#Oliver: Power Tools II

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Download Oliver: Power Tools II

"Oliver: Power Tools II" is a comprehensive and user-friendly guide that empowers DIY enthusiasts, hobbyists, and professionals with an array of invaluable tools and resources for all their woodworking and home improvement projects. This exceptional resource builds on the success of its predecessor, "Oliver: Power Tools I," by offering even more insights and knowledge to help you achieve your goals.

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[taoofshigeru]

Finished the True Vide fight!

I'm going to just talk about how it went for me below the jump.

Short version: This was so hard. I died so much. I had so much fun and am basking in the glow of octopathic euphoria right now.

---

My party: [Phase 1] Armsmaster Castti (level 82) Cleric Agnea (level 80) Merchant Throné (level 80) Thief Ochette (level 82)

[Phase 2] Inventor Partitio (level 80) Merchant Hikari (level 76) Dancer Osvald (level 80) Dancer Temenos (level 80)

---

There were lots of fun tricks to this fight, but by far the most glaring was the punishing power of the Hellbound each time a tentacle dies. Four of them each for 3-4000 on most characters even at level 80. You can't start attacking the core until all tentacles are dead, and if you spread out the tentacle kills by even a bit, one will respawn while you're busy finishing the others and the loop will never end. And, by the way, Vide can do 4000 damage flat, ignoring defense, if there's only one tentacle left, so you better get that break right after the tentacles die.

Divine Protection (which Hikari gets from the one 10-star difficulty nun in Canalbrine), which can be stacked 4 at a time on the entire party, can effectively block this for one phase. But there are two, and you have to use an entirely different party for the second one. I was hoping to use Temenos' Prayer for Plenty to heal for 9999 on the second phase and tough it out.

I tried this. The quad Hellbounds did 12k for a total party wipe.

Welp.

That and the end-of-everything spam attack (3 hits for 9999) that the second phase does about 4 turns in convinced me it was a significantly better idea to try and carry Hikari to the second phase so he could stack that buff on everyone. Getting there without burning it on the first phase would essentially trivialize the fight.

However, doing so meant I needed to figure out another way to tough it out in phase 1.

It ended up coming down to Castti, who I had fed all of my nuts throughout gameplay because she was my starter and I love love love her. Plus some luck with turn sequencing. I had Agnea cast Aelfric's Blessing on both Castti and Throné, and got the tentacles down to where one final Hired Help would finish them off. I also buffed elemental defense in one of the preceding concoctions, since that does seem to reduce damage taken from Hellbound.* Then I waited for a turn where Throné went first and Castti second. Throné used Foreign Assassin to heal from the Vide Wave (tm), then Castti was able to stay standing after the last one with like 600HP.

The doctor doesn't care if you're a wicked deity

She then did extreme doctor things (used an Almighty Olive to fully revive the party). Then I had a full turn to break Vide before the waves of darkness started coming.

When Ochette gets a full turn, Ochette breaks the enemy. It's what she does.

The rest of the fight was a walk in the park. Ochette's Peek-a-Boo summon plus Castti's Drastic Measures shredded through the phase 1 core, Osvald's One True Magic (II) plus assorted Almighty Soulstone usage from the rest of the boys helped break the second round of tentacles with the sidestep mixed in. Hired Help did the rest of the damage, and quad-stacked Divine Protections rendered the party essentially untouchable even in the face of that 9999 x3 barrage.

I loved this fight, and I'm saying that from the perspective of having fought Galdera. It really drew on all the disparate elements of vaguely and blatantly broken tools the game gave you, and I get the feeling it could've been solved in a half-dozen more ways depending on how one had built up their party. It was everything I loved about Octopath II.

…Next up. True Vide, the Wicked.**

------

*A point regarding the elemental defense buff and Hellbound. Information I found online has been sketchy but I set the above strategy up twice, once with the buff and once without. It does seem to have made the difference between Castti surviving to use the Olive.

**I have already died twice, but I've also made some decent progress and am interested to try some new combinations.

[back-and-totheleft]

World War III may be inevitable

Iconic director Oliver Stone is not optimistic.

Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, and nearly 35 years since his film "Platoon" debuted, America is still hopelessly enamored with violence, and Washington, encouraged by the tandem power centers of Wall Street and the media, is still engineered for war.

“Our country is sabotaging itself. Why do we keep going back” in search of a necessary enemy? He asked. “We track a pattern of intervention, there is a repetition” that will eventually lead us to another world war.

Grim thoughts, given in a conversation moderated by (Ret.) Col. Greg Daddis, Iraq War veteran and director of the Center for War and Society at San Diego State University. Daddis is also USS Midway Chair in Modern U.S. Military History (Thursday’s event was held on the USS Midway museum) and a board member at the Quincy Institute, which partnered in the event.

Stone’s own experiences as a 20-year-old Army infantryman during the most tumultuous years in Vietnam (and politically, socially, back home in the U.S.) — 1967-1968 — formed the basis for Platoon, which won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director in 1987 and is considered one of the most important and viscerally impactful Vietnam War films in Hollywood history. It is the first in his Vietnam War trilogy, which includes "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989), and "Heaven and Earth" (1993).

As a young man inspired by the tales of mythological Odysseus and a father who had served in World War II, he was driven to war by wanderlust and the frenetic unfocused energy youth. His time in combat there, in his words, took the scales from his eyes and upon returning to an “country he no longer knew” set him on a course of discovery, his mind and creativity coalescing around a burning skepticism of the government, social convention, and conformity.

This is all detailed in his excellent 2020 autobiography, “Chasing the Light” which charts Stone’s youth, his time in Vietnam, and his screenwriting/directing career though “Platoon.”

He didn’t directly mention the recent elections or the current conflict in Ukraine on Thursday night, but insisted that the “strong compulsion” to use war not only as a driver of industry but as the first tool in the box for resolving foreign disputes, still fueled Washington policy. Despite all of the failures of the last 50 years, “it’s impossible to break that lock” that war has on the collective psyche, he said. Even “Platoon” which is a searing indictment of the what he calls the Three Lies of the military and war, has failed to turn the society against interventionism.

“No film is going to change people if you don’t want to be changed,” he said, charging that military recruitment had actually gone up after the film was released.

In recent years, Stone has courted controversy with his series of interviews with Vladimir Putin and his questioning of the Washington/Western narrative of that war. The only mention he made to that was that “I have been passionately driven and for that I’ve paid a price,” and criticized censorship (his 2016 documentary "Ukraine on Fire" had been initially banned on You Tube and then reinstated).

“Free speech is a right, not a privilege” he said, to applause from the room. Of the current political dynamic, he lamented that the “neocons are here from the last administration as well as this administration, they are not going away."

“We’ve made one mistake after another on foreign affairs, there is no reason why we cannot be partners with Russia and China. We don’t need a war.”

Unfortunately, the country’s love for was is “a religion,” he said. All one can do is keep resisting it. His entire life after Vietnam seems to have sprung from that adage. “Be a rebel, and that’s the best way to be.”

-Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, "Oliver Stone: World War III may be inevitable," Responsible Statecraft, Nov 16 2024

[thegrapeandthefig]

Hello! How are you? I'm in love with your posts, and I learn a lot from them. Thanks for sharing your knowledge! But could you help me, please? Can you tell me how the Greeks asked for spiritual protection for the house? I know it was usually for Hekate, but I don't know how I could be asking. Thank you!

Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you find my posts helpful.

Edit: This got very long, and I promise I do answer your question eventually, just please bear with me.

There were many ways one could protect their home, and as I said in my "spiritual protection" post (which I assume is the one you read before asking this question), a lot of different techniques revolved around the house's threshold. I'm going to avoid repeating too much what I already said in that post and add that a lot of it comes down to a set of religious habits that were protective in nature.

Let's start with the Noumenia and the action of cleaning/replenishing the khadiskos in honor of Zeus Ktesios (+ the libation to the Agathos Daimon on the 2nd). More than monthly praise to the divine Father, it is in essence a protective ritual meant to protect the pantry - your food. So here we have a first domestic ritual that very likely included a prayer and sacrifice.

In parallel, the beginning of the month marked the time where one would tend to the statues (hekataia for Hekate, herms for Hermes):

In fact, it seems likely that the immediate outside of a Greek house could well be cluttered with statues: as well as the pillar of Apollo Agyieus, we have evidence that it was common to find hekataia and herms, representative of Hekate and Hermes respectively:

ὥστερ Ἑκατεῖον πανταχοῦ πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν. they’d [personal law courts] be on doorsteps everywhere, like the shrines for Hekate. (Aristophanes, Ckouds 804)

ὁσοι Ἑρμαῖ ἦσαν λίθινοι ἐν τῇ πόλει τῇ Ἀθηναίων (εἰσὶ δὲ κατὰ τὸ ἐπιχώριον ἡ ἐργασία πολλοὶ καὶ ἐν ἰδίοις προθύροις καὶ ἐν ἱεροῖς) the stone statues of Hermes in the city of Athens – they are the pillars of square construction which according to local custom stand in great numbers both in the doorways of private houses and in sacred places (Thucydides 6.27.1)

Porphyry tells us that these hekataia and herms would be cleaned on a monthly basis (De abstinentia 2.16). There are no identifiable archaeological remains of any of these statues in situ, but Faraone points to evidence of ‘a shallow recess off the street in front of the housedoor… [which] seems ideally suited for statuettes, presumably fashioned from perishable materials.’

- Kerr M. D., Gods, Ghosts and Newlyweds: exploring the uses of the threshold in Greek and Roman superstition and folklore, 2018

So we have to imagine that the presence alone of the statues had their own protective/apotropaic properties but also the monthly tending of it. We could go as far as to imagine that the monthly cleaning was accompanied by a prayer and offering. It honestly doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.

We need to understand that, despite me titling this last post as "spiritual protection", there really isn't much of a distinction between the "physical" and the "spiritual". The statues at the door of the average Greek household protected as much from the spiritual (eg. the restless dead) than the mundane (thieves, mice, illness, etc.)

And this is only for domestic cult. Athens had a fair amount of festivals dedicated to purification, and therefore, protection. The most relevant one for your question is the one(s) that involve the eiresione, aka a branch of olive or laurel that is adorned with wool, dried fruits, nuts, sometimes little flasks of oil or honey. It’s part of at least the Pyanepsia, but some people associate it with both the Pyanepsia and the Thargelia, and I would even be tempted to add the Delphinia, all festivals to Apollo.

During the Pyanopsia, an eiresione would be carried by a young boy during the procession to the temple of Apollo, where it would be placed at the door. That being said, it seems that people made their own at home, and kept it close to their house door:

several passages of Aristophanes which show that any normal house in Athens might be expected to have one outside the front door all year round; […] The orator Lycurgus associates the origin of the custom with an ancient famine, and says ‘decorating a large olive branch with everything that the seasons produce at that time they dedicated it to Apollo in front of their doors, calling it eiresione, making first fruit offerings of all the products of the earth, because the suppliant branch placed with Apollo ended the famine in our land.’ –Robert Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens, 2005

So here we have an example of a protective device that doubles as a ritual tool and is intertwined in both personal and state-cult. Placed at the door for a whole year, it is then replaced at the next Pyanepsia where the ritual would be renewed. Again, we find something that is close to this type of formula (imo) "ritual involving an object"+"sacrifice"+"prayer" like with the monthly sacrifice to Zeus, but here, the eiresione seems to provide more long-term protection.

One could point out also the presence of other apotropaic devices, like phallic imagery. Pompeii stands out in this matter for the Roman example but the practice is present in Greece as well:

Phallic imagery in public monuments and in ordinary domestic and commercial plaques can be found at different times and places throughout the Greek world. A relief of a phallus was discovered on the island of Thera in the Dorian, Hellenistic colony (Figure 1). This engraved, rock-cut, large phallic plaque (1.4m) is placed in the doorway of a residence from the Oea on the island of Thera next to the Greek inscription τοισ φιλοισ (for my friends), an inscription that reflects the “benevolent inclusion of friends within the apotropaic protection.”2 When the phallus is accompanied by this type of inscription, [...], the strength of the apotropaic phallus is further reinforced, sometimes promising “retribution in the precise form taken by the evil to be warded off." - Claudia Moser, "Naked Power: The Phallus as an Apotropaic Symbol in the Images and Texts of Roman Italy.

But there were others that weren't necessarily linked to a deity, like some plants, such as when Dioscorides (Ist century AD) tells us this about the red squill: "It does also ward off evil when hung whole on front doors." (De Materia Medica; II, 171, 4)

-

While I wouldn't advise the red squill method (toxic plant), I hope you can see from my long answer that methods were varied. If anything, it shows the ancients were very much concerned about their protection -spiritual or not-.

I do not know your situation, so I can't tell you which of the options will work best for you. Personally, I have an eiresione at my door (+ a lot of phalli around the house due to the gods I worship) and more recently I added the tending of the khadikos to my routine. But you could choose to have a representation of Hekate, Hermes or Apollon at your door (even one that is aniconic, if you need discretion) and do a monthly ritual to the chosen deity, giving your thanks for the protection, pouring a libation, cleaning it. Choosing the right epithet during your prayer to communicate your request clearly (such as Thyraios or Hermes Strophaios -the latter being more against thieves) is a good idea.

I hope this helps, and that examples I gave can inspire you to figure out what it is you want to do.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 23, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first humans ever to land, and then to walk, on the moon.

They were part of the Apollo program, designed to put an American man on the moon. Their spacecraft launched on July 16 and landed back on Earth in the Pacific Ocean July 24, giving them eight days in space, three of them orbiting the moon 30 times. Armstrong and Aldrin spent almost 22 hours on the moon’s surface, where they collected soil and rock samples and set up scientific equipment, while the pilot of the command module, Michael Collins, kept the module on course above them.

The American space program that created the Apollo 11 spaceflight grew out of the Cold War. The year after the Soviet Union launched an artificial satellite in 1957, Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to demonstrate American superiority by sending a man into space. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy moved the goalposts, challenging the country to put a man on the moon and bring him safely back to earth again. He told Congress: “No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

A year later, in a famous speech at Rice University in Texas, Kennedy tied space exploration to America’s traditional willingness to attempt great things. “Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it—we mean to lead it,” he said.

[T]here is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people…. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills….”

But the benefits to the country would not only be psychological, he said. “The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school.” The effort would create “a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs…new demands in investment and skilled personnel,” as the government invested billions in it.

“To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money…. I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.”

Seven years later, people across the country gathered around television sets to watch Armstrong step onto the moon and to hear his famous words: “That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”

President Richard Nixon called the astronauts from the White House: “I just can't tell you how proud we all are of what you have done,” he said. “For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives…. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world…. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one…in their pride in what you have done, and…in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.”

And yet, by the time Armstrong and Aldrin were stepping onto the moon in a grand symbol of the success of the nation’s moon shot, Americans back on earth were turning against each other. Movement conservatives who hated post–World War II business regulation, taxation, and civil rights demanded smaller government and championed the idea of individualism, while those opposed to the war in Vietnam increasingly distrusted the government.

After May 4, 1970, when the shooting of college students at Kent State University in Ohio badly weakened Nixon’s support, he began to rally supporters to his side with what his vice president, Spiro Agnew, called “positive polarization.” They characterized those who opposed the administration as anti-American layabouts who simply wanted a handout from the government. The idea that Americans could come together to construct a daring new future ran aground on the idea that anti-war protesters, people of color, and women were draining hardworking taxpayers of their hard-earned money.

Ten years later, former actor and governor of California Ronald Reagan won the White House by promising to defend white taxpayers from people like the “welfare queen,” who, he said, “has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands.” Reagan promised to champion individual Americans, getting government, and the taxes it swallowed, off people’s backs.

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” Reagan said in his Inaugural Address. Americans increasingly turned away from the post–World War II teamwork and solidarity that had made the Apollo program a success, and instead focused on liberating individual men to climb upward on their own terms, unhampered by regulation or taxes.

This week, on July 20, 2021, 52 years to the day after Armstrong and Aldrin stepped onto the moon, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and four passengers spent 11 minutes in the air, three of them more than 62 miles above the earth, where many scientists say space starts. For those three minutes, they were weightless. And then the pilotless spaceship returned to Earth.

Traveling with Bezos were his brother, Mark; 82-year-old Wally Funk, a woman who trained to be an astronaut in the 1960s but was never permitted to go to space; and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen from the Netherlands, whose father paid something under $28 million for the seat.

Bezos’s goal, he says, is not simply to launch space tourism, but also to spread humans to other planets in order to grow beyond the resource limits on earth. The solar system can easily support a trillion humans,” Bezos has said. “We would have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts and unlimited—for all practical purposes—resources and solar power and so on. That's the world that I want my great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren to live in.”

Ariane Cornell, astronaut-sales director of Bezos’s space company Blue Origin, live-streamed the event, telling the audience that the launch “represents a number of firsts.” It was “[t]he first time a privately funded spaceflight vehicle has launched private citizens to space from a private launch site and private range down here in Texas. It’s also a giant first step towards our vision to have millions of people living and working in space.”

In 2021, Bezos paid $973 million in taxes on $4.22 billion in income while his wealth increased by $99 billion, making his true tax rate 0.98%. After his trip into the sky, he told reporters: “I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this…. Seriously, for every Amazon customer out there and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart very much. It’s very appreciated.”

—-

Notes:

https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-space-flight-passenger-revealed-wally-funk-2021-7

https://www.businessinsider.com/blue-origin-auction-spacecraft-jeff-bezos-winner-seat-astronaut-2021-6

https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-launches-to-space-blue-origin-first-human-spaceflight-2021-7

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/08/wealthy-irs-taxes/

https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-thanks-amazon-customers-for-paying-trip-to-space-2021-7

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[From comments: “When you’ve been able to amass your money by not paying your fair share of taxes, your “privately funded” venture is a diversion of rightfully public funds. This new space race is publicly funded, but absent public controls and alignment. Socialize the expenses, privatize the profits.”

“After May 4, 1970, when the shooting of college students at Kent State University in Ohio badly weakened Nixon’s support, he began to rally supporters to his side with what his vice president, Spiro Agnew, called “positive polarization."Combined with the unsubtle racism of Nixon's Southern Strategy, thus began the decades long Republican policy of dividing Americans against each other that has led us to what we have today; two Americas that reside in different universes, and our national wealth controlled by a handful of unelected, supremely, in some cases psychotically, self-centered white men.Jeff Bezos could not have existed in Kennedy's America. We must make that so again.”

[queencest]

Robbie Amell & Stephen Amell To Star In ‘Code 8’ Sequel

EXCLUSIVE: Robbie Amell and Stephen Amell are expanding the Code 8 universe. After spearheading the crowd-funded original film, the cousins are set to reprise their roles in the sci-fi sequel Code 8: Part II. Jeff Chan is also returning to direct.

Chan also penned the screenplay with Chris Paré, who wrote Code 8, as well as Sherren Lee and Jesse LaVercombe. The plot centers on the 4% of people living in fictional Lincoln City who possess special abilities and are often confronted by advanced, militarized police technology. It’s a sci-fi fantasy about the extraordinary power that we as individuals hold, versus the technological superiority of the institutions that we live within.

The sequel follows the journey of a teenage girl fighting to get justice for her slain brother at the hands of corrupt police officers. After becoming a witness to the cover-up, she becomes a target and enlists the help of an ex-con (Robbie Amell) and his former partner-in-crime (Stephen Amell). Together, they face a highly regarded and well protected police sergeant who will use every tool to prevent himself from being exposed.

Chan, Robbie Amell, Stephen Amell and Paré will once again produce the pic.

“There’s nothing better than working with family and friends,” said Robbie Amell. “Code 8 was the embodiment of that. I can’t wait to get back to work on the sequel.”

“Code 8 is an incredibly personal and special project for all of us,” Stephen Amell added. “We built the world in the first one and now we’re ready to blow it out!”

Code 8 raised $2.5 million from more than 35,000 backers through Indiegogo, making it the second-largest crowdfunded original film of all time. It set the record for the highest-grossing day-and-date release for Elevation Pictures in Canada and for Vertical Entertainment in the U.S. Upon the film’s release, Deadline reported that a shortform series adaptation was in the works at the now-defunct Quibi.

“We’re beyond thrilled to get the team back together and bring more of the Code 8 universe to our very passionate fans. We know this is a sequel that will push the story to new heights,” said Chan.

XYZ Films is handling sales and will serve as executive producer. The film is set for a start date in the fourth quarter of this year.

Robbie Amell is currently starring in the new Amazon series Upload, which was picked up for a second season soon after its debut. He’s also part of the cast of the forthcoming Resident Evil reboot Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. He’s repped by WME and Protégé Entertainment.

Stephen Amell, who recently wrapped an eight-season run as Oliver Queen/Green Arrow in the CW series Arrow, will next be seen in the Starz wrestling family drama Heels, slated to premiere this year.

[the-dan-sargent]

Moffle Phillips is a Normal Human: Part II

by Dan Sargent

This semester I took a creative writing class, and began writing a story about one of my characters, Moffle the Alien, for the final assignment. I wanted to share it, so I decided to drop it on here! Hope you enjoy, and feedback is highly appreciated!!

Click here to read Part I (in which Moffle nearly destroys his chances of being able to attend human school)!

Part II under the cut!

“It was a sunny morning in early June. I awoke to my alarm clock ringing, and quickly reached out to stop it as I opened my eyes. While coming out of my groggy state, a sense of excitement washed over me as I realized that it was my first day of space camp! My entire life I’d wanted to be an astronaut and explore the universe, and I had been begging my parents to let me go to space camp. It was my dream.

Another thing I was extremely excited for was getting the chance to meet other kids my age for the first time! My life was a pretty lonely life to live, but I managed. Being by myself all the time gave me lots of free time to find myself. And in that time I discovered two things: that I love outer space and that I really want to get some friends. And now I was going to be attending space camp! Where I would meet a whole bunch of other kids who liked space, just like me! It was going to be perfect!

I turned over in my bed to stare at my wall. It was plastered with posters I’ve collected over the years. There were posters of the moon, of the solar system, and of stars and galaxies. Among my favorites were the music and film posters. My gaze landed on a poster featuring cover art from my favorite album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I felt a smile spread across my face as I jumped out of bed to turn on my stereo, popping my CD of the album out of its case and into the device. From there I skipped ahead until I landed on my favorite song, “Starman”. I let the song play as I strutted over to my closet.

Something about Ziggy Stardust had always resonated with me. But I guess it would make complete sense for me to resonate with someone who took on the form of an androgynous alien from outer space. For you see, I myself was also an androgynous alien and my ancestors were definitely not from planet earth. There was nothing human about me, and I was okay with that. Compared to others I was strange, but I didn’t care. Sure I was different, but it was an easy enough thing to hide. As soon as I learned to control my form, my mother made sure I knew to hide my true form and present as a human whenever I was around other people. In her words, it would be “very dangerous--or at the very least, extremely awkward” if anyone saw me in my alien form, so I knew to hide. Presenting myself as a human was second-nature to me by that point in my life. But as I said before, none of this ever bothered me because it was just a normal aspect of my life. Sure, I was essentially hiding a huge secret from the world as well as rejecting a huge part of myself, but really it was better off that way.

I made my way to my floor mirror, with a shirt in each of my olive-green toned, three-fingered hands. I looked at my reflection for a moment. My skin clashed with the bright orange t-shirt I was wearing, and my honey-yellow eyes glowed in the mirror as they scanned my appearance. My long (some might say cat-like) tail swayed back and forth in my excitement, and the deep green hair on the top of my head was matted together in a very apparent bedhead. Woven into the strands of hair were my ears, both of which were half a foot long and typically drooped down to my shoulders. I chuckled a bit as I gazed up at the beautiful mess of hair atop my skull, then closed my eyes as I changed into my human form.

My tail shrank away, as did my long ears as they became human-like in shape. My skin went from green to a more human-appropriate warm tone. My fingers split from three to five. My hair fell over my eyes as it straightened itself out and turned a dark, muted brown. When I opened my eyes back up, they were a very normal white color with dark green irises around the pupils. Looking back at myself, I looked like just a normal human kid stood in their heavily space-themed bedroom. With a huge smile across my face, I lifted up one of the two shirts in my hand. It was a navy blue tank shirt with stars plastered on every inch of it. Deeming it the perfect thing to wear, I paired it with a pair of black knee-length shorts, white socks, and dark blue high-top shoes. Soon after putting my outfit on, I checked my appearance before turning off my stereo and making my way out of the room.

Similar to my first day of high school, everything about space camp felt like a dream. The space camp building was on the same site as a space base. Everything I walked by filled me with amazement, and I smiled to myself as I realized that I was walking in the footsteps of some of the greatest space explorers of humankind. I was touring the main space camp building with all of the new campers, and we were being led around by two camp counselors. First we were brought to the dining hall and the residence hall, two areas that weren’t very exciting but were definitely important. Then we were brought to the fun places, starting with the simulation room. This space was enormous and was filled with endless interesting contraptions, from rooms for practice missions to antigravity emulators, among other things. Then we were led to the theater, and later to the research room.

It had hit dusk by the time we had made it to our last stop on the tour, which was the observatory. Upon walking in, I had never been more awestruck by anything else in my life. The cylindrical room was topped off with a dome-shaped ceiling, and there was an opening in it that provided a clear view of the dimming sky. The walls of the room were lined with desks and bookshelves loaded with computers, scale models, knick-knacks, tools, and a massive collection of space-related books. The room’s main feature, stood on a tall platform base, was the huge astronomical telescope placed directly in the center of the space. After scanning the room in utter disbelief and amazement, I had concluded that this very room would be my favorite part of space camp.

From that day on, I would hang out in the observatory whenever I got the chance, looking at the cosmos and everything found within them through the telescope. I felt like the secrets of the universe were at my fingertips whenever I looked through its lens. I could see stars and galaxies I had never seen before. I could see planets I could only dream of seeing with my naked eye. Looking through the telescope, I sometimes found myself wondering if my home planet was one of them.

One night, I had decided to hang around in the observatory before bed instead of going to my dorm room. After eating my dinner, I had gotten my belongings together and prepared to fly over. I swung my bag over my shoulders and cradled a pillow in my arms, prepared to spend the night if I so desired. I then went invisible and snuck my way into the observatory without a hitch. From there, I placed all of my things in a hidden area of the room and got comfy. I pulled out one of my favorite astrology books and rushed over to the telescope. I had planned on studying different types of stars on this night, and went about comparing every star I looked at to every other star. This went on for hours, and when I began to feel an overwhelming sense of exhaustion I decided it was time to hit the hay. Sleepily, I trudged over to my hidden spot and immediately drifted off, with my astrology book still in my arms.

Suddenly, I was awoken by a loud exclamation. The shock that rushed through my body caused me to instantly vanish from sight, and I darted up in the air to see what was going on. A brief glance toward the opening in the ceiling told me that it was early morning. To my horror, I had discovered that I left the telescope in a state of mild disarray, and an astronomer who had just walked in was running up to it. I panicked, realizing that if I was found out, there was a fair chance I could get in a whole heap of trouble. I knew I had to stay out of sight. Fortunately, my invisibility powers made that easy for me. Rather unfortunate, however, was the fact that all of my things were still sprawled out around me, and I wouldn’t be able to pick them up without making noise. Looking down at everything, I knew I had to find some way to get it all out of the room without getting caught. I looked back up towards the rest of the room, and nearly screamed in fear when my eyes immediately met those of the astronomer. His face was mere inches away from mine.

He couldn’t see me, right? I hovered backwards, slowly, looking down at myself as I did so. I was completely invisible. Obviously, there was no way he saw me. He had clearly been looking at my things and not at me. Instant relief fell over me. But now that my spot had been exposed, I knew that leaving with my stuff would be near impossible unless I caused some sort of distraction first. So, fighting against the urge to have a complete panic attack and shut down, I flew over to the other side of the room and pushed a few heavy books off of a desk. This seemed to do the trick, and the astronomer quickly turned his head and approached the source of the sound. Straight away, I made my way back over to my possessions and gathered them up. Every item I picked up turned invisible with me. Once I was fairly certain I had collected everything, I rose back up in the air and stole a swift glance at the astronomer, who was puzzlingly making his way back over. Struck by fear and wondering whether he saw my things vanishing as I picked them up, I rushed out the door and didn’t look back until I was safely back in my dorm room. To my relief, no one had ever come to me asking about what happened that day. I had luckily made it out, completely in the clear.

From that day on, I never stayed overnight in that observatory ever again. I had also learned that I needed to be extra careful to stay far away from humans whenever I was using my invisibility powers. That accident had shown me that one mistake on my end could lead to my alien form being exposed. And once my alien form was exposed, I would never, ever be able to blend in with other humans.”

To be continued in Part III!

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