“So,” You say, taking a bite out of your bagel (dear Reader, I personally am imagining just eating it like a donut because I can), “How are the readings coming?”

“Well,” Anathema starts, “I got some vague vibrations yesterday and I have a theory.”

“Oh?”

“The vibrations were very faint, mind you, but I think they were coming from the southwest. So I’m going to try going to that edge of the city today and try again. With any luck I’ll have a better idea of where we’re traveling to by tomorrow.”

“Awesome!” You reply

“Thanks! Aziraphale is going to go with me.”

“And I am not,” Crowley says definitively. You smirk behind your coffee mug.

“Still sulking over yesterday, are we?” You ask him, trying your best to imitate his eyebrow.

“No. It just sounds boring.”

“Well we could hang out today,” You suggest brightly. Crowley makes a noise that is non-committal and mono-syllabic. “I’ll take that as a yes!”

“That sounds like a splendid idea,” Aziraphale offers in place of Crowley, “Perhaps you can find us a car to rent. I have a feeling that we will be leaving the city soon, and we won’t want to be walking will we?” He chuckles to himself, and you nod in agreement.

“Perfect,” You say with a smile as you finish off your breakfast.

----------------

“So!” You start casually as the pair of you wander down the street, “What mischief are we going to get up to? Are we gluing coins to the sidewalk? Are we going to find someplace busy and just walk REALLY slowly? Take up both sides of the escalator? Oh! We could ride the bus and request every stop without ever getting off!”

Crowley stops walking and looks at you. His eyebrow has practically merged with his hairline.

“Is that what you lot think I do?”

“Well, uh...basically yes,” You reply uncertainly. Just as you’re starting to wonder if you should be re-evaluating everything you know about how Crowley operates, he smirks with a satisfied hum.

“Good. Glad to know my finer talents are appreciated somewhere.”

Oh he has no idea. You decide not to inflate his ego too far. Yet.

“So what do you want to do?”

Crowley produces a bag of frozen peas from nowhere. A light bulb goes off in your brain.

“Oh! Ducks!”

“Ducks.”

And so you head for Central Park.

--------------

Finding the ducks doesn’t take too long. Neither does emptying the bag of frozen peas. In the end, you both find a bench and have a seat. It feels strangely like you’re filling in for Aziraphale.

“So what happened yesterday with Anathema?” You ask after a while.

“I have no idea what you mean,” he replies, shifting around on the bench. Alright, enough of this. You turn to stare at him.

“What do I mean, okay. I mean that you spent two days running around like an unsupervised kid, spend one afternoon with Anathema, and suddenly when I literally give you permission to be a mischievous shit, all you want to do is feed the ducks.”

It almost looks like he’s chewing on something. Words maybe, you figure. Maybe he feels that if he chews them enough, they’ll come out easier. He must realize it doesn’t work like that because after a few seconds he answers your question.

“She may have mentioned that my having too much fun might bring the Metatron back around. Back to Aziraphale. Especially since he didn’t seem to have much trouble finding you in Heathrow. He probably knows where we are.”

Oh. That’s actually a fair point. You take a minute and think about it.

“Yeah, he probably does, but I don’t think he’s going to try anything just yet. I mean, his tactics are straight out of the Fairytale Villain Playbook. So he’s probably going to hold back for a bit to see if I start to crack and then go back to him.”

“Book Girl still has a point, though. Don’t wanna bring him out before we have to.”

“Okay,” You pause for a minute, considering the obvious compromise that Crowley doesn’t seem to have touched on yet. But then again, sometimes you just need someone to give you permission – even if it’s something you already know. “So how about we don’t have too much fun, but we have just a little bit of fun. Like we go souvenir shopping and buy a t shirt with small change. Keep stuff in moderation, yeah?”

“Hm,” Crowley leans back farther if that’s even possible, considering your proposition. “I do somewhat fancy one of those I Heart NY shirts.”

“Same actually. Did you create those by any chance? Just curious.”

His smile is toothy and smug. Instead of answering, he lifts himself off the bench.

“Come on then, Reader,” he says, “Let’s buy some souvenirs.”

“Reader?” You answer, getting up and following him.

“Well what else am I gonna call you? You keep talking about how much you read and I already have Book Girl. Need to keep all you straight somehow don’t I?”

----------------

Not very long afterwards, you find yourself wandering around the city again, this time sporting I Heart NY merch and cheap star-shaped sunglasses. Crowley has swapped out his normal shades for a pair of shutter shades. A couple of times now you’ve had to grab his arm to keep him from walking into poles. And once, he nearly sauntered his way down a flight of stairs that he was certain had come out of nowhere. He still hasn’t switched back to his normal sunglasses.

“Okay what about Monopoly?” You ask him.

“Nope. That was an American who made that I think. No idea who it even was.”

“Mario Kart?”

Crowley snorts. “No.”

“What about fake pockets?”

“If anyone asks, yes. But otherwise, actually, no.”

“What about...multi-level marketing schemes?”

“I…what? No. But I definitely told Hell that I did.”

“Okay well then what did you actually invent?”

Crowley stops and looks at you through those ridiculous shutter shades. He smirks like the Cheshire Cat as he answers.

“As little as physically possible.”

“So you did basically nothing, and just took credit for everything?”

“YuP.” He pops the plosive at the end with a self-satisfied head-waggle.

“Brilliant.”

“Thank you. It’s nice to talk to someone who gets it.”

“It really is, isn’t it?” You turn and give him a hug. Sometimes, you just need to hug your demon.

“Ngk. What’s this?” He’s clearly uncomfortable, so you let go. He doesn’t say anything else about the hug, but he buys you an ice cream.

And he pays with pennies.

----------

The hotel room is quiet when you both return. After a quick search, you find that Aziraphale and Anathema aren’t back yet. That’s not...a great sign. But you’re determined not to panic.

“I’ll order some room service. You want anything?”

“Nah, I’ll wait.”

So he’s worried too. Alright. You place your order and turn on the tv. You try to care about the Big Bang Theory reruns, but you can’t relax just yet. Both of you sit in quiet tension until the door finally opens to Anathema and Aziraphale. Their moods are joyful, and you feel the dark cloud just lift away.

“Hey guys,” You say, “I just ordered some room service. I wasn’t sure when you two were coming back.”

“Oh!” Aziraphale practically sings, “I’ll get the menus. I’m certain they won’t mind adding on to the order.” He leaves the room. Anathema’s face is bright.

“I found out where we need to go. Did you find us a car?”

Oh. Whoops.

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 🖤

Beginning || Previous || Next

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #good omens 2 #good omens fandom #aziraphale x crowley #aziracrow lasts forever #fanatic intervention #part 11 #poll fic #good omens fanfiction #good omens fanfic #ineffable fandom #ineffable poll fic #ineffable fanfiction #let's write #self insert #we're all in this together #writers on tumblr #writeblr #cast your vote

[anexperimentallife]

Alex and the Oracle

This is a humorous short I sold many, many years ago, before I even knew I was autistic, but the rights have reverted to me, so I'm in the middle of a rewrite/update in preparation for re-release as part of an "Alex And" collection. The premise (inspired by some of my own weird impulses) was, "What if things that might LOOK like random impulses or compulsions were actually a form of precognition?"

Alex and the Oracle by D. Robert Hamm

The first thing you need to know about Jimmy Cane is that no matter what anybody says about him, he’s not crazy. And I don’t say that just because he’s my best friend. Sure, he once showed up to a black-tie affair wearing lederhosen and leading a ferret on a leash, but I think that falls under "eccentric." Also, in his defense, I’m pretty sure lederhosen are considered formal wear in some parts of the world, he was wearing a black tie, and the invitation did say, “and guest.”

Okay, so maybe he’s a little bit crazy, but if you had Jimmy’s ‘gift,’ you would be, too.

See, Jimmy’s a precog, but not in the traditional sense. He doesn’t actually know what’s going to happen; he just gets these compulsions that usually seem to work out in the end. That whole thing with the lederhosen and the ferret? Set off a Rube Goldberg-type chain of events that saved a guy’s life. In addition to the general agitation that comes when he tries to resist acting on his compulsions, knowing that something as small as, say, what color socks you’re wearing could be a matter of life and death for someone puts a lot of pressure on a guy.

So when I let myself in over at Jimmy’s place to find him on the floor in a bathrobe surrounded by thirty or so cases of diet soda and blowing up an inflatable kiddie pool, it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever caught him doing.

“Hi, Alex,” Jimmy said between breaths, “I know, I know. Don't have all the soda yet; I just couldn't wait to get the pool ready.”

Which made perfect sense, in a Jimmy kind of way. I grabbed a couple of Blue Moons from the fridge and kicked back on the couch until he finished with the pool and plopped down next to me, panting. We clinked our bottles together, and he drained about a third of his in one long drought. He sighed and wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his robe.

“Okay,” I said, “Whatcha got?”

We long ago gave up on serious predictions about the outcome of Jimmy’s compulsions, but we make a game of seeing who can come up with the most outrageous guesses. We play as a team against reality, and give ourselves points every time we out-weird what actually happens. Two-on-one odds may seem a little unfair, but reality’s been doing this a lot longer than we have, and it has the home field advantage. So far, reality is winning, and I don’t even want to talk about the point spread.

“Diet soda, kiddie pool… Gotta be a connection there,” Jimmy said. “I was thinking maybe a pile of aspartame-addicted carp showing up on my doorstep.”

“Nah, not weird enough. Make ‘em talking carp and I think we’ve got something. I got a better one, though; how about the Apocalypse is nigh, and diet soda will be the only currency of value in the aftermath?”

“Makes sense; only mutants would actually drink the stuff. But what about the pool?”

“Like you said—mutants.”

“What does a kiddie pool have to do with mutants?”

“Oh, so now I’m supposed to be an expert on genetic anomalies? Maybe it’s their religion.”

Jimmy nodded sagely and stroked the three-day growth of beard on his chin. “Hm…” he said. “Plausible. Hope you’re wrong, though; I think I’m allergic to apocalypses.”

We toasted to our brilliant predictions, and Jimmy went upstairs to get dressed so I could chauffeur him around for the day. He’s got this old VW Microbus, and while it runs great, he hates driving (everyone else hates him driving, too), plus he hadn’t really slept in a couple of days, which meant he’d be a danger to life and limb out on the road alone. (Although, knowing Jimmy, if he actually felt compelled to drive, an angel would get its wings and somebody’s dead dog would come back to life.)

I do a lot of things like that for Jimmy, but it’s not a one-sided deal. He doesn’t really benefit much personally from his gift—in fact, it often screws him over—but it does provide him with just enough resources to take care of basic needs so that he can follow his compulsions full-time with no visible means of support. That seems to include whatever I need in order to get by when I take time off whatever crappy day job I’m working at the time to give him a hand and help clean up his messes.

It’s like some kind of weird temp job where I get to go on wacky adventures with my best friend and still keep up with rent, and even though it’ll never give me financial security, and even though it’s made having any kind of decent career impossible, and even though no girlfriend I’ve found so far has been willing to put up with our little adventures for more than a few months, I challenge you to come up with a better job at any salary.

Because let me tell you, being friends with Jimmy is never boring.

After several years of this kind of thing, Jimmy was showing the strain. Over the past year, I’d seen him almost in tears a few times trying to choose between three identical boxes of cereal, and there was that time he couldn’t sleep unless he wore his shoes on the wrong feet and listened to yodeling records for three days straight. Don’t even get me started on the truckload of frozen mangoes in cold storage.

It was getting to the point where Jimmy wasn’t sure what was a ‘gift’ compulsion, and what was a random impulse, and fewer and fewer of his compulsions were bearing fruit—no mango-related pun intended—or at least none that we could see. But even if he could resist the occasional impulse, he doesn’t dare, just in case doing so might have a disastrous effect on someone else. He’d even started seeing a psychiatrist, but the only thing the doc was able to do for him was prescribe sleeping and anxiety medications.

Even with the meds, or maybe in part because of them, Jimmy was in even worse shape for driving than usual, so it was a damn good thing he’d called me. Once he was ready, I fired up his microbus, and we drove the forty minutes into Kansas City, where we spent the next few hours, stopping at grocery and convenience stores. At each stop, Jimmy pulled case after case of diet soda off the shelves with increasing degrees of agitation. When he found one that “felt right,” he was able to relax for just a few minutes before he started being drawn to the next case. A few places we had to talk them into letting Jimmy go examine the back stock. You’d think they’d refuse, or at least get a little annoyed, but Jimmy has this—I don’t know—this childlike, innocent vulnerability about him that’s hard to say no to. He lives in kind of a different world than most people do, and sort of expects everybody to be as nice and as helpful as he tries to be. It’s hard to say no to Jimmy without feeling like an asshole.

Sometime around ten o’clock that night, Jimmy guided us onto I-35 North, and we waited for the compulsion to tell us where to stop. We finally found the “right” convenience store about halfway to Des Moines, and I hit the men’s room while Jimmy perused the displays. I finished just in time to see Jimmy explode out of the store waving his arms and screaming, “No! Not that one! I need that one!”

He was charging straight at a grizzly bear in denim and plaid flannel. Okay, not an actual bear, but if a real grizzly ever met this guy it’d pee its fur, scream like a twelve-year-old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert, and run crying for its mommy. Man-bear had—you guessed it—a case of diet soda under one arm. Jimmy slammed into him at full speed, and cans flew everywhere.

Man-bear’s face went from surprise to ugly(er). He pulled back a fist the size of my head, and before I could get there Jimmy was flying backwards to land on the blacktop. Man-bear dropped the soda and took a step forward.

“Don’t hurt him,” I hollered. Okay, it was a little late for that.

“You want some, too?” Man-bear said, and I froze. I wasn’t just afraid he was going to beat me up; I was afraid he was going to eat me.

Now, I’m not the world’s bravest guy, but I do think pretty fast when the alternative is getting turned into hamburger. “No, he’s my little brother,” I lied, “I-I take care of him.” It was the best I could come up with. Hey, I said I think fast, not that I do it particularly well.

“Doin’ a pretty crappy job of it.”

“I know,” I didn’t have to fake anguish. Imminent death has that effect on me, especially when it’s mine. “ Look at him, though,” I pointed to where Jimmy was crawling around muttering to himself and gathering up the fallen cans while blood dripped from his nose to the blacktop. “You can see he’s not, y’know, quite all there in the head, can’t you? It’s not his fault.”

The trucker scowled at Jimmy, then at me. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s a little, uh... touched, you know? He gets it in his head that something—like one particular case of soda—is important, and he thinks something bad is going to happen if he doesn’t get it.” Well, that much was true.

I spread out my hands in appeal. “Look, I’ll pay for the soda. Hell, I’ll buy you ten cases.” Man-bear was silent. “C’mon, man, do you have a brother?”

Man-bear looked at Jimmy again and nodded slowly. He sniffed, then in a wilted growl said, “Keep your money. Tell him I ain’t gonna hurt him no more.”

While I stood gaping, Man-bear pulled a grocery bag from the cab of his truck, got down on all fours, and started gathering up the cans along with Jimmy. It took me probably half a minute or so to pick up my jaw enough to pitch in myself. Man-bear even got a cold pack from the cooler behind his seat for Jimmy’s face, and before he got back into his rig, shook Jimmy’s and my hands and said that while he wasn’t going to give any details, we’d changed his life.

Once Bruce’s rig was out of sight and we were back in the Microbus, Jimmy grinned at me, split lip, bloody nose, and all. “Alex, you were brill—”

And for the second time that day, Jimmy got punched in the face. Some things simply have to be done.

“Ow. What was that for?”

I glared at him, trying to ignore the fact that I felt like a total ass for hitting him. “I felt compelled, okay?” I started the car and pointed us back toward Lawrence. “I’m getting worried about you, man.”

“Yes, I could sense the concern in your loving punch.”

“Sorry about that, but are you nuts? That could have gone a lot worse than a punch in the face.”

“Two punches,” he said.

“Okay, two punches. I said I was sorry. But man, that has got to be the craziest thing you’ve ever done, and I’ve seen you do some crazy shit. Did you see the size of that guy? He’d give Mount Everest a Napoleon complex. We could have ended up in the hospital. Or jail. Or both. Hell, maybe even the morgue. Did you even stop to think we could have just politely offered to buy the soda from him instead of trying to tackle him?”

Jimmy’s face went slack. He stared at me for a few seconds, then hung his head. When he spoke, he sounded even more tired and beaten up than he looked. “I was so caught up in...” He looked back up at me. “You really do take care of me, Alex. And I don’t say thank you enough, but you never complain, and then tonight I almost got you… I’m sorry, Alex. It’s just… This is a bad one.”

I very carefully didn’t look at him. “Just think next time, okay?” I threw in some Ramones to cut short the Hallmark moment, and we cruised along to Blitzkrieg Bop.

About halfway through I Wanna Be Sedated, Jimmy turned off the music. “Hey, Alex? If we changed that guy’s life like he said, this diet soda thing is starting to play out, right?”

“Looks like. I just think it could have been handled differently.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I know, but if it’s starting to play out, my ‘gift’ or whatever should stop poking at me, or at least ease off a little, but it’s getting worse. And there are all those other cases.”

“Jimmy, I—”

“This so-called ‘gift’ pretty much runs my life, Alex, and it’s getting worse, and I can’t control it. I never wanted it to begin with. What if it gets one of us killed someday?”

I didn’t have an answer. When we got back to his place I was going to hang around to make sure he was okay, but he said he’d put me in harm’s way enough for one weekend. There wasn’t much I could do except make him promise to call me if he needed me.

#

My phone woke me a little before three a.m. the next night, which would have been fine if it were a supermodel calling to profess her undying love, but that, I decided, was an unlikely scenario, and stuck my head under the pillow to wait for the ringing to stop.

It didn’t.

“I have a hammer,” I yelled, “and I’m not afraid to use it.” Apparently the phone was unafraid of percussive maintenance. I tracked it to the pile of laundry under which it had made its rebel lair, and flipped it open. “Please state the nature of your emergency.”

“Alex! I’m glad you’re up.” Jimmy sounded like an auctioneer who’d been up all night mainlining double-espressos. “I dialed you like, nine times. Are you busy?”

“No, I was just going through the yellow pages trying to find a re-education camp for wayward cell phones. Look, it’s three AM, and you don’t sound like a buxom supermodel.”

“That has never been my aspiration. You said to call if I needed you. And I do. So I am. It’s the soda thing.”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose and censored myself. I had told him to call. “Okay, what do you need?”

“I know how to make it stop. Gotta get one more case and get to this little spring in the Flint Hills. About a hundred and fifty miles. Don’t trust myself to drive that far.” He giggled and switched to a bad falsetto. “Help us, Obi Wan. You’re our only hope.”

“You can’t play the princess-in-distress card, Jimmy. First, it’s not fair, and second, you know I’m already in.” If he didn’t trust himself to drive, I sure as hell didn’t, especially when he sounded that out of it.

Half an hour later Jimmy lurched in and knocked (in that order) dressed much like “The Dude,” from The Big Liebowski, only Jimmy’s bathrobe was fuchsia. He banged his shin on the coffee table, but barely seemed to notice. His nose and lip were still swollen, and his eyes were spider-webbed with red, but he was practically vibrating with nervous energy.

“You look like crap,” I said. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Can’t sleep. Gotta go. Here.” He dug into the pockets of his robe and handed me a printed-out map along with the keys to his old VW min-bus.

“Okay,” I said, “but shouldn’t you be wearing pants?”

He looked down at himself and frowned. “What’s wrong with swimming trunks?”

“Dude.”

“Okay, okay. But we gotta hurry.” Jimmy’s a little smaller than I am, but I managed to find some clothes that didn’t fit him too badly. (I let the Cthulhu slippers slide. You have to pick your battles.)

Jimmy had a bunch of those big plastic bottles—the kind that go on top of home water coolers— filled with slightly brownish water and strapped together in the kiddie pool in the back of the mini-bus. “What the—”

“No time. I’ll explain on the way.”

By the time I had the mini-bus in gear he was already asleep, slumped against the passenger door. I knew how this worked, though. As soon as I stopped heading toward our destination he’d wake up frantic. Besides, I probably wouldn’t get anything coherent out of him until he’d napped, so I bit down on my curiosity.

He woke up about halfway there. “Take the next exit,” he said. “That’s where the last case is.”

I pulled off the highway. “You wanna fill me in now? And please tell me we’re not going to get our asses handed to us by a human grizzly again?”

He laughed, bouncing up and down on his seat. “No promises on that count, but I don’t think so. As for filling you in... Wait. Turn here.” We pulled into a service station with all its lights out. Jimmy opened his door.

“Dude, they’re closed.”

“Gonna check the hours on the door and see how long we have to wait.”

The station wouldn’t open for three more hours. “All right,” I said, “That’s plenty of time to fill me in, so spill.”

“I’ll warn you, it’s going to sound crazy. I’m going to sound crazy, but hear me out, okay?”

I said I would, and he continued. “You saw how I got earlier. I had to get some sleep before I finished this thing or I was going to fall apart. Or even worse, screw it up. But I couldn’t. I even took a sleeping pill, but all it did was make me spacey. I finally gave in around one and poured the soda into the kiddie pool.”

He paused and stared out the window. “Keep going,” I said, “You poured the soda into the swimming pool, and then what happened?”

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I started pouring, and there was this... face.”

“What, at the window? Somebody was watching you?”

“No, in the pool. A woman’s face, there in the soda.”

Now that topped the weirdometer, even for Jimmy. “Right. You’re sleep-deprived, and like you said, you were on sleeping pills. People see things.”

“Whatever. Anyway, it freaked me out,” he said.

“Understandably.”

He got quieter. “Her lips started moving. She was saying, ‘help me.’”

“Hang on—You know it wasn’t real, right? Unless... Is your ‘gift’ giving you visuals now?”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “What could I do?” he said. “The more I poured, the more of her there was, until there was this… this beautiful woman standing in the middle of the pool. She was real, Alex. She had sort of blue-tinted skin and long green hair, and she reached out of the pool and called me her hero and kissed me, and—Hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m starting the engine. And unless I hear something of the not-crazy variety come out of your mouth in the next five seconds I’m turning around.”

“Wait, Alex. Don’t freak out on me.”

“We’re way past that. Look, it’s probably just sleep deprivation combined with Ambien, but we gotta get you looked at.”

Jimmy grabbed my sleeve. Not like he was trying to pull my hand off the steering wheel, but just to emphasize his words. “Alex,” he said. “Please. I’m not crazy.”

“Maybe not, but something’s wrong. What kind of a friend would I be if I—”

“Okay, okay” he said, “Just for argument’s sake, let’s say I was hallucinating, and that it’s from not sleeping because of this compulsion. What’s the fastest way to fix that? The only way to fix it?”

I sighed. “Seeing it through.”

“So see this through with me, give me a day or two to catch up on sleep, and if you still think I’ve lost it, I’ll go to a doctor or whatever you want. I mean, come on, it’s a few hours of driving is all, and then we’re done with it, I promise. Deal?”

I rolled my eyes and climbed into the back to stretch out by the kiddie pool. “Damn it, Jimmy, there’d better be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.”

It only took a few minutes for me to doze off. I couldn’t have been asleep for long, though, when I woke to shrill ringing. Jimmy jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and started the engine. We threw gravel getting back on the road.

“What the—” I looked back at the service station. The front window was broken out. “Jimmy! What did you do?”

“I couldn’t wait. She can’t hold out much longer.”

I climbed toward the front. “That’s it. You’ve lost it, man. Pull over right now. If you pay for the damages they’ll probably let you off with probation.”

Jimmy’s voice was choked and he was blinking back tears. “You don’t understand. She’s dying. There weren’t any security cameras, and I left money on the counter to pay for the window. If I drive fast we won’t get caught.”

“We? I didn’t do anything except ride along with a crazy man!” I reached for the steering wheel, but we were already going fast enough that I’d probably flip us if I grabbed it. I got out my phone. “Pull over now or I’m calling the police.”

I wasn’t really going to. As far gone as he was, he might try to outrun them, and things would only get worse.

He called my bluff. “Go ahead. If you’re still my friend, though, wait until it’s over.”

There wasn’t much of an alternative. About an hour later Jimmy turned onto a dirt road. When we got to the end of it and bounced to a stop I grabbed the keys from the ignition.

“Help me with the bottles,” Jimmy said, “The spring is just a little ways off.” He unbuckled himself and moved toward the back. I grabbed his arm, and he looked me square in the face. I have never seen him so determined. “What are you going to do, Alex? Hit me again?”

Ouch. I let go, and Jimmy’s expression softened. “I know you think I’m crazy, but I can prove I’m not.”

He started pulling stoppers out of the water bottles. “I hope she’s up to this. She’s in pretty bad shape, or I’d have tried it earlier.”

I had to clench my jaw to keep from responding. Jimmy un-stoppered the last bottle and leaned over it murmuring. “I know,” he said, “But we have to prove to my friend that you’re real before he’ll help us get you home.” He turned to me. “She wants you to know that not all of this is her. Some of it’s just regular water and soda.”

“Great,” I said, “Tell her those bottles don’t make her butt look big. Honest.”

Jimmy scowled at me, and I was about to say something more when the water moved. Trickles from each bottle snaked up and joined to form a translucent face like in, what was that movie... The Abyss or something. It—correction, she—stuck out her tongue at me before turning to Jimmy with an expression of such adoration that it broke my heart. The sun was rising, and it glinted off of her in reds and golds. Jimmy touched her lips with his fingers and she kissed them, then lost cohesion and flowed back into her bottles.

All I could do was stare.

“Well,” Jimmy said, “Am I crazy?”

Either she was real, or Jimmy’s insanity was contagious. I preferred to believe the former. I had to work my mouth a bit before anything came out. There isn’t much to say when you witness the impossible. “What are we waiting for,” I growled, “Let’s get her home.”

We used the deflated kiddie pool as a sled where we could, and carried the bottles one by one over the rough spots until we reached the spring.

Jimmy finished filling me in on the way. The woman’s name was D’lahna, and she was a naiad, a water nymph. She’d been exploring “Overhill,” as she called it, when she somehow got stuck in a soda bottling plant. She wouldn’t have lasted much longer if not for Jimmy and his gift.

We poured first the bottles, then the final case of soda, into the spring, and D’lahna rose up out of it more beautiful than you can imagine. And very, very naked. I stood staring until Jimmy punched me in the arm. “Hey. Mine.”

“Sorry.” I averted my eyes. Kind of. Hey, she might have been my best friend’s girl, but she was gorgeous. I tried not to gape at her, and searched desperately for a way to cover the awkwardness. How do you make small talk with a mythological creature?

“So, uh...” I said, “Sorry about the whole thinking you were imaginary thing. Nice place you’ve got here. Love what you’ve done with it. Seems like a quiet neighborhood.”

D’lahna laughed. If you’ve never heard a nymph’s voice, I can’t really describe it to you except to say it sort of... sparkles. “Your friend is funny,” she said to Jimmy, then looked at me. “This isn’t where I live, Alex, but it will get us there.”

It took me a moment to process that. “Us?”

I turned to Jimmy, who had just stripped naked. (Now there’s a sight I hope to never see again.) He grinned at me. “I’m going with her,” he said.

“But you... She... You can’t...”

“It’s okay,” Jimmy put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be in touch.”

They offered to take me with them, but instead I watched as Jimmy took D’lahna’s hand and waded into the middle of the spring with her. They turned translucent and flowed into the water.

It was a long drive home, and I thought about the two of them all the way.

Two weeks later I turned on the kitchen faucet, and out came an invitation to Jimmy and D’lahna’s engagement party. They’ve already set me up with a date—a wood nymph friend of D’lahna’s who, Jimmy thinks, just might break my losing streak. He mentioned a possible job offer, too.

And guess what D'lahna's family's favorite fruit is? Yeah, at least now I know what to do with all those frozen mangoes.

#writing #urban fantasy #rob writes #my writing

[aceghosts]

Reflections

Rating: G

Summary: A photo of Wesker at his S.T.A.R.S. Days brings back some memories.

Warnings: No real warnings apply. Please let me know if I need to tag for anything.

Words: 2,978 words

Author’s Note: This is a gift for @skinky-squamata as part of @sstewyhosseini's RE Gift Exchange! Mika, thank you for letting me participate and giving this a look over! @skinky-squamata, I hope you enjoy this!

AO3

Albert Wesker pauses, his finger hovering over the button of the terminal. In his black shades, reflects the soft blue glow of the screen, his eyes fixed on the image in front of him. He stares at the photograph, one taken from his days at S.T.A.R.S., back when he was just pretending to be the Captain of the Alpha team. How easy it had been to fool everyone. None of them saw his betrayal coming, not that they could have. The S.T.A.R.S. members were his personal little piggies to experiment on. In the end, they had done a fine job. However, S.T.A.R.S. surviving had not been part of Wesker’s plan, an unfortunate annoyance.

In the photo, Wesker is in the middle, Chris on his right, with Barry to his left. Both have their arms around his shoulders. Jill and Rebecca are in front of the three, crowded into the photo with them. Behind the camera is Joseph Frost, cracking jokes in an attempt to make everyone smile. This photo is from his days at S.T.A.R.S., Barry playing his part well. Wesker knows Barry would have rather punched him, only the threat of harm to his family keeping him at bay. Everyone is smiling, looking excited and happy, unaware of the events to come. Even Wesker, himself, is smiling slightly, arms crossed over his chest.

Looking over at Chris, a deep hatred flares in Wesker’s chest. Chris…the bane of his existence. Every time Wesker is about to execute a daring move, Chris and his merry band of imbeciles are there to mess up his plans. At least, his other plans, the ones hidden in shadows, are left alone. No matter, Chris’s efforts are futile, and his struggle only makes Wesker’s victory more delicious in the end. As he stares into the screen, Wesker can’t help but drift back to a memory of Chris in Wesker’s early days at S.T.A.R.S.

--Raccoon City Police Station circa 1996—

BANG!

The rifle fires off, hitting its mark. With a smirk, Wesker moves the right earmuff back, teasing Chris, “Think you can do better, Chris?”

It’s late at the station, most of the staff already having left for the night. Originally, Wesker was going to leave, having been held later by that pig, Chief Irons, who once again felt it was his place to lecture Wesker. While he was able to remind Irons who Wesker worked for, Irons clearly had an inflated sense of worth, and Wesker looked forward to the day he was no longer needed. Noticing that Chris was at the gun range, Wesker decided to join him, blowing off some steam and hopefully kicking his ass in the process.

“Course I can, Wesker! Watch this!” Chris says before both men get their gear back in place. He aims, firing off two quick shots, hitting the mark in quick succession.

Chris looks over to him, and Wesker nods in approval. He removes his earmuffs as Chris does, complementing his younger teammate. “Impressive.” Chris smiles, clearly appreciating the comment from his Captain. From the short time that Wesker had known Chris, he found that the young man held himself to a high standard, leaving no room for failure, something he and Wesker had in common. Barry mentioned that Chris was determined to prove himself, that he earned his spot on the S.T.A.R.S. team. Another thing he and Wesker had in common. Although, Wesker supposed he wanted to prove himself for less noble reasons.

“Thanks, Wesker,” He replies, before a slightly mischievous gleam appears in his eyes, “How about we make this more interesting?”

A bet and a chance to kick Chris’ ass? Now, this is an idea that Wesker can get behind. “Name your terms, Chris.”

“Whoever can hit the most moving targets in a minute wins.”

Wesker tilts his head. “Sounds agreeable, but what is the catch?”

“If I win, you have to come out with us tomorrow night. Join us for a monthly S.T.A.R.S. teambuilding.” Ah, ‘Teambuilding’ as Chris and some of the others referred to it. Wesker saw it as an excuse for them to get drunk at the local bar.

“Why would you want me to join you? Most people would be thrilled that their boss didn’t join them for a drink.”

Chris falters slightly, looking more unsure of himself. “We want to get to know you, Wesker. None of us know you, and you’re always rebuking our attempts to get to know you better. We’re a team; we have to be able to trust each other.” It takes all of Wesker’s strength not to scoff at Chris, call him an idiot for believing in a thing like trust. Chris’s attitude is so antithetical to anything at Umbrella. At Umbrella (and in life generally), trust only gets you hurt.

Instead, he settles for a half-joke. “And what do I get in return?”

Chris’ eyes light up as he thinks. “I’ll take over any night patrols that you have for a week.”

“Make it two weeks and you have a deal.”

He smiles, a wide grin on his face. “You’re going down, Wesker!” Chris wins by a slight margin, Wesker letting him. Wesker supposes it couldn’t hurt to spend a night with the team.

--

 The memory ends, leaving Wesker alone in the dark room with only the screen for light. He scoffs at how idealistic Chris was at that time. Surely, Arklay had rid Chris of that notion. Yet, Wesker couldn’t help but see part of Chris in himself, no matter how much he hated it. It made Chris such an annoyance with his partner, Jill. Jill Valentine.

He looks at Jill, who is smiling as widely as Chris. Wesker snorts, another memory coming back to him.

--Raccoon City Police Station circa 1996—

Wesker’s hands come up to rub his temples, a minor headache starting to form. Curse Irons and his over-inflated ego! He grits his teeth, frustration bubbling up. No matter how many times, Wesker politely reminds Irons that he is ultimately a pawn for Umbrella, the man never seems to remember for long. If he had to hear another lecture from Irons-.

“Captain Wesker?”

He turns, finding Jill Valentine in the hallway, watching him with concern. Glancing down at his watch, Wesker notes that she should just be leaving. “Is something the matter, Jill?”

Jill shakes her head. “No, you…look frustrated. Is everything okay?”

“Nothing is the matter, Jill,” He replies with a sense of finality, hoping that she won’t ask more questions.

She narrows her cold blue eyes, and Wesker knows he isn’t being let off so easily. While a rather useful trait for a lockpicker and bomb defusal expert, Jill’s perceptiveness is rather inconvenient at this time. “Is it Irons?”

Wesker frowns, now concerned. Was Irons blabbing his fat mouth around the station? “Who told you that?”

Jill holds up her hands in mock surrender. “We noticed that you always seemed to be in a worse mood after Irons. You look like you’ve been talking with him again.”

“We?”

“Yeah, the team and I,” She pauses, adding sheepishly a few seconds later, “I noticed first and told the rest of the team.”

He crosses his arms over his chest. “You and the team have time to gossip on the clock? If so, I think we need to increase-.”

“It’s not like that,” Jill shakes her head, “We wanted to make things easier for you. If Irons was getting on your case, we thought it might be about S.T.A.R.S. So, we tried to show Irons that we are a good team.”

Now that Jill mentions it, a lot of things start making sense. After one particularly frustrating (and almost violence-inducing on Wesker’s end) talk with Irons, he came back to the S.T.A.R.S.’s office to find Chris working on paperwork dutifully, something he often didn’t do. At the time, Wesker shrugged it off, but he wondered if it was Chris’s attempt at making S.T.A.R.S. look good. “Hm, is that so?”

“Yes,” Jill relaxes, her shoulders dropping, “We tried to come up with ways that we could show off, make the team look better.”

“Was that your idea or Alpha teams’?”

“It was mine at first, but the rest of the team thought it was a good idea.”

“Thank you,” Wesker admits, “I appreciate the work you and the rest of the team are doing. However, my meetings with Irons do not involve you.”

She raises her eyebrow, tilting her head slightly. “Then, what do they involve?”

“Nothing that is any of your business.”

Jill opens her mouth, only to be cut off by Chris. “Hey Jill! You ready to go-Oh hey, Wesker!”

Wesker snorts, smirking slightly. “Go.”

“But-.”

“It’s none of your concern, Jill. Enjoy your night with Chris.”

She glances between the two, smiling back at Wesker. “Have a good night, Wesker, and” Jill adds quietly, “if there is anything we can do, let us know.”

Wesker nods, watching as Jill leaves with Chris, both happily chatting and laughing with each other, unaware of the future horrors to come.

--

Jill and Chris always made a good team, and Wesker always thought that Jill might be perceptive enough to sense that something was slightly off about her Captain. But it never happened. Now, she and Chris were always several steps behind, unable to catch up to Wesker.

He looks to Rebecca Chambers next, the youngest member of the S.T.A.R.S. team. She had a brilliant mind, especially compared to some of S.T.A.R.S.’s other members. Yet, Rebecca chose to waste her talents in his eyes, once wondering briefly if Rebecca would join the pharmaceutical industry.

--Raccoon City Police Station circa 1998—

“Rebecca.” Rebecca jumps, apparently deeply focused on her work. She jumps, nearly knocking over the mug of coffee in a S.T.A.R.S. mug. Wesker is quick enough, carefully catching the mug and setting it back on her desk. “I apologize, Rebecca. I did not mean to scare you.” He’s only curious, wondering what Rebecca is doing here so late. Wesker rarely sees Rebecca, considering she works for Bravo Team.

She shakes her head. “It’s okay, Captain Wesker,” Rebecca smiles at him, still slightly nervous and on edge, “I got absorbed in my work again. Classmates used to tease me about it all the time.” Wesker notices a brief wince. It wouldn’t surprise him that her classmates sought to sabotage her; it’s something he and Will would have done, especially Will.     

 Wesker leans casually against her desk, raising an eyebrow. “There are worse things than to be absorbed in your work. Better to be interested in the project in front of you than simply skating by.”

“I agree,” Rebecca starts to relax, seeming less disturbed by his presence, “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

That catches Wesker’s attention. Really? Nothing else except working at S.T.A.R.S.? “Interesting,” He muses, knowing that geniuses like Rebecca have their pick of placement, “You weren’t interested in working anywhere else?”

Again, Rebecca shakes her head. “Nope! I’m happy to be here.”

“What about working as a doctor?”

“I don’t think I have the people skills for it,” Rebecca admits, nervously rubbing the back of her neck, “Besides, I like working with a smaller team.”

“What about a pharmaceutical company like Umbrella?” She would be a fool to join Umbrella, but perhaps, she could be swayed over to another one.

“They tried to scout me for their biochemistry teams, but I wasn’t interested.”

Interesting. Most would jump at the chance to work with a company like Umbrella. “Why not? What made you say no?”

Rebecca glances at the photo on her desk, a picture of the Bravo team. They all look happy, smiling wide in the S.T.A.R.S.’s office. “As I said, I wasn’t interested. Umbrella couldn’t give me the one thing that I was looking for in my work. I want my work to have a purpose, to be part of a team. I’ve found that here with S.T.A.R.S.”

How sentimental. How naïve. Places like Umbrella would have chewed her up and spit her out. At Umbrella, you were always seeking to get the better of your colleagues, sabotaging them when you had the chance. Someone else’s failure meant more time and accolades for you. He remembers one researcher like Rebecca, who hadn’t lasted long at Umbrella. He remembers the way she stared, broken and defeated, as she realized what had been done to her work. “Captain Wesker?”

Wesker is jolted from his thoughts. “Yes, it’s important your workplace matches your values.” And what weak values Rebecca had. Just like the rest of the fools here.

Rebecca smiles up at him. “Thanks for understanding, Captain Wesker.”

--

What a massive waste of talent. No matter what, Rebecca would fail like the rest. He would make sure of it.

He moves to Barry next, a small chuckle escaping from him as he smirks. Poor Barry, so easy to manipulate. Barry loved his dear family too much and had been so easy to manipulate. He had been the perfect pawn for Wesker to use, especially with the false threat of Umbrella. Until his damn conscience got the better of him. Another memory takes over him, one before he made Barry his pawn.

--The Burton Household circa 1996—

“Wesker! Thanks for coming over!” Barry pats his shoulder forcefully, and Wesker forces a semi-friendly smile on his face.

“It would be rude to reject an invitation from a colleague…” And this was too good of an opportunity to learn more about Barry, to possibly find something that Wesker could dangle over him like a carrot on a stick. In the future, Wesker will wonder if Barry ever regretted this decision, to allow someone like Wesker into his home, his sanctuary. He will wonder if Barry thinks he should have thrown Wesker out, that he let the snake into their den.

Barry gives him a confused look, before shaking his head, perhaps chalking it up to Wesker’s aloof nature. “Well, I hope you enjoy beer and burgers! We’re grilling tonight.”

“Delightful.” Barry opens the door, Wesker behind him. The Burton home is slightly messy, a stark contrast to Wesker’s neat and orderly home. Even Will’s home is neater, but that’s since Will and Annette are rarely there.

“DADDY! DADDY!” Two girls come running, jumping into Barry’s arms as he scoops them up. Both girls laugh in delight, their smiles matching the wide one on their father’s face.

“Wesker, meet my daughters, Moira and Polly! Girls, say hello to Captain Albert Wesker.”

“Hello!” Both girls shout in unison before they start to pepper Wesker with questions and random tangents.

“Girls, slow down! Give him a few minutes.”

“Sorry dad!” They both apologize, curiosity still bright in their eyes. How different Moira and Polly are from Sherry. Sherry always seems so polite, so quiet. But Wesker knows that it’s from the lack of attention she receives, that she’s been forced to grow up faster than her peers. He wonders if Sherry would be like Moira and Polly if she was raised in a home like this, more childlike. Barry beams at his girls, adoration for them shining in his eyes. They seem to be the center of his universe. Wesker doesn’t think he’s seen Will or Annette look at Sherry that way.

“Come on, Wesker, and girls! Let’s get that grill going!” The girls laugh and cheer in delight as Barry turns, motioning for Wesker to follow him. He follows Barry, knowing that he’s just found the carrot dangling over Barry.

Later on, during his time at the Burton’s, Kathy, Barry’s wife, pulls Wesker over to the side as Barry is distracted with the girls. “Promise me you’ll look after him?” Her voice is steady, but Wesker hears the faint fear behind it.

 “I will try. I cannot guarantee that he will avoid danger, but I will watch out for him.” It’s a bald-faced lie, but Kathy doesn’t need to know that. It might be easier for Wesker to manipulate Barry if his wife thinks so highly of his boss.

Her shoulders relax, dropping slightly. “Thank you. I just don’t want the girls to grow up without their dad.” She looks past him, and Wesker follows her gaze, settling on Barry, who is now playing with the girls. Wouldn’t it be so sad for the girls to grow up without their father? He hides the smirk that threatens to appear. Love makes Barry Burton a weak man, and that is something he can use to his advantage.

--

In the end, Barry’s love for his family hadn’t been enough to override his conscience. His love for his teammates won out in the end, and he’d helped Jill when he was supposed to be sabotaging her.

Anger rises in his chest as he glares at the photo, his eyes darting between the different faces. They may have survived the mansion, but they would not survive what Wesker had coming for them. Chris, Jill, Rebecca, and Barry were all pawns, and Wesker would remove them soon. But for now, he would need to be content. Let them think that they were truly doing something.

The anticipation of satisfaction washes over Wesker, and he relaxes, his glare morphing into a smirk. One day, the four would lose, and Wesker would be there to see it. He would savor their defeat along with his victory. A dark chuckle escapes Wesker, knowing that bigger and better things are in store for him.   

#resident evil #albert wesker #chris redfield #jill valentine #rebecca chambers #barry burton #resident evil fanfic #re gift exchange 2023 #kate writes #I really hope you enjoy this! #it was a lot of fun to write this for wesker!

[theartgremlin2]

Apparently people are complaining about this week’s Bad Batch s2 episode being uninteresting. While I was a little bored while watching, that has more to do with the episode’s pacing than it’s actual content. The comparison between Tech and TAY-0 made it quite fascinating to me.

One of my main gripes about Tech has been how underdeveloped his character is. He’s the smart one! He’s got a big, beautiful brain and an ego to match. Occasionally, he behaves a bit robotically because of how direct and literal he takes things. I don’t think I’m the only one who has felt like that. It seems to me that the writers realized it too, which is why TAY-0 is the perfect person to contrasted against Tech in this little character study of an episode.

TAY-0 was quite capable of doing his job. He was the current champion racer when we are introduced to him. Cid wouldn’t have bet so much on him if she didn’t have every confidence in him. We’ve seen her do it with Omega, and she clearly thought she would win that wager with Millegi. Not only is TAY-0 a competent Pilot, he is also relatively intelligent. He knows how to fix his speeder, and how to re-assemble himself. He even has a certain sense of art, though that isn’t really explored. He is very similar to Tech in that he has an inflated ego. This is likely from all the praise and popularity his skill as a pilot earns him in the races. However, TAY-0 has one glaring flaw: he’s inflexible.

The move where the two rival pilots who trap their opponent and saw into their speeder is not a new strategy. The announcer and the crowd all know what’s going on when a pilot gets trapped between these two in the tunnels. TAY-0 has seen these rivals do this likely several times, and yet he is incapable of adapting to the situation when it happens to him. In addition to this, when Tech is attempting to repair him, TAY-0 insists that Tech is doing it wrong. He cannot imagine the possibility that there might be another, possibly even better way to re-assemble himself. And this inflexibility is why TAY-0’s ego comes off so gratingly. He behaves as though he knows best in every situation because he is a great racer! There is no need for him to learn anything from anyone else!

Tech is already a magnificent pilot. We have witnessed him flying the Marauder in ways that rival Anikin Skywalker’s ingenuity. He has probably gotten the Batch out of more tight spots than you could count on all you and your closest friend’s fingers and toes combined! In contrast to TAY-0, however, Tech has the humility to admit when he doesn’t know something. He does not claim that his experience piloting the Marauder makes him just as good a racer as the droid. Instead, he recognizes that this is a different skill, and spends time familiarizing himself with it before he decides he can do it. And once the race is over, he does not soak in the praise that the racing fans pour on him. He savors the glory for a moment, accepts the praise, and moves on.

This is not something I ever thought I would say, but Tech’s humility is what makes him a compelling character. He can be a smartass. He can be annoyingly correct. This actually put me off the character in the first season. I was not a big fan of Tech. But he can also be endearingly eager to learn. S2e2 even foreshadowed the closer look at Tech’s humility we were going to get by allowing him a moment of revelation when Romar points out to him that the Serennians had existed before they became Separatists.

This development has softened me a little towards the character, and I can’t wait to see more of him!

#tech bad batch #tbb tech #tbb season 2 spoilers #the bad batch season two #character analysis #episode analysis #am I the only one who wants TAY-0 to get a little development from this too? #please let him have a think and realize that maybe he’s not the Force’s greatest gift to being-kind #I also really hope that Tech and Romar become good friends #it would be a cute elder-teacher dynamic #GremlinReflections

[schmergo]

Maybe a unpopular opinion these days, but ceremonies are important to me.

When I was planning my wedding, I noticed a trend of people wanting the least ceremony or shortest ceremony possible. Get the vows over and done with and then focus all the planning on the reception. I enjoy attending weddings like that, but for me, the wedding ceremony was the most important part. I wanted every detail of it to be meaningful and personal. It was about 35 minutes long, which I don’t think of as insanely long, but it wasn’t just the bare bones, either. 

I did maybe feel a little guilt about that because the prevailing attitude I’ve heard from many other couples is that they don’t want ‘all the fuss’ over them or people to have to sit and pay attention to a boring long ceremony. I think ceremonies are seen as old-fashioned.

I’ve also heard similar attitudes about funerals. “I don’t want anyone to make a fuss over me. Just put me in a box. Just donate me to science. I don’t want anyone spending time crying over me. Why would I want a big ceremony? I’m dead.”

I totally think that both weddings and funerals are industries with hyper-inflated pricing and with too many cultural expectations to spend a ton of money. But for me, the areas that feel excessive to me aren’t in the ceremonies themselves. 

I’m someone who deals weirdly with change sometimes. When my family moved from the house I lived in for 17 years growing up, it was a difficult adjustment for me. Starting college was a difficult adjustment for me. Moving out of my parents’ house for good was a hard transition, too, even though I was really excited about it. I had trouble sleeping for months. Heck, even closing night of a show I’ve been rehearsing for months tends to be hard on me. And I’ve noticed that when big life changes happen to me, sometimes it takes a long time to fully accept them. I’ll wake up thinking I’m in a different home, or I’ll think about getting in touch with someone only to remember they’re no longer alive.

 I did not have that problem with the transition to being married because there was so much time dealing with the preparations, planning, and ceremony that I felt very present that day and had fully absorbed what this next step in my life would mean to me.

To me, even if you don’t have a religious tradition you practice, ceremonies are a way to make sure you stay present in the moment and absorb its meaning, which is helpful to me as someone who’s often kind of zoned out and thinking about a zillion things at once. They’re a way to officially mark life changes, a pre-determined turning point. They mean you’re sharing the same experience with many other people rather than just coming to terms with it on its own. Weddings help you re-conceptualize a person or people you know as part of a new family. Funerals help you re-conceptualize a person you know as having moved on from the world. Heck, even the weird little rituals surrounding midnight on New Year’s are a way to refocus and conceptualize the year ahead.

My favorite YouTube channel is Ask a Mortician. I think the host of the channel, who is a big advocate for personal choice surrounding death and what happens to our bodies after death, is a really inspiring personality and someone who’s made me think a lot more deeply about some of the big transitions that are generally seen as the biggest and scariest of all: end of life. Watching her videos while planning my wedding WHILE during a pandemic definitely made me think about the Other Major Ceremony, not in an anxious and foreboding way but in a thoughtful way.

When I do die, I do want a funeral. I do want a ceremony. I want people to be able to have a shared space to process their feelings. I want people to gather and take time to think about my life and think about what things will look like moving forward. I personally want people to have allotted time set aside to accept and understand that I am not around anymore instead of trying to do that by themselves. I don’t think it needs to be expensive or lavish, and I don’t want a lot of money spent on it, but I do want some time spent on it.

I have no problem with people who don’t need ceremonies to process these things. I think that’s cool and great. But I just wanted to speak up for those of us who do appreciate ceremony as a sort of shared ritual to process transitions. I don’t think you’re boring or self-indulgent or overly superstitious if those things are meaningful to you. There are DOZENS of us!

#cw: death #death cw #weddings cw #wedding cw

[broadcastbabe]

You rarely look directly in my eyes when you talk to me anymore. I don’t blame you, they are magnificent mammaries and deserve your adoration. I can see your mind wander as you drift off into fantasies of nuzzling between them, running your tongue around the saucer-sized aureolas until the tips are pulsing, maroon and tough as soft licorice to gnaw upon. Nursing like a thirsty starving beast, it’s no wonder you gulp for air when you switch to the other to resubmerge into the pliant flesh. Your hands reflexively twitch as if imagining the wrangling these globes will require. You never can get a full grasp of them, even in your mind, but always do your best to attempt the enjoyably impossible task. When your eyelids go half-mast, I know you are descending into the logistics of their full envelopment for your release. Narrowing the gap between them for their combined friction around you is a top turn on for you. You’ve told me it feels like home, even while you’re sliding back and forth to further your growth and progress towards the best orgasms you’ll ever have. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the attention you give them. You know as first point of contact, they are my chief arousal center. I get crazy wet almost immediately as the tingling courses through my entire body, but most distinctly to between my thighs. My breathing accelerates and serves to inflate them further for your greedy possession. We do make eye contact occasionally as you suckle, and there is dreamy look of gratitude for my indulgence while you feed. I sometimes cradle your head to watch your enthusiasm and am always wet with my own desire from your clever mouth and talented tongue. Once you are sufficiently hard and find the need to pleasure yourself in the sleeve you craft for yourself, I am on board as I witness your earnest thrusts from my vantage point below. The culmination is always as messy as expected, sometimes splattering my spectacles, but mostly painting my bosomy canvas with your excitement. The experience invigorates you to perform the celebratory finger painting we both enjoy. The incentive of full handed massaging and manipulation elevates my arousal further. The combination of the warm slickness eased into niches of warmed flesh is thorough and brings me closer to my own climax. The process of frosting every inch of my torso is your excuse for further touch, as well as a completist tongue-cleaning that comes next. Your dedication and hunger sets me to writhing and squirming under your diligent lapping. No wonder cats purr while they clean themselves. I am close as you add some finishing touches, one of which is proudly displaying your re-aroused length for my reciprocal adoration. I am quite dizzy, breathlessly begging for ruination, until you ease it into my drenched void, impaling me to the hilt with its exquisite filling. Your timing is perfection as I cum almost immediately from the extreme stretching. I clench to trigger your second release and am flooded from the inside with the familiar warm slickness. No matter, you will suckle there as I slowly recover from this onslaught and ooze forth for your quirky insatiable appetites… that works for both of us.

#marvelousmammary #lingerie

[woolywoofs]

I wanted to post a little update. And ask for a little help, again (paypal posted below, please dont feel pressured! you and your needs come first always).

Moppa and I are still grieving Skvetta, but we are managing now. She can be left alone now without panicking and she no longer searched for her in the yard.

I had my tonsils taken out last friday, on my birthday lol. Surgery itself went well, but beforehand did not. My IV infiltrated and all of the meds to calm me down and put me to sleep just went into my soft tissue. It was extremely painful and I started to have a panic attack on the table because of it + the oxygen mask makes me feel like im suffocating (i know it doesnt make sense haha). All hands on deck after that and I had 3 people on me at once sticking me trying to get IVs in me but my veins just kept breaking. It was actual hell and felt like forever.

Recovery has been a hot mess honestly. The first 3 days were fine and since then its been reaaal bad. The ear, throat and tongue pain is unreal. I am drugged out of my mind because pain/stress is a huge seizure trigger for me, but at this point it is not really working. I did have 1 bad seizure, to a point where i had broken capillaries in my face. But thankfully it didnt create any issues with my surgery recovery. Im hoping things will start improving soon.

Generally my epilepsy has fucked up a lot. My short term memory is messed up and I have lost some skill sets after the bad seizures. I have been re-learning how to draw and paint! It is a very tedious process but i really feel like im making progress.

My autoimmune disease has been lowkey out of control and I saw my rheumo and I am going back on a low dose chemo drug. It really did help last time, it just made me so sick. But we will be looking into every option to control my nausea etc! So im trying to be hopeful. Ill start once im completely healed from my tonsillectomy, since the meds make you more likely to get infections and slows healing.

My uterus has also been absolutely fucked, once again. We were really hoping that removing the mass, scraping my uterus and putting the IUD would stop the bleeding, and it did, for 6 months. But im having issues again and I saw a specialist and we decided that the only option left for me is a hysterectomy. There is a year long wait though. This wasnt exactly on my list of things to do at 27.. but i suppose it is what it is.

Now for some good. Moppa is healthy and happy. She was attacked by a dog in september and got a bad gash but shes completely healed! She loves the fenced yard. We have been working on nosework stuff when im feeling okay enough for it! She is honestly such a light in the dark and I love her.

I get to renew my lease next year so i dont have to worry about housing!! Rent will be increasing bc inflation but im okay with swapping some meals with ramen to make things work, when I cant make extra money. I have been learning how to quilt!! My grandma does it a lot and i asked her to teach me so I am working on a project with her.

While things are generally a hot mess right now, i am mostly okay. And i feel like thats a big improvement for me, im not sure I would have handled all this a year ago. And im proud of myself.

With everything going on, I have obviously been unable to do commissions, or taking in dogsitting clients or anything i typically do to make money. If anyone is able to help, it is really appreciated. *This is my PayPal*, im afraid its my only way to receive anything. *any* amount helps. I really hope this is the last time i ever have to ask for anything. I feel like things are going to turn around now that we have solid plans to help with my health issues. The hope is that once my uterus is out and the low dose chemo has gotten my overall pain under control, that my epilepsy will chill out. It seems to be easily triggered via pain and hormones.

Thanks to anyone who had the patience to read this thing. I just havent posted an update in so long that there was a lot to say 😅 i am going to start being more active on here as ai really miss it. I will include the 2 art pieces I managed to make and finish. It took forever to figure everything out but im proud of myself. Quality may be a little destroyed bc tumblr likes to do that... i really hope i can offer commissions again soon. I might choose a person or two at random that donates and do a ghost commission like below for them? I can at least try. But youd have to message me on here after donating so i know who you are, i think i can attempt dog, cat or rabbit. But i cant promise anything.

I talked forever, im so sorry lol. Here is the paypal again because its definitely lost up there in the babble

Just to end this.. Has anyone here had a tonsillectomy as an adult and can tell me at what point it got better?

#personal babble #lord sorry for going off forever #my art

[art-of-manliness]

Sunday Firesides: There’s Only So Far You Can Get Off Track in a Week

How do people lose their spouse, their faith, their grip on their values, goals, and dreams? It doesn’t happen all at once. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens through tiny shifts: a steady accumulation of daily, imperceptible deviations from one’s set course. A little more attention is given to one thing than another. A frame of mind bends a bit at a time in a certain direction. A small weed of temptation pops up and is allowed to grow. As the months and years go by, one domain in life inflates while another shrivels. Thoughts turn 180 degrees. Tangles of vice take over the garden. A man wakes up one day and doesn’t recognize his own life. He doesn’t know how he got there. He is a stranger to his wife. A stranger to his children. A stranger to his twenty-year-old self who had ideals and a vision for who he wanted to be. Left unchecked, every life flows away from higher aims and towards the path of least resistance. Daily practices can help stem this slide. But staying on course requires check-ins that are too big to do every day, and too important to only accomplish monthly (or yearly). These are your weekly habits. A weekly planning session to re-establish your agenda. A weekly dedicated hangout to physically and mentally reconnect with your spouse. A weekly family powwow to sync your schedules and reaffirm your values. A weekly worship service to remind yourself you’re more than a product of nature. A weekly walk in the woods to remember you’re also a product of nature. Though you may zig and zag each day, weekly habits ensure you keep moving in your chosen course; there’s only so far you can get off track when you’re recalibrating your compass every seven days. The post Sunday Firesides: There’s Only So Far You Can Get Off Track in a Week appeared first on The Art of Manliness. http://dlvr.it/Sjf1G4

[kp777]

By Jessica Corbett

Common Dreams

April 20, 2023

Backed by climate, health, and labor groups, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey on Thursday reintroduced the Green New Deal Resolution, which the progressive leaders have been fighting for since they first unveiled it in February 2019.

"In the four years since we first introduced the Green New Deal, the tides of our movement have risen and lifted climate action to the top of the national agenda," Markey (D-Mass.) said of the resolution, which envisions a 10-year mobilization that employs millions in well-paying union jobs to help the country respond to the climate emergency.

"Thanks to the persistence of the Green New Deal movement, we succeeded in securing historic progress through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act," he noted, "and now we have an obligation to honor the origins of that success—which sprung from the young people and workers who never once stopped organizing for their future—by putting those dollars to work to create dignified jobs, rectify generations of systemic injustice, and reverse climate damage."

Along with reintroducing the resolution—a largely symbolic move given the current makeup of Congress—the pair released a guide for cities, states, tribes, nonprofits, and individuals about how those two laws "help bring the Green New Deal to life."

"Finally, it is understood that the climate crisis demands a full transformation of our economy and society that the government must lead."

While some progressives criticized the Inflation Reduction Act for pouring "gasoline on the flames" of the climate crisis by extending the fossil fuel era, it was still widely heralded for investing a historic $369 billion in "energy security and climate change."

Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that "when we first introduced the Green New Deal, we were told that our vision for the future was too aspirational. Four years later, we see core tenets of the Green New Deal reflected in the Inflation Reduction Act—the largest ever federal investment in fighting climate change, with a focus on creating good, green jobs."

"But there is still much, much more to do to make environmental justice the center of U.S. climate policy," the congresswoman acknowledged. "Today's reintroduction marks the beginning of that process—of strengthening and broadening our coalition, and of laying the policy groundwork for the next fight."

The resolution is co-sponsored by several lawmakers in both chambers of Congress and endorsed by dozens of groups, including the Sunrise Movement, whose executive director, Varshini Prakash, said that Thursday "marks our recommitment to the bold vision of the Green New Deal—the only plan to stop the climate crisis at the speed and scale that science and justice demand."

"Since the Green New Deal was first introduced, we have made climate a rallying cry for our generation and a political priority for our politicians," Prakash continued. "And in just a few years, through our organizing, we have elected new leaders, helped pass the biggest climate bill in U.S. history, and built a new consensus in the Democratic Party—finally, it is understood that the climate crisis demands a full transformation of our economy and society that the government must lead." “Across this country, millions of young people still dream of a Green New Deal," she added. "So as fossil fuel billionaires and right-wing extremists take on the battle for control of our classrooms and communities, we are fighting back. Together, we will take over, classroom by classroom, school by school, city by city until we win the Green New Deal in every corner of this country."

Markey declared that "we have demonstrated that our movement is a potent political force, and in the run-up to the 2024 elections, we will direct this power to demanding solutions to the intersectional crises Congress has yet to address: in healthcare, childcare, schools, housing, transit, labor, and economic and racial justice."

Also on Thursday and as part of that pledge, Markey partnered with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to introduce the Green New Deal for Health, a bill "to prepare and empower the healthcare sector to protect the health and well-being of our workers, our communities, and our planet in the face of the climate crisis, and for other purposes."

The senator stressed that "the American healthcare system is broken—from the exorbitant medical bills and outlandish insurance premiums to maxed out emergency rooms and shuttering hospitals. With climate disasters on the rise, the health and safety of frontline environmental justice communities is more precarious than ever."

"We urgently need to invest in a more sustainable system, one that is resilient to the impacts of climate change, supports its workers, and doesn't rely on fossil fuels. We can't have a healthcare system that makes us sicker while healthcare providers work to make us well," added Markey—who, like Khanna, supports Medicare for All.

The bill would invest $130 billion in community health centers, authorize $100 billion in federal grants for medical facilities to improve climate resilience and disaster mitigation efforts, require hospitals that receive Medicare payments to notify the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary at least 180 days before a full closure, and create a task force to ensure a greener medical supply chain.

"Across the world, hundreds of millions of people are already feeling the effects of climate change and the health consequences that often follow. From increased cases of asthma due to air pollution to disruptions at care facilities after extreme weather events, it's clear we need to take steps now to protect public health," said Khanna.

The healthcare legislation is also backed by progressives from both chambers and various advocacy groups and unions.

"Stopping the climate crisis will require us to transform every aspect of our society, our economy, and especially our healthcare system, to work for people and the planet," said Sunrise's Prakash. "Sen. Markey's Green New Deal for Health finally addresses the staggering, often-overlooked costs to our health from fossil fuel-generated air pollution and climate change, and begins to build a system where people and workers are taken care of. If our generation is going to have a shot at a livable future, we must pass it as we strive towards our vision of a Green New Deal."

Read more.

#green new deal #aoc #ed markey

[teaveetamer]

Re: Fates pricing vs House repetitive issues. I think the problem here is that it depends on what each person values in a game to see whether it's scummy or fair or not. House put a LOT more into things like voice acting for fully voiced support (save for Byleth themselves). That's a lot more effort than Fates did re: voice acting. If you love the characters as a result, you see more value in what 3H brought. If you judge based on gameplay alone, you might see Fates as more value to bring (1/2)

For me personally, I fell in love with the voice acting of 3H. It made the cast feel more real and alive than Awakening and Fates did. And I loved the cast more the Echoes too, which also had voice acting. 3H characters became beloved by many. But the gameplay was very repetitive nonetheless. I loved playing Fates (I played Birthright twice, Conquest once). But I never bought Revelation b/c of negativity re: the maps and meh story. So I would say a DLC golden ending was kinda scummy (2/2)

I'm glad you enjoy the voice acting enough for that to make the $60 price tag worth it to you, anon. I'm of the opinion that having nice voice acting does not make up for having three quarters of the game be lazy copy pastes of each other (and, in fact, I wish they would have taken the money and time they put toward that production value toward making more unique maps, optimizing the game, and tightening up the gameplay).

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the worst sin a game can commit is not being fun. You can have the best voice cast in the world, the highest production values, the nicest art, the coolest cutscenes... but if the game isn't fun then it's not serving its function. I don't play games to be bored for three hours straight until the next kernel of interesting plot dump.

It just so happens that 3H commits the cardinal sin of not being very fun to me while also having significantly worse production values than it's predecessors in basically every way except the voice acting. The maps are samey and repetitive, the gameplay is either completely not challenging or SO challenging beause of inflated "difficulty" (mainly crazy inflated enemy stats and ambush reinforcement spawns), the classing is so open as to make each unit functionally interchangeable (and therefore boring), the graphics look like ass, the load times are atrocious, the lag is a pain in the neck, the art is not to my preference at all, there's too much copy-paste, the cutscenes look like they run at 15 frames per second (aside from the in-engine ones), and the story is a complete and utter mess that they couldn't even correct with a second go around.

I'll tell you two things I never felt while playing Fates: I never felt like I wasn't having fun, and I never felt like I'd wasted my money. I won't say I had no fun with 3H, and I won't say I feel like I completely wasted my money, but frankly it's embarrassing that 3H costs $60 with the state they released it in. It's unfinished. They had to add content in after release in a patch. That's unacceptable practice.

Last time I was at my local Gamestop I saw it on the shelf for $40 and you can bet your ass I was kicking myself for not saving that $20 on it. (Actually, more, since I bought the special edition with the steel box)

Also, fun fact, if you purchased one route of Fates + Rev you'd be paying exactly as much as you paid for 3H, and you get two entire complete games for the same price as one half baked mess. If you paid for all three, you're only paying $20 more for nearly triple the content.

And again, I'll bring up Tellius as a comparable. To get the full story of Tellius you have to play both PoR and RD. That was $50 for PoR and $60 for RD back in the magical beforetimes when these games didn't cost your entire yearly salary to purchase, so $110 for both. And no one calls those games scummy for intentionally designing a story which forces you to purchase two separate, full priced games in order to see it through to its conclusion. We can extend this out to other series too! Mass Effect? No one calls Mass Effect scummy for intentionally designing a trilogy that forces you to purchase all three games in order to experience the full story!

"But those were all full games with their own stories!"

So. Was. Fates.

The difference is:

One, you had to buy Fates three separate times instead of as a bundled purchase

Two, Fates released all at the exact same time, which meant you had to pay for each of these things all at once if you wanted to play them all right away.

And you know what? There's actually a psychological tactic companies use on consumers! It's called "Flat Rate Bias".

Fates is a much better value than 3H or Tellius. Three games for $80 is a far superior deal than one game for $60 or two games for $110, but because you only have to pay once for 3H and three times for Fates, you think 3H is a better deal. And because your payments for the two Tellius games (or three Mass Effect games, or whatever franchise applies) is split up over time, you feel like you're spending less, or it takes the sting out of spending, even if you're spending more.

You can also see the latter phenomenon with The Sims. Do you really think EA would make any money if they just rolled up and said "'sup, here's the whole Sims 4 experience. It costs $1,500"? No! That's why they release the content slowly over time, so you keep buying and buying and oh shit, looks like I've spent $1,500! (Personal experience. I'm not immune to this)

Like do I have problems with Fates? Sure. I think the way they rolled out the games was clunky and ultimately made them inaccessible and difficult to recommend to beginners. I think the three-in-one cartridge should have been a standard option. (I would have gladly paid for it instead of buying all three separately! I am not immune to Flat Rate Bias either!) instead of a special edition exclusive thing.

But like I don't wanna hear about it being overpriced or scummy because it's really not. If you personally don't think it's worth the money because you didn't enjoy it then that's one thing. I am never going to convince you that something is worth the money if you didn't enjoy it (spoiler alert: NOTHING is worth the money if you don't enjoy it!) but let's not pretend like charging $80 for three full games is somehow scummier than any of the other things I listed.

[decadentduckpeanut]

Responsible for a Budget? 12 Top Notch Ways to Spend Your Money

Nardi Furniture for Mid-Century Modern Lovers

Resin plastic outside furniture could be a nice alternative for restaurants, patios and pool areas. It�s straightforward to scrub, sturdy and appearance fashionable. Several styles will be stacked for convenient storage, and several are proof against stains and UV rays. They�re also lightweight, therefore they'll be simply moved around your space to accommodate guests and events. There are various types of resin plastic, as well as polyethylene (PE), highdensity PE (HDPE), and polypropylene (PP). HDPE is a lot of durable than polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and is proof against fading, chemical degradation, and warmth injury. It�s conjointly abrasionresistant and punctureproof. Polypropylene could be a stronger, lighterweight choice than PE and is a lot of flexible. It�s less expensive than HDPE, however is not as robust or weatherproof.

Nardi Omega for Fire Pit Gatherings

Outdoor furniture's durability depends heavily on its materials and design; but, its useful life will be significantly extended through proper care, maintenance and protection against environmental elements.

Resin Out of doors Furnture for Your Restaurant's Patio. Resin furniture is a fashionable selection for several out of doors spaces. It's simple to scrub and maintain, and it's longlasting. Moreover, it's also environmentally friendly. To create resin wicker furniture, makers produce a mildew and then pour plastic resin into it. They then use wood and alternative materials to give the furniture its form.

Business out of doors furniture is designed to be used outside, which suggests that it needs extra care than indoor items. Tougher materials usually utilized in its construction allow fabrics that create up its upholstery to be rinsed down with a hose once each use to get rid of sweat, sunscreen and pool chemicals; different web site amenities like tables chairs and benches additionally utilise materials that won't rust quickly or break down quickly.

Jensen furniture is wellknown for their premium out of doors furniture, designed with care to supply most comfort and longevity. Their chairs and sofas boast light curves for optimal seating comfort whereas their 197seven outside sofa has been transformed for outdoor use with its modular style that permits you to rearrange every module as desired. Lined in Element cloth that resists staining and water harm because of solutiondyed acrylic threads, its vibrant colours stay intact even underneath direct daylight or temperature changes.

When getting patio furniture, it is wise to appear for things that may withstand adverse weather. If you reside in an space at risk of frequent rainfall, select weatherresistant materials or furniture with protective umbrella bases and canopies as this can provide a lot of rain protection. Similarly, considering galvanized steel is also an choice as this material provides further sturdiness against corrosion or rusting. In addition to tables and chairs on the market from Costco, Costco additionally offers patio furniture covers which feature fitted designs to permit air circulation so mildew does not develop; these covers come back in varied colors/ sizes making this a useful addition for any patio house!

Some pool users wish to merely lounge around and unwind, that makes having lounge chairs around an essential piece of furniture. It permits guests to start off their shoes, lay back down and absorb some sun while not ever needing to leave the water! Lounge chairs also build an glorious place for reading, napping or merely having conversations many designs exist that float whereas others must be placed on deck or patio to be used.

An inflatable pool lounge chair will take your poolside expertise to the next level. Opt for from varied colors, configurations and dimensions.

Homecrest collection furniture offers longterm quality with poly outside items designed not to rot, splinter or attract wood bees. Their sturdy chairs, tables and loungers can face up to even extreme climate conditions while boasting lovely color choices that rise up against nature.

Olefin

Homann's AH Outside Series boasts an elegant combination of rigorous aesthetic and soft forms chairs and tables will even be stacked to save house!

If you want a beautiful outside space with minimal maintenance requirements, furniture made of recycled resin could be your answer. This sturdy material has the planning and feel of painted wood while not needing annual refinishing or staining; weather and fungi resistance; fade resistance from sunlight exposure are simply a few additional edges of resin patio furniture which makes cleaning straightforward using mild dish soap and water solution excellent for anyone seeking to cut back their environmental footprint! Several makers turn out ecofriendly furniture from recycled plastic, diverting loads of waste aloof from landfills and oceans while giving the planning and durability of ancient wood furniture. Brands like Polywood even give a 20year warranty on their recycled plastic items! Pottery Barn sells trendy nevertheless sensible recycled plastic chairs like this Polywood Chippendale dining arm chair that features fade resistance, easy assembly instructions and features an eyecatching lattice pattern on its backrests; and insect, mold and mildew resistance so no refinishing ever required!

Owners get weatherproof outdoor furniture that will withstand the weather, like weatherproof and rustresistant pieces that are easy to take care of with materials that dry quickly and resist mildew and mold growth. Take into account furniture created of recycled materials with faderesistant finishes as ideal options.

Homann's AH Outdoor Series boasts a sublime combination of rigorous aesthetic and soft forms chairs and tables can even be stacked to avoid wasting house!

Outdoor FurnitureOutdoor FurnitureOutdoor Furniture for Scandinavian Style

Plastics and resins come back in an exceedingly wide range of colours and shapes, making them a in style alternative for up to date out of doors furniture. They'll mimic the planning of the many different materials, and some have faderesistant finishes that don�t need paint or sealants. They�re additionally light-weight, inexpensive and simple to scrub, though they'll be subject to mold or mildew growth if not often cleaned.

Outdoor Furnishings for Bohemian Vibes

Metal

Outdoor Furnishings for Yoga and Exercise

Some ornamental pillows boast decorative parts like tassels or trim that add a distinctive aptitude. These adornments will build an impressive accent piece for any chair or sofa in any space, adding a way of luxury and personalization. Alternative cushions may come equipped with cushion ties for added stability when it involves seating arrangements.

Nardi Omega for Reading Nooks

At any movie night or appetizers party, comfy bean bag chairs offer intimate conversations or sipping wine in front of the hearth. Indulge yourself with this relaxing expertise for Valentine's Day dates or unwind once long workday. Conjointly ideal for garden parties and barbecues where relaxed conversation takes place; easily rearrange and wipe clean for fast patio makeover.

Outdoor Furnishings for Picnic Excursions

Homecrest collection furniture offers longterm quality with poly outside pieces designed to not rot, splinter or attract wood bees. Their durable chairs, tables and loungers will face up to even extreme climate conditions whereas boasting beautiful color options that get up against nature.

Nardi Omega Maintenance Tips

Online is usually the best place to seek out highquality out of doors furniture. Not like traditional brickandmortar stores, online shops carry a wider variety of products and brands than physical locations do some even having dedicated sections for outdoor furnishings! Customers will simply search and compare options. Plus, these websites provide detailed product descriptions with their options furthermore financing solutions. Some out of doors furniture brands use social media channels as a further avenue for client and business engagement, and to supply a lot of tailored client service while meeting trade requirements. This enables these companies to fulfill industry demand a lot of simply whereas meeting client expectations more reliably.

Nardi Omega Brands and Manufacturers

When buying patio furniture, it's wise to seem for items which will withstand adverse climate. If you reside in an area prone to frequent rainfall, select weatherresistant materials or furniture with protecting umbrella bases and canopies as this can offer more rain protection. Similarly, considering galvanized steel is also an option as this material provides extra durability against corrosion or rusting. Additionally to tables and chairs available from Costco, Costco conjointly offers patio furniture covers that feature fitted designs Affordable Nardi Furniture featuring the Omega Chaise sets for budget-conscious buyers to permit air circulation thus mildew does not develop; these covers come in numerous colours/ sizes creating this an invaluable addition for any patio house!

Outdoor FurnitureOutdoor FurnitureOutdoor FurnitureNardi OmegaOutdoor Furniture for Meditation Spaces

Selecting the proper balcony furniture for your condo is essential to making it really your own space. Your selection ought to mirror each your taste and temperament while simultaneously increasing its price. Outer furniture offers fashionable and durable patio pieces made with highgrade materials and return complete with lifetime warranties as well as cash back guarantees, making them a sound investment.

Rustic Nardi Omega Inspirations

Dining sets and patio umbrellas add an expensive feel to any out of doors pool house, whereas side tables or different smaller items serve as decorative accents to the present area. Umbrellas play a useful role in providing patrons with shade as needed throughout their day.

Outdoor FurnitureOutdoor FurnitureOutdoor Furniture Brands and Manufacturers

Several people fancy lounging in pool lounge chairs to unwind and scan or simply take in some sun, with to take a seat with family or friends and chat. You'll conjointly use these chairs for conversation. Different people opt to lay out within the water with towels to sunbathe. Furthermore, pool furniture sets supply tables where food and drinks will be placed.

Nardi Omega Chaise for Garden Oasis

One in every of the numerous benefits of out of doors furniture crafted from recycled resin is that it will stand up to all varieties of weather it resists rusting, staining and mildewing whereas having the ability to withstand extreme temperatures and sunlight while not warping or rotting over time. Recycled resin furniture makes an glorious various to wooden outdoor furniture which often wants regular repairs for best performance and enjoyment. Recycled plastic furniture offers another advantage over its counterparts: it's entirely recyclable itself. Many manufacturers utilize this material in the production process, guaranteeing ecofriendliness. By recycling this Nardi Furniture featuring the Omega Chaise for vintage-inspired porches material and continuing production with quality furniture pieces from it, makers scale back oilbased polymers which will contribute to pollution problems.

Set up an alfresco family dinner or host a crawfish boil; selecting outdoor furniture that creates your guests feel relaxed can add Nardi Furniture featuring the Omega Chaise for Event Venues: Stylish Seating for Special Occasions a special bit. From charming balcony chairs to fivepiece patio furniture sets, Baton Rouge offers everything required for the best setup! What Are My Options If I Have a Tiny Balcony or Backyard?

Furniture used around a pool must stand up to the rigorous components, including Nardi Omega Chaise with built-in insect repellent sun exposure, chlorinated water and rain. If it wasn't designed specifically to survive this surroundings, its color can quickly fade, crack and rust away quickly to stay your poolside patio wanting its best, invest in industrial quality outside pool furniture that is designed to last. When shopping for outside furniture to complete your poolside oasis, vogue and luxury ought to both be priorities. A stunning piece can solely impress if it offers snug seating solutions; so be positive to get chairs, hammocks and lounge chairs that feature ergonomic styles.

Manufacturers are increasingly designing product that can be used both indoors and outdoors, typically created of materials fitted to completely different climates. Customers have shown additional willingness to spend on luxurious outdoor furniture due to increased disposable income and interest in out of doors activities. Wood is that the goto material for out of doors furniture. Hardwoods like teak are naturally immune to rot, insects and the weather; its durability will easily be restored by sanding and sprucing it into its original condition. Softwoods may need additional maintenance.

Nardi Furniture for Family Gatherings

LBO is the premier wholesale supplier of aluminum metal patio and pool furniture for public swimming pools, personal swimming pools, water parks, YMCA's, flats, home owners associations (HOA's), hotels and resorts. Their top quality industrial grade patio and pool furniture product are manufactured using superior materials like Marine Grade Polymer that resist warping, fading or chemical breakdown good for use at private and non-private pools alike! Contract Furnishings International provides fashionable nonetheless comfortable outside furniture to any business, perfect for restaurants, hotels or clubs alike. Our big selection of patio furniture matches any theme or vogue with styles designed to face up to rain, snow and sun a vital consideration when selecting outdoor seating for any restaurant, hotel or club.

Nardi Omega Upholstery and Cushions

Nardi offers highend outside lounge furniture that's made with antistatic and moisture resistant resin, featuring elegant yet practical styles crafted in Italy for complete Created in Italy production processes.

An inflatable pool lounge chair can take your poolside expertise to the next level. Select from numerous colors, dimensions and shapes.

A variety of fabrics are used for luxury outdoor furniture, together with materials like olefin. Olefin may be a kind of solutiondyed artificial fibre, which is incredibly sturdy and stainresistant. This fabric can be found in an exceedingly big selection of chairs, sofas, chaise lounges and additional. It is resistant to UV rays, chlorine and saltwater, creating it excellent for outside use. It will also face up to abrasion, which means it can get on my feet to significant use. It is conjointly straightforward to wash, as it resists deterioration from mildew, chemicals and insects.

Out of doors resin furniture makes an attractive and purposeful addition to any home, while being ecofriendly and weather resistant. Furthermore, it resists mildew growth plus mildew growth.

Sara Kenton's passion for Van Morrison's music galvanized her to launch Tupelo Goods, an Austinbased company offering up to date out of doors furniture. Since launching in 2018, Tupelo Product has rapidly expanded with offerings starting from beach tote luggage which will simply be rinsed after long beach days, to chairs designed with silicone seats for both land and water access. In addition to selling traditional adirondack and hammock chairs, the whole additionally sells transportable fireplace pits that make entertaining easier, with Zephyr Flyer swings to promote slowness in neighborhoods. Their merchandise can be found through retailers such as Target and Whole Foods; with its mission being to bring people together through merchandise that make recollections and celebrate special moments; their future plans involve expanding its lineup by adding outside games that promote familyfriendly fun!

One in all the numerous benefits of outdoor furniture crafted from recycled resin is that it will withstand all sorts of weather it resists rusting, staining and mildewing while having the ability to stand up to extreme temperatures and sunlight without warping or rotting over time. Recycled resin furniture makes an excellent various to picket outside furniture that often needs regular maintenance for best performance and delight. Recycled plastic furniture offers another advantage over its counterparts: it's entirely recyclable itself. Several manufacturers utilize this material in the production method, guaranteeing ecofriendliness. By recycling this material and continuing production with quality furniture pieces from it, makers cut back oilbased polymers that will contribute to pollution problems.

To keep out of doors furniture beautiful and in smart condition, it's crucial that it's regularly cleaned and guarded against the elements. Regular soap and water cleaning can do just fine, whereas adding protective coating such as varnish or wax will keep pieces looking whole new for an extended period. Alternatively, water repellant spray can conjointly work effectively; simply be positive it's been specifically made for outside furniture as using regular household cleaners will harm its surface. One of the hottest trends in outdoor furniture design is mixing materials. Furniture makers often combine wood, metal and plastic into trendy designs that withstand weather elements giving customers additional selections so as to pick out pieces that best match their personal styles and add texture and depth to a area.

http://allbackyardideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/pool-and-spa-depot-patio-furniture.jpg

#Youtube

[hms-desk]

Understanding Angioplasty: A Step-by-Step Journey from Blockage to Recovery

Angioplasty, a medical marvel of modern science, is a procedure that opens blocked or narrowed arteries, restoring blood flow to the heart muscle. If you or someone you know is preparing for this intervention, understanding the journey from pre-procedure preparation to post-procedure recovery can alleviate fears and uncertainties.

Join us as we embark on a comprehensive exploration of the angioplasty procedure, step by step.

Preparation: The Journey Begins Before the procedure commences, thorough preparation is key. Patients typically undergo a series of pre-procedural evaluations, including blood tests, electrocardiograms (ECG), and possibly imaging scans like angiograms. These assessments provide valuable insights into the condition of the arteries and guide the medical team in planning the intervention.

Arrival at the Hospital: Setting the Stage On the day of the procedure, patients arrive at the hospital and are greeted by a team of skilled medical professionals dedicated to their care. After completing necessary paperwork and consenting to the procedure, patients are prepped for the angioplasty in a designated pre-operative area. Here, they receive instructions, have vital signs monitored, and are prepped for anesthesia administration.

Anesthesia: Drifting into Comfort Once in the angiography suite, patients are administered local anesthesia to numb the area where the catheter will be inserted. In some cases, mild sedation may also be provided to help patients relax during the procedure. While fully conscious, patients typically feel minimal discomfort or pain due to the anesthesia.

Catheter Insertion: Navigating the Arterial Pathway With the patient comfortably positioned, the interventional cardiologist begins the procedure by inserting a thin, flexible tube called a catheter into a blood vessel, usually in the groin or wrist. Guided by fluoroscopy, a type of real-time X-ray imaging, the catheter is carefully threaded through the arterial pathway until it reaches the blocked or narrowed area of the coronary artery.

Angiography: Visualizing the Blockage Once the catheter is in position, contrast dye is injected through the catheter, allowing the cardiologist to visualize the arterial anatomy and pinpoint the location and severity of the blockage. This angiographic imaging provides crucial information for planning the subsequent steps of the procedure.

Balloon Inflation: Opening the Artery With the blockage identified, the next step involves inflating a tiny balloon at the tip of the catheter within the narrowed artery. This balloon inflation compresses the plaque against the arterial walls, widening the artery and restoring blood flow to the heart muscle. The duration and pressure of balloon inflation are carefully controlled to achieve optimal results.

Stent Placement: Scaffolding for Support In some cases, a metal mesh tube called a stent is inserted into the newly widened artery to provide structural support and prevent re-narrowing, known as restenosis. The stent is expanded using balloon inflation and remains permanently in place, keeping the artery open and ensuring long-term blood flow.

Recovery: Restoring Health and Vitality Following the procedure, patients are closely monitored in a recovery area for a few hours to ensure stability and assess for any complications. Once deemed safe, patients are discharged with instructions for post-procedural care and follow-up appointments.

Angioplasty is a transformative procedure that restores blood flow to the heart, alleviating symptoms and improving quality of life for countless individuals worldwide. By understanding the step-by-step journey of angioplasty, patients and their loved ones can approach the procedure with confidence and optimism, knowing they are in capable hands every step of the way.

#angioplasty in pune #coronary angioplasty in dhanori #angiography and angioplasty #angioplasty surgery #angioplasty cost

[ailtrahq]

Bitcoin’s price increased by a little less than 1% in the past seven days. The week was, overall, positive for the industry as the total market capitalization approaches the $1.1 trillion cap. The biggest news of the week is undoubtedly the US FOMC meeting that happened on Wednesday. According to the official announcement, the central bank took the decision to maintain the target range for the federal fund rate at 5-1/4 to 5/12 percent. The statement also noted that job gains have slowed but also that they remain elevated altogether. The unemployment rate in the country is also reported as low, while the inflation remains above its target. Bitcoin’s price didn’t react to the news and remained flat. All in all, it couldn’t initiate a leg-up, although it did try to poak above $27K on a few occasions. Every time the price increased above that level, though, bears were quick to intercept and push it back down. Some altcoins saw action. Namely, this week’s top performer was Toncoin (TON). It’s up a whopping 17% in a market where the second-best performer is up 3.7%. This is Ripple’s XRP. Interestingly enough, for XRP, it also became the most-traded altcoin across US-based exchanges. This is a very curious fact, given that most of them had delisted it until July when a Judge ruled that secondary XRP sales are not securities. This is when Coinbase, amongst a bunch of other exchanges, re-listed it, and the volumes skyrocketed. All in all, the week was exciting, but Bitcoin failed to capitalize on the momentum and is trading more or less where it was this time last week. It’s curious to see if the next seven days will be any different. Market Data Market Cap: $1.09B | 24H Vol: $44B | BTC Dominance: 47.4% BTC: $26,644 (+1.5%) | ETH: $1,597 (-1.5%) | BNB: $210 (-0.6%) Polygon 2.0: Everything You Need to Know About 3 PIPs and Phase 0. The three proposals for improvement that were unveiled earlier this week seek to enhance Polygon’s network in a way that would supposedly have a significant impact on the entire ecosystem. Judge Denies Sam Bankman-Fried’s Pre-Trial Release. After having his bail revoked earlier, the founder of the failed FTX exchange made yet another unsuccessful bid to gain temporary freedom. However, the judge didn’t grant it to him once again. Bitcoin Non-Whale Addresses Now Own Over 41% of Supply: Data. Smaller Bitcoin wallets, which are typically associated with retail investors and market participants, have reached a historic milestone, owning over 41% of the total supply. Bitcoin Network Faces Congestion with Over 470,000 Pending Transactions. Bitcoin’s network is facing historic levels of congestion. This means that there’s a huge backlog of unconfirmed transactions. To be precise, their number is just shy of half a million. This has happened only once before, and it has become a massive friction point in the community on whether it’s good or bad. Mt. Gox Rehabilitation Trustee Extends Repayment Deadline Again. Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee of Mt.Gox’s bankruptcy proceeding, has granted an extension for repaying creditors. The delay is for one year. The saga is now going on for many years, and it’s interesting to see when it will finally unfold. Ripple (XRP) Becomes the Top Traded Altcoin on US Crypto Exchanges. Since the partial victory of Ripple against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, many exchanges relisted XRP. The cryptocurrency has subsequently become the top-traded altcoin across US exchanges. Charts This week, we have a chart analysis of Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Solana, and Binance Coin – click here for the complete price analysis. SPECIAL OFFER (Sponsored) Binance Free $100 (Exclusive): Use this link to register and receive $100 free and 10% off fees on Binance Futures first month (terms).PrimeXBT Special Offer: Use this link to register & enter CRYPTOPOTATO50 code to receive up to $7,000 on your deposits.Disclaimer: Information found on CryptoPotato is those of writers quoted.

It does not represent the opinions of CryptoPotato on whether to buy, sell, or hold any investments. You are advised to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions. Use provided information at your own risk. See Disclaimer for more information. Cryptocurrency charts by TradingView. Source

[almondbiscotti]

Hard Knocks

Jan 2021. Possibly my favourite. So far.

I barely remember life before they came, unannounced, stomping through my front door, deliberately intrusive and demanding my attention. I tried everything to keep them out, I changed the locks, I added new locks, moved across the city, and even changed my name. But they are persistent, and they do not need to know my name to find me.

Monday is the loudest of them all. Blue like the ocean and dark as a storm. She ate everything I had in the pantry and terrified my neighbours. I wish she wouldn’t ask me questions I cannot answer. What is your fancy arts degree worth, inflation adjusted? Does your boss hate you? How many Zoom meetings can you take before you go clinically insane? I pretend I can’t see or hear her but she is too unpleasant to ignore. Her visits are the worst. I think she knows, and she enjoys my suffering.

Tuesday is best friends with Monday. They say they’re close, but I have never seen them in a room together. She says little but sits at my table and makes lists, things to do and groceries to buy. Lists I find scattered in random corners of my apartment, her reminders of how I have failed to live up to her expectations. I am more at ease when she leaves. If looks could kill, Tuesday kills me every week.

Wednesday is a depressing shell of a man. He is the only one that knocks, 3 listless taps even when the door is open. He leaves me alone mostly, crying silently on the couch. Sometimes he sighs loudly and sneaks furtive glances at me. Once he sang a song and I threw my cup at him. Nobody likes Wednesday and he only has himself to blame.

Thursday bursts in like the sun. She brings me flowers and fruit and nags when I skip lunch. She makes good Bolognese, and we watch re-runs of The Nanny till I fall asleep. When I wake, she is gone and all I can smell is the faint scent of rain and freedom.

Friday visits when the sun sets. He drinks endlessly and wears nothing but black. He drags me out and insists on introducing me to women. I secretly wish I was Friday, Friday could sell ice to an Eskimo. I wake just past midnight to pounding on the door and in my head. I open the door to a smiling Friday with a bloody, unconscious Saturday slung over his shoulder. I feel the back of my head throb and taste iron when I swallow.

Saturday is exhausted, beaten senseless by Friday. I crawl into bed with him and wish we were both dead.

I clean the house of Saturday’s blood and vomit while Sunday lazes and watches. Sunday says he’s a God-fearing Christian and observes the 7th day of rest. He tuts while I do the laundry, pointing out unmovable stains and criticises my choice of detergent. Sunday reminds me of Monday.

At night I lie in bed, hating Sunday for leaving me. The seconds drip away, and I know when I open my eyes, Monday will be here with her questions.

#Nessa Writes