#(But maybe you shouldn't listen to all of it. It's a lot of audio.)

[endothermic-rain]

Hello Stray community! After two months of work, I'm excited to bring your attention to this video!

Someone by the name of "Балвд лыжыэфэф" on YouTube extracted over six hours of music and ambience from Stray's game files. This is an amazing resource, full of extended tracks, ambience, and cut content.

What it lacked, however, were time-stamps. The description included a list of all the audio files that were extracted, but nothing to indicate when a track ended or began, nor where it played in-game.

So, I did all that! Almost every track in this video is now time-stamped, with listings that show where everything plays in-game. I made a comment that listed everything as it appears in the video, and one that lists everything as it appears in-game. I also made a list of some motifs. I couldn't help myself.

This was a lot of work, and I'm so thrilled to share it with you all. If you're looking for a song that was never or only partially included in the OST, you'll find it here! And if you find any mistakes, please let me know! Enjoy!

[asexualbookbird]

insert Imagine Dragons Radioactive Gasp Here

Hi. Coming up for air. I'm surrounded by yarn ends and fabric scraps I'm sweaty and covered in paint. I was a tiny bit productive this July! Made lots of progress on the Irish Lullaby Blanket, painted our balcony, started a few projects I really shouldn't have, and oh yeah! READ EIGHT BOOKS?? Who am I. I'm twelve books ahead of schedule according to goodreads, eleven by StoryGraph standards. It's wild. It helps that my library is holding an adult summer reading bingo contest and I fully intend to fill out the entire board.

The City We Became by NK Jemisin ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- WAOW. I initially rated this four stars, but sitting on it and coming back to it now, it was absolutely a five star read. I would love to reread it, the world was intriguing, and the AUDIO NARRATOR WAS STUNNING! I do try not to judge the contents of a book by it's narrator, but what a performance! When library bingo is over, I'm listening to book two ASAP.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Oh look! A Classic I actually enjoyed! I don't want to judge horror on whether or not I'm scared, because it IS kind of tough to get to me, but this was fun! I could see the spooks! Even if it wasn't spooky For Me, Personally, it was still a fun time!

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Oh. Ouchie. A shortie, but a goodie, I'm kicking myself for returning the ebook immediately because I would've liked to go back and reread bits of it if not ALL of it. A not exactly new take on fae, but an interesting one that I actually enjoyed.

Starling House by Alix E Harrow ⭐⭐⭐⭐- I did NOT intend to read this directly after Hill House but I am SO glad I did. THE PARALLELS!!!! The circular story!!!! THE STARLINGS!!!! I laughed, I cried, I yelled at Arthur, there were surprises I genuinely didn't expect, but made so much sense in hindsight. I don't exactly buy the romance, but I'll let it slide this one time.

Ghost Station by SA Barnes ⭐⭐- Two stars is Very Generous. And I'm sticking to it because the concept is still intriguing and if you squint there was some Leech stuff going on. Maybe I should just reread Leech. Sigh. Ophelia was hired to do ONE. JOB. To make sure none of the team members have Want To Murder Disease. And then Birch shows signs of Want To Murder Disease and she KEEPS IT QUIET BECAUSE *checks notes* HE KNOWS HER DAD HAD WANTS TO MURDER DISEASE. Everyone is stupid. They're scientists and everyone is fucking stupid. It wasn't scary, because EVERYONE WAS FUCKING STUPID. Biting all of them.

Thornhedge by T Kingfisher ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Oh T Kingfisher, you have never disappointed me, why do I read anything else. Another fun take on the fae! It's so hard to get me to like a fae book, so GOOD JOB KINGFISHER! I liked the new take on Girl Locked In A Tower, I liked that Toadling was surrounded by love and still encouraged to do what makes her happy. Again, I almost reread (listened. Whatever) this immediately just for funsies. Another banger from T Kingfisher.

The Sun and The Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro ⭐⭐⭐ - I've been waffling on this rating a LOT. Disclaimer that I haven't read any of Riordan's stuff since the OG Percy Jackson series, and that was ages ago so I can't compare this to that. This was a fun little book, but it felt a little heavy handed with the themes even for a middle grade. It doesn't make me want to read more, but I'm not mad I read it at all.

The Scapegracers by HA Clarke ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Okay. Listen. Look. Look at me. Was this The Perfect Book? No absolutely not. Was it a banger? Did I have fun? YES ABSOLUTELY YES! It's a book I could've needed in high school, but I wouldn't have been mature enough to appreciate it so I'm glad I have it NOW. Angry Queer Teen Girls will run the world. And I'm here for it. So looking forward to the rest of the series, I need to know what sort of mischief these girls get up to. I hope they curse another fuckboy. They deserve it.

BONUS! I also watched The Haunting of Hill House on netflix! One bingo square said "read a book then what the movie" and I really thought Mike Flanagan's Hill House was a movie but no it was ten (10) hours of spooky fucked up family dynamics. Also Nate Ford was there. Naturally. It was good! It was creepy! I wanna watch it again JUST FOR THE TREE HOUSE. I was skeptical when I first started because who the hell are you people (Steve, Shirley) but no it was fun! But also. Fuck Steven and Shirley. Congrats to Theo and moving in with her girlfriend of one week, peak lesbian stereotypes. Biggest complaint is with Mike Flanagan and his need to not only kill cats, but get close up shots of said dead cats. What's up with that my dude. What did cats ever do to you?

Plans for August (how am I saying that) are The Bone Season side by side comparison with the first edition and the tenth anniversary edition. I'm counting that as two books, I think, because it IS two books, and looking at them next to each other, there's a pretty sizable difference in page count! No clue about word count. This is part of book bingo (reread a book you didn't enjoy the first time), and this has helped me realise that I've been avoiding this for a Reason. I truly and surely did not enjoy The Bone Season and have no desire to experience that again. Don't know what to do with this information. So. I'm rereading it. Yay.

I have a few sewing projects I'm working on, and I am SO CLOSE to finishing the Irish Lullaby Blanket! It's exciting! So lets go!! Bring it on, August!!

[ruhua-langblr]

Hi, you seem to have a decent grasp on Language Learning Resources™, so maybe you could help me.

I currently have a 2600+ day streak for Duolingo Spanish, which I initially picked up because I took classes in school and wanted to see if I remembered any. I'm well aware of the limitations on the app, and at this point it's just because I like to see the number go up. I've only ever been a casual student but I would like to progress eventually. The problem is I have trouble finding a method between gamified app, and full-blown, academic, novel -and- textbook self study. Do you know of good ways to move past Duolingo lessons without biting off more than you can chew?

Thanks for any input you have

Hi!

I feel like that "number goes up" connection is the main reason a lot of people don't want to move on from Duo and similar apps! I hope to do a post that goes into all of this more in depth, so consider this a shortened version~

My personal philosophy is that you shouldn't have to chose between just gamified apps and academic study—ideally you need it to be engaging enough to keep up for when you have less motivation, but with an academic rigor! I'm gonna drop some general resources/resource types and try to give them all a shot! Don't think of replacing Duo with a singular app or activity, but a collection of resources that you can switch between.

Anki: SSR vocab learning. Lots of customization and habit tracking features available so consider this a good "number goes up" replacement (and if you really love looking at data it's much more thorough!). With Spanish as your TL (target language), you'll have plenty of pre-made decks available. You can have specific decks, sentence mine, or have a huge 5,000 most frequent words deck. Anki isn't my favorite method personally, but people get SUPER into it and it works for them—also you'll hear this everywhere anyway.

Language Transfer: I wish my TL was one of the ones they have! If you're coming from Duo then you've probably been lacking a good method to really train your listening skills. 100% free, and I've heard great things about their Spanish course as well. All the files are available to be downloaded to listen to offline. Great to put on when you're getting ready in the morning, for bed, or during a commute.

LingQ/Youtube/Podcast Comprehensible Input: "[TL] Comprehensible Input" in the Youtube search will get you pretty far. There are podcasts like this as well, but it's nice to have a visual stimuli as well! This is pretty much the epitome of a ~natural language acquisition~ style. Immersion and immersion at an appropriate level is what works best. If you've even dipped your toes into the language acquisition sphere, you'll know Steve Kaufmann. LingQ is his app that's based on these principles.

Textbooks: Duo assumes that you can just pick up grammar from pattern recognition and that can work, but upper-level nuanced grammar or grammar patterns that are vastly different from your native language are hard to intuit. Find a good, dedicated grammar textbook and use that as what you will learn the details of grammar from. All that audio stuff will teach you what sounds right, this will teach you why/how it's right. (Buy a used textbook, visit your library, or check out my pinned post...)

+More: There's so MANY ways to learn a language. I'm focusing on specific methods that would fit in naturally with your existing habits (solo, digital, habit-forming), but there's tons more out there that you can do: journaling, discord servers, italki, chatting apps, graded readers, etc.

To start pick one that you feel the most drawn to and then a second that compliments where it might be lacking. Make a goal that you feel is reachable, and build from there.

Best of luck!

[peraltuki]

Your favorite redacted audio character but I I'm judging you part 1

This is all for fun and it's not meant to be taken seriously!!1!!2

Gavin: if your favorite guy is Gavin you need to stop telling people about your mommy issues, you love the chase in relationships so you'd go for the guy who's super complicated and has a lot of emotional turmoil in his life, you him because he's a bit arrogant and you think you can tame him, you can't, but you can definitely try to make him obsessed with you! deep down you just have too many responsibilities and you get bored with people easily, you repress your sexual desires because you don't feel that comfortable in your body or you believe there's something more important to be doing, stop repressing it! we get it you're horny, so Go get it!!

Lasko: if your favorite guy is Lasko you have time management problems, stomach ache and a controlling parental figure. You like your teacher probably, you love being in control of everything but you can't organize yourself enough to control anything, and you're very critical of yourself and others, even if you really try not to you're a kind of judgemental in a bitchy way like did you seriously asked me that dumbass question kind of judgemental, you are hypochondriac that's a problem you need to stop seeing therapy as a personal attack!

Huxley: if your favorite guy is Huxley your home was very chaotic and unpredictable, now that you're old you look for peace and quiet, but maybe stop overindulging so much. One thing is to be carefree and the other is to be irresponsible, you like to have a good time not a hard time and it's difficult for you to not bend because you have a tendency to not care about things unless the problem is so big you can't ignore it anymore, you see yourself as a secondary character even in your own life start owning your shit

Damien: if your favorite guy is Damien you're an Aries or a Scorpio don't ask me how I know just check your natal chart. You have anger issues and suppress the darkest parts of your personality, you just want someone who's as insane and annoying as you so you can feel comfortable being like that too, you are very sensitive to sounds and to other's emotions but not in a I'm an empath way but in a everything people do and say makes me irritated or doubt myself or feel weird, I genuinely believe you're just an old person in the body of a young one, try to go on walks honey :/

David: If your favorite guy is David you really believe the power of love and pussy can save him, you love the sun and the moon kind of relationships, he was sunshine I was midnight rain you know? But sometimes you overcompromise with being the nice one and the mediator, you need to say fuck you to people more often, and you need to stop living in your head so much!! I feel like David is what you wish you were because you like how he doesn't take shit from anybody, be more confident in being disliked

Asher: if your favorite guy is Asher you're so serious and you know it like you can be like 😐 around people but it's not intentional, you like to be around extroverted people because you like to be listening not talking, you can be very annoying sometimes telling people what they should or shouldn't do, yes you're very funny you're just shy and you have a resting bitch face, but you also like Asher so I know you like goofy Gemini men

Milo: if your favorite guy is Milo you tend to be super extremist and people often feel like they have to tolerate your control managing issues, you are not as controlling as you think you are you're just bossy that doesn't mean you want to be in charge, you love alone time and you know YOU KNOW you're good company, your jokes can be very inappropriate at times so calm down on that, impulsivity is not a personality trait!!

Sam: if your favorite guy is Sam your favorite guy is also Joel from tlou, you're the person with the daddy issues and you know it, I mean look at what kind of men you like??!! That's not normal! You like being told what to do even if you say you don't, you like having someone behind you giving you advice on what you should and shouldn't do, and you really like your house and comfortability, you were a Carlisle girlie, you HATE unexpected things and yes you are a sucker for older men

Vincent: if your favorite guy is Vincent, you have 100% not gotten over twilight renaissance and you stalk Robert Pattinson, you really like vampire shit and you liked his flirty personality but his emo persona was what made you fall in love, you really believe in the idea of the one, it's monogamy or death for you and you want to be with the same person forever, you are a Phoebe Bridges fan (side eye) and you love the idea of being protected by someone stronger, older and wiser and I don't know in what category of daddy issues does vampire fall but you have both even a little bit of mommy issues considering.....

Quinn: If your favorite guy is Quinn, no it's not, you like making up people in your head he's not even here he's just a figment of your imagination go write a fanfic I'll read it

[a-vibing-potato]

Nevermind, I'm not done ranting about HFTH tonight

I just finished episode 81 and I'm crying a little bit and am ready to cry a lot more.

First of all, I've been desperately trying to find this post lately but I can't but it was someone who said something about episode 82 or 83 I think? made them cry more than MAG 200. And... I just can't. I'm so afraid it's not even funny, but here I am and I'm like, "Are you sure 81 isn't supposed to be the sad one?!?!"

Nikignik's Outro:

I was so ready for just a chill little outro but then they pause suddenly in the middle of a sentence for like a minute straight and then just say, "This is not easy."

Like oh my gosh, Nikignik, my heart can't take this today, but then they sound like they're so close to crying (which they do a decent bit, honestly, but same, and it still gets me every time).

And when they said, "It should be easy, none of these people actually effect me and I shouldn't care about them. I've seen so many species end but it still hurts." (paraphrased but still MY HEART BROKE)

One, I still stand by my statement that Nikignik is a depression reference/symbol. Two, I see myself in Nikignik.

I care too much about these people in the Hallowoods, and I've listened to audio dramas before and it never gets easier (cue my dramatic being depressed over Hector's death earlier) and technically they're not even real but I love them all so much and I just can't????? Oh my gosh I didn't want an existential crisis tonight but maybe it's what I needed????

The very end of the outro reminds me of my day to day struggles and how even though everything seems like it's just going downhill, we have to keep moving on, and pick ourselves back up and put ourselves back together.

"Nevertheless, I will continue, in the hope that it will get better, somehow. That these vestiges of darkness will melt in the light of some new sun. That there is still a reason to fight." - Nikignik (Oh my GOSH this is so beautiful but also I'm crying but also I feel this in my SOUL)

Then they use trepidatiously as their fancy -ly adverb in the last sentence and I always love a good use of the word trepidation. :)

But then I looked ahead to the next episode, 82: Polly, Clara, and Moth. Two of my favorites (and I love you, too, Clara and the rest of Downing Hill) and the theme is Failures.

I'm really scared and really sad but also really comforted for some reason??? I didn't realize I needed someone to tell me about grief and depression and always moving forward in the hopes that things will get better but I guess I did???

Anyway, hopefully things get happier lol. You can't have light without the dark.

[kevin--of-desert-bluffs]

Psssssst the into the mirror episode of WTNV sure would make a great paraody of TMA riiiiiiiight? /nf

Ok ok you've twisted my arm :) also remember I'm still not even on episode 30 of TMA so can only write in very early TMA style, it's not that I don't want to listen it's just execuative dysfunction kicking my ass about it for some stupid reason.

Anyway, here you go!

Statement of Cecil Gershwin Palmer, regarding an alleged supernatural experience with a mirror. Original statement given August 1st 2020. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

'I grew up in a lovely little desert town called Night Vale. As you can no doubt tell by my accent when I spoke to you it is far away from here in the good ol' USA. I can't really remember how I got here from there.

No matter. I want to tell you a story - a story about a mirror. I guess it's a story about me really but it involves a mirror.

When I was a child my mother told me that she was an oracle and that I should study a book she had so that I may one day understand the messages inside. There was a table with chipped corners and a mismatched wood stain on the tiny drawer at it's center. The drawer had a tarnished yet ornate brass knob. The book was inside of that drawer and I never opened it after she put it there.

The book frightened me. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the handwriting that matched no known language. Or was it the drawings of serpents with human faces but innumerable teeth? It gave me a feeling of disorientation - seeing these faces contorted into a scream yet their eyes expressing nothing. Maybe it was the inscrutability which scared me.

I promise that all of this is connected though even I'm not sure how. My mother said a lot of things to me which didn't make much sense. I remember once that she asked me why I was crying when I wasn't real. I don't think my mother was very well.

By far the most frequent warning she would give me was about mirrors. She warned me that one day I would die and it would involve a mirror. This statement was made all the more confusing given the large ornate mirror in the downstairs hall which faced that table. If they were so dangerous - why did we own any? I always ran past that mirror to get out.

My mother died years ago. A few months ago my sister and I finally got around to sorting through all of her old belongings instead of leaving them to rot in a storage facility.

I did not get the table, but I did get the mirror. I felt that perhaps it was time to get over my fear of mirrors. So I looked into it.

It was just a mirror of course and at first there was nothing unusual about it - nothing more than one expects when looking into a mirror. A reflection of the self staring back. No more frightening than your own interpretation of the gradual changes of your own body only observable through that reflected world.

I hung it up in much the same place as it had stood in my childhood home. Every so often I would glance at myself to check that I looked presentable before heading out for the day. What else is a mirror for? I'd had a lifelong fear of mirrors due to my mothers frequent insistence that they were dangerous. It felt good to finally get over that fear and with a mirror that I had specifically feared as a child.

There was nothing wrong with the mirror. Nothing unusual. Never had been. There was no strange noise coming from it at night, no portal to the 3rd dimension, nothing.

Until yesterday...yesterday I saw something in that mirror. Something that shouldn't have been. I was getting ready to leave the house when I looked into the mirror as I had been doing - it was becoming something of a habit in fact - when I was compelled to stop and continue staring into the mirror.

I don't know why but I couldn't draw myself away from it. I looked at myself so long that I lost my ability to understand what I looked like. I want you to understand that when I said I couldn't move away I meant it. Nothing was physically stopping me and yet there I was, frozen in front of the mirror.

Perhaps it was psychosomatic. Perhaps I was a slave to my own mind. My thoughts raced, circling around themselves like snakes, confused and sometimes unrelated to my sudden paralysis.

I started to wonder whether I was looking at myself at all or perhaps it was someone else. How many hairs did I have? How many did I have yesterday? Are they the same colour, the same length? Are they the same hairs I had as a child? Thoughts like that.

I thought - should I be high if I’m going to ask myself these questions? Can you get high by behaving high? Are you a good person because you do good things? Does a qualitative assessment mandate empirical evidence to support its truth? If I point at something and declare it good, will I be crossexamined? And if so, am I to be held in contempt for refusing to answer?

I have no idea how long I was standing there thinking like that.

Then I saw something truly frightening. First it was just a pair of eyes and the curve of a head - human shaped but about a third of the size. I stared into those tiny eyes and watched as it reached it's long spindly fingers up to touch my shoulders and I understood that whatever it was - it was climbing on my back.

I screamed and looked away from the mirror, still rooted to the spot but able to look away at least. I wanted to touch my shoulder to see whether those fingers were really there. I couldn't feel them but maybe they were there all the same but I couldn't bring myself to check. It was like when you're at an ATM and it asks you if you want to check your balance before you withdraw money. You don't want to look because you don't want to know how little is actually in there, despite the fact that not looking won't change reality.

I stood there and thought about those long fingers, that small head, that little face with it's inexpressive eyes and flat lipless mouth...it felt familiar. Was it something from childhood? Or maybe it was from a dream I had?

I was starting to forget what it had looked like exactly so forced myself to look again. It was still there. I couldn't tell if it was friend or foe. There was a flickering behind the figure. I couldn't tell if it was sunlight oscillating behind moving clouds or if the figure itself was causing the effect.

The creature was climbing up my back. It had talons and wore black rings. It had a mouth full of too many teeth and a long tongue. A cry was leaking out of it's mouth, a horrible high-pitched mewling like it was imitating a child crying. What unholy monster cries like a child?

I managed to look beyond the creature and there I saw the table. Just as it had been in my childhood. I remembered every detail perfectly and I also remembered that I did not have the table in my house. Whose house was this mirror reflecting? Who and where and when?

I looked behind me and the mirror was not in my house. It was only in the mirror, holding it's dreadful secret within that drawer.

I returned my gaze to my own reflection. It had changed. It was me, but it was not me now. It was myself as I had been many years younger. It's movements did not match my own. The creature...the creature was sinking it's teeth into the neck of my younger self. Rivulets of blood ran down my neck and shoulder.

I remember willing myself to break the mirror. To break it into many pieces. I wanted to move but I couldn't. Yet...I heard the sound of glass shattering. I closed my eyes just for a moment and when I opened them there were glass shards all over the floor. Large shards that could only have come from a mirror. Yet...the mirror. The mirror was completely intact.

Inside the mirror I could still see my younger self, now curled upon the floor, mouth agape in horror and eyes glassy. I could move again and I'm almost ashamed to say that all I could think to do was to put the entire experience behind me. I got a blanket and put it over the mirror and then I swept the shards of mirror away.

And there by the door was the small antique table with the chipped corners and the small drawer. I had not taken it home. I was sure of that. But there it was. If I'm honest - I was afraid to touch it. I'm afraid of the table and the mirror even now.

I asked my sister, Abby, about the table. She confirmed that she thought the table was still in storage and agreed to take it off my hands, as well as the mirror. When she asked me about the blanket covering it I asked if there had ever been an incident when I was young - one involving a mirror. She said that she had come downstairs once to find me passed out and cold on the ground with a wound in my neck possibly from all the broken glass around. Broken glass she'd thought was from the mirror at first except the mirror was completely fine. I'd been fine too, after a trip to the hospital - she said and asked me why I wanted to know. I didn't have a good answer and hurried her away with the dreadful mirror and table.

She hasn't reported anything unusual about the mirror and says the drawer is firmly shut - possibly even fake.

I have a small hand mirror I use. I went upstairs after she left and used it to check my neck. There upon it was a ring of scars that had not been there the week before - I swear on this. In fact, I can prove it with this picture of me on vacation with my husband, Carlos. My neck is clearly visible up close and yet there is no scar. Now the scar is here, as you have seen and is visible in the second photo. A small ring, exactly like a bite mark.'

Statement ends.

By far the most interesting factor of Mr Palmer's statement is his claim to be from the town of Night Vale, located somewhere in the USA. This town has been mentioned in a not insignificant number of other statements given by residents from there despite how far from us it is. The second most interesting fact is the book which matches a volume by Jurgen Leitner that the Institute has not yet been able to get ahold of. Unfortunately, since we are unable to locate Night Vale there is no chance of locating the book even if we could afford a trip to the States.

As for the statement itself...it sounds to me like a man who has had a significant traumatic event at some point in his life and a memory or half a memory relating to this event was triggered possibly during an episode of psychosis. Even he admitted that his mother had mental health issues and it's possible that Mr Palmer also did.

It has proven absolutely impossible to track down Mr Palmer despite the relative recentness of his statement and it's possible that he has returned as he stated to his home town which nobody seems able to locate on any map. The pictures that were previously attached are nowhere to be found. Nonetheless, an eye shall be kept on this account and all those which mention Night Vale. Archiving them together might provide us greater insight into the believability of any statements coming from residents of the town, as well as into the town itself

Recording ends.

[gamergal-ds]

HOW 2 MOD MAD RAT DEAD ON SWITCH! PART 1: MUSIC!

If at any point you need more information or further assistance, drop me an ask or direct message! Even if it's something 'stupid' don't worry, I'll help :)

What you'll need:

A copy of the game in .nsp or .xci format

Switch Explorer

Sonic Audio Tools

VGAudio

Audacity (My recommendation, alternatives may work)

Switch explorer is used to extract the files from the game to be modded

Sonic audio tools is used to extract the .acb archives the songs (.hca files) are packed in, and to pack the files back in

VGAudio is used to convert the .hca files (the actual audio files) to .wav to be opened and edited in audacity, and to convert them back to .hca before being repacked

Lastly, audacity is used to edit the .wav files to put whatever you want into the files, completely replace it's contents or whatever, go wild

Did any of that make sense to you? no? Good, keep reading.

LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD!

I'll add like a pastebin link here later with every song's internal number so you can easily find the one you're looking for and extract it, too lazy right now tho :P

Open switch explorer, choose to load up your nsp/xci of the game (file > open) and navigate to data > sound

then, find the song you wish to edit and right click > extract file, then drop it in a good spot for later

Afterwards, open two file explorer windows, one in the sonic audio tools folder and the other where you extracted the .acb file. We do this so you can easily drag the .acb into the ACBeditor.exe found in the sonic audio tools folder:

this will produce a folder in the same directory as the .acb sharing its name, and inside you will find your .hca files:

these are the actual audio files, but we can't edit them yet, because no program knows what to do with a .hca! First, we need to convert them to .wav files, so boot up VGAudio, click open file, pick the .hca file (you need to repeat this process for all 4+ files), choose to convert to WAVE and hit save file.

wherever you saved it, you now have a .wav of the audio file, feel free to give it a listen! If it's just silence, don't worry, some of the songs are like that.

Now these files require a little explanation, the one ending in 0 to 2 are all related to the song's into, opening, and cut scene loops, basically everything you stop hearing once you've started playing the level properly. The file ending in a 3 is the main loop, the part that plays so long as you keep playing through the level. In some rare cases, there will be even more files, or less! I haven't done enough of my own research yet, so you can come to your own conclusions on those, shouldn't be hard to figure out once you get how these work.

Anyways, now that that's outta the way, audacity time! Individually open, edit, and export each .wav you extracted, again as .wav (keep the file name the same!) using audacity, make any changes you want, import other files of any format into it on a new track and remove the original when you're done, whatever, but I recommend keeping the lenght (not filesize) of the audio file the same, idk if the game will have a stroke if it's too long or not long enough. (Also a lot of the song info like BPM is hardcoded so any old song won't work if you just drop it in here, stick to mad rat monday songs for your first edits like I did, those work the best, but do be ready to splice them to extend the main loop (file 3)) (also line it up properly, it can't be off beat from the original, you gotta find a point in the songs where the waveform is similar and use it to line it up exactly right)

This part's kinda all up to you, but I can provide some basic audacity tips specific to your situation if required. Or just general ones, if you can't wrap your head around audacity :P

once they're all edited, use VGAudio to reverse the process, open the .wav files and choose to convert to HCA, and save them, maybe backup the original .hca files instead of replacing them if you want to (i just added an 'og' to the start of the original file's name)

then, remove all the junk from the folder besides the new .hca files you made (or move them to another, identically named folder separately), and drag the folder into the same acbeditor.exe from the sonic audio tools folder, just like you did with the acb the first time. It will pack your folder back into an acb in the same directory as the folder you dragged in (it'll replace the original if you kept them all in the same directory, but don't worry you can just extract the file again if you need the original). Now, we set up the mod!

This part's easy, just make a new folder with the name of your mod, in there make one named romfs, in there make one named data, and in there make one named sound, then drop your new acb file into the sound folder. The mod's done! Drag it into the mod directory on your real switch (idk how that works I don't have a modded switch) or in yuzu right click mad rat dead, choose open mod directory and drop the mod folder in there. Then right click the game, hit properties, and the mod should show up with the name you chose for the top folder. Here's some screenshots for all that:

Tick the box to enable the mod and boot up the game! That's it!

If you need any more help, further assistance, suggestions, anything, just drop me an ask or DM, I'll respond in due time! Additionally, if you have any suggestions or requests for how to improve this guide, let me know with a reply!

Happy modding everyone!

[bitterbelphie]

(( content warning for graphic blood and mild body horror in the form of a gross, dead monster. ))

[A video is posted.]

[Play video?]

---

The video begins with quite a mess- Something almost incomprehensible, there's so much information to take in all at once. There's some chatter going on for directions, to get something that sounds like hot water muddled in the audio. There's footsteps, and vaguely gator-like, wet gurgles. There's two men bickering more clearly over something.

The two men seem to be in what looks like a spill of gel, stuck in place by it somehow. Next to them is a nightmarish lump of flesh, teeth, limbs and eyes that still vaguely seems to be noncommittally in the shape of a dumpster, and one if them seems to be stuck to another hunk of meat in the spill. It's almost dyed entirely in a mess of what looks a lot like ink, or... some sort of dark colored sauce.

"So,"

A voice calls out from behind the camera.

"Belphie found the mimic... But uh,"

"Levi?"

"Levi!"

The men stuck to the ground call out almost in synch, and the camera jolts in surprise. The two talk over each other.

"If you're taking a video of this-"

"Is this really the time? Shouldn't you-"

"I swear, I'll rip your spine out and beat you with it."

"-be helpin' out or somethin'? Gimme a break!"

"Could you relax? We just got here! You think we knew you'd be glued to the ground after being here THREE seconds earlier than the rest of us?"

Levi talks with a bit of a whine in his voice, arguing. It makes Belphie groan, and Mammon's brows angle down. Before he can retort though, Levi's voice takes on a more sincere tone.

"Belphie, are you sure you're okay?"

He doesn't get any closer, doesn't zoom in. It's hard to see details, but the figure that must be Belphie looks pretty rough. Some of his clothes are shredded, and he's clearly exhausted and singed. There's hints of red that look too much like blood here and there on his person, but he's filthy. It isn't the clearest image. He sighs wearily, rolling his head as much as he can to express his exhaustion.

"... Yeah. I'm fine. I'd be more okay if stupid over here wasn't stuck to me and looking at me like that. Can we hurry this up?"

"How was I supposed t' know what the hell was goin' on!"

"If you waited... THREE seconds," Belphie seethes, "Then you would have heard me. And anyway, don't you know ANYTHING about a mimic??? I'd figure you've seen plenty of them with your sticky fingers."

The two begin arguing, and Levi sighs a little. His hand comes up, slender and with nails painted a deep shade of purple, and gestures somewhat helplessly at them.

"Okay, while they're occupied... Belphie, I know you're mad at me now. But later on, I know you're gonna watch this, and you're gonna thank me. Probably because you'll have something to bribe Mammon with when he royally pisses you off or something, but! Um..."

Levi gets audibly stuck before the camera darts down in a blur, a flustered noise coming out of the cameraman.

"N-Nevermind. Listen, just thank me later, huh?! You're welcome!"

"Levi! What are you doing over there? Come help already."

"Ah-- C-Coming! Do you think plain water would work? Maybe I could, uh..."

There's the sound of someone adjusting their hold and running their finger noisily across the mic, and the video cuts.

[aceinabook]

Monthly Wrap-up~

July 2024

Books Read: 19

DNFs: 2

Holy I read a lot this month, haha. There was a lot of Manga to be fair though! I've never read this much in one month! It didn't feel exhausting either!

The Last Hero: I absolutely loved this one. It finished off the series with a banger and made it's way to one finishing this series and as well as making it a favorite!

Remarkable Bright Creatures: I'd never heard of this before, but it was my bookclub's August pick! It was a nice cozy read. I really enjoyed the character work in it!

Sword of Summer: The first in the Magnus Chase series! I love Rick Riordan's writing, but did not care for the Kane Chronicles so I was wary of the gods of asgard series. I shouldn't have worried I loved meeting Magnus!

The Midnight Lie: I loved Rutoski's Winner's trilogy. So I was excited when I saw a Lesbian romance by the same author and didn't really know much about it before I read it! I was very intrigued with it and am excited to pick up the sequel. I think it was only a duology. \

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet: This was such a nice cozy Sci-fi it made me think of Mass Effect. I loved it and the Wayfarer crew really made me happy

Golden Kamuy Vol. 5: I like the many expressions and how much Japanese history i'm learning with this series. Also love Asirpa.

Heaven Official's Blessing Vol. 8: This was such a good ending to such a beautiful story. I will not shut up about how much I love this story. Xie Lian you are such an icon.

Requiem of the Rose King Vol. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5: This is all gonna go in one seeing as I feel it will get blurred together haha. My Partner was reading this and told me it had some playings with gender. I like reading things like that! It is defintely very political and I am actually really enjoying that, I'm not the biggest fan of shakespearean stories at times but this one feels just right.

Hunter x Hunter Vol. 4, 5, 6: I love the Hunter x Hunter anime. I started the manga to get caught up and see what happens after the anime ended. I like this series, and the anime was pretty on the nose.

Divine Rivals: I read this for a challenge to read the past years GR best of the year, this was YA fantasy & Sci-Fi pick. It was ok, but I do not understand how it won. I look at the nominees and I hadn't really read any of the others, but look it was not the best book I read. There were some good bits, but it felt under-developed. Not interested in continuing this duology.

Tokyo Ghoul Vol. 7: Ah, I have never really read a horror manga. Tokyo Ghoul has been something I've been reading for a while but slowly. I loved this volume, it was peak. I loved that Kaneki went through a major character break. I love this boy.

The Hammer of Thor: Magnus Chase! He Strikes again! I listened to the audiobook for SoS and HoT, there are two different audiobook narrators so that was a little off putting. I'll be honest Kieran Culkin the narrator for HoT was better than the one in SoS. I liked this because of Alex Ferraro, I enjoyed she/he's banter with Magnus it was fun. It was also funny to hear Alex call Magnus a golden retreiver. This series is fun!

Icarus: I had not really have heard of this, I got it in the Rainbow Crate book box so It came to me via book recommendation boxes. It is kind of a retelling of the myth of Icarus and Helios. It was pretty good and is def not a close retelling. K Ancrum writes so beautifully. I do highly recommend it

Dnfs:

Godly Heathens: This seemed like really good potential, but I just didn't care about the characters and there were too many dream sequences and it blurred with what was happening. Maybe listening to the audio was the problem haha.

Westside: I just didn't want to read about a detective with a cop dad that was admired who did some police brutality. I'm sure some will like it, I just can't read about that.

That's about it! It was such a good reading month I had a great time. Once I started I just couldn't stop!

[castle-dominion]

skipping ahead of my family watch & my binge watch bc I feel like a change in pace:

7x16, the wrong stuff

Love space, I just read the martian last year. V nice. What I wouldn't give for a hot girl XD. This is a movie set right? We saw the sideways thing

Oh rick & alexis <3 <3 <3 OH NO IT IS NOT RICK, WHO IS SHE PLAYING WITH WHO IS THIS BOYF? Martha was here? WAIT MARTHA WAS WITH BENJAMIN HIS PJS??? it seems everyone is taking his life/stuff lol

Ryan's shoulder things, pretty. Also keep forgetting alexis is an adult.

Visitor badges lol wait mars lol, legit? Our victim is on mars!? "out of our jurisdiction" lol these are, not this is.

He signed up to go to mars? They made a yucky air place? CASTLE GETS TO WEAR A SPACESUIT he should ask her to remarry him, just say "Ryan be the officiant for twenty seconds, beckett say you love me, I do, I got married in space!"

Castle takes directions like me Doctor Haroun, interesting. SEALED 9M EXPERIMENT!?

Ryan is NOT INTERESTED IN GOING TO MARS!?!? or was it to be nice to castle? the gravity scene, this is amazing, I love this so much lmao, & the music too. "didn't have to go through astronaut training"

Castle doing his cute jumps

Luke Reichle my man! Or maybe they could survive the atmosphere for a few minutes, long enough to kill the astronaut & then get out with minimal rash-getting.

RC: (whispered) One small murder for man, one giant mystery for mankind. KB: (whispered) Even when you whisper, everyone can hear you. Radios Oh esposito, shaking his head like that

Audio editing my beloved This is so multicultural, just like The Martian. EW I HATE THE COMPUTER

She can /hear/ you yk...

THEY GET TO MEET THE INTERNED BILLIONAIRE!? if it is not a request then you need a warrant.

RC: There goes my rise of the machines theory.

There is going to be an animal that can survive there, they accidentally created life. Oh esposito is still on the ship in the sim! He's going to actually really really love it, start applying to astronaut programs (esp since the other ex-military astronaut got murdered) Oh yeah, to see if you can handle it too. I remember in The Martian, the crew had to spend a week in a cubicle-sized thing. The murderer stayed in there since the start of the experiment!?!? They would go insane from no human contact bro!

Nice intro!

Love a good bit of ass-posito (sorry) OH NO HE;S GOING TO END UP STUCK IN THE MARS SIMULATION WITH THE ALIEN/MURDERER & THEY WON'T BE ABLE TO HELP HIM HEHEHE

Yeah he probably WAS seeing things... Yeah I trust their security Or not ig lol When was the vic's "seeing things" vlog made? he is, after all, an internet guy Ah, if this pilot dies they'll have to get the second choice, like in the airborn series (which got way unrealistic by the end & had a lot of deus ex machina & he totally deserved better than that girl even tho he was also not such a great person)

Love castle's jacket btw

So did he ever get charged with attempted murder?

Out of the country? Very far away convenient alibis. Nova scotia? I thought he said he was in connecticut. Also heck yeah canada! You know, canada should be broken up: maritime provinces, ontario+quebec, the prairie provinces plus BC (Metis country babes), & the territories.

KR: Mars? Nova Scotia? This guy really loves barren landscapes.

KR: If I want to fly thousands of miles to see a lifeless orb I could just visit Jenny’s grandmother. Same hostile environment, same freezing temperatures, same noxious atmosphere. BRUH (& her gramma is still alive?)

Ryan's outfit, also castle & esposito, & also beckett, they are all so pretty.

It is probably a youre-in-close-quarters-your-lives-depend-on-each-other type relationship ALSO I TOTALLY GOT THE FEELING IT WAS GOING TO BE A GIRL, HAHA I KNEW IT, MY GAYDAR IS REAL! (no it is not)

Ew tom, listen, you shouldn't be flirting with the ppl you're going to space with. Genuinely.

Oh no he was going to be an astronaut but she got in w/o him so he became a facilities engineer... sabotage? girl I get wanting to be WITH her but let her go to mars for the both of you... & then ofc she broke up with you but still, you were part of the mission in a different way, if she didn't go & fall in love with someone else I'm sure that you two could have worked it out. Except that you would sabotage the trip to keep her instead of collaborating on a solution so maybe you SHOULD have broken up... better now than later.

George Reyes: I’m not so sure about that. Us: WAIT WHAT tunneled thru?

WAIT THEY ARE ACTUALLY CHECKING IF THEY TUNNELED THRU? What are these icky cobwebs?

KB: Castle, boost me up. (Typical XD) RC: Why am I always on the bottom? (lmao sexy) She just gives him a look. RC: Yes, dear.

She IS a scifi geek (get married in space y'all) SHE APPLIED TO GO TO MARS!? Love this version of the theme, sounds great. Duncan robert or smth? What's the composer's name? THE SCREWDRIVER! a snake? water? NEUROTOXIN? WAIT IS THAT A DOG-- IS THAT AN ALIEN (or fake alien? or a person in a mask that is not the typical spacesuit mask?)

He pushes KB’s hair away from her neck and runs his flashlight over her skin. KB: What are you doing? RC: Checking you for bites and scratches. Making sure you didn’t somehow get impregnated. KB can’t stop her eyeroll. KB: If you think that’s how I get pregnant we need to talk.

RC: IT SHED ITS SKIN

I like how she speeds up her talking to finish her explanation, then says "excuse me" then leaves to take the phone call.

Prints on the mask from when they put it on?

Ew spider webs lol I def heard stuff in there lol Oh, they take off their shoes outside the door...

AC, in front of her friends: Wow you two. Get a room. RC: We would. if there were any LEFT!

Ooh her hair is nice today & the rest of her outfit is good too. "Heyy Castles!" They are married! I love them so much! Wowie that outfit on ryan. He's had a lot of dark jackets with broad shoulders recently. His tie looks too fancy tho, smth I'd wear to an event. & his hair also looks like he's going somewhere. He would fit in at a funeral & I don't mean that in a sexy emo way. Actually I kind of do, he looks good I just don't like it.

Ooh Esposito's outfit too. All his layers. Very bisexual of him.

RC, in a voice: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of Castle and Beckett. (Beckett smiles at his antics.) Their ongoing mission: to explore strange new motives, to seek out new witnesses and new suspects for murder, to boldly go – oh, right over here.

Lol easy code. They probably change it frequently tho.

Oh! It's another space thing! corporate espoinage! Have we met him before?

It's like that time some author got investigated by the military. He saw the public floor plan for a boat but the rest of the floor plan was confidential. He then thought about it for a while & figured out the most efficient floorplan for a boat like that. The military said "how did you know our floor plan?" & he said "this is the best way to build a boat, of course you would make it like this". These things have the same end goal & so since they are both going for the best path to achieve that goal, they end up with the same (or similar) technology.

Interesting reaction.

That feels like it should not be the best way to decide who goes on your mission... But he was the first choice before he got emotional! But he did get emotional... SOMEONE was stupid enough to leave the murder weapon

SOMEONE ELSE ON THE INSIDE WAS IN ON IT Mikhail? No my beloved!

Oh no he's going to bust open esposito's helmet to the noxious gas OH & I REALIZED, THEN RYAN IS GOING TO HAVE TO GO IN & SAVE HIM & ofc they'll end it with witty quips about how ryan now wants to go to mars.

This is an awesome fight/chase scene JE: Come on, Mikhail. Are you crazy? Bro! Where’re you going to run? You’re on Mars! (I could clip that but I won't)

That's not the usual door they enter through... He was leaving &... never coming back??? wait what?

Oh they're def sad he's dead, even if they are guiltily glad in some ways. Oh it WAS a mars trip for the rest of their lives! Dang! Oh no, not sex Ah nvm they are time stamped lmao: So your alibi is that you were spying for Granger.

He edited the clock but not the reflection? THE ROVER WAS IN THE HUB THO

THE COMPUTER KILLED HIM lmao, edited in the rover was holding it? The rover did it? Oh well ig the rover is controlled by mira, so yeah mira killed him lol

data ARE wrong, castle, "data" is a plural word.

I kind of get it but they can't control it manually? That seems dangerous. Things need to have big clunky levers & mechanical parts, not just digital. So the computer did do it OR SOMEONE TOLD IT WHAT TO DO & TOLD IT TO DO IT AT A CERTAIN TIME SO THEY'D HAVE AN ALIBI

they are letting people from the outside in, that's not smth they'll get on mars irl.

The way she talks makes it move its mouth lol. RC: Well, at least she’s not asking for a lawyer.

That "how do you know" was WAY too human the fourth rule of robotics is you gotta make its eyes go red when it turns evil. She needs captions on her face in addition to the audio imo. How do you know they are optimal w/o running diagnostics?

WHAT? WHAT IS COMPROMISING THE MISSION MIRA? Castle, she can hear you. But why isn't she denying him tho? Protect everyone on it? She is protecting someone from leaving. ANGELA DIDN'T FALL IN LOVE WITH TOM, SHE DIDN'T FALL IN LOVE WITH A FEMALE ASTRONAUT, SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH MIRA Mira: Pilot, specialist... deceased idk why I found that so funny

Everything she's learned will be wiped? then she won't have the-- oh nvm you claim her memory will still be intact. But what if she's glitching out one day? What if you need to turn her off & on again? In that case she SHOULD keep her learned stuff. Unless this is a full reboot... idk bro I'm not a tech geek.

Ok she would TOTALLY just lock down the keyboard if it is a touchscreen keyboard. You would need a real keyboard, smth nice & clunky.

Where r your hats? HOW long term? You should be fine for a few hours. It shouldn't be THAT deadly, esp if your astronauts are there. Maybe long-term exposure would harm them by like, causing issues down the line but not rn. Like asbestos or lead in your bones.

Yeah YOU shut off communications. Nausea & a rash, not coughing like that... & like, would it really be that short of a time to take effect? idk. If it is that fast to take effect & it is that deadly, then it really should not be classified as "it won't kill you" babes. Then again, the spy had to wear stuff like that, he was probably not up there for long. I was under the assumption that it would be painful & nauseating & annoying (even if you only come into contact with it once) but it wouldn't kill you, even if you're in the atmosphere for hours, for days even. Maybe you would get a rash in your lungs & die like that. I just think it's kind of unrealistic to say it's non-lethal & then switch to it's lethal. Give them a bit more time. Define long-term. Say maybe "it is harmful but not deadly, at least in the short term, but if we're exposed continually for more than maybe ten hours it could lead to severe damage, & if we're too nauseous to get up & get help we could be exposed for more than 24 hours, which could potentially cause (harm that leads to) death."

lmao I love how they were so caught up thinking they were on mars that they forgot they had cell phones XD XD XD Oh no she fainted. Oh wait nvm we don't get an intense rescue. We had ice (dirty bomb episode), we had fire (arson episode for rysposito), we had air (mars episode), we had water (linchpin/pandora cia episode), now we just need earth.

This is how! The other astronaut got taken out, that's why they have the three suits for castle beckett & Jansen, & then they still had another one for esposito!

The mission data too? that's expensive af

I love how castle has his mask on properly while beckett is the one who doesn't have it on at all & jansen it holding it to his face but taking it off to talk

One of them? Which one tho? Tom himself?

ALL OF THEM?

KB: [nods] Killing two birds with one stone. Tom, (who everybody hated), and Mikhail, who was selling secrets. She just said that XD Wow all the pilots kinda suck huh. This one everybody hated, the other one tried to run him over...

Didn't someone accuse haroum of smth before?

The two of them? Well yeah, that's how you get someone to break Or all three like I said before!

"You have no proof" is such a weird line. It's like saying "Yes I did it but you can't prove it" girl say "I am of the belief that you are mistaken; you have a lack of proof & therefore cannot sway my belief." or smth like that. "I didn't kill him, you don't even have proof to show me why you think that is the case." Interesting theory, but I believe it to be untrue, especially when you have no evidence to validate your theory. "I didn't kill them, where are you getting that idea? You don't have any evidence implying it is me so why are you saying that?"

Prisoner's dilemma. Captain, say "all three of us will turn around, write our statements, & hand them in at the same time." Or beckett is just saying that, lying the way cops do, to make them confess.

That's the moon probably, not mars... right? I see mars often, when I look up at the night sky. I have dates written in my agenda.

OH IT WAS A RUSE AHAHA. but lol cops & their lies. Castle really is becoming a cop. btw what sculpture did castle get from maya or whoever the girl in the s3 premier was?

KB: I think that when people are stuck together in a small space for a long period of time they lose perspective. Me: quarantine hhhhh also like when vacation space travel is a thing I'm going to be so excited. There are totally going to be seasonal jobs there where you can live on mars & be a hotel room cleaner for three months, then spend two days travelling back home after that bc space travel will be that fast.

NO--..

I'VE SEEN GIFS OF THIS OR SMTH

THIS IS WHEN MARTHA SAYS SHE IS MOVING OUT, ISN'T IT?

& ALEXIS DID MOVE OUT, AT LEAST TEMPORARILY,,,

frenetic, good word yes the odd hours lol sdjhfksjdfjdhgkjh marthaaaaaaa & I love her jewelry BABIES Martha martha martha I love her! so maybe the psychic was wrong, the beautiful woman who came to live in his loft & stay with him forever did NOT stay forever... then again, becks is there. Remember when martha half moved in with Chet? Yeah.

*quiet* Me: awkward *quiet* Me: OH WAIT SEXY TIME

indian restaurant? def loud lol

[thatforgottenbasilisk]

peel away the layers 'til you're nothing and no one

Words: 3880 (AO3)

Originally Posted on 12/14/2022

Summary:

Statement of Shimura Nana, regarding the beginning of her career as an Archivist. Original Statement given 9th December, 2XXX. Audio recording by Yagi Toshinori, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, Tokyo branch. Statement begins.

The tape recorder is clicked on.

- I found this in a locked drawer in the bottom of a desk that was meant to be thrown away. Given that Nana did actually record some tapes, and that this was only ever on paper... I don't think she wanted this found.

- It's too late for that. For what it's worth, I am sorry for this, it's just... I have to know.

Statement of Shimura Nana, the previous Head Archivist, regarding the beginning of her career as an Archivist. Original Statement given 9th December, 2XXX. Audio recording by Yagi Toshinori, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, Tokyo branch. Statement begins.

I shouldn't be here.

I should've never listened to En talking about this damned job offer, should've never walked in this building, should've never accepted the position in Research, should've passed up the stupid promotion. I should have run when I had the chance, before I was caught here, pinned like a butterfly to a board, stuck like a cell between plastic squares under a goddamned microscope.

But I didn't. And I'm here. So... may as well go all in.

I'm going to be saying quite a bit in this that most people in the higher-up positions probably wouldn't want you to know, "you" being whoever's reading this. The next Archivist, probably; I hope, for your sake, that you know what you're getting into with this, but who am I kidding? You probably don't know anything more than I did when I was in your shoes.

That's alright. You'll learn, because you weren't picked for this job because of any kind of "weak constitution." Maybe you're a skinny little nerd, for all I know, but if you're here, if you're alive and you're sitting in this office, you've got a hell of a lot more fight in you than your appearance might let on. Maybe even more fight than you know. You might end up thinking I'm crazy, you might get even more paranoid than you are already- and yeah, you're paranoid, at least a little bit, because you don't study fear without it rubbing off on you a bit- but whatever you take from this, just know:

You will survive this. No Archivist ever died from their first encounter with the supernatural, I can promise you that. Maybe your third or fourth, maybe in five years, maybe in fifty- you'll get past the very beginning, though. Your first is what you will survive. The beginning.

I'm going to prepare you for what comes after that, to the best of my abilities.

I can't go into too much detail, though. That's the antithesis of this. I could leave you a note or record you a tape, technically speaking, and I could run through everything, go over every detail of what you need to know, in the clinical and detached tones of some anthropologist or taxonomist, but that wouldn't work.

I know it doesn't work, because I already tried. Three full notebooks. Five complete tapes. All gone the minute I left them for future reference. Gone from my desk drawers, from my shelves, from the fully sealed boxes I put them in for good measure.

A Statement, though. That, I know for a fact, will not disappear. That would mean losing knowledge, losing an entry in the Archive.

To make a Statement, there must first be a story. A real one, not some metaphor or made up little fairy tale made for the specific purpose of illustrating a concept. That would be too easy.

So... here's mine. Don't judge me too harshly once you've got hindsight on your side, alright?

I never had stage fright when I was younger. I heard about it, knew that some people got nervous when people were looking at them, paying attention to them, but I never applied that to myself. I never trembled at the feeling of being watched, though I knew that it was what creeped out many of my peers more than anything else- at least, that's what they swore up and down when the conversation meandered to that point.

I didn't get it, personally. People will look or they won't, what did their judgement matter to me? Sure, I'd felt embarrassment before, but I'd also been able to brush it off or turn it into a joke that I could laugh at, too. It had never been a big deal.

Maybe I was a paragon of self-confidence, maybe I was just ballsy, I don't know, but the point is I never understood why being known was such a bad thing.

Not until I met him.

The man who knows everything. He knows everything about me and everything about you, yet he's always searching for more.

When I met him, I got the sense I was being Seen, inside and out, every tiny piece of me weighed against an invisible metric, and I... I was judged and found lacking. It didn't even take a minute for it to happen, but when that chill ran down my spine from that judgement from his empty, empty eyes... he drank it in. It was almost tangible, how much he enjoyed watching me squirm, like I was a particularly interesting insect.

That's all he wants. To watch people shudder in fear. He wants that fear, he's ravenous for it, desperate for more, more, more.

That's why he built this place. That's not his name above the door, of course, that's some man in England who's two hundred years dead by now, but the only reason the man who knows everything isn't in a grave just as withered is because... I don't know, honestly. I suspect that the fear sustains him, much more than food and oxygen and all that sustains us, like a- like a psychic vampire or something.

God, that sounds so fucking stupid. That's the reality of it, though. He drains fear from everyone who has some of it to spare, whether or not they want to give it.

I met him back when I was a cop. Don't judge me for that, I used to believe in clean-cut justice before reality proved itself more messy than that, but the point is that that's the context I met him in.

He wasn't someone we just pulled in off the streets, you understand. I'm not repeating the story of some creepy homeless schizophrenic, or something, he was someone that the whole force both desperately wanted to catch, and yet dreaded even being in his presence. He was- is, I should say, because as far as I know, that's what he's still doing to this day- the kingpin behind all organized crime in Japan. All of it. Everybody bows to his leadership, because if you don't, you're dead. No trial, no negotiations, just there one day and a corpse the next.

He calls himself "Sensei," and there was no one who could cough up a name to contradict it in the time I was there.

Maybe someone knows his name by now, though. Either that, or he's more selfish than I thought.

I met him multiple times over the course of my police career. Every time, he somehow managed to unnerve me more, seeming like he was turning it into a game to mess with us cops, me most of all. I know why he didn't like me, in hindsight; I had a best friend at the time that was apparently clinging to his humanity by a thread, not that I knew back then.

The first time I met Sensei, I was just some rookie cop; didn't even have a partner yet. I still had about a year to go before I met that best friend. I already said that his gaze flayed me alive, and that's about the extent of that first interaction, where he stared at me and I was unnerved by the thought of being Seen for the first time in my life.

It wasn't until the second time that I saw him that things got interesting. More interesting than just staring, anyway, though he did that a lot, still. He looked me right in the eye and didn't even hesitate to identify me by name. He didn't even take a second to think, when I had only ever met him once, two years prior, without even a word exchanged between us.

He identified me near-instantly, but it took even less time to disregard me completely. Instead, he focused on my new partner, Torino Sorahiko. Sorahiko would go on to become my best friend, my brother in all but blood, but at that point I barely knew him.

I don't know what he saw in Sorahiko that seemed to captivate him so much, but whatever it was, nobody else seemed to have it. None of the other police, none of the criminals he had working under him. Nobody but Sorahiko.

Sorahiko didn't seem nearly as affected by Sensei's presence as anyone else. He seemed to disregard him, almost, as just another big crime boss that needed to be taken down; no special considerations or anything about just how damn creepy he was. Maybe that's what Sensei found interesting? I don't know. What I do know is that Sensei could talk to Sorahiko and have some sort of back-and-forth that he couldn't get from anyone else, not even me at first. Everyone was just too afraid of him to try and match wits, if there was ever a time that he would try.

There wasn't anything special about their conversations, though. They sounded exactly like any other interrogation, or on-the-field encounter, or whatever other situation they happened to come across each other in; the only interesting thing was how Sensei seemed to revel in it, losing that eerie calm demeanor he kept on at all other times.

It was shockingly human of him.

Time wore on, and we never were able to keep Sensei arrested for long. There were no official records when we tried to book him, and, well... no one even knew his name, and he wasn't exactly volunteering information. I grew closer to Sorahiko, officially got Sectioned with him, and picked up quite a few stories along the way.

The thing is that being in the force, it... it changes you. Usually for the worse. You sort of... you shut down, almost. It's not that you're having a meltdown or something all the time, it's just that you start to distance yourself from things, more than the average person probably should. I did it, to an extent; Sorahiko even more so.

He started pulling away from everyone. He'd never had a real close family to begin with, and he wasn't the most popular in our precinct. Nobody ever really considered him a friend, other than me. Maybe it's because we had only ever partnered with each other, and he didn't make much of an effort to reach out? That's probably it, to be honest.

He also picked up a smoking habit. He swore he'd never touched a cigarette, but sometimes I caught him breathing out lungfuls of pure white smoke, and it wasn't exactly hard to put the pieces together. He must not have been doing it all that much, because I never smelled it on him, so I wasn't going to make a big deal of it, lest he start doing it more.

I didn't get concerned about that until he started shivering everywhere. It was slow, almost enough that I didn't notice, but he became one of those people that's cold all the time. He started wearing his jacket even in summer, when it was nearly unbearable to be wearing anything heavier than a tank top, and yet there he was, cool as a cucumber in an average autumn outfit. His skin was always like ice whenever we had physical contact- I started thinking that he must have been anemic, or some other health hazard that comes with smoking, but he kept insisting that nothing was wrong.

While this was happening, we kept coming in contact with Sensei, more and more. He would only talk to Sorahiko, and by that point, they had established a rapport that went far beyond the "job," for either of them. Sora... he started pulling away from me, and towards Sensei. I don't know why.

That... might have been a lie. I suspect that he was bothered by me and my concern for what he kept brushing off, what he was clearly hiding, what he seemed to be lying about- and while Sensei made it clear that he knew about it, he expressed a perverse sort of excitement about it.

He quit one day without warning. Sorahiko, I mean. There one day, gone the next. Nobody even- no one told me until I asked, like the whole department had just forgotten about him.

I'm not proud of what I did next. I tried to track him down, first to the car shows he used to talk about, then bars he used to hang out in, then finally to his apartment.

He wasn't there. He wasn't anywhere. I didn't- when I opened his front door, everything was packed up in boxes, and when I went further inside, I found a stranger in there- she had just moved in, she'd said. The apartment had been up for sale, and it came fully furnished, she'd said. Apparently the landlord told her that the previous tenant had just up and left without a word, so when the lease ran out, he put it up for sale, furniture and all.

She'd also been told that he'd been a recluse. She didn't expect anyone to come knocking, so she hadn't yet changed the locks.

I left. Wandered aimlessly for a bit, then put everything into my job. If I was solving more cases, doing more, then the chief wouldn't care as much if I was using police resources to track down someone who wasn't technically missing, right?

I followed every lead that I could. Started hacking security cameras, motion detectors, microphones, all hoping for the tiniest hint of where he could have gone, where he might have been heading, why he had left without so much as a word.

I didn't eat. Didn't sleep. Just poked through more footage, pulled more interviews, trying to find something; and then I had the brilliant idea that Sensei had been behind it all.

I don't remember where it came from, if it was influenced by anything I'd seen or if it was... divine intervention. I'm inclined to believe that it was something towards the latter.

It wasn't exactly difficult to find Sensei. Just follow the drug rings, the leads picked up by the human trafficking parts of the force, and all of a sudden I was at his doorstep.

I found him in an old warehouse, actually. It was abandoned long before then, but there was still trash all around, as well as pipes and wires that used to be hooked up throughout the building. He'd been using it as a base to store drugs, I don't even remember what kind, but he was moving them out of there when I found him.

He was alone when I came in. I thought it was a stroke of luck finally heading my way, but now I know that it really wasn't.

I went into that warehouse and screamed at him. Insulted him, demanded he tell me what the hell he did with Sorahiko. I didn't care how fucking creepy he was, I didn't care how easily he could have killed me, then or down the line, I didn't care. I just wanted my best friend back.

He didn't shoot me immediately, instead he just... walked up to me and put his hands on my shoulders. I thought that it was supposed to be demeaning, at first; now, looking back, I think I've realized how pathetic I must have looked. I was shaking like a small animal, with eyebags darker than the walls around us, I... I don't think he ever actively disliked me, either. At least, he knew that Sorahiko cared for me, so he at least gave me that tiny modicum of- not "respect," but something close to it.

That action did, ironically, steady me enough to bite out my question. I asked where Sorahiko was, because of course Sensei would know, of course Sensei would've had something to do with it. He didn't ignore it, like I honestly thought he would; instead, he tilted his head somewhat, and responded,

"Now that is interesting. I thought you would end up going Hunt when we met, or else Slaughter, but I never believed that you would go for Beholding."

He backed away and just smirked at me, while I demanded answers on what the hell he was talking about. With every question he seemed more and more smug, like he'd won a game that neither of us knew we had been playing.

Eventually, he told me, "Your power is weak now, but there is potential, I'll give you that. I think you'll find that if you asked anyone else any of your questions, they would respond honestly, involuntarily; but if you want anything of me, you'll need to do a little more than that. As for Sorahiko's whereabouts, let's just say he doesn't want to be around anyone for the moment, hm?"

I lost it. I just lost it on him. I'm not even entirely sure how it happened, just one moment he was talking, and the next I was on top of him, bashing his face in over and over again. I was going to kill him.

I nearly did, too, because on the floor next to me was a piece of pipe that must have once been connected to the main plumbing system of the place. It was made of metal, I knew it before I even touched it, and nearly without thinking I reached out and grabbed it. I raised it over my head with both hands, and was about to swing down on his head when I was stopped by something else.

It felt like somebody was grabbing the pipe from behind, and so I looked back to see him. Sorahiko. Gripping my makeshift weapon, staring at me almost expressionlessly, surrounded by that same strange white fog that he always tried to hide.

"Don't."

Just that one word, and I let go of the pipe. He tossed it to the side, where it clattered loudly against the ground. I stared up at him in disbelief, as though at any second, he would vanish all over again.

"Wh- why did you just- " It wasn't until I started stuttering that I realized I was crying, and even then I had no idea how long. I didn't know why he'd appeared, why he'd left, how he'd managed to sneak in without being detected by either me or Sensei.

Sorahiko pulled me upright, leaving Sensei on the ground for the time being. He'd end up being alright, anyway, and Sora even told me so a little later.

He pulled me close, hugged me tightly, and I started sobbing in earnest. I probably got blood and snot all over his jacket, but I don't think he cared. He told me that he'd left because he had to, which wasn't really an answer at all, but it was better than anything else I'd gotten.

He didn't really explain what "Beholding" meant, or what it meant that he'd become "one with the Lonely," but I figured it out soon enough after, once I got this job. Sora's actually the one who told me that Sensei had founded this place, though only after I'd gotten employed here; Sensei had apparently decided that he would be better off associating it with the Magnus Institute in England in order to keep his own name out of it. Apparently, he'd always been a bit afraid of his own patron, so that decision was sound, I suppose.

I see Sorahiko sometimes. He visits me on occasion, though he maintains that Sensei still holds a grudge. He never comes here, says there are too many prying eyes, which I understand. I'm not sure how he still tolerates me, now that I am what I am, but maybe he's just used to me.

So. That's my Statement, that's how I got here. I guess I didn't end up explaining a whole lot, did I? Just that Sorahiko started out human, then ended up getting power from things that aren't exactly known by the wider populace.

You'll get those powers, too. You're an Archivist, after all. You'll end up with something closer to what I got than what Sorahiko did, so at least you've got more context on yourself, right?

Ah, hell. I guess I'll be trying to leave a few more of those notebooks and tapes around, because this really wasn't the explanation that I wanted it to be.

Statement ends.

- This... was less enlightening than I'd hoped it would be. I'm glad that she did mean for this to be read, at least, because I'd feel very bad if this was supposed to remain private.

- There are a few things that warrant some elaboration here. That "En" that was mentioned early on was the previous Archivist before Nana, and before him was Banjo Daigoro, and before him was Shinomori Hikage, and then it's all blank. All I know is that there were three Archivists before Shinomori, the first of which being rumored to have been the brother of the first Head of this branch of the Institute. There's very little information on the other Archivists available, and even what I know about Nana was because I'd known her personally.

- What's interesting is that there's no record of a Torino Sorahiko ever having been associated with the police, in any district. In fact, there's no record that anyone of that name ever existed at all, in Japan or otherwise. Maybe Nana used a fake name for him in this Statement, or maybe something else is going on; either way, I'll need to investigate further on him, maybe try and figure out a way to talk to him, in addition to this "Sensei."

- About the... about the powers. I don't believe that I've gotten anything like she's described, just knowing things out of thin air or being able to get anyone to answer my questions involuntarily, but I also haven't been at this post for very long. I... I don't think she's lying about it, though, even though in all the time I knew her, she never asked me a question I felt I had to answer. I'm sure that she did ask questions, though, because who doesn't?

- Either way, I'm going to be doing more research on this in my own time. This tape, and this Statement, will not be made available to Research, or anyone else, for that matter. It is imperative that this does not leave my office, for fear of... I don't know. I don't know what would happen if this were to get out of here, but I suspect that it would be very, very bad.

- End recording.

The tape recorder is clicked off.

[dailyaudiobiblechronological]

9/1/2023 DAB Chronological Transcription

Ezekiel 18-19

Welcome to Daily Audio Bible Chronological, I'm China. Today is the first day of September. Welcome. What a joy to be here with you today as we jump into the month of September. Welcome. Here we are. And, you know, September's...it's a fun month. We got a couple birthdays in our family this month. But it's also one of the trickiest, weathering months you would think. It starts to get, you know, a little bit more cool. I'm not technically sure wouldn't fall as I think we got another month or two maybe, I'm not sure, don't know, don't quote me on that. But actually I feel like September is Tennessee's honest month and so we have those tricky days where it's like- it's 93, tomorrow it may be 72.The three days after that may be pushing 100 and if that doesn't say welcome to the South, I'd I don't know what does. But here we are excited about this month and this is actually our last month in the Old Testament together. In October, we will peak in the New Testament after nine long months of reading the Old Testament. Then we will finish off the year in the New Testament. So we are continuing in the book of Ezekiel today with chapters 18 through 19. We are in the English Standard version for this week.

Commentary:

So today the Lord is giving word that he is a God of righteousness, that he himself is what righteousness is defined by. And saying listen, when you live a life of righteousness, there will be an honoring and a blessing in that. And when you are living a life of righteousness and then you turn away from that there's consequences of that and basically he's addressing this situation that people are wanting to live as if their actions don't have consequences, as if the actions of their lives, of their ancestors, shouldn't have consequences, and when they do have consequences, all of a sudden God is not just in reality. We looked back all the way back to the beginning of this year, and every story that we have read, we see the hand of God. We see him declaring what he is going to do, whether it is destruction, or threats of destruction. We see that the Lord's hand and his heart is always for redemption and for restoration and that he is waiting to show grace and mercy to us. And yet the story goes we are people who...we'll choose anything but him. And so then there is a Lamentation, or the Princess of Israel and really, I think Lamentation is beautiful because I feel like I'm in a lot of- the culture of like the Capital C Church is...everything is awesome. And that like prosperity gospel and you know, kind of drifting away from the core of Christianity, the core of what we believe and why we believe it, which is that Jesus came, He lived a perfect life. He died on the cross for us, took our place, and so that we could have a way reconciled back to the Father and in that kind of like an action step for us is to have repentance, confessing of sins, to turn away from and to turn back to the Lord and to seek Him with our whole heart. And so we see the people in the Old Testament kind of having like half hearted, um, repentance moments and then turning right back to their ways and now that we're on the other side of the story, you know we we live on the other side where we have the knowledge of Jesus. We have received that salvation and we can read these stories and be remembered and be reminded. I'm going to not choose this vicious cycle of being in and being out, but I'm going to choose the...I'm going to choose today and who I'm going to serve, and it's going to be the Lord. And tomorrow I'm going to choose the Lord. And in any of the moments that I am living in, and the hard ones, the ones where I prayed for this, it didn't come to pass, or it didn't happen the way that I thought it would, or I'm believing, I'm thinking maybe the Lord is unjust. I'm thinking he's being unfair, but actually stepping into the sweet reality that he is a God of justice and he is a God of love and he is a sovereign king. 

Prayer:

And so, Father, I thank you for your hand. I thank you for your word. I pray that we would be a people who care to know your word and care to learn about you and read about you and understand more of your heart through Your word. And so God, I pray that we would be a people of integrity, people of righteousness. We would seek first your Kingdom. And everything else will be added to this. And, Lord, I thank you for your word. And I thank you, God, that we have it to guide and direct our steps. And I pray that it would do just that. And so, Father, I thank you for your nearness. I thank you for your presence, and it's in your name we pray. Amen.

Announcements:

Dailyaudiobible.com is our website. That's the place of connection where you can see what is happening here in the community, so be sure to check that out. If you'd like to get further connected, you can go to facebook.com/daily Audio Bible Chronological. It is a mouthful, but it is a great place for you to, you know, get connected, stay connected and to put a face with some of the names of the people that you have been praying for or that have been praying for you. That's a great place of connection. But that is all for today. I'm China. I love you, and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Line:

This is Unashamed of the Gospel in Pennsylvania. I was calling in response to Faith filled Mama's prayer request for her son Moses. I just wanted to let her know that I will be praying for her and for Moses, I myself have an adopted son who deals with attachment disorder and today is Daniel's first day of school. So I'm praying for Daniel as well as Moses. So Lord just be with faith filled Mama give her peace and grace as she deals with their son Moses. Give Moses peace and comfort as he deals with a father who is away. And we just pray that you would give this, give this family a sense of your your whole experience throughout the the whole family. But they might they might know peace even as the father goes away. Let me just ask this in Jesus name, Amen.

Hi family and good morning. I'm from Leicester in the UK. Glad to be calling back in today's the 28th of August. I've actually just finished this into yesterday's reading from China so it was the 27th. We went through a sequel which was really great thing in China just went to. What about the polls that came in from yet then as well. First of all faith filled Mama, thank you for calling in and sharing about the report. I've not heard about it before. I was glad to hear good news regarding the successful quadruple bypass healing process for your friend Angela. And definitely also keeping in prayer, Moses, your son and and and and and everything you mentioned and trust in God. White space for the provision for all you and your husband need and and helping deal with and handle and be strong and being wise and able and capable in this situation to help guidance still build him up and supply more he needs and to be able to manage as well. And definitely pray and trust God for the knowledge and encounter with Jesus Christ that would happen...Thank you as well for reminding about the situation that's recording previously as well of the lady about her son-in-law. 

Unfortunately, I had an accident. And they definitely have brain. And you commit by the grace of God for every supplier of your supply of grace and provision for them in the household that his wife and her her, her daughter. As I believe for physically, mentally, emotionally, every supply they need and just every resource and hope and rest embrace the Amen.

For brother Aaron for Houston as well thank you very much. Just really wanted to call and I should say acknowledge your your core and definitely let you know that regarding your cousin Kevin and his friend definitely I put them into prayer I'm joining praying with you regarding that and I do believe in strongly confident in God's provision and that he does indeed you know what to do and that prefer just to hope and help and strength and provision all they need. Likewise a man. Likewise. Thank you Lady came from Kentucky for sharing your thoughts on the world.

Good morning, Daily Audio Bible Chronological. This is the Green Thumb from Nebraska. This morning I'm asking for prayer for myself. I have been a bus driver, route and activity for 11 years. That's what I did after my kids all went to school so that I could be on their schedule. I am obviously, as my name says, I do Gardening Landscaping also in addition to that in the summers. So we have new administration at the school and they basically umm put up a actual job for a director of transportation which is pretty much the job that I have been doing at the school in addition to routes and stuff, but I just did never have an official job title. So they put it out there with umm....so that they could take other applicants. Today we get the results of those. It's August 31st. And I don't know what I'll do if I basically get demoted. I do have another job on the side that I can probably go full time but, just very anxious about it. And I'm typically not an anxious person at all, so if you guys could just pray for me. His will it'll be done by the time you hear this, but I hope I can call back with a praise report. Thank you all. Goodnight.

Hey y'all, hey, it's Simone from Texas calling to give a quick testimony. I have three kids. My youngest is a son and I remember carrying him and feeling like I was hearing God's say, he was going to grow up to be amazing and special. When he was three months old, they started seeing signs of something they weren't sure about and when he was six years old, because they completely missed it. After that, he was diagnosed with autism, with a specific learning disability. I remember going through a deep, deep depression and it was one of the things that kind of triggered me to want to take my life. In addition to many other things, because it was really hard. And so I remember praying I seen God to send me one teacher that was seeing him what I already know and what God has spoken to me about him when I was carrying him. But when I moved to Texas, got sent that one teacher and she rallied around him with me. And she helped me advocate for him. And all of these amazing teachers came on board. And in May he graduated with a regular high school diploma instead of special education. He went from all special education classes to all regular classes in high school. And yesterday I wept as I watched him walk into the building at the Community College. Um, guys, God is so amazing. And I spent four hours on the altar at my church yesterday just thanking God. Not asking for anything, just thanking God for being so good and amazing and wonderful. And I'm praying for all the parents who have children with special needs. It is so difficult. Hard but with God, all things and everything is possible. So I'm asking guys, please keep my son Ethan lifted in prayer...in his first year of college.

[styafiya-blog]

Psychological facts about people's behavior One Side Justice Control

Post

The purpose of the article is to open your eyes to the control of the human race and how easily it can be taken over by understanding people's behavior from the streets to the community. As you know, everything is under concrete control, so let me explain who I am. I am from Jamaica in the West Indies. I came to America about 13 years old and life did not turn out how I planned it like so many people around the world. I worked for twenty years in America and did a lot of trying for about fourteen years up to 2023. I gave up working because of the attacking corruption side of the American system that was still doing sleeping slavery. You just have to be aware on awakening to see dangerous forces tricking the people and sickness traps that have vaporized my human rights. What I did was follow the American old constitution law enforcement that was created to protect the people and analyze people's behavior, that corruption changed the way I looked at the world. I spoke about it in some of my videos online and audio search Dealfigure Entertainment to know my thoughts.

psychological facts about people's behavior, it is under control because I see little children and adults alike picking fights, using disrespectful words, and doing a lot more disgraceful things. What I learned from this is that you shouldn't let other people's behavior affect you.

Stop getting affected by people's behavior, because it will put you into serious problem  try to rap your mind around word of Truth I  watched all population tricks by one side of the troops to killed them all I noticed that they continue to contribute to family and use them against each other how I know that they done that to me if you don't have a observing eyes think before you act you are going to end up in jail because all your friends and family on under the wrong side of the troops laws from what I understand they are the one that used the people to puch one person to do masshooimg on American ground that same corrupted side trick the entertainment business and artists to do landfall sad new is they control the humans population plotting to lead them to their dead international law enforcement used the radios and television to wake them up because they are listening to wrong doing law that only have one gold to bom down the sunlight I am asking myself when they going to wake up maybe when the whole land in under raderation.

All natural nations that create music and do entertainment don't realize that the wrong doing law fooling them and trying to kill me at the same time government sends special forces to stop and disrupt people's behavior is a result of my past karma. I pinpoint that because if I did not contact higher law enforcement, the wrong doing law would kill the whole human population.

[gaykarstaagforever]

My YouTube Rewind Top 10 for 2022, based generally on time "viewed" (Starting 7 months ago, I drive for a living now, so "Can I just listen to it?" is weighted very heavily here).

(Also I am 40 so this is a very Dad Content list. Which is weird because I am not a dad and do not follow the sportsball. But Dadness still infiltrated things a bit. There are no golf or sportstalk channels, don't worry. Not yet, anyway.)

1. The Weekly Planet -- Generalist nerd media podcast out of Melbourne, Australia. Hands down the only good podcast on the entire Internet. Their Best Of compilations from years past are required listening and relistening. Also they do a short weekly show about movies and TV shows called Caravan of Garbage that is the bar by which all others are judged, and always come up short.

2. DankPods -- Sydney, Australian, retro mp3 player channel that has now expanded into general audio hardware reviews. But oh, so much more is going on here. This guy is one of the funniest, most energetic creators on the platform. Even if you don't care about anything he is interested in, you will love watching him talk (and scream) about it. Co-starring Frank the Snake. He also has two side channels about fixing up trashed Australian cars and drumming (he is a drummer by trade) that are just as good.

3. That Chapter -- True crime with a sense of humor, that is only occasionally mean-spirited. But even in those cases it is usually in the service of bad Dad Jokes so that's okay. He always tries to include actual 911 calls and trial footage, 20+ minutes, here is what happened, in a straightforward way that respects your intelligence. None of that "creating a narrative" horseshit that make true crime podcasts by actual journalists un-fucking-bearable 10 hour slogs that pretend they are saying something profound about the universe by the end. They're not. Stop paying 8 people to produce these; maybe then you wouldn't have to shill for whatever criminally-overpriced nonsense Peloton just invented. True crime podcasts suck, That Chapter is why.

4. Morbid Midnight -- He covers what I can only call "disasters," some true crime, others extreme sports accidents, also plenty of generally horrendous historical events. Lots of stories about people being blown off of mountain sides or getting trapped in caves. His subdued delivery of dark content is like what Chills pulled off, back before it became a meme and a parody of itself. I don't know why I like hearing about adventurous people dying horribly. Probably because I can then feel smug about how I wasn't so stupid as to dive into a cave like a big stupid idiot, you idiots. You shouldn't have been doing that. You should just get drunk and watch YouTube like me. See? They're the losers, not me.

5. Professor of Rock -- Oh god, the Dad. This is a daily upload channel in which Adam Reader, the Professor of Rock, talks about Dad Rock, and how great Dad Rock is, and how modern not-Dad Rock sucks. Tons of classic rock trivia, and also snippets of long-form interviews with the artists who made this stuff. This is the channel you are forced to admit is good and you like while simultaneously being embarrassed about how old that makes you look. But that's not Adam's fault. Seriously, a good channel for music nerds.

6. Cathode Ray Dude [CRD] -- He started doing short-form videos about the old camcorders he collected. He now does long videos about fascinating and obscure cul de sacs in tech history, routinely with live demonstrations of said tech. And yes, he almost always ends up explaining how this wonky failed media format can actually be a metaphor for our sad, short little lives. Which would be forced journo bullshit. Except it always ends up forcing me to respect the legions of unsung engineers and desperate marketing executives who had a hand in creating our modern technocratic world, even if only by failing spectacularly. These goofy creations really are artifacts of entire little worlds, many of them long-dead and forgotten. It is as sad and funny as it is fascinating.

7. Snipe and Wib -- A Warhammer 40,000 channel, but HOLD ON, this is one of the good ones! They do a show called Codex Compliant that goes through the published history of Warhammer lore from Rogue Trader in the mid-1980s to now. They love 'grimdark' and Space Marines as much as they understand that all of it was created as a cheeky English parody of melodramatic, misogynistic total-war fantasy worlds. I always thought Warhammer 40K was a boring expensive thing for the grossest WASP nerd boys before I watched Snipe and Wib. Now I know that Warhammer 40K is a boring expensive thing for EVERYONE. I'm not buying and painting miniatures or arguing over protractors yet, but I kind of want to because of Snipe and Wib. I at least get it now. It is a lot to manage, but a lot of it is pretty cool.

8. Imbrandonfarris -- Like I have to explain who Brandon Farris is. He is a charismatic guy who hurts himself and destroys his own apartment to entertain the world's children. And he doesn't say swears so they're allowed to watch it. And BOY, do they watch it! This is content for 8 year olds. But goddamn it if it isn't really, really GOOD content for 8 year olds, the kind the rest of the family can enjoy, too. Brandon is charming as hell, his story is heartwarming, his family is adorable, and you don't even resent him for recently buying a palatial estate in which he can spray foam on everything. This is a guy who exists to do the stupid shit the rest of us wish we could do, and he kills himself doing it, and the world has rightly responded by rewarding him for it. Good on you, Brandon. Also it is just really funny to watch a man destroy a bedroom with an exploding pumpkin filled with glitter and then fall down.

9. Warlockracy -- Russian-based gaming channel that mostly posts long-form analyses of PC RPGs, especially those in the isometric family of the original Fallout games. These games maintain a huge cultural influence on gamers in Russia and Eastern Europe, and being one of those, Warlockracy uses his platform to give the rest of us an insider's perspective of that world. Seriously, if you want to understand modern Russia, and even the war in Ukraine, Warlockracy casually explains complex aspects of both of these, via the easily-grasped context of games like STALKER and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. I believe he is still in Russia, so I don't know how he pulls off this kind of commentary at this point and hasn't gotten in trouble yet. But he keeps doing it, and with an easy sense of humor that I cannot comprehend, having to live under those circumstances. I wish him the best, and hope to enjoy his content as long as it lasts.

10. Thew Adams -- Thew reviews Transformers. But that...that doesn't begin to cover it. Threw Adams is a ray of sunshine on YouTube, and everyone needs to watch his videos. Don't care about Transformers? Doesn't matter. Seriously. It DOESN'T MATTER. You will like Threw. You will never see a more delightful person. And no matter your gender or sexuality, if you don't want to kinda kiss him on the mouth, you're not human. Thew makes everything fun, especially when he doesn't like something. Thew Adams is the bit of chocolate you let yourself have every day because no, you don't NEED IT, but it makes you happy, goddammit. Watch Thew. Thew is good.

Honorable Mentions (in that, these are consistently good channels I have liked for years, even if their specific content every year might not be perpetually notable):

Jenny Nicholson

Ashens

LGR

Techmoan

PeanutButterGamer / Peebs

Scott the Woz

Your Dinosaurs are Wrong

Secret Galaxy (formerly Toy Galaxy)

Drew Gooden

Pyrocynical

[a9saga]

digital textbooks which do not include an audio book, or at the very least, a screen reader that will read double columns in the correct order, are crap and should be a thing of the past.

[harryhoney-bee]

My muse

Summary: Harry is in a fake relationship with another singer. After the show, reader and H get into a fight because of it.

Ps.: Angst with Fluff ending. Don't worry, there is a lot of comfort<3

Word count: 3.3k

Y/n knew they were nothing but friends. She knew the other girl was just as uninterested as Harry was in this whole fake relationship, but they had signed up a contract that Jeff swore would give them great results when it comes to the public since Harry and Sadie were already successful singers.

The worst part, in Y/n's opinion, was that the whole plan was working. The fans loved it.

Maybe she was being a little selfish to have so many negative feelings towards something so successful, but she couldn't help but feel jealous while looking at pap pictures of the 'new celebrity couple' walking side by side during song premieres while she couldn't even look at Harry's directions if they were in a public place.

Sadie was a very talented artist, her very first album hit millions of listeners, she already had a very steady fan base and would be touring around Europe and the US in months, that's the reason Jeff wanted them to be together. He made a deal with her management: a clean, dramaless relationship for 6 months. 

They were all over Twitter since day one. The couple was spotted drinking coffee together, walking on the beach, and buying clothes. They were everywhere. If y/n deactivated her accounts on social media they would still be there, just like right now.

It was just another show and Jeff requested for Sadie to be there, so she took a seat in one of the private parts of the pit and enjoyed herself while Harry was performing. 

The girl could be watching Harry while Y/n– his girlfriend – needed to be hidden behind the curtains the whole time. He was debuting some unreleased songs he had written with y/n, words that came out of his mouth when they were having another round of sex in one of their hotel rooms. He was singing metaphorical lyrics about being drowned with love looking directly at someone who he didn't love at all, to someone who shouldn't be there.

Of course, the poor girl had no blame in that, she was always very respectful regarding her and Harry's relationship. They even followed each other on Instagram and had small conversations whenever they were attending some private event. 

But It still hurted y/n to watch Harry interacting with Sadie, being his goofy. It wasn't like the fake couple weren't friends, they were quite close, so almost every action was genuine, Harry wasn’t forced to interact with the girl.

But when y/n saw him blowing a kiss in her direction she decided it was enough. Everything was just overwhelming:  the big signs in front of her, the screaming fans, the loud music, the people on the team asking her over and over if she was okay when she clearly wasn't. It all led her to lock herself inside Harry's dressing room.

She was definitely selfish, maybe even childish, who cares? The only thing y/n knew was the growing feelings on her chest. She was scared of Jeff saying that Harry needed to get rid of her, fearing Harry actually falling in love with the woman sitting in the pit (who was also dating, even though her fans didn't know that yet).

Y/n sat down on the white leather couch, tears falling down with every deep breath of her lungs. She was trying to think of all the tips her therapist gave her, but her attention was drawn to the door.

"Y/n? Is everything alright?" Y/n quietly identified the voice as belonging to Andrew, one of the men responsible for the audio and lights. He was very caring to her, almost like a father figure.

She swallowed her tears, trying to make her voice sound normal and calm. "Yeah, of course, everything alright in the concert?" Y/n asked, there was a slight shake tone in her voice. If it was anyone else talking to her, they wouldn't have noticed, but it was Andrew, and he was always attentive. 

He ignored her first question. "Are you sure, sweetheart? It's alright if you need to vent, it's very healthy to talk our feelings out." His croaky voice was very low, she barely could hear him through the door, but he was probably making sure no one else was eavesdropping.

"I just want some time alone, Andrew," she explained, looking at her face in the mirror and noticing the white parts of her eyes were a red tinge, "but thank you so much, you are always very kind to me."

"Are you sure? Do you want me to call someone else?" His shoes were hitting the ground in a pattern, as if he was nervous and stimming, changing the balance of his body from one leg to the other out of nervousness.

"No, please don't bother anyone. I'm just tired and can't wait to go back to the tour bus." Y/n got closer to the door. "I got my period, that's why," she lied. Men normally wouldn't question the well-being of someone who's bleeding out of their body.

"Oh, hm, whatever you say, sweetheart, if you need me I'll be next to the curtains, you know where to find me." Andrew seemed to be hesitant to leave her but the footsteps confirmed y/n that he had indeed left.

Y/n grabbed a glass of water, and drank it slowly, focusing on everything but the thoughts in her head. She had the stupid idea to log in to her Instagram–one she hasn't updated for 5 months– to distract herself, but the universe seemed to be messing with her that day. The first picture to appear on her feed is precisely the same reason why she locked herself in the room. 

Sadie Carter and Harry Styles: click on the link on our bio to know everything about the new lovers.

589.090 likes and 385.654 comments.

Sadie Carter's presence on Styles' show has just been confirmed.

871.290 likes and 762.168 comments.

Will Mrs.Styles and Ms.Carter be the next celebrities to tie the knot? Know about this and more on the Us Entertainment– July edition. 

546.332 likes and 324.967 comments.

The girl closed her Instagram app, reminding herself that was not real, What she and Harry had was real. The necklace on her neck he gave her on her birthday, the nail polish Harry had applied on her fingers this morning was real, the playlist on her Spotify he had made himself was real.

Y/n had a very bad habit whenever she was anxious, and it was scratching and pinching her arms, she never did it to the point of bleeding or bruising, but it still was a very unhealthy mechanism she discovered to cope with her unphysical pain. It helped her understand that she was in the real world, that she was outside of her head, that she had control, even though right now she was at the mercy of her fears.

She was pulled from her thoughts when someone knocked on the door again, this time the person was hectic, y/n quickly found out Harry was on the door. “Love, what happened? Andrew said you weren’t feeling alright, open up, c’mon.” 

He seemed very worried, which made Y/n guilty. She cleaned the skin close to her eyes, getting rid of any tears, taking a few breaths before opening the door, a fake smile on her face. Harry smiled sweetly when he saw her, his hair was all over the place, the red shirt was very sweaty from all the dancing he did.

She was pulled into a hug, he kissed her head, squeezing her against his body. The singer closed the door behind them. “I know you aren’t ok, my love, don’t need to give me fake smiles, talk to me, yeah?”

He looked at her face, stroking her cheek, “I got concerned, I looked at the curtain and you weren’t there, poor Andrew tried to explain that you were back here through signs, but I didn’t understand a thing.”

With a swift movement, Harry sat on the couch, pulling y/n to his side so she was cuddling with him. "Now tell me, why was my beautiful girl crying?"

"It's nothing, H, just want to be with you now," she mumbled on his shoulder, hooking her arms around his belly. "Can we just go to the hotel? I don't wanna stay here anymore."

"Y/n, please, love. Talk to me, don't shut me out like that," he held her chin, placing a sweet kiss on her mouth. "Did a fan say something rude to you?" 

Y/n scented that he was trying to stay gentle with her, even though he was eager to know the truth. They had come a long way since she felt like she could truly open up completely to him about her feelings, but sometimes it was just hard. But he was Harry, he was worth a try.

"I got sad," she said, hiding her face from his view. "I know you guys are only friends but–"

"Hey, who are you talking about? Sadie?" He questioned, distancing his body from hers, he noticed how her lips were trembling and her eyes watering. "My love, how many times will I have to tell you it's only because of the contract?" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "We already had this conversation, didn't we?"

She furrowed her brows at his tone. Was he really getting annoyed by it?

 "Well, the conversation led to nothing if you still don't care about how I feel." Y/n got up from the couch, looking for her bag and belongings. "I wanna leave." 

He mirrored her actions, grabbing her upper arm and pulling her gently to stand in front of him. "I care about your feelings, don't treat this situation as if I'm in the wrong."

"Oh so who's in the wrong? Me? Jeff? Sadie? Pick someone to blame, then." She rolled her eyes, getting off his grip.

He took deep breaths, starting to undress from his concert clothes to his normal ones. "This is my job, Y/n. I talked to you before signing the contract and you said you were ok with it." 

His clothes were already hanging, and Harry was putting on his sweatpants and pink hoodie. "I'm tired of having to deal with the same thing this many times."  His voice was low, but y/n could hear him very well.

"Oh deal with what? With me? Do you think it's easy for me to deal with you being affectionate with another person when you go out? Do you think I enjoy reading the news about you and her all the damn time?" Y/n was sad before, now she was just angry.

His eyes soften at her words, his eyes filling with guilt. "Babe, I didn’t mean that–"

"No, now you're going to listen. You can't come here telling me to open up to you when you treat my feelings like that," he tried to speak again, but she didn't let him, quickly pointing a finger at him, making the man close his mouth. "I know I said I was ok with this whole fake relationship thing, and I'm not asking you to break the agreement off, I'm just sad by it and I hope you would listen to me."

"How would you feel seeing the person you love pretending to date someone else? Would you be pleased by it?" She continued. "I left the show because I was crying, and I wasn't going to tell you about it because I didn't want to upset you, but now you are upsetting me."

"I'm sorry, please let's talk, alright? I'm sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you," Harry said, taking a step in her direction, "please? I know I'm being a jerk, you don't deserve that."

"I wanna go to the hotel." Was the last thing she said before leaving the dressing room, going to the exit where the security men were, waiting to take her and the singer to the car that would bring them to the hotel.

The security men stared at her open and down, noticing the absence of Harry, who would always be by her side holding her hand. 

She waited a few minutes until a well-known voice met her ear. "You ready?" He asked in a shy voice

The girl only nodded, letting him place a hand on her lower back, leading her to a black car in front of them. He opened her door, letting her get in first before he did. The driver confirmed the location of the hotel, which Harry affirmed.

A soft song was playing on the radio while Y/n was looking out the window, holding back her tears, she was an angry crier, and she was hurt. Harry was sitting by his side, taking fast glances at her, trying to come up with a way to apologize for his words, but he was too scared to mess up again.

“Do you want to order some food from the restaurant? if we order right now it will be ready when we arrive at the hotel,” he suggested, trying to ignore her reflection on the window, he couldn’t stand to see her crying, especially when he was the reason.

“I thought the hotel would be the one providing our dinner?” she said, looking at him confused.

“Yeah, but Detroit has that Chinese restaurant you like, that one we ate during Live on Tour.”

“I know, but I don’t want anything, thank you.”

She was denying her favorite food, he had really screwed up.

After twenty minutes of complete silence between the couple, the car had parked right in front of the main door of the hotel. A man wearing a black suit opened the door for Harry and Y/n, they walked side by side through the hotel reception area, until they got to the elevator. Harry pressed the number to floor 60, the one they were staying in.

Harry unlocked the door and Y/n followed him, before Harry could initiate any conversation she went to the bathroom, locking the door. She would normally have a very hot shower with Harry, massaging his back and washing his hair for him, not today though. Well, he didn’t even deserve that in the first place. 

While she was showering he ordered food for them, picking some petit gâteau since Y/n was quite the sweet tooth. The room service knocked on the door, bringing in the dishes, Harry tipped the lady, wishing her good night before getting the table ready.

He hoped she would want to eat with him. Whenever she was upset she wouldn’t want to do anything but sleep or watch TV, this habit of hers always drove Harry crazy. 

Harry sat on the chair, waiting patiently for Y/n to be done, he was reciting his apology to her in his head when the girl opened the bathroom door, wearing only a robe, she looked at Harry, sitting in the chair right in front of him and began eating her diner in silence. 

He hated her silence.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” Harry said, breaking the suffocating silence, “I’m sorry for not listening to you and disrespecting your feelings after I told you to open up.” 

Y/n pulled her fork down, staring at him, “When I told you I was upset about Sadie I didn’t say it so you would break the contract off, I say it because I wanted you to hug me, to talk to me, Harry.” 

“I know, my love. I was just too hyped up from the show, and I hate knowing this whole fake relationship causes you pain.” He brought his chair closer to her, placing a shy hand on her thigh, feeling relief when she didn’t complain about it.” 

“I was a jerk to you, I wasn’t empathic and I didn’t even try to understand you, this won’t happen anymore, alright? Never want to hurt you like this again.” She looked down, letting his words sink in. “Just a couple of months till this is over, Sadie is gonna release her new album and we're gonna be free of the PR, then I’ll scream to the whole world how amazing, pretty, and smart my girlfriend truly is.” 

He squeezed her thigh gently, feeling her lean into his body, he hooked his arms around her and kissed her head. “Please say something, sweetheart, I mean- If you don’t want to say anything that’s ok too- do you wanna be alone? I can ask the hotel for another room if you don’t feel like spending the night here.”

“Harry?” she mumbled against his chest.

“Yes, my love?’

“You are rambling.” 

He brought his hand to her neck, caressing her skin. “I’m sorry, do you want us to be in silence?” 

“Yes, please.” She got back to her original position on the chair, detaching herself from him. “I appreciate your apology, I just want to finish dinner and go to bed.”

Harry kissed her hair and went back to his previous chair. They ate their dinner, only the sound of the cars on the streets could be heard. After they were done Harry went to the bathroom to take his shower and Y/n put on an old shirt and pink sweat shorts. 

She laid in bed, thinking about everything Harry said. She was still hurt, of course, but he seemed honest with his words. He was always the one to apologize first during a fight, even if he wasn’t in the wrong, and Y/n appreciated that a lot. She was glad he understood where her feelings were coming from.

The door to the bathroom opened, Harry was wearing his kiss shirt with his boxers, his curls were damp. “Is it ok if I sleep here? Or do you wanna be alone tonight?”

“No, it’s ok, you can come to bed,” she lifted the duvets, for him to snuggle in, he laid his head on the pillow, turning to her side so they were facing each other. “I’m honestly sorry for the way I acted,” he said, wrapping her in his duvet.

“You don’t need to say you’re sorry anymore, I believe you. I was just bumped by it, I saw you blowing her a kiss and my mind went places,” Y/n told him in a low voice. “People on Instagram are always talking about you guys all the time.”

“Oh my love,” Harry brought her to his chest, “I only did that because Jeff asked, all of my kisses belong to you, ya know that, right? And the media will talk and create rumors about everyone, you shouldn’t believe them.”

“Just two more months, right?” she whispered, feeling him kissing her forehead.

“Exactly, after that I will never accept anything like that ever again. I hate this, hate seeing you sad, hate people not knowing you belong with me.”

“Damn, I thought I was the jealous one,” she teased, smiling for the first time after the fight.

“Oh sweetheart, you have no idea,” he kissed her jaw. “I mean, look at you, whenever I’m performing the only thing on my mind is you.”

“My sweet girl, such a pretty face, a pretty laugh,” he continued, “love you so much, my next album is going to be all about you, gonna have you in the pit right in front of me, would you like that? Want me to sing just for you?”

“I would, H,” she kissed his lips, “I would like it a lot.”

“I’m gonna make it happen, just for you, my little muse. At the end of the day I’m all yours, right?” He rolled them over, so he was above her, his hands grabbing her love handles while he bit the skin of her neck, “You got me in a fucking leash, baby.

Tag list: @sunandherflores , @elenagilbert01 , @bellelittleoff , @sunflowervolume66.

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