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ace-apple · 4 years

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cbuUgw

(chumlochcaight so since i recently made a new ref for her CHORAN MASTERPOST (aka infodumping on my fave oc)

ALL HER INFO UNDER THE CUT (its really fucking long!!)

Part 1: Lochainin

aight so first off ill need to explain lochainin

(the lochainin campaign is set in the year 1987 in michigan (well when they’re not in lochainin) btw!)

choran is actually a dnd character of mine in a campain called lochainin im doing with a couple friends

and this is a group pic of all the player characters i made a while back! ill summarize them from left to right (pls remember that only choran is mine!!)

quinn- 11 yrs old, he/him, jewish, has an affinity for moss and pretty much lives in the woods. druid

hans- 10 years old, he/him, german, loves frogs and is all around baby. druid

emerson- 10 years old, she/her, german, hans’ twin sister. more levelheaded. barbarian (both hans and emerson are technically npcs now, since the person who played the two of them left the campaign)

choran: 15 years old, she/her, caucasian, chaotic bastard. rogue

delilah- 15 years old, she/her, jersy-italian, her parents have ties to the mafia, choran’s girlfriend, jersey accent. monk

aight so here’s the story/lore

lochainin is an alternate dimension that humans sometimes fall into through puddles. the gang (shown above) jumps in a puddle and falls down into Lochainin. lochainin is a very swamp-like place, but also has other terrain such as forests and caverns. lochainin is inhabited by humanoid frogs and toads (called losgann and buaf/buof respectively), they have human intelligence, posture, and speech capabilities, but some things like modern medicine are foreign to them.

now there’s this Empire we barely know jack shit about but it exists and most of the humans that fall down end up with the Empire. currently in this campaign all we know is that a lot of people dont like the empire. we just know the empire exists

aight here are the npcs (that i can remember lol)

- Crecil (losgann, he/him, tavern worker, party found him in a sewer not long after falling into lochainin)

-Ugma (buof, she/her, captain of the local guard in one of the villages)

-Zax (buof, they/them, good at navigating, at the time of writing this we’re going with him to the north to look for dryads cause they might know the way back home)

-Iris (buof, witch in t’og swamp who gives quinn and hans a weird potion that essentially takes them on an acid trip where they both get their druid levels)

locations: T’og swamp- village the party comes across after finding Crecil, has a tavern, local guard (Ugma is the captain) that is pretty much all volunteer work (choran joins up with them for a day at one point), and a market.

Crystal path- cavern with lots of crystals. they have fiberglass like shards when you lick them (we know this because choran licked one of the rocks). has large crystal beetles who’s blood can be cooked for good nutrition.

Part 2: Story

this is just a summary of the stuff that has happened in the campaign so far (as of writing this) (might not be accurate since none of us took any fucking notes lol)

they fall into a puddle and end up in lochainin. choran finds a human skull in a sewer and decides to keep it. they fight a strange acid spitting monster that almost killed choran by getting acid on her arm (that’s where her arm scar is from!) they find crecil in a cage but had found a key earlier. choran takes an axe out of a block of wood they found in a dead end.

they show up at t’og swamp and stay at the tavern. at one point choran gets drunk off of a substance known as death cap ale (death cap being a type of mushroom). we still have no idea if that was poisonous or not.

uhhh a lot of stuff i dont remember cause it was a while ago and i spaced out a bunch

eventually they come across some tower place i also dont remember why we were there. a couple of losgann were fighting each other, eventually they notice us after one of the party members failed a sneak roll, we fought them but choran killed one of them after getting stabbed in the ankle (she sliced their neck with an axe). since their death was completely unnecessary nobody is very happy with choran for doing this. delilah is especially unhappy with her girlfriend for commiting homicide.

fasldkjfasolfjasdo;lf and now theyre in the crystal path with zax going to look for the dryads since they might know a way for the party to get out of the place.

Part 3: Choran

oh hey now we finally get to my girl!!! might as well start with the basics of a dnd character: stats and shit

Strength: 13 Dexterity: 17 Constitution: 13 Intelligence: 13 Wisdom: 13 Charisma: 17

(yeah my stat rolls were really crazy)

Alighment: Chaotic Neutral

Race: Human (all of the party is!)

Class: Rogue

unfortunately, i don’t have my character sheet and i dont have it listed elsewhere so i dont remember any of my proficiencies or most of my items, but i do know she has a human skull on her that she found in the sewer they found crecil in

she’s a bit of a wild child, rebellious teen phase is turned up to 11 with her. she got a tattoo that may or may not have been legally obtained (the warning symbol on her right shoulder). her and delilah have been banned from their local cvs pharmacy.

now for backstory, and hoo boy.

alright so choran was born to two rich parents who were very strict about her life. textbook helicopter parenthood and then some, really. they didn’t let her make friends, enrolled her in a private school (the kind with uniforms and shit, not the kind too poor for a janitor like my private school). they often told her exactly how to behave, with their own words contradicting themselves! (aka one time theyll tell her to speak up and another time theyll tell her to be quiet). she felt like her parents could never make up their minds about what they wanted her to be. Eventually in 5th grade they let her go to a public school, but still forced her to wear skirts and proper clothes and not really express herself. By the end of 6th grade her parents sent her to live with her aunt on the other side of town, despite having always called her a “bad influence”. turns out that bad influence was actually being a decent human being to choran, letting her actually have friends over, go to parks, choose her own clothes, etc. in middle school she met delilah and quinn, and eventually through delilah she met the german twins. her original name wasnt actually choran by the way! her full legal name is Lalia Ouroban, but since she moved and got her own life away from her parents she decided to go by Choran. the only member of the party to know her real name is Delilah. and then in 8th grade choran and delilah started dating and then the lochainin events happened!

#apple draws #choran post #<- gonna use that for posts of her from now on btw #apple rambles #dnd #infodump #i literally love her you have no idea #she's my fave oc im so attached to her #like her design? love #her personality? love #her story? love #maybe illl post the short story for her backstory i wrote one day........

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siliquasquama · 4 years

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Elf Storage

This is the first short story I ever told anyone. I think I came up with it for a Boy Scout campfire. But I lost the original document somehow (no idea how, it ought to be on my computer and it isn’t! I am vexed! I am infuriated!), so this is the revised version that I came up with yesterday -- here it is, and enjoy it as you please.

So I used to have a job in this town. I used to be the second-shift front desk clerk for a self-storage facility.

It wasn’t a fancy job but it was a big job, at least I like to think. ‘Cause a lot of people need their stuff stored, right? You know, we’ve all got so much stuff these days – sometimes I wonder where everyone puts it! But my place was one place. And, you know, lots of people have more stuff to store than their apartment can hold – better a self-storage facility than tripping over a bunch of junk to get to the kitchen table, right?

Well anyway. This place, big tall square brick building, not dressed up very fancy. It had a big neon sign out on the top that said “Self Storage.” Big letters lit up in red.

And I’m working at the front desk alone because the only two people who really need to be there are the receptionist, a couple security guards, and the manager. It’s a pretty low-overhead kind of place. Good profit, and I get some of it.

So around about noon one fine cold day this guy comes walking in and he looks homeless. You know how you can tell sometimes, right? Wearing lots of clothes all at once, carrying a big bag of cans, face looking like all the world’s come right down on you, which, to be fair, it has. Well this guy didn’t have a big bag of cans and he wasn’t wearing all his clothing at once, but he did have that look on his face.

And he came up to me and he said, “I would like to store myself, please.”

And I said “Stop yanking my chain.”

And he said, “I’m not trying to yank your chain, I want to store myself.”

And I said, “Either tell me what you actually want to store or stop wasting my time and get out of here.”

And he said, “Look, can I speak to the manager?”

And I rolled my eyes and I went to bring the manager out, and the manager asked the guy if he could pay, and the guy brought out a big old wad of cash. Well that threw me for a loop. Where did this guy get a big old wad of cash if he was homeless? The way he explained it, he had a decent job and all, working at the dollar store and second shift at a fast food joint, but he still just couldn’t afford an apartment in this dumb city, you know how it is, especially since he had to help pay his sister’s medical expenses, and the motels didn’t want him around, and he got kicked out of the Salvation Army Shelter because – well he wasn’t going to explain that at all. So maybe this was a last ditch, you know, a wild shot in the dark. Better than sleeping on the cold street, right?

And I thought well that’s fair, and the manager said well that’s fair, but it’s not like our units have ventilation or anything. And he said he would leave the door open a few inches at the bottom.

I didn’t think the manager was going to go for it, but he did, and the fellow purchased a unit and promised he would pay extra if he was going to bring anyone else in. And by day he would be out and about, doing his work, and by night, before the third-shift clerk came in, he would come back, pay his fee, give me a high five and go to his unit. Never brought anyone else in. Maybe he couldn’t afford it?

We wound up having to explain things to the third-shift clerk and the first-shift clerk, because sometimes Mister Stores-Himself would come in much too late for me, and of course he’d be leaving when I wasn’t there – the first-shift clerk thought it was pretty funny but the third-shift guy took some convincing. Fortunately in this economy, “do it or you’re fired” is pretty convincing. I always felt a little ashamed about that but hey – I’m not the manager. None of this was my decision. I’m just along for the ride and making money.

Well. Things went like that quietly for a while. I wondered if any other homeless folks would follow in his wake, but, you know, we do charge a fee for storage, and we’re not going to give discounts. Got to make money, right?

The first test of that principle came when the neon sign had a letter burn out.

You know how it is with those signs, right? Where you drive up to the store at night and the sign says “HARMACY” or “OOD MART” or “1-HR P O O” because the boss was too cheap to get the sign fixed and who cares anyway. Maybe you’re old enough to remember when the Hollywood sign said “HULLYWO D”? That kind of thing.

So now, as soon as night fell, our facility was called “ELF STORAGE.”

I thought that was kind of funny, like, oh no someone’s going to try to store an elf here. I stopped laughing when a lady came in around 6 PM and asked to store an elf.

So I said, “Come on, lady, I don’t need this kind of crap. I’m here on my feet from 5 to 11 and – ”

And she cut me off like a jerk. “I don’t care about your feet,” she said. “I want to store an elf.”

And I said “Look, you can store any object you want as long as you can pay, but why do you need to tell me the details? Just get out your credit card and stop wasting my time.”

And she said, “This isn’t an object, this is a real elf. The sign says Elf Storage. So I’m storing an elf. Do you want me to sue you for false advertising?”

And I said, “Do you want me to call security?”

And she said, “I want you to call the manager.”

Here we go again! So I brought in the manager and the manager said alright, let’s see this elf, and the lady brought out – must have been from behind her back somehow, I swear I never saw the damn thing before that moment – a living breathing elf.

A fairly tall elf lady, as it was, and I could tell even though her long hair covered her ears, cause she was a foot taller than my annoying customer and she was giving me a look that made me shudder and I was pretty sure her dress was made of actual leaves.

So I turned to the manager, hoping to get some backup for my refusal here, and the manager said, hey, we have to make money. And I said, I think we’re in over our heads. And the manager said, do you want to get paid or not?

That was a good answer, but I still had a burning question on my mind, so I turned to the annoying customer and said, “Why don’t you let the elf here speak for herself?” And that turned out to be a mistake because the elf’s response was a song that sounded like it came out of twenty different people.

And the annoying customer said that this was the elf lady’s request, because now that the sign no longer said self-storage, she couldn’t ask to store herself.

And that was when Mister Store-Himself walked in and put down his fee for the day, and the Elf Lady told him to scram because he was violating the sign. He told her to shove off. They almost started a fistfight until the manager put his foot down very loudly and said it was his facility, by thunder, and he’d accept whatever he wanted to accept.

That was a fair enough answer for the elf lady. She could understand monarchy well enough. And Mister Store-Himself was just glad to avoid being tossed out. So he didn’t put up a fuss.

Money in the till and that was that. The annoying customer purchased a small unit and the elf lady shrank to fit. I could swear she gave me a wink before she closed the door.

Things went like that for a while. Someone would come in wanting to store an elf, and all kinds of them – some thin as a rail and taller than me, some short and squat, some pale, some brown, some golden, some blue, didn’t matter really, they always looked completely different every time any of their doors were opened. And the third-shift guy kept telling me that they looked nothing like human when they crossed through moonlight. I asked him how the hell he was seeing moonlight in the middle of this city and he said he could see the full moon out the windows every night, when the lights flickered out at random times. I asked him how the hell the lights burned out when they were fluorescent track lighting installed last month. He couldn’t explain.

It took some convincing to get him to put up with all this, which is to say the manager threatened to fire him again.

Well, whatever. I didn’t have to deal with it except on the very occasional instance that the lights went off before my shift ended. One time Mister Store-Himself came in at just that moment, and needed help finding his own unit. Wouldn’t have been a problem except that my flashlight wasn’t working, so I had to use the glow from my smartphone and that kept turning off. Slow going. Especially since Mister Store-Himself told me to keep my eyes away from the patches of moonlight, so I’m shuffling around them with my eyes down. Talk about a nightmare. I have no idea how I found the guy’s unit before dawn.

Both me and third-shift guy were envious of the first-shift clerk, or more envious than usual.

That went on for a few months. No more incidents on my end, although Mister Stores-Himself complained to the manager that his unit’s door kept getting shut all the way. Thank heavens the first-shift guy always made sure to check. Otherwise it was a nice time. The building was warmer than you would have expected.

Then the next letter in the sign burned out.

At that point most of the elfs disappeared. They weren’t going to stick around if the sign didn’t say they could. And the manager no longer had a hold on them. Maybe he never really did. Maybe they were just playing with him. Or maybe they were following rules that he didn’t understand. Or maybe they understood what was coming. Whatever it was, the fees for their storage were gone, and the manager was despondent. He made hints that he would have to let us go. No more money. Well, that was going to be a problem, but at least the units were free for other people, right?

Unless some whack-off comes in trying to store an LF. What the heck is an LF? I don’t know. Hopefully nobody knows.

So the very next evening some fellow comes in with a pet carrier in one hand. Big pet carrier, the kind that holds a medium dog or a really big house cat. And oh boy, the sound that comes out of this pet carrier. Snarling like the devil himself. SNARL, GRRR, ROWL, RARR. I can barely hear the guy as he requests to store an Eleff.

I say, “What? You want to store an elephant?”

And he says, “No I don’t think you’re elegant!”

And the manager comes out, grabs the pet carrier, opens the door, sticks his hand in, and suddenly it’s dead quiet.

Alright, so maybe these things shut up if you give them a taste of the long pork. I asked the manager if Mister Stores-Himself is going to like that idea and the manager said, we have to make money.

So now it was my turn to suffer. First-shift clerk had no people coming to store Eleffs; third-shift guy only got them now and then; they all came in on MY shift, and oh my poor eardrums. I had to learn to stick my hand in the pet carrier despite my utter terror.

Whatever these Eleffs were, they were pretty fluffy.

And once you shoved the pet carrier into the unit their snarls were muffled. That worked well enough for a while. Until we got as many of them as we used to have elfs, and all the muffled snarling added up to an ominous sound that had the third-shift guy shaking in his shoes all night. He didn’t wait for the manager to fire him, apparently. Just ran out the door into the night. Or so I was told. I never actually saw him go.

You’d think if he got eaten Mister Stores-Himself would have gone first, but, by the same token, HE had a big steel door to hide behind. And what was he going to do if he didn’t like it? Leave?

I felt a little sick thinking that way about a fellow down on his luck, but it was true. He had to accept whatever this place threw at him, as long as his unit was his own. And the manager would take anything, as long as someone paid the fee. Money. Money money money. Maybe Mister Stores-Himself and the manager were both stuck in their own way. Manager out of greed, Mister Stores-Himself out of desperation. And me? Well, I had an apartment to pay for as well. This place paid well enough that I only had to work one shift. What a rare thing around here. I was stuck as much as anyone else was, unless I wanted to work myself to death at some warehouse package-fulfillment place where I could die and nobody would find me for twenty minutes.

So while these Eleffs were snarling all the livelong night, I was drowning them out with my own snarls about who had enough money to pay our fees, after all. How the hell did they get it and what did they do. Who knew.

Well, that went on for a while, and I wound up picking up the third shift because I was really good at ignoring the noises from the units, and NOBODY was applying for the position. Hey, two wages in my pocket, what’s not to like, right? Oh right, the fact that I had to stay awake from 5 PM until 5 AM. No goddamn way, man. I slept under the front desk.

Until the security guards ratted on me to the manager. Maybe they were mad at me for supposedly accepting all this nonsense. Hey, all I ever did was call the manager!

So I got real mad and I decided to get real sneaky. One night I told the security guards I was leaving the desk to use the bathroom, cover for me alright? And I sneaked up to the seventh floor where the big red sign ran right under the windows. This whole LF thing was going to end right now, dammit. I leaned out the window and whacked the glowing red L real hard.

Admittely it was a long shot, but I was thinking that, if they’re hanging up high, they’re not built to withstand any heavy blows. Well, I can’t say for certain. My idea didn’t work.

What actually happened was that the metal parts holding the sign to the brick were really rusty because Mister We Gotta Make Money never bothered to pay for maintenance on these things. So one smack sent the entire thing right off the wall.

The impact down on the ground sure drowned out whatever snarls were coming from the units. And thank god it sent both security guards running towards it, because they were too distracted to see me coming down the stairs. They were looking up to wonder why the sign had fallen, and down to worry about the massive amounts of glass all over the place.

I didn’t get any more sleep that night. The manager told me to sweep up all the glass. Oh, security guards didn’t have to help, did they? No, they had to protect the precious storage units from the sneak thieves who might have been using the sign as a distraction.

They wound up blaming Mister Stores-Himself because he was…an easy target, to be honest. They knew I’d gone to the bathroom and Mister Stores-Himself couldn’t prove his whereabouts, could he? And he could open his unit’s door from the inside, right? There you go.

The fact that I never revealed the truth when I had the chance to save that guy is not the greatest shame of my life, but it’s up there.

Well. I’d solved my problem, at least. Now we were going to get people trying to store an F. And no more snarls! No more Third shift for me!

Except that by this point, nobody in their right mind would have applied to work for us. I had hoped that Mister No Longer Stores Himself would take the opening that I had left, but maybe he wasn’t going to put up with a place that treated him like crap after pretending to give him a chance. So, welcome to third shift again!

And my assumption about the new customers proved correct. Sort of.

The first guy that came in next evening said, “I want to store an Eff.”

And I said, “Store an F? Maybe you can just paste it to a wall somewhere.”

And he said, “Excuse me? Oh, no no. Spelled E-F-F. Slightly different.”

And I said, “The sign says F not E-F-F. No dice.”

And he said, “I want to talk to the manager.”

I was sorely tempted to go behind the doorway and pretend to be a gruff manager telling him to scram, but the actual manager was there, so, nothing for it.

The manager said it was fine as soon as he could see this “eff”.

And the customer said, “You can’t see it. But! You know it’s there. Here effy effy effy effy.” And suddenly a gentle breeze blew through the room even though the door was closed.

Money in the till and that was that.

Only after the second and third of these things came in did I think to ask where, exactly, these things were being stored. The manager said, wherever. And I said, what do you mean whatever. And he said, you can’t store the wind in a definite place, can you? And I said yes you can, it’s called compressed air. And he said, the point is, we can store as many of these things in here as we want. Infinite customers! We’re no longer limited by space! And I said, compressed air, dumbass, there’s a limit to how much air you can fit in a space. And he said shut up or you’re fired.

Fine. At least this time the security guards weren’t going to venture into the building. At all. They were getting really scared. So I could sleep behind the desk now and fall asleep to the sound of a gentle breeze.

Or with good earplugs, because as we got one customer after another, the wind got louder and louder. I had to sleep with a thick blanket behind the desk because that wind was taking the heat right off me.

Mister manager kept his door closed and pretended not to notice.

But eventually, it was impossible not to notice, especially when I was having trouble standing upright at the desk. If I couldn’t hear a customer say anything then how could we get any more customers? Sign language! Thank goodness everyone knows sign language, right? Right. Right. Lucky me.

At the point that the manager himself could barely get his own door open, he began to have some doubts himself. But, gotta make money, right? And I tried to tell him that this was now impossible. First-shift clerk was long gone. Maybe blown out the window. The manager had to cover that shift himself.

But before he had the chance to figure that all out for himself, I wasn’t going to let him learn for himself, before I had my goddamn revenge. What I did was, instead of communicating the impossibility of the situation to him in sign language, I opened one of the windows, staggered back to the cash drawer, opened it up, and tossed all the cash into the air.

Must have been three thousand dollars that blew out the window with the escape of the Effs.

So NOW it was quiet.

And the manager told me I was fired.

Fine.

As it turned out, I wasn’t going to get any more money out of that place. Now that the remaining customer base had been thoroughly infuriated, they collectively sued the guy to oblivion. He tried to pin the blame on me but I never wound up paying anything because HE counter-sued the customers for creating the whole situation, and the whole thing became a legal tangle. He had to sell his storage facility to a national chain in order to keep paying his legal fees, and then settle.

In the meantime I took a first-shift job at a mattress store and a second-shift job at a nail salon, and those places were at least a little nicer. And I’d picked up enough money from the night shift at the storage place that I could put a down payment on a better apartment than my old place. I tracked down Mister Stores-Himself and offered to make things up to him by letting him pay a quarter of the rent instead of half. And he said, oh no, I don’t think you can put up with me, and I said, what could possibly be the problem? And he said that, before he managed to put on deodorant in the morning he always smelled like the devil himself. He had asked for a unit in a storage facility because he knew he’d be totally alone in the morning.

Well I’d lost my sense of smell in a firecracker accident years ago, so that wouldn’t be a problem. And he said fine and dandy.

So now we’re kind of stuck together, but I’d rather be stuck with him than my old manager. He’s a clever fellow, and bold. He proved that at the start of the whole ordeal.

I wonder why the manager never said anything about the smell. Maybe he was too polite? Nah, can’t be.

It had to be the money. Well, he got what he wanted.

And maybe everyone got what they deserved after all.

#Elf Storage #self storage #neon sign #fun with neon #short story #text #fiction

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swish-the-fish · 5 years

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So I didn’t want to post about this until the situation was resolved, but this is all that’s left of my colony of purple Moscow guppies

Out of eight adults and sixteen fry, these two fry are the only ones that survived.

This is kind of a long story, but here we go.

For anyone that may have been following me and my misadventures with guppies, you might remember that around the beginning of August I had a bunch of random store bought guppies, Momma, Annie, JB, an unnamed male, and a bunch of fry who I just kinda... stopped talking about. So what happened was I decided to redo their tank because they had painted gravel, and I wanted to switch to something more natural that wouldn’t flake off and hurt them if they ingested the paint. So I went to the store and bought a bag of fancy planting soil that was advertised as volcanic rock with starter cultures of beneficial bacteria.

Being my paranoid self, I didn’t really trust that, so I washed the devil out of it. I probably spent an hour washing the entire 20lbs bag. In order to not crash the cycle, I put a bunch of the new substrate (probably about half of it) in a Tupperware container and put it in the tank to start cycling. Fast forward a week, I take out all the old gravel and put the new stuff in place. I monitor the cycle just to make sure it didn’t crash, but besides a small spike in ammonia (it got up to .5ppm if I’m remembing right) everything was fine.

But then, one by one, all the guppies stopped eating. They stopped swimming around, they would just hover at the surface or at the bottom of the tank. I did my frantic research, and all the symptoms pointed to parasites. ‘No problem’ I thought, and I marched myself to the local fish store and bought a bottle and test kit for cupermine. Only the unnamed male has died at this point, and the fry had been moved to grow up tanks before the adult began to show symptoms, and none of them ever died so I don’t think they ever got infected. Over the course of treatment, the two females Momma and Annie die, but JB recovers! He starts eating again and he regains his energy. He gets moved to the fry tank as they’re now old enough that he isn’t a threat. I believe that means the treatment has run its course, so after some water changed I leave the tank up and running and put Pepper in there so she can enjoy the extra room. This is my big mistake, and I can only be glad that either she managed to avoid infection or the parasite was species specific to guppies.

Not having the 20g at this point, I give JB and the fry (now about 2.5 months old) to the lfs and move to Wilmington for college.

Flash forward to September and Hurricane Florence. The week before the hurricane hits I found out my friend from high school had committed suicide. Being so busy with classes I hadn’t checked the news and went straight home so I could attend his memorial service without knowing about the hurricane (and therefore leaving my fish behind). I was out of school for almost a month, and it was during this period that I got Diego, Artemis, and the new colony of guppies. I had taken in Artemis (a rescue) and bought Diego assuming that the bettas wouldn’t survive a month trapped in my dorm without any care, and my RA has agreed to let me have the 20g in the suite common room so I bought a group of 8 adolescent guppies from a lovely woman named Jen. Being the largest tank I had set up, they went in the 10g old guppy tank. This was big mistake number two.

So eventually I go back to Wilmington, get the 20g set up and everything is going great. The guppies are growing quickly, and there one female that just balloons in size. I mean she’s twice the size of the other females, and she the first to get pregnant. I assumed that she was just older, possibly from a different brood, and just went about things as normal. Fast forward again to the middle of December. I find the second largest female, pregnant at the time, dead. This throws me, and I check all the parameters, everything’s fine. I chalk it up to complications with birth and move on. The next week I go home for winter break, all my fish in tow. A few days later, the big female is about to give birth a second time. I see a long, translucent white stand coming out of her anus. Confused, I google it to see if its a sign of labor. Surprise surprise it isn’t. White translucent poop means internal parasites, I go to grab the cupermine only to find out that Cupermine only treats external parasites, not internal ones. I do more research, find the proper meds and dose the tank. Meanwhile the guppies are dropping like flies. The first to go was the third largest female who actually did die giving birth, I found about three fry swimming that day along with the dead female. The rest of them die one by one, and even after dosing the tank, many of them just didn’t make it. I’m left with one male and one female fry who I’m fairly certain will survive.

I didn’t want to post about this while it was happening because I didn’t know what was going on in the beginning and by the time I figured it out I felt like complete and utter shit. I failed them as their care giver, and I feel so guilt that I didn’t recognize what was happening soon and step in to correct it.

I still have hope though, in the form of Jen and the absolutely amazing @titans-guppies-aquatics. I got back in contact with Jen who had actually had her colonies go through a crash at the same time, and got my hands of a pair of pregnant females and a cross breed (bluexpurple) Moscow male. I also got a trio of blue deltas from Titan, and I’m hoping to breed the two together to get the beautiful full body color of the moscows with that stunning delta tail.

This is been a really rough start to my guppy breeding, but I’m hopeful that things will get better and that we can recover :)

Tl:dr I’m an idiot, parasites are so hard to get rid of and @titans-guppies-aquatics saved my butt

#guppies #guppy #fishblr #guppyblr #tw: animal death #tw animal death #tw: suicide #tw suicide

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occupyvenus · 7 years

Text

The good, the bad, the ugly, the incredibly STUPID and the thin silver lining

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SPOILERS FOR LEAKED EPISODE 6 UNDER THE CUT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IF YOU ARE ON MOBILE, APPROACH WITH CAUTION !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME. FUCK ME.

Why didn’t Dickhead & Douchebag just break into my house, take a giant dump in my living room and then ask me to pay for it? Why don’t Dipshit & Dumbass just put a bullet in my head and end my misery???? WHAT THE UNHOLY FUCK

Okay, that’s not really enough, but just to get this out of the way. Let’s start:

THE GOOD

Finally a dragon died. Only real good thing in the episode. Undead Ice-Dragon is kinda cool, I’ll admit that.

Some of the interactions of the let’s-go-die-beyond-the-wall-like-a-bunch-of-fucking-idiots-squad were funny? - interesting? I guess?

The differences between Tyrion and the D are getting more profound. He’ll turn on her in season 8. Thank god. Fuck god for saving all the interesting plotlines for later.

The undead ice bear was pretty sweet as well.

Jon looking hot in his furs.

THE BAD

“Bad” is too weak a word for all the bullshit that happened. All of that was moved to the “incredibly stupid” section. It can only be used for the things that weren’t on screen:

No Bran. Couldn’t he simply end this amazingly-fucking-idiotic-piece-of-shit-ooc feud between his sisters? Both Sansa and Arya know about his visions, why isn’t one of them just going to him for some info? But that would make too much sense, so D&D cut Bran from the plot, hoping we are all to stupid to notice.

No Cersei, no Jaime, no Euron. (Yes, that’s bad. The Cersei-stuff is the only thing that was kinda thrilling this season.)

Plotlines that were completely forgotten: Euron having Yara, Grey Worm and the Unsullied in Casterly Rock, as stated above no Bran, no Theon. Establishing a plot point just to let lie unused for the rest of the season is bad writing.

THE UGLY

Jon didn’t choose to go to Kings Landing. Blondie just put him on a boat while he was knocked out. Not happy about it happening, but at least he didn’t ditch WF for the stupid stupid dragon pit meeting by choice.

The Wight hunt was as close to filler as you can get in a show like this. Half the episode was Benjen showing up was completely useless, if Jon had just hopped on the dragon with anyone else he wouldn’t have been left behind. No major human character died. (Thoros is not as important as say Tormund).

BERIC FUCKING DONDARRION TEASING A FUCKING BOSS-FIGHT WITH THE KNIGHT KING ONLY FOR IT NOT TO HAPPEN. LIKE FUCK YOU TOO, BERIC. FUCK YOU.

THE INCREDIBLY STUPID

I know they are playing loose with the timeline BUT HOW LONG WAS THE SUICIDE SQUAD WAITING FOR THE D IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT FROZEN LAKE? A couple of days, right? Gendry getting back to Eastwatch, a raven flying to Dragonstone, the D getting her dragons and flying beyond the Wall. How long did they camp there?

Speaking of that: If they Army of the dead is close enough to the wall, that Gendry can sprint back there in one go.... Shouldn’t they just breach the wall within the next 24 hours tops?

How did they fight off the Wights for so long? They only way to kill them is with fire, there is no reason for them to stop moving when cut down with a normal blade.

Again the story beat with Benjen showing up was so fucking useless. It didn’t accomplish anything (Jon is super dead, btw. The fucker fell into icecold water, he like froze to death. Believe me it happened, even if they didn’t show that. Don’t let the show fool you.) other than killing his character in a completely senseless way. What? There’s no time to get on the horse? Just like there was no time for Jon to get on the fucking dragon?

Fuck, if one of those bright minds would have thought about taking a bow and some dragonglass-arrow heads with them, they could have killed the night king and the rest of the White Walkers right then and there. But no. That would have taken some logical thinking and planning.

Beric teasing a fucking showdown with the Night King. Yeah Beric tell out

Why can’t they bring Thoros back to Eastwatch when they haven’t even come that far??? I mean what the fuck???

Under the assumption that there is no twist involved: WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING TO ARYA? LIKE WHAT THE FUCK? I don’t really know what else to say about this...

Rant under the assumption that there is no twist involved: I was this close to throwing up, like I was seriously physically sick over Jon being all “D*ny, My queen, they will if they see you for what you really are” uugggghhhh .... *kotz* so eine elendige scheiße. Fuck. ...

Please keep reading the next section because those two “plots” are so extremely stupid I can’t believe they are actually really happening the way it seems right now.

THE THIN SILVER LINING

Still not sure if I’m buying Jon’s “feelings” for the D. Nothing we saw from Kit’s performance so far (especially last episode) build up to that. Plus, Tormund reminding him how many people died because of Mance’s stubbornness. Jon didn’t give two shits about the dragons last episode, there is no reason for him to be that heartbroken now. If his targ-blood was supposed to give him an instant connection to those fucking ugly fire-breathing lizards he could have just answered “yes, they are beautiful” last episode. But he didn’t. If he was supposed to be super in love with the D, he could have turned around when leaving. But he didn’t, quite contrary they emphasised that by Jorah turning around. Nothing about Jon so far suggested that he actually has any kind of serious feelings for her. They didn’t write in a single scene where both of them bonded as people. Jon was still refusing to kneel last episode, the only two things that could have changed his minds: 1. Tormund talking shit about Mance. 2. witnessing how effective the D’s dragons are against the WW. Still holding out hope for Jon playing her to get her help. It doesn’t make any sense otherwise (though would that stop Dickhead&Douchebag ???) Plus, Beric doubling down on “we are not fighting for a king/queen on a chair, we are fighting for life against death” and Jon doubling down on his former nights watch vows of shielding the realms of men ... makes it hard to believe that Jon would suddenly decide to serve “his queen” .Uuuughhhh..... I can’t believe I had to hear that with my own to ears. Can I sue Dickhead&Douchebag for compensation for my mental and emotional pain? His behaviour towards the D after waking up, taking her hand, calling her his queen, appearing heartbroken about Viserion’s death, TAKING THE FUCKING BLAME FOR THIS MISSION WHEN HE ONLY WENT BECAUSE THE D REFUSED TO HELP HIM BEFORE, praising her, etc is so over the top, standing in such a vast contrast to his behaviour the previous episodes, it’s hard to take it as genuine. It’s so fucking cheesy, I never thought I would ever hear something like that out of Jon's mouth. If they had taken it only a nudge down I might be ready to buy it ... but like this??? I’m crossing my finger that Jon is only saying what the D wants to hear. Why would he call her “D*ny” ??? Seriously why? They never addressed each other on a first-name-basis. He hasn’t called her anything but “Your Grace” until now. They could have easily written in a scene where the D tells him “you don’t have to call me your grace”, for example after the dragon-petting, to make it more believable. Jon first declines, but now makes good on that offer, going a step farther and calling her by a nickname. This came out of nowhere for Jon (the D had been making hearteyes at him, but the other way around? Naah.), it makes absolutely no sense. I’ll say it again: Season 7 j0nerys can be described with two words: Obvious and superficial. It smells of red herring, it still does, because other than the hard-core-shippers the audience had no time or reason to actually get emotionally involved in this relationship. There was no “human moment” between them so far, none that didn’t end with their “kneel!” “no,fuck you” dilemma.

If this amazingly-fucking-stupid-useless-piece-of-shit-ooc starkbowl is a trick to end LF, Sansa doesn’t know about it. Arya is so ooc and insufferable right now, it only makes sense if she (and maybe Bran) came up with this convoluted plan to get one over LF somehow. Why and How I don’t know, but it would be a nice enough twist to justify this giant turd of a plot. Maybe to get LF to feel safe, believing that Sansa has no other choice but to rely on him? Still holding out hope, because Arya just can’t be that stupid (THE LAST THING SHE SAW OF SANSA WAS HER PLEADING FOR THEIR FATHER’S LIFE BEING RESTRAINED BY THE KINGSGUARD AND FAINTING AFTER THEY CUT OFF THEIR FATHER'S HEAD). But all those interactions make me believe that at least Sansa doesn’t know about the plan. I hope, like really hope, that this will be resolved that way. Arya will kill LF next episode, revealing that she was playing LF and Sansa (he’s always following you around, I couldn’t risk him noticing something, I had to leave you in the dark) with a tender, lovely sister moment where apologizes for all the shit she said, saying that she doesn’t hold Sansa responsible for their father's death. I swear to all the goods, if that was just Arya, without a hidden agenda, I’m rooting for her to die on the show (book!Arya would never be like this. never). Her character is dead to me if that really is what she thinks and how she’s feelings.

To sum this up: The Wight Hunt was the most stupid thing ever. If both Jon and Arya are truly thinking and feeling how they are show to be .... I will lay my two favourite book characters to rest. I want all of them to die. I hope the White Walkers win and kill every single living thing in Westeros. FUck D&D. Seriously, fuck them. You can tell that they only meant to have 7 seasons, but then decided to stretch the last one, write in some senseless, useless bullshit and then cut it in half.

Unless they are turning a lot of this around in s8, grrm should be given the right to cut of their fucking, incompetent heads for ruining his life’s work.

There’s probably more, but for now I’ll leave you with this.

#e6 leaks

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pawneewafflesben · 7 years

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2. “I know it’s 3 in the morning, but I can’t find my cat” and 6. "Don't you die on me." :)

Thank you Shea!! You are the best❤️

2.“I know it’s 3 in the morning but I can’t find my cat”

In hindsight, moving into a new house in a completely new town in the middle of the night probably wasn’t the best idea.

But the second Ben got the call from the realtor saying the deal was finalized, he just had to be there. Out of Indianapolis and the stress of his old job and onto working at an accounting firm in Pawnee, Indiana.

Just Ben, his three trusty calculators, and his cat; Franklin.

Letting Franklin out of his travel crate before Ben had fully unloaded all his belongings was probably his first mistake.

Leaving the front door open to carry in boxes while Franklin was out of his crate was definitely his worst mistake.

He searched all over the new house. In every room and and closet, every box and nook and cranny. Panic slowly rising in his chest as he covered more and more ground and continuously ended up cat-less.

It was nearly three in the morning when Ben realized his front door was wide open. Along with a few cat pawprint a beside a puddle of rain water from the porch. Ben scoured the yard, every possible hiding spot was searched while he called out Franklin, and shook his favorite bag of treats.

Ben’s hands trembled and he could sense the start of a migraine as he wandered around the yard. It was late, colder, and somehow even darker. Making it even more difficult to see anything else.

He needed help. But surely there was no one awake at three in the morning to help look for his cat.

That’s when Ben caught a glimpse of his neighbors house. Nearly every light turned on on the first floor and most curtains opened to reveal a very… Cluttered inside. And before Ben could even come up with a reason to why this was all a bad idea, he was knocking on his neighbors door.

~~~~

“Uh, hi. I’m Ben Wyatt, I just moved in next door and I know it’s three in the morning but I can’t find my cat. And I noticed your lights were on and I was hoping you’d have an idea to help me?” Ben spoke without taking a single breath, words running together as he stared at his neighbor.

The woman blinked for a moment, most likely slightly stunned from the jumble of words that came out of his mouth, but she then proceeded to smile. A smile so bright that Ben was sure no one was actually capable of that smile in three in the morning, except this woman.

“Leslie Knope. You have a cat too?” Her voice was so excited and full of happiness when she spoke. As if Ben having a cat, missing or not, was the best thing she’d heard all day.

Ben nodded, “Uh, yeah. Franklin, he’s a little black and grey tabby. He got out when I was moving my stuff and-”

“Oh! Don’t worry! I know where your cat is!” Her eyes sparkled when she spoke, smile growing even wider. And even in his panic Ben’s still pretty sure his stomach is doing summersaults over the sparkle in her eyes.

“I- you do?” Ben could hardly hide his shock, he expected to be turned away or shrugged off. He certainly didn’t expect help from someone who already knew where his cat was.

Leslie nodded and held out her hand, “Yup! Follow me.”

Ben didn’t even hesitate.

As Leslie maneuvered through piles of boxes and bird houses she told him about her cat.

“She’s an orange tabby, she mostly stays in doors but sometimes she wonders outside. But she always comes bald home, which is why I had a car door installed in the front and back. Tonight though, she brought a friend with her.” She turned and gave Ben a pointed smile as if to say “I wonder what cat it could be.”

“But, the cat didn’t have a collar on it so I thought maybe I’d take him to animal control tomorrow, even though they’re just a bunch of stoners, but now you’re here so I don’t have to! Although the you should really consider getting a collar for your cat it’s only safe.” And with that Leslie opened a door to a back room that was surprisingly cleaner than the entirety of her house.

And right in the middle of the room sat two cats, a black and grey tabby and an orange tabby. Both curled up beside each other, eyes shut and purring ever so softly.

“Aw did you make a friend Eleanor?” Leslie crouched down and began petting both cats.

“Eleanor?” Ben asked as he moved to sit beside Franklin. Most cat’s he’d run into were typical cat names, Eleanor was not one lf them.

Leslie blinked and leaned backwards, almost taken completely off guard by his question.

“For Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the most incredibly First Ladies of our country. She’s an activist and an absolute inspirational hero…” Her eyes narrowed slowly as she trailed off. Like she’d easily take Ben down for disagreeing with her.

Somehow that only made him smile more, “I actually named Franklin after FDR-”

If Ben thought her smile earlier had radiated pure joy, it was nothing compared to this one.

It could probably light up an entire city black out.

“Yeah?”

Ben nodded and felt himself smile, a real smile with teeth showing and everything. He couldn’t even remember the last time he smiled that much.

He was about to pick up Franklin when the cat flattened his ears and nuzzled closer to Eleanor.

Leslie laughed, though really it’s more of a cackle, before saying “I think our cats like each other.” She bit her lip, contemplating what to say next.

Ben almost said he better go, it’s nearly 3:30 on the morning and he starts at his new job in the Accounting firm tomorrow and he really ought to sleep-

“You could both stay, if- if you want to.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, that way Eleanor and Franklin could hang out because,” her eyes flickered towards the two cats, curled up beside each other and purring softly, “I don’t think you’re going to be able to tear them apart anytime soon and I was actually about to make some waffles and-”

Ben turned and his lips tugged up into a slight smirk, “Well I do like waffles.”

Leslie stood, holding her hand out for him again as she walked to the kitchen.

“Good, if you didn’t I’d probably have to kick you and your cat out.”

6. “Don’t you die on me” (Some strange post war/crazy rebellion AU)

“Don’t you die on me, Wyatt.” Leslie bites back the tears already filling her eyes. “Don’t you dare die.”

She reaches out to brush the hair out of his face. Ben can’t help but notice how they feel the same as they always did. Even with her nails caked in dirt and her fingers trembling with every movement. They’re still the same, just as before.

Before the wars and the bombings. Before they were captured. Before they ran.

Before he got shot by one of the many officers chasing after them.

Ben knows he’s dying. He could tell the moment he heard the bullets whizzing towards his shoulder and back. Laying there in Leslie’s arms he can already feel the blood soaking through his shirt and onto her legs.

He’s too weak to walk out of their hiding spot to find help. And even if he wasn’t there’s no one that would help them. Not when the new government is offering a hefty reward for his and Leslie’s heads.

“Hey, don’t- don’t cry okay?” His voice is cracking and every breath stings. It takes most of his energy to reach up and brush away Leslie’s tears as they fall. Ben tries to smile but it comes off as more of a wince, pain quickly getting the better of him.

“It’s going to be okay, you just have to keep going and-”

Leslie sniffles and pulls him closer, letting her forehead fall onto Ben’s. “What am I supposed to do without you…”

This time Ben smiles, a soft and small smile despite the tears sliding down his cheeks.

“You’re Leslie Knope,” Ben’s lips graze hers as he speaks, a feather light tough. Just barely there. “You can do anything.”

#my fics #leslie x ben #ben x leslie #benslie #benslie fanfic #benslie fanfiction #benslie fic #leslie and ben #ben and leslie #parks and rec fic

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