#i'm very paranoid when it comes to storage

[danny-phantom-x-reader]

overprotective danny phantom >>>

IT'S CRAZY YOU SAY THATTT I was literally thinking about this yesterday [Aug 23]

Danny worries, a lot

Especially when it comes to you

With all the dangerous ghosts he fights, he's worried that one of them will come for you

He has to know where you are, what you're doing, etc etc

^ If he doesn't, it gives him paranoid and he imagines the worse has happened to you

What if you were attacked? What if you were face down in a ditch? What if you were hit by a car? Oh god, think of all the things that could happen

His mind is constantly running

He gets very demanding when there's a chance you could be hurt ["Give me your hand, Y/n." He'll tell you, pulling you close to check and make sure you have no scratches]

^ He gets furious when you are hurt

^ He'll become extremely violent to whoever hurt you

"If you ever hurt Y/n, I'll make you wish you had made it to the afterlife"

Nver lets you get involved in ghost hunting. He doesn't care. He can't have you getting hurt. You can fight him all you want about it, but he can't have you getting hurt

"You stay here and I'm not arguing with you about it"

^ "You can pout all you want, Y/n. You're not coming. I don't want you getting hurt"

Acts more like your dad than a boyfriend

He's just scared of losing you

One Shot

It was a small room, the size of a classroom or a storage room. It's probably why it was so easy for you to sneak in and help Danny. He was so focused on Skulker that he didn't realize you were holding a Fenton Thermos. But then it happened, and it happened so fast no one could have stopped it. Skulker threw Danny into the boxes you were hiding in and it ruined their structure.

You didn't see the boxes when they started to wobble, but your eyes widen when hearing the smack of one of the boxes hit the floor. Your eyes widened as they all came tumbling down, causing you to scream.

Danny hears it and his eyes go straight to you, quickly realizing that you were under the boxes. He rushes over and quickly digs through the boxes, Skulker making his leave when seeing Danny preoccupied.

Danny is able to quickly find you and pulls you up. He grabs you harshly, pulling you close and checking your arms.

"I told you to stay put."

"You know me better than that. Besides, I'm fine."

"Maybe this time. But what if next time you're not. I can't take that risk." He grabs your face, squeezing your cheeks to make sure there were no bruises or scratches. He sighs when finishing and lets you go.

"See I told you I'm fine. I can help you."

He looks away from you, frowning, "You're really going to hate me for this."

"What do you mean?"

He looks over to the door and your eyes widen when realizing what he was about to do.

"Don't you dare, Danny."

He was quicker than you. Though, even if he wasn't, you never would have beat him. He slams the door shut on the other side and locks the door. You bang on it, yelling at him.

"Let me out Danny! You can't do this!"

Danny leans on the door, frowning. "I'm sorry, Y/n. I can't have you getting hurt. Or worse, dying. I'm not taking that risk."

You bang on the door some more, trying to reason with him, but Danny wasn't hearing it. He'd let you out once he got Skulker back into the Ghost Realm. You wouldn't be happy about it, but at least you'd be safe. And that's all that mattered to Danny, your safety and he would risk you being mad at him.

[storm-breaker7]

• Code name: TANGO •

Pairing: Rex X Reader X Fives

Summary: Being one of the best pilots you gain the attention of the republic. You become a getaway driver for the 501st battalion but when an assignment is given to Anakin, you find yourself between a rock and a hard place.

Warnings: Swearing, A creepy perverted fat dude (yea. It's a warning in itself), Fem reader, Very spicy (I may continue if I have modivation)

A/n: Sorry this took so long but holy water and grass for 50 cents 😅 (The sins I have committed in this one fanfic is scarry 💀🔥) please lemme know if you want the extended version- this has been in my drafts for way to long tho so it's outta here.

Edit: Help why are so many ppl liking this post. I really thought this would be a major flop. Why is this even past 10 likes 💀💀💀

I groaned, "This slagger won't fucking work!" Grumbling to myself how nice it would be if R2 showed up to help. This ship is as stubborn as me, and it's getting annoying. My comm buzzed and I picked it up after I had let out a string of course words. "Yea?" I asked into the comm,

"We have a new assignment, we need you for this one so be up at the bridge. Were starting in 10 minutes." General Skywalker explained over the comm.

"Be there in a shake, General" I told him and ended the call before he could argue again how I don't have to call him general. I left the tools on the floor and went to clean myself up. I could hear footsteps coming down the hall behind me but I continued on, I'm being paranoid.

"Hey Tango!" I heard Fives call,

"You do know you only have to call me that on missions?" I called over my shoulder as I continued down the hall. Fives jogged up next to me and started to walk backward so he could face me.

"Come on, You know I know you love it when I call you that" He pointed at me and himself boldly, I only hummed and gave him a side glance that, to put it simply, said 'Sureee'.

"Whatever floats your boat Fives" I say before stopping at my door and punching in the code. "Cya later" I wave at him as I closed the door, chuckling quietly when you heard his pleas for you to let him in.

I walked into my personal bathroom and washed my hands from the grease quickly. I looked into the mirror and tried scrubbing away some grease off my cheek and forehead. I sighed and gave my face a little splash.

Then I walked back out and pulled my shirt off. I pulled a half decent shirt on and walked back out again. If I'm right I have about 4 minutes to get to the bridge.

I heaved out breaths and slowed in front of the bridge doors. I took a deep breath, fixed my ruffled hair and walked in still huffing lightly. "For a second I thought you weren't coming Y/n." Ashoka joked and I only smiled at her,

"You know me," I started and she joined in saying a phrase that went back between us both, "Fashionably late is just my/your style" We both laughed before getting back on topic, General Skywalker was waiting with a small smile on his face. A hologram near where the General was standing had a human male that was the definition of fat rolls, Don't make me throw up breakfast.

"Alright. We have been given intel that this mob boss, here," Anakin gestured to the hologram, "Is selling black market goods to the separatist. We either were going to get Ashoka or Y/n to be the distraction while Me, Rex and Fives sneak into here, his storage shed at these docks. We only need enough time to slip in, get evidence and slip out" Anakin gestured to another hologram that popped up, Anakin gulped and sucked a breath in, "So... Who's the distraction?"

I cut in immediately, "I'll go, Ashoka is too young to be trying to get an ugly mug that to touch her." I stated quickly placing my hand on Ashokas shoulder.

"She has a point, General. N-not that I want her to touch... That" Fives stumbled over his words as he explained himself. Anakin shook his head,

"We can do it another way-"

"Anakin." I walked up and patted his shoulder, "Just tell me for how long and I'll do it. I don't want anyone touching her, being the age she is."

Anakin huffed, a war raging behind his eyes, "Fine. But if I say get out of there, I mean it. No risking it."

"You got it, General." I smiled at him, "I've gotta dress the part though don't I?"

"How many times must I tell you? I'm tired of telling you? Just Anakin is fine" He huffed out a sad laugh and glanced away, "But yea, I'll get Ashoka to take the dress to your room. Be ready by 1930 hours and meet at the ship you were just working on. It's going down tonight, the council wants no delay." Anakin glanced back and sighed waving me away and worked on the plan with Rex. Me and Ashoka walked out of the bridge and down the endless halls.

I noticed Fives and Rex exchange glances multiple times throughout that whole thing... Maybe they were just worried about me. I zoned out of my daze when Ashoka tapped my shoulder, "Sorry what?" I asked, glancing down at her quickly.

"Go to your room and I'll grab the dress for ya" Ashoka repeated with a smile, I nodded and returned it. Ashoka parted off down another hall and I continued on down to my quarters. It was a good few minutes before I got to my room and I took the extra time I had to take a quick shower.

I turned the water off, missing its warmth already now that the cold air replaced it. A knock at my door sounded and I raised a brow as I peeked my head threw the bathroom door into my bedroom. "The door is open Ashoka! What are you waiting for?"

"Uhm.. what?" I heard Fives say,

"Goddamn it Fives. I have to go soon and aren't you meant to be getting debriefed right now?" I called back keeping my body in the bathroom, just in case.

"It's finished, Y/n, Ashoka told us Skywalker needed her help so she got me to take your dress.... And Fives just tagged along." Rex explained and I mentally cursed, Just had to be those two-

"Hey it's alright. Uhm I'm still finishing up in my bathroom so just put it on my bed, if that's not a problem" I said closing the bathroom door and started pacing in the bathroom waiting for them to leave my dress so I can get dressed.

The door opened with a hiss and I heard their light footsteps walk in then out again and the door hissed closed. I sighed as I walked out of the bathroom, then called out, "Thanks boys! Appreciate it!" A small call back from Fives was all I could hear and It made me smile lightly.

I walked to my bed that was in the corner of the room. I smiled as I picked up the dress. The beautiful royal blue silk cascaded down like a waterfall. At least I got to stay in our colours, I thought to myself.

I pulled the towel off and dried myself before slipping it on. I grimaced, "God fucking damnit" Was all I managed. The dress I had on had large slits on the side that let everyone have a nice view of my thighs, but thankfully covered up everything else.

I sighed but continued on, grabbing black high heels and putting on a black leather bracelet, it's my comm system. I brushed my hair quickly before grabbing my heels and running out barefoot. I have to make it in time.

By now I had run past many clones that may have or almost passed out, I was concerned but I kept runnin', I can't be late again. I ran smack into the doors because I forgot to open them but I quickly recovered and opened it, walking through. I cursed to myself and made my way over to the ship I was working on not 45 minutes ago. It's fine I was only fixing some small things.

"I sure hope I'm not late guys. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Late both... Times... ...uhm.. Why are you all looking at me like that?" I slowed down to a stop and shook the heels in my hand lighty. I was getting real nervous, this silence was stretching out forever. "Does it not look good-? I don't really have time to chan-"

"No, nono no. You look great. Really great." Fives waved his hands around, "Were just.... Stunned.."

"Uh-huh.... Well come on we don't have all night. Can't be dreaming about me, we got a mission to complete" I joked and stepped into the ship and waved everyone else in, "I thought I was late, Come on"

Ashoka had a mischievous grin on her face and I could hear the General whisper yelling 'no' repeatedly. Rexs' face was red and priceless and Fives suddenly found the floor interesting. The general and commander walked in with Rex and Fives close behind. I walked into the cockpit and started the small-ish ship up.

The ear piece was uncomfortable but I dealt with it in the end. We had split off earlier, me and Ashoka were dropped near the club and the others went off to the dock. Ashoka was only meant to be in the club and somewhere close to me for back up, and when I mean back up I mean if someone pulls a blaster on me she can help.

I walked in with a sway, god I hate heels, and made my way over to the bar. "Where is he?" I asked Ashoka, but quietly because the boys and us shared this comm frequency.

"To your right. In the corner with Twi'leks all over him." Ashoka whispered back.

"Got it, Thanks" I whispered before setting off toward the Mob boss. I could hear Anakin and Ashoka lightly arguing in my ear piece but I ignored them and stalked over to the target.

He got up and practically brushed off all the Twi'leks he had gathered and started walking away, Something must be up I thought. I put my path on his and 'accidentally' ran into him. God has he ever heard of a breath mint?

He looked me up and down like a creep. "What's a pretty girl like you doing in this part of town?" He drunkenly slurred, tracing a finger down my arm.

I grimaced but continued to do my job, "You first" I purred, trying my best to think of how much I saved Ashoka from doing this.

"Well if you want to follow me, I'll show you enough" His words were still slurred as he leaned forward.

"Well I'd have to turn that offer down. I'm only here for a drink." I thanked the maker I was a good lair because it came in handy at times like these.

"Just a drink, dressed in this?" He asked, fiddling with the front part of the silky dress.

I heard Anakin and Rex bark something in my ear and it didn't sound good. The target turned away a tad and checked his comm that was buried deep in a pocket, somewhere where I wasn't going to bother looking.

I forced my best smirk on and turned and walked away from bar and his 'hideout' altogether, hoping like hell he'd follow.

"Playing hard to get, huh? Two can play at that game" He growled as he caught up, pushing past people trying to catch up to me. I gulped and kept walking.

"We've got it. Get out of there Tango. Now." Anakin whisper yelled over the ear piece.

"Alright." I responded with before I whipped around and let my fist fly to his face. "Whoops my bad, my hand slipped" I growled and stormed off leaving him a wheezing heap on the floor.

I burst out the bar and pulled my heels off. I sat down on a random bench nearby and sighed a relief. Thank the maker I'm out of that mess.

Getting back up again proved to be a hard thing to do after getting hit on by a whale, but I did and I continued on to the ship pushing past people. I didn't know nights got this busy here.

When I finally made it back to the rust bucket I was given a big hug by literally everyone. Ashoka first, then the general, and Fives jumped in then Rex after him.

"Yea guys don't worry, I don't need any air today" I joked and they all let go of me a smidge but didn't let go fully.

"I'm sorry you had to deal with that" Ashoka mumbled into my dress. I hugged them back with a small smile growing on my face. "Hey it's alright-" I started,

"No, it wasn't. I could hear everything he said. That chakaaryc got a fist to the face for a reason." Fives growled.

*Translation- Rotten, Lowlife [chah- KAR-eesh]*

"Guys you can let go I'm not going to disappear. Come on we have to get back to the cruiser." I suggested, lightly tapping Anakins' shoulder and Rexs' back. They all slowly detached from me and looked around guiltily. I shook my head and smiled as I walked up the ramp and into the cockpit.

Once everyone was in, I took of back toward the republic cruiser. Tonight was not so great, let's just hope that dinner will be better.

I landed the old rust bucket in the hanger then stepped out of the cockpit. I followed the others out and saw R2 frantically coming over here. He zoomed straight past Anakin, who was going to pat him like a puppy, and continued over to me.

R2 skidded to a stop in front of me then bumped my leg. I smiled and patted him, "What's up with you?" I asked and kneeled down to be eye level with R2.

"Traitor" Anakin called jokingly but continued off to report the mission to the council. I smiled and patted R2 once again before standing to my full height. I started to walk but stopped and turned back to R2 when he beeped up a storm.

"Don't tell me you came here just to say sorry about not helping R2." I shot back, He beeped a reply and I scoffed dramatically, "R2, I swear one day you are going to get decommissioned because of how sassy you are"

He beeped then followed after me as I walked off. We chatted on my way to my quarters then went off by his lonesome once I had gone into my quarters.

I placed my shoes down and pulled my jewelry off. Just as I was about to pull my dress off a knock sounded at my door. "Yea?" I called, flattening my dress out and walking over to the door. A few more furious knocks later and I opened the door. Fives came tumbling with Rex close behind, their blacks were hugging them tight and I gulped.

I closed the door and rolled my eyes, "What have you two done now? You can't keep hiding here whenever you start something." Fives sighed and Rex huffed,

"Fives decided it would be a great idea to start a-... Why are you still in your dress?" Rex gestured at me and I only frowned.

"I was just about to take it off when you two barged in" I grumbled and stalked over to the baggy shirt and some skinny jeans.

"Wait- Hold on a damn minute" Fives held his hand up. I put the clothes back on top of the dresser and turned to the two boys. "We have managed to find something we can share."

"I'm interested... I gotta see it" I grinned and waved my hands around.

"Well... If you insist.." Rex and Fives glanced at each other before walking up to me. I raised my brow at Fives as he circled around behind me and Rex walked straight up to me.

I swallowed thickly and froze. Fives started tracing patterns on my hip and they had both pressed themselves against me. My hands stayed strictly at my side though because I had some good bad ideas.

Fives leaned in and whispered into my ear from behind me, "Found it"

I'm half mad and half thankful at myself right now... And I'm not sure which one takes the cake. I thought as my eyes carefully watched Rex and Fives. I gave a curt nod, and Fives shot up to attack my neck. Me and Rex met halfway and he eased into the kiss.

I could feel Rex and Fives' hands roam trying to carefully yank the silky blue dress off me. The dress fell with a light thud and they both pulled away.

I felt their eyes drag down my body and I shifted uncomfortably under their gaze. Rex rested his hands on my hips and Fives leaned in whispering a small few words of approval, "Hotter than I expected, Cyar'ika"

I smiled back at him as I felt his hands slither up my back toward my bra and unclasped it, slipping it off. Rex let out a strangled groan as my bra joined the dress on the floor.

I turned around to Fives and smirked, "You both better start, I'm feeling a little left out here"

They both started to yank their blacks off and I pulled my underwear off leaving it in the pile of my clothes. I leaned back against the wall and watched the show unravel.

I let out a heavy and shakey breath as they both finished and threw their blacks somewhere else in the room. "You alright with us doing this mesh'la?" Rex asked as he and Fives guided me toward my bed.

Fives sat at the edge of the bed waiting just as I replied, "Do your worst"

[capricioussun]

Hello! I love your papyrus headcanons and your art of them! Do you have any extra fun facts about Lace or Void?

Ty!!! That's so kind of you to say 🥺💖 extra fun hmmm

I'm not sure how fun these are per se, but Void is incredibly self sufficient! You accumulate quite a lot of knowledge from traveling and living on your own, so he's got survival skills for just about any terrain, most situations, medical know how for humans and monsters alike. You name it, he probably has at least some knowledge on it, even space crafts! But day to day he mostly puts those skills to use in much simpler ways – mending clothes, fixing armor and weapons, gardening, food preservation, weather prep, etc etc etc

Loves sitting out in nature and just relaxing. The rare times he isn't hurrying off to whatever's next, if he really truly just relaxes for a moment, one of his favorite places to be is lakeside on the surface in a peaceful universe, listening to the water, the creatures, feeling the breeze. If he wasn't so paranoid, that'd be the best place for him to sleep.

At various points throughout time, Void essentially winds up "fostering" a number of people while they're displaced, until he or his allies can return them home or find them a new one. Non-canonically, this includes Abstract and Cosine, canonically, it also includes a Chara variant who goes on to wind up an "outcode" ally as well. Once they're an older teen, they decide to head out on their own to find their place in the multiverse (though they do make time to check on Void now and then)

Doesn't watch tv or movies anymore, so most of his knowledge is extremely outdated or very random. It's hard to keep track of what's popular in which universe for every generation!

He keeps everything genuinely gifted to him until it's worn away by time. He’s fairly adamant about only using the void to preserve a very few important things. Besides, most gifts are made to be loved, not last forever.

He would never voice it, but he’s always a little charmed by all the differences across the multiverse. Even two AUs that should be nearly identical will still have their quirks, and after a while, they become so pronounced. Truly, everything is unique in one way or the other.

As for Lace...

He's one of those anomaly type extroverts. He's popular and usually quickly recognized wherever he goes, but most don't know much about him beyond how friendly he is, and he seems to slip from the mind when he’s not actively around. It's almost like he only exists when in plain view and then disappears the moment he’s gone, but few think on it long enough notice...

He does love cats, but he loves dogs probably almost as much! Absolutely the type of person animals are naturally drawn to as well.

He doesn't really paint or draw so much like the others, but on the occasion he does it's usually very colourful and abstract. It comes across very...raw, and despite seemingly like it should evoke a happiness or energy based on the colours and usual naturey landscape subjects, they come across rather melancholy.

He knows a lot about self care, and that means he knows a lot about how to take care of others! He gives incredible massages, and would have the best advice to help almost anyone unwind after a long day, and may even lend a helping hand himself if they're close enough <3

Has 9 million pictures on his phone. All his storage is always being eaten by pictures of anything and everything. Cute animals or bugs he saw out, clothes that inspired him, flowers, trees, clouds of all types, the sky, the stars, nice drinks hes gotten while out, interesting buildings. Anything, you name it, there's sooo many pictures and he needs all of them.

Similarly to Edge and Void, he loves hair, loves doing hair, playing with it, but he also loves doing makeup, nails, all that sort of stuff! I guess in general he likes treating the body like a canvas, loves how customizable it is!

Bonus lace doodle from Langolyn’s ref below the cut

[debaroohoo]

So I'm buying a house. Like. A whole dang house. As someone who's pretty terrible at being an adult, this process is terrifying. I keep going back and forth between being excited and wondering what the hell I think I'm doing. In an effort (probably in vain) to keep my brain focused on the latter, I'm making a list. All pros, no cons since I don't need that in my life right now.

Hopefully no more very brief power blips at the start of minor storms that like to happen when I'm in the middle of playing a video game. This actually happened earlier and what prompted me to start typing this up as I waited for my internet connection to come back.

No more sharing a wall with a guy who likes to crank up his music for a couple hours each night. Headphones are useless, my brain knows it's there, so it seeks out the annoyance against my wishes.

No more sharing a…floor? with people who like to yell at their barking dog and crying child to shut up.

I'll finally have a bathroom (2 bathrooms!) that hasn't been used by strangers. Removing the sliding shower door and cleaning the questionable crud on the bottom a few years ago nearly made me throw up three times (that is not an exaggeration) and I've never felt truly clean since then.

No more living right next to the county fairgrounds. Hearing cows and sheep and roosters once or twice a year is kinda fun. Concerts so loud that the noise makes my walls and windows shake, not so much.

More room for activities!! And storage. Really looking forward to the storage and having more shelving so I don't have to keep any of my favorite junk hidden away in boxes.

A better kitchen! There are some recipes I haven't tried in a while (or never tried at all) since I don't have enough storage space (see above) to keep various cooking gear on hand.

A GARAGE!!!!!! My poor car hasn't had a roof over it's head for most of its life and I'm tired of how filthy it gets. The headlights have so much built up gunk on them I haven't bothered trying to clean since being outdoors 24/7 means it'd probably get bad again eventually. I'm weirdly looking forward to cleaning those and wonder if there'll be a noticeable difference in the light quality.

No more lugging groceries up the stairs. The garage leads right into the kitchen plus I won't have to shut the back hatch between trips if I can't carry everything in one go since I'm paranoid someone might try something funny in the few seconds my car would be out of my sight. Plus, I won't have to worry about wasps trying to build a nest in the door cracks. ...Hopefully.

Garbage and recycling pick up! I'm mainly happy that I won't have to take my recycling to a drop off center anymore. I tend to let it pile up…

Closer to family! I currently live on the opposite side of town. It's not a long drive to see them, but it'll be nice to be only 2-5 minutes away.

Customizing!!! I know I can technically paint the walls in my apartment if I wanted to, but putting everything back to normal before moving out would be a headache. If I want to go ham and Jackson Pollock up a wall I can do as I damn well please.

I will have a patio! It's small but it's a place to put a chair outside!! I can sit outside and not have to worry about making eye contact with neighbors!!!

Complementary to #13 - I will have a YARD! I can GO TOUCH GRASS. I can get a DOG someday. I'll have to get a fence installed first which won't be cheap, but that's okay because DOG.

The front door is purple. PURPLE. That was actually a paint choice the builder had and I took it. When I give directions to my house I can tell people it's the one with the purple door. No one tell my dad. He would uh...totally approve and I want it to be a surprise. Yeah.

I can mount a TV. Again, I technically could do it in my apartment but I don't really trust the walls to hold up… Anyway, I have a plan to move my consoles and other things currently hooked up on the TV stand to a shelf where I can have better cable management. That means no more cable jungle! Seriously, I wonder if the space behind my TV can be considered a fire hazard.

I think that's all I've got for now? I'll probably think of more to add to the list, but that covers most of it. If you read all that…what the hell man, I appreciate it but I know you've got better things to do with your time.

[vengeancect]

i don't really have thoughts anymore. just endless degraded feedback, like scrolling through a timeline forever. there's like a 1% of barely functional half-awake suicidal ideation buried under 99% corrupted unconscious junk data. i spend every day twitching and mumbling like a coma patient while replaying memories of watching videos or streams, little soundbites from movies or games, recycling them in my brain and pretending they're mine and i made them. it's always too loud, sleeping is hard. i try very hard to come up with any original thought or concept and even if i do it's impossible to do anything, gets eaten by the noise. my brain just ping-pongs between "i really wish sex weren't real" and "i wanna blow my brains out" as i drool all over myself and think about playing a video game (not actually doing it of course). there's only so many adjustments and corrections i can make to the same old stupid fantasies. i've eaten myself to the bone. i think about killing my parents a lot, especially my dad. i'm paranoid and jumpy all the time, my heart rate is way too fast, i hate the sound of thunder and rain hitting our roof and our dog barking and my parents old people yelling at each other. i don't have a job or education (though i did try to get them a few times over the last 2 years thank you very much!) and probably won't have one for the rest of my life. i won't be able to take care of my parents when they get old, i might even die before them due to my awful lifestyle

now that i think of it that period in 2019 where i went around actually making an effort to learn suicide methods was probably the most autonomy i've exercised in my entire life. i went outside a lot, learned how to buy things online, how to tie knots, put a lot of "effort" in, but pussied out when the time came to make a plan. oh no i have to fast for a while? but then i'll have to talk to my mom about it, and maybe reject a meal! and now, somehow, over 4 years have gone by. i don't know what to do about that. when i kept shopping for the stuff to kill myself with i was so unfamiliar with everything in the world that i had to keep googling to find out what a hardware store is. i had to check around everywhere i could for rope to buy, what kind of rope fits best. i would walk for miles into another city and then spend the entire time inside the store developing an alternate reality in my mind where i created an obscure japanese horror game from 1998. ordering shit online was mortifying and required weeks of planning just to hide it from my mom. a thing that everyone does every day was like a big autistic quest i had to bravely overcome. a year later i would learn how to turn a stove on and make grilled cheeses and it was like a revelation from god to the point where i'm legitimately nostalgic about it. (MAJOR UPDATE: just like last night i learned how to properly tie my shoes for the first time at age 24)

i had to write myself several unhinged reminders and memos like an amnesiac to remember how to tie a noose and do this or that. i shambled around two shopping malls like a tortured ape trying to find anywhere that sold kitchen scales, asking for the price and then leaving. i gave all these stores like 2 or 3 visits at least because i couldn't handle being unprepared for them. i had to talk to staff so many times, staff that were clearly my age, what an uncomfortable realization that was. i saw some disabled guy sitting at a mall cafeteria getting fed by his mom or aunt or whatever and thought "wow he's literally me…". i had to buy deadly chemicals from the internet and find a box to keep them stored in, then i had to get a padlock and key for it somewhere. then i'd walk to a random fuckin chemical storage facility because surely they'd sell me something right? then i would realize i've had my shirt on backwards for the past 2 hours. that Death Box is still there although very moldy. i want to use it but i know i won't, because i guess i don't have the mental fortitude necessary to commit suicide, and maybe never head 2019 was my 10th year being isolated. my most common thought back then was futility. that's all i could think about every time i walked back home. i am so far behind everything and everyone that even if i started "fixing myself" right now and giving it 100% it would still take another 10 years just to build a hollow resemblance of a normal life. i would "succeed" the same way that disabled guy at the mall succeeds at not choking to death on his food. the ever-present spectre of ngmi was now stronger and clearer than ever. nothing will change because nothing can. i was so desperate to die that i walked around a bunch of grassy fields trying to find a good angle and spot to do it where no one would find me. surrounded by bugs and wild horses. it didn't work. that was 4 years ago now. i can barely remember anything before that year (just to hammer the brainrot home even harder, this post was written over like two weeks while also copying another draft i'd written 4 months ago, then left to rot in my drafts for another month or two)

it's been 15 years since 2009. i guess that's when all of this "started" but it would be wrong to claim my isolation made me like this. this is just what i've always been. i am not a victim of neglect so much as a willing accomplice to it. i remember being 11 and browsing my grandpa's PC, looking up cheat codes or chemtrail videos or ytp's in his dark house and hearing the kids outside, seeing them to go school or back home, talking with their parents, and i'd think "hoo boy i hope this doesn't affect my life too hard!" i remember starting this blog july 2012, 11 years ago. i think i did it to follow some skype acquaintances and post "weird" stuff, trying to cobble a personality out of liking this or that insignificant media thing. everything i've ever done has always been a performance because i'm not capable of being real. trying to align this blog with my real thoughts only made it feel more forced and exponentially more painful because now various random people had access to my fragmented thoughts and could poke me with a stick whenever they wanted to skinner box my shit up. i awkwardly exposed myself to all manner of maladjusted weebs and soylennial irony nerds and blessedly ignorant normies and American art school gays, all of which i'm sure have now been subsumed into the workforce and developed conveniently docile, castrated lifestyles and philosophies as a way of preparing their brain for the horribly-but-sometimes-comfortably mundane rest of their lives. they'll get fat and lame but still act like they're 19, they'll try and fail to not become their parents. they'll breed and raise children and work as their brain is slowly dissolved in the murky primordial soup. they'll do all of that, and i'll still be here somehow. i'm just glad they're not pretending we're the same anymore. guess i should press post on this now

[literaryscribs]

Going through 7.5 story and I'm going to make a couple of theories on the future: 1) I'll bet Heta is Nul. Why? The weird and unusual fixation people have with her. Plays similar to what's been told about Nul when she was a Jedi and force bonds/connections. There's also the cinematic that had the Mirialan try to protect the group while a woman suspiciously tall and shaved bald has their back turned.

Not to mention the type of weapon going into storage there. No the lightsabers don't look the same but there's no guarantee she didn't strip down one of her own to a more base form. But Ri'kan's unusually fanatical, Shae's fanatical in the opposite way i.e wanting Heta dead, the Mandos following Heta despite a portion having their own reasons for joining her are weirdly dedicated to her cause when their nature is typically more fickle unless a strong leader's able to unite them. I just don't see Heta as particularly charismatic considering it feels she's more like a child going by what other people have told them rather than personal experience. Considering what's known about Mandalorians pre Shae's leadership and they actively wanted to side with the Empire to fight Jedi. Plus several other pretty extensive benefits too. 2) Our factions are going to turn against us. I've suspected this for a while but the recent 7.5 update's getting close to putting the nail in the proverbial coffin for me. I've done saboteur and loyalist and the main thing I'm getting in terms of vibe is our faction is losing patience with us. Shae's thing and her lack of responsiveness in general while she goes hunt murder. Basically put, during Kotfe/Kotet the point was basically driven home that our factions moved on without us. They took apart everything we worked for and stuck it as a mere footnote in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes we were pivotal in a particular objective but the grand scheme of things? Nope. Republic wanted us gone and refused to help, even when Saresh tried to take over. Empire assisted eventually but even during chapter 2 of Kotet it's very grudgingly while people think Acina's insane. During the uprisings, especially in the second round which was very Republic centered, you could see how paranoid they were getting over the Alliance. Equating them to potential terr*rists preparing to invade the senate because they had the Eternal Fleet. If you sided with the opposition on Iokath, its even less reason to trust you. Only reason why they did after all that was basically a combination of desperation for a win and to see what you were up to. It's out of character for either big faction to allow the Alliance to exist in the form it has considering both their natures to dominate. Either by diplomacy or force and currently both sides are getting tired of it because they can't outright control you like they used to. You're not playing by their game rules, so at some point in the future I expect the knives to come out at you. And it'll either be over the holocron, Shae or the Alliance itself being too much of a liability long term for their interests. 3) It's a suspicion and I could very likely be wrong but I'm thinking they may make all classes relatively accessible to one another. Reasons why: On the logistics end it's more than a bit inconvenient to have to make essentially 4 slightly different storylines to take into account force and tech users. I've been noticing over the past few expansions (I came into the game in 2015 or 16, just after chapter 10 of Kotfe was released) that the line between force user and tech has been getting more and more blurry over time.

I did run into cut content on reddit somewhere that actually had a different plan for the infamous Chapter 12 of KotFE, in which the protagonist was actually supposed to gain force using powers courtesy of Valkorion unlocking certain things. I suspect that it was originally in the plan but the game engine decided to have a massive upheaval which resulted in the chapters being pushed back a ton for a rush rewrite and rollback of the patch on the dev test server before what we got came through. Story wise, other than it's a bit jarring and weird to be the only gun in a room of lightsabers in general, there's been little hints here and there. Some of it long ago in the flashpoints for Taral V and Maelstrom prison in which Trooper and Smuggler can both see and hear Meetra Surik without assistance from Oteg, being able to use/channel Valkorion's power relatively safely during the times he offered the choice to (or by force), being easily able to enter into Satele's mind albeit with Kira's help, being easily able to stand against force users in general for the most part, being able to have certain force tech react to us. Then there's the weird scene where the player character, no matter the class, is reaching toward Nul's holocron even though the tech users shouldn't technically be able to pull it toward them. Why try? The holocron itself does appear to have a fascination quality to it since Sahar gets mesmerized by it for a period of time before she hands it to the player. Considering what it does, it leaves implications... If, and it's a big IF, the wall between tech and force user comes down at some point, then it would open up a few avenues. It would possibly allow for new classes to be made since you'd no longer need to make 4 of them just to keep things equal. Possibly just 2 or 1 with the extra effects changing various colours depending on alignment. It could also mean that content is released a little bit quicker since less work would need to be done to keep those hard-line distinctions from one another. Less work on voices and a few other things. It might not happen, depending on potential backlash, but I'd prefer the chance for new things to happen and explore rather than have stuff stagnate. with some caveats in place to ensure the old content isn't impacted *too* much. e.g running the unlock like a venture where player needs access to x planet or x place in the storyline or something.

[eggman-is-fat-mkay]

Also: if your PC case has space for them, and your mobo has ports for them, it is better to buy many smaller hard drives than one large one, and set them up in something called a RAID array. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (the I was later changed to Independent) and its purpose is, in essence, to take a bunch of hard drives connected to the same computer (most RAID controllers also require them to be the same size) and treat them like one big one. Key features of RAID include better performance (each file is stored across all of the drives, so when accessing them, you get the combined access speed of all of the drives in the array), and, more importantly, redundancy. There are several RAID configurations available. If you set up your array in a RAID-5 configuration (requires at least 3 drives), your total capacity will be all of the drives added together except one (i.e. four 5TB drives would get you a total of 15TB), and you have one-failure redundancy. This means that if one of the hard drives fails, all of your data will be intact, and you can simply replace it with another hard drive of the same capacity, wait a few days for the array to "rebuild", and it'll be as though nothing happened. If a second drive fails before you replace the first one, or before the rebuild finishes, though, your data is toast. If you set your drives up in a RAID-6 configuration (requires at least 4 drives), you'll have the sum of all of them minus two, and you'll have two-failure redundancy. If you're truly paranoid, you can use RAID-1 (aka "mirrored" -- at least 2 drives), where you only get the capacity of a single drive no matter how many you have, but all of them can fail except one and all of your data will be intact. If you use RAID-0 (aka "striped" -- at least 2 drives), you'll get the capacity and performance of all your drives put together, but if any of them fail, all is lost, so make sure you're backed up. (You won't be expected to remember all that, by the way. When you're setting up your RAID, you'll be asked to pick one of those options, and then you can forget about it forever.) RAID-5 (one drive redundancy) is the most popular and the one I recommend.

While hardware RAID controllers do exist and are common, the more popular option nowadays, especially for consumer setups, is software RAID, since it's cheaper (comes with the OS) and more feature-filled, and unless you have more hard drives than SATA ports to plug them into, there's no real advantage to the hardware stuff. All four of the major operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux, and BSD) have software RAID functionality built in. (Linux even has more than one.) You'll need to delete all existing partitions off of a drive before setting it up in a RAID array, so if you have any existing data, you'll need to copy it somewhere else first.

Also worth noting is that while any RAID system will let you replace a drive with one of the same capacity, very, very, very few allow you to change the number of drives in of an array after initial creation, short of deleting and re-creating the entire RAID array along with all the data on it. Of the dozen or so RAID systems I've encountered, hardware or software, I'm only aware of two that support adding drives willy-nilly: BTRFS (a Linux-exclusive filesystem with software RAID built-in, and one of three ways to do software RAID on Linux) and BeyondRAID (a proprietary system developed by the company Drobo and used exclusively in their user-friendly USB storage controllers). Of those two, everyone you talk to online will tell you BTRFS is great as long as you don't use the RAID feature, for reasons that don't entirely make sense to me (they'll encourage you to use ZFS's software RAID instead, which doesn't support that), and Drobo boxes are notoriously quirky and unreliable. In short, none of the big-name ones let you add capacity because it's really hard to implement that without making a gigantic mess. If you want to add capacity down the road, you're either going to have to live with five drives in a RAID array and one all on its own as a separate drive letter, or you're going to be going down some very deep google rabbit holes, and quite possibly taking advantage of your local computer store's return policy to have drives you can temporarily copy all your data to.

Oooh im a new anon what brand/kind of memory i should get to start storing data? Like vids n movies

For brands: Seagate or Western Digital. Don’t drive yourself crazy like I did researching for days which is objectively “better” — they are both very solid and reliable brands, and the fact is that you can have a good or bad experience with either based on factors outside of anyone’s control. Hard drives fail — it’s a fact. There’s no way to permanently prevent this. Sooner or later your hardware will wear down, even from the best manufacturers, and all you can do is plan ahead of time for getting the longest life out of your drives by properly caring for them and have something planned to replace them when they inevitably fail. Hopefully after you’ve gotten some years of good use out of them first, but like I said there’s tons of factors.

For example, I ordered a 12 terabyte HDD from Seagate once for my server that was over $300 and it was dead on arrival. Wouldn’t work at all. But the warranty was for several years and customer service replaced it no problem and the 5+ other hard drives I’ve gotten from Seagate have been flawless. But sometimes, drives just die. You feel me?

But yeah, WD or Seagate. I’ve used both. Both are highly recommended

What kind: to keep things basic, you should consider either an HDD (hard disk drive) or SSD (solid state drive). For stuff you just want to back up and make sure it’s safe/you have copies, like videos and movies, pictures, music, documents, etc… you can go with an HDD. They are much cheaper, and ideal for storing files that aren’t accessed or modified frequently.

An SSD is going to be more expensive, and those are ideal for things like applications, games, your operating system….stuff that you interact with in real time, where loading time really matters and files can be being cached and changed and modified a ton within a short period of time. In this case, an SSD will feel significantly better and faster than an HDD

Hope this helps! Lemme know if I can answer anything else for ya

[freakxwannaxbe]

The SD card for my switch finally arrived, which only means one thing

River City Girls time

[froggy-frogz]

Hi, I know I already had a request put in, but i was wondering if you could do another one? I'm going through a rough time with a break up, and I have no one to comfort me right now. i was wondering if you could do a brett (inside job) x reader? Like Brett and y/n are best friends, and y/N is going through a hard time and he has no one to comfort him, but Brett finds them in a storage closet and comforts them. Also, could the reader use he/they pronouns? If that's no to much to ask

A/N: I'm super sorry that you're going through a rough time :( and dw, I don't mind at all, you can submit as many requests as you like. Sorry I didn't get it out till now though! Hope you're feeling a little bit better hun. [Also if you ever want to talk, or anyone reading this needs some to talk to, my DMs are always open! I'm not the best at advice but I'll listen!]

- - -

Brett Hand x Reader

Warnings: None!

- - -

You were having an awful day. You weren't sure why, maybe it was just you overthinking again, or you were getting paranoid that you weren't good enough to work here. Hell, you were surrounded by some brilliant people and you felt small compared to them.

Normally you were okay at work, sure you had your moments but you were always able to calm yourself down.

Today was different though, as you weren't able to shake the feeling of unwellness that was swelled up in your chest. You didn't want to talk to your friends about it, because, despite everything, you weren't sure how they'd see you afterward. Sure you guys had been through a lot, but you didn't want to be seen as a hassle.

That's how you found yourself in some random office supplies closet, bawling your eyes out as you used your hands to muffle the sounds of your sobs. It was pathetic, wasn't it? You crying in a closet. You felt bad if Larry, the janitor were to accidentally find you in here.

You were in a meeting with the gang when some snarky remark from Glenn set you off. Normally you and Glenn didn't have any issues with each other. Sure you didn't always see eye to eye on certain, if not many politics, but generally he was nice to you.

You weren't sure why what he said to you hurt the way it did.

There's a loud, sudden knock on the door that makes you jump a bit, and you get immediately scared as your hand reaches for the doorknob. You weren't able to tell who's knock it was, and for the most part, it had pretty quiet in the hall.

You open the door and there's a mix of relief and embarrassment as you see Brett standing there, a worried expression apparent on his face.

"[Y/n]... You doing alright?" He asks gently as if he didn't want to scare you.

"No." You sniff, wiping your face free of tears, "I feel like shit."

Brett looks around for a second before stepping into the closet and closing the door, before leaning on the wall next to you.

"What's wrong?"

You let out a snort, what wasn't wrong at this point? God now to add to that, Brett had now seen you cry. You knew he wouldn't tell anyone but he still saw you.

"A lot. I just don't feel good, y'know? Like it's too much to handle. I don't know if it's work or if it's what Glenn said earlier but I just feel shitty."

The man next to you is quite as if he doesn't know what to say, but after a second, he mumbles to you, "Can I hug you?"

You were a bit shocked that he'd ask that right now, but Brett was a very touchy-feely guy so you guess it made sense.

When you nod and give him the okay, he wraps his arms around you, tucking his chin on your head. If it was anyone else doing this, it'd be uncomfortable, but it was Brett, sweet, kind Brett who was the one person that you could count on here to make you feel better.

"Everyone got pretty upset at Glenn," Brett says quietly, a tiny bit of amusement in his voice, "It was a little funny to see everyone ganging up on him, but once you didn't come back I got worried."

He hugs you tighter, and you hesitate, but hug him back, pressing your teary, snot-covered face into his shoulder. You'd have to apologize later.

"I'm here for you [Y/n], sorry I didn't notice earlier." He says softly, "I may not know what to say but I want to help in anyway that I can."

"Thank you," You mumble, knowing fully well that he was already, indeed, helping.

[strawberry-possum]

🖊 ?

HEEHEE TY ALFA

I'll talk about my otb (one true blorbo) Venus (and by extension, Nassa), and specifically my tma au for them both.

Warnings for vague mentions of injuries and implied death (sort of) (I'd put this under a read more but I'm on mobile </3 )

Necessary backstory if you don't know tma: spooky shit happens. This spooky shit can be roughly sorted into several "spooky shit" categories. They have cool names like "the beholding" and "the desolation". Normally they're Evil but sometimes people can serve them and get Cool Powerups at the cost of feeding on fear and/or suffering. Also it's british so you get things like flats and colours

Necessary backstory if you don't know Venus: vae/vem pronouns, is a mechanisms oc (immoral space pirates, they have a mechanical body parts which is what causes said immortality). Vaer mechanism is vaer chest! Vae also has vines growing in vaer chest and it's a Fun Time (/s).

OKAY with that out of the way

Venus and vaer qpp Nassa are both living in a flat. It's a tiny shitty little flat, but it's theirs. Venus was able to get away from vaer parents, Nassa is in a better location for their job, it's good. Except rent is A Lot so Venus needs a job.

Then, woah!!! One day vae gets a letter in the mail from this super fancy place asking if vae's interested in a job? Boy are vae ever!!!! They even pay well!!!!

(spoiler alert it's the Magnus institute)

Vae gets in, and it's kinda weird bc yeah vae was good at school but vae never really,,you know, finished college, and vae is pretty sure that to work at an institute you need a degree or two? But vae's not going to question it. Can't afford to question it, in the most literal sense of the word.

And sure, it's hard sometimes, and other times it's downright weird. (No matter how pressed up against a wall vae is, vae always feels watched.)

But it pays the bills, and clearly vae's just being paranoid, and things are going well :)

Until :) a certain archivist disappears :) and a new archivist is promoted :) and new archival assistants are chosen :)

Venus becomes an archival assistant is what I'm saying here

Things go relatively normally, until Martin comes back after being gone for thirteen days. After that, there's this faint humming sound in the walls. No one else seems to hear it. It must be some sort of hazing thing, you know make the youngest, least qualified person lose vaer mind a bit, haha very funny.

One day though, the humming is so loud, it's a song, its screaming at vem to help it, please, it's so cold and alone, and vae is so warm, vae could save it-

Jon breaks through an "exterior" wall. Prentiss attacks. Sasha flees into artifact storage. Martin finds Gertrude. Jon and Tim are both Marked. Venus barely manages to break free from the song of the Corruption in time to survive the worms.

Vae doesn't know what to tell Nassa. When the humming first started, vae mentioned it briefly, and she'd looked so concerned that vae hadn't mentioned it again. After that, when the song had gotten louder, vae started staying later and later, until vae almost never saw her. It's only after Prentiss is dead that vae realizes vae hadn't had a proper conversation with her in almost a week and a half.

Vae's scared, going home. When vae gets home, vae thinks that somehow, Nassa is more scared, seeing vem so wrapped up in bandages and gauze that vae looks like a shitty dollar store mummy.

She doesn't ask. She trusts that vae'll tell her when vae's comfortable. She trusts vem.

Venus doesn't tell her.

Which means that, only a few months later, when vae hears the song again? Vae has no one to fall back on. Vae's isolated, alone, and the song is singing so sweetly of community and devotion. It doesn't take long for the vines to grow in and around vem.

And Nassa? She's angry. She's hurt, and betrayed, and confused, and a thousand other things she could put a name to if she really tried. Even so, she can't deny how worried she is when Venus doesn't come home, one night, then a second, and a third. She contacts the institute, and Elias is no help, simply says that he hasn't seen vem either.

He does offer her a job though. Says that he thinks she should have a lot to offer for the team, and maybe she can even find leads while she's working.

She accepts. Her worry has overpowered her anger, and all she wants now are answers.

[amphorographia]

Ok, so I have a story about this.

My grandmother died when I was very young (I was 6, I think?) so I don't have many memories of her. When she died, my mum and dad cleared out her house and her books all ended up on random shelves or in storage.

Anyway, about 15 years later I'm flipping through books at random and I come across a 1940's textbook for midwifery. For context, my grandmother served as a nurse during WWII and, when I asked my Mum about it, she said my grandmother had been told she had to pick a specialty before she could enlist and so she picked midwifery. The whole time she was studying, her goal was to help in the war effort on the front lines as it were.

I was getting a kick out of seeing how she underlined passages and made notes in the margins the same way I do when I came across an article she'd clipped out of the newspaper and used as a bookmark.

"WHAT TO DO IN AN AIR RAID"

Now this article had lots of very blunt information about what rooms you should go to and practical information but the thing that shocked me the most about this article in particular was this phrase: "To provide yourself with protection [from high explosive bombs] you should build a barricade over the window opening. On the outside there can be built a brick wall of 13 1/2 inches thickness, or a sandbag barricade of 24 inches." The article also ended with the announcement that on Monday they would explain how to shatterproof glass.

In Australia when we learn about WWII we mostly learn about what was happening in Europe and America at the time and much less about what was happening 'back home'. To realise that this was something printed in an Australian newspaper (and important enough to be cut out and kept by my grandmother) honestly surprised and terrified me.

The old woman I remember was paranoid. She was convinced the world was going to end and prepared accordingly. She panicked when she couldn't contact her children (so much so that we stopped telling her when we were going on holidays). After she died we found in her medicine cabinet the cyanide pill she was issued with when she was deployed to Japan in the 1940's. All of that behaviour suddenly seemed so much more understandable, despite how unnecessary all her precaution really was.

Essentially, I learnt more about her from her choice of bookmark in 1941 than I did in the time she was alive.

TL;DR: My grandmother used an article about protecting your home from air raids as a bookmark in the 40's that I found after she died.

my favourite thing about buying books secondhand is finding the things people used as bookmarks in books that they never finished. here’s some of my favourite things that i’ve found!

[unclebiggs]

It began with M

It Began with M

Chapter 1: It Began with M

I have told this story for what feels like a hundred times. Anytime someone mentions hearing a ghost story, or tells of a experience they had in the past, hell even anytime someone asks "Have you seen the trailer to this movie?" I always responds with my personal dealings with the afterlife during my late teen years, still a boy but slowly becoming a man, in a 2 floor apartment in Chicago. 

Recently some friends of mine suggested I write my stories down, turn it into a horrific tale of a truly spine tingling experience. A decision I have come to regret since that day. 

I now spend every night, since I started writing, repeating the same routine. The same one I learned years ago when this story began. 

"You don't belong here... You don't belong here. YOU DON'T BELONG HERE!"

  I don't understand why it works, or if it works with every sitstuation, I just know, from what I dealt with, repeating those words, sternly, always pulled me back away from what lies in the shadows.

  I guess a little back story before we begin would be best, without it, all of this would just come off as unstructured ramblings of a man crazed by paranoia. 

  The same month this story begins was the same month I was diagnosed with BP-1 or more commonly known as Type 1 Bipolar disorder. A manic episode in school and a few paranoid fueled delusions, was enough to scare my parents into secretly getting me help. Because hell, no one wants to admit their child may have some screws loose in their old noggin. I understood their fears though. One day out of the blue, I completely blanked out and lost my shit, and started screaming and attacking some kids at school. I don't remember what started it, nor do I remember how it ended. I went from sitting at my desk, bored to tears as my teacher lectured the class on the fundamentals of Algebra. "You will need to know this for every day life!" Was what she would yell at us, whenever she caught someone ignoring her teachings. It happened almost every day. 

 After that, the next thing I remember was my teacher crying, another students face scratched and bloody, and a 2 ton behemoth of a man pinning me down with this tree sized calf pressed firmly into my upper chest. Close enough to threaten the wind pipe in my throat, but far enough that I could breath. Barely. 

For some months before this attack, I started to believe that I could feel the thoughts of students and teachers in my school. They were not pretty thoughts, not at all. Tortured and angry, they all hated me, they hated, the kid  that always had a smile on his face. Or that's how I remember it at least. Honestly, these days its hard to even know what did and didn't happen. I guess I'm not starting any of this with a whole lot of confidence, makes it hard to believe a story when even the writer can't recall memories and suffers from delusions. 

     That's how it all works though with ghosts, or spirits, or phantoms, whatever name you want to give them, they don't like to be remembered. I have no clue as to why, what purpose does hiding from us serve them. 

     Most people are lucky enough to never remember any experiences or interactions that they had with the dead, but trust me when I say, we've all  had at least one experience. Those moments are usually wiped from our minds or at the very least altered, leaving people confused as to what transpired. Sometimes though, clues are left behind, and with them, we rebuild our broken memories, that is if we choose to remember at all.  

     The easiest clues to spot are the chunks of time that seem to just vanish. If you ever had a unnerving feeling of an unseen figure, slowly creeping towards you from the shadows, or one that lurks in the corners of your eyes, like a hungry wild cat stalking it's next meal. That overwhelming presence that fills us with blood curding dread when we sit alone in a deafening silent room, chilled with malice intent. The sensation that causes the hairs on your arms to stand tall with teeth grinding trepidation, and then... nothing. Feelings gone, nothing in the shadows, no figure waiting in the corner, just you in a empty room and time lost in the unspoken commotion.

         I feel like Hollywood has a small part to play for the unsettling and confused reactions we garner from these moments. Movies have tainted our minds with preconceived ideas of what dwells in the darkness. With an over reliance on special effects makeup and CGI, they have convinced generations of people into believing that the things, that go bump in the night, are tangible. Demons, monstrous creatures, paranormal activates, they all are given a face or a form. 

       As if they can be touched by our shivering hands when we cautiously reach out for a possessed porcelain doll, once a beautiful treasured item pain-stakingly created by a manic artist, now cracked and aged from years of neglect. Or as we reach for the rustic doorknob, loosely held by dull worn out screws, to a heavy and creaking wooden door. The only safety sitting in the pathway between us and a loud, wet cracking sound on the other side. Like bones crushing under the pressure of monestrous slobbering mandibles. 

My first clue, my frist experience all started with the woman next door to the apartment I lived in. My parents owned the 2 floor building we lived in. We called the second floor home and my sister and her family lived on the first. The basement, which used to be where our family held parties, was now just a storage space for all the junk my family no longer wanted, but didn't want to toss away. Just tossed and forgotten in the cold and stale basement. For a while I used to enjoy chilling out down there after school. Even though it smelled funny and dead bugs littered the floor like bread crumbs leading to their nesting spot, it felt safe. I would clean up the area when I could, drop a few bug traps, I did my best to keep it maintained, but it was a never ending battle. 

I can't remember her name, the woman next door, with every attempt to remember her, even when she was alive, the memories get revised. With every revision, comes a new name for her. Though, as odd as it may sound, her name in every version of this constantly changing history, always started with an M. Massiel, Michelle, Meghan, Misty, Miriya, Monica, Marisa, Maria, May, Martha, and so many others that I decided it was just best to call her M. 

She was an older woman, but like her name, her age always varied, but her undeniable beauty never changed. M wasn't the most beautiful woman that I have ever come across, hell over the years I have come to meet plenty of woman that society would deem much more stunning. Still she had that alluring beauty, the kind that caught your eye and refused to let go. Especially when she smiled. When she did, you felt safe, her cheerful and honest grin felt familiar. 

Then one day she changed. She used to walk the neighborhood all the time, her daily exercise, which she did around the same time. Early in the morning, and around the hours that I would head out to the public bus stop and wait for the green limo that gathered the bored and tired denizens of the morning routine, heading out to their daily grind. For me it was school. 

Even on the cold winter snow filled days, she would take her daily stroll. Then they started to become infrequent, eventually she stopped completely. Still, since she also lived on the second floor, I would sometimes see her through her kitchen window that sat right across my bedroom window. Her smile was gone, face pale, the cheerful demeanor that she radiated was gone. Then a few weeks later she just wasn't there anymore, and then, unexpectedly one night she was.

I was in my bed with both my adorable but annoying chihuahuas, Nunuk and Mimi. After some time of tossing and turning, I was finally falling to sleep. It was in the moment between where the mind begins to drift into the warm embrace of a dream filled deep sleep and the slow decline from the bodies external senses, that I felt the sensation of someone sitting at the edge of the bed. 

     At first, it was just my legs that rolled slightly towards the incline, as the pressure of weight on the bed grew, more of my body began to tilt in it's direction. With every inch I turned towards the thing that was sitting at the edge of my bed, the further away I was pulled from the safe arms of my dreams and forced into the grips of a horrific realization. I was not alone. 

          I awoke from my sleep and sprung upright, eyes blurred, and too dark to clearly see, but I knew what was there or should I say wasn't. My dogs stood at the other end of the bed, their fur standing straight up, and ready to attack, though I wasn't sure exactly as to what they thought they were going to accomplish. I could barely open my eyes, especially my right eye, so there was no way for me to know for sure what was there by sight, something that over time I would learn was pointless anyways, but by instinct, intuition, I knew exactly who was there. 

     I could feel her eyes on me, and if the idea of her lifeless body sitting at my beds end watching me sleep wasn't enough to scare me, then her smile, normally filled with joy and compassion, was now overflowing with something much more sinister. M, who had now been dead for a few weeks, was in my room, sitting on my bed. I had to act, but for whatever reason I still couldn't completely open my right eye. The more I attempted to force my eyelids open the stronger a sharp pain would shoot down my eye, into my jaw, and finally work its way down my spine. I panicked with confusion and pain, and bolted out of the bed to turn on the light. 

     There was no one there, nor where there signs that anyone had ever been there. I could finally see again with my left eye, but my right still rang from pain. I turned to the door and stumbled my way into the bathroom to see what was wrong with my eye, thinking my ordeal with the presence of M was over with. As I stood in front of the mirror prying open my eyelids with my hands, a new dreadful sensation began and I could feel her pacing with a panic, back and forth past the bathroom's door way, like a scared and confused animal trying to escape a small room. I fought the urge to look towards her direction and just continued to stare straight ahead into the mirror. I thought to myself, if you can't see it, then it can't hurt you. At that moment, and only for a moment, I completely forgot about M. There, in the corner of my eye, resting in the bed of the socket was the tip of a small yellow string. 

     As I cautiously reached for it with my left hand while my right kept my eyelids open, I wholeheartedly expected M to walk up behind me, or even worse appear in the mirror in front of me, grinning her now dead and haunting smile. The second I felt the edge of the string in my finger tips, is when time began to slow. I pulled and pulled on that blood soaked string for what felt like hours and with every tiny centimeter that I pulled from my socket, a shot of pain worked it's way down every nerve in my body. My legs and arms shook from the constant barrage of pain, but I couldn't stop pulling on the tiny yet hellish string. 

      It was almost an addiction, I had to see just how long this thing was. At one point though, I began to wonder what was in my grasp, was this minute thing that made its way down my eye even a piece of thread? Could it be a part of me, a thread of flesh maybe, a fiber of tendon, or a collection of nerves? Was I slowly tearing the flesh of body from the inside out?  

     Finally, as my thoughts reached a feverish high of gore, one that I couldn't handle anymore, where I ironically thought that I had reached the end of my rope, the tiny rope in my eye fully came out, and in that exact moment, M's presence was also gone. 

          Back then, I believed M was the one who placed the string in my eye, but the more I think about it. The more my memory of that night gets revised, the more I belive, she was only there as a witness to the whole ordeal, maybe even a concerned one. As for the bloody thread that I pulled from my eye, the one that took forever to remove, was only 3 inches long. 

     The night was silent again, and as if I was in a drunken stooper, my recollection of the whole ordeal began to wain, even before I attempted to go back to my bed. My dogs, who were so scared and ready to attack were now fast asleep, as if nothing ever happened. Like the rising sun that was filling my room with light, it dawned on me as to what was going on. M or something else, someone else, wanted me to forget everything that had happened, but why? I had proof of my ordeal, something more than just a clue, one that I still have to this day. My reminder that I am not a complete crazed and delusional poor soul, constantly tortured by paranoia and fear. Regardless on how insane my story sounds, I still have the yellow 3 inch string now stained with the rustic color of dried blood. 

Chapter 1: End

Chapter 2: Then came the Shadow

     (I find myself once again repeating. "You don't belong here!" Usually only have to do it once a night, but the night is still young and this is the second time I had to push away the shadow. )

     Three months had gone by since that first encounter, which is almost how long it took before I was able to sleep through a whole night, and not wake up in a cold sweat, at exactly 4:44 AM. I know such a cliche, such a sad "Hollywood" attempt of suggestive mania.

     Not surprisingly, the first few days after M made her presence known, were the worst. I didn't sleep at all during that time. Every slight sound like the house settling in the cold night air became an muffled whisper, or the dance of lights and shadows caused by cars driving through the neighborhood, the bright beams from their headlights piercing into the house gave way to illusions of something making it's way to me. This constant fear kept my nerves on high alert and my mind racing. I was now always short of breath as my heart pounded, every night burst with overwhelming angst. 

     Worse, were the days at school. Lane Tech was a massive and bustling school, with over 4000 students walking the halls between class periods. Each of us rushing and bumping into each other, trying make it to the next class before the tardy bell played it's malefic song. 

     Before M, the sensation of having that many people around me all at once, never really took a toll on my mind. After M, every person I saw, that didn't exactly flow with the stream of the crowd, became a potential threat. Were they just an altered thought in my head, masking the true world around me, around everyone? Were they something from the otherside, watching me? Have they always been there, have they always watched us all, but now because of my recent experience, I see them too?

          I wanted desperately to tell someone, anyone, what I had experienced, but how could I? Who would believe anything I would say? Fuck, even if I didn't take into account all of my other mental instabilities , I wouldn't belive my story of a woman who wasn't there and the time lost to the malicious acts of that horrible night. 

     Plus, chances were, if I had told anyone what I had saw, explained why my right eye was blood shot red and the lids surrounding it had become swollen and purple, franticly throbbing, they would have sent me to a loony bin. 

     Honestly, for a time, I contemplated the idea of being sent to a physic ward, and not just because of the one night, the idea crossed my mind several times, before and after M. Recently, with everything that has been happening, the idea has crossed my mind again.

          It wasn't a bad idea either. I could get away from M and everything else that dwelled in what felt like the last stop before purgatory, aka my home. In doing so though, I would have to pretend that it was all in my head, that not one bit of it, actually happened. I would be letting the world win, by letting them think my bi-polar grew into something more, and I was now just another pill-popping nutcase. 

 The night I pulled that bloody string out of my eye, I convinced myself that I had proof of my story, in case anyone thought I was crazy. The next day however, I realized how silly that idea was. It wasn't enough proof to show everyone that spirits were/are real. Showing them the string would have brought the wrong kind of attention to myself. It would have just solidify my families worries for me. I needed hard evidence to show that M wasn't a bad dream, that my mind wasn't slowly losing itself to decay. Until then, I was on my own.

I'm currently back on sleeping medications. It helps better now then it did back then, which at the time only gave me a few hours of sleep but once the clock hit 3:33 AM, I was awake, usually in a cold sweat. As the months went on though, as the nights grew longer, I had less issues waking up in the middle of the witching hours. I eventually got off the meds, but I never really did learn how to have a full nights sleep again.

It was around that time, when I felt comfortable with living in constant fear of the night, that I learned spirits really don't care about the time of day. They are around us at all times, always moving, always phasing in and out of the realm of our senses, and altering perception and memory. It's hard to notice the small changes, names, dates, hell just numbers in general, so easily forgotten or confused. Which is how they get you to question things, like the small changes, because when you question the small things, then everything becomes... questionable. 

The reach these spirits have too, how far they can influence a mind. That, as I learned was just as scary as any experience. 

     In the late 90's the new craze sweeping the nation was buying webcams for your personal computers. Now, no longer were people confined to communicating to friends, family, or complete strangers, with just AOL's instant messenger. With the advancement in both video and internet technology, people could communicate with the power of a web browser camera. 

     Being young and determined, meant I had to be at the cusp of technology, and I needed to get myself a webcam so I could chat with friends online. Being young and broke meant that I would be on the clearance section at the cusp of technology. It didn't matter though, I had met a very lovely woman on the inter-webs and she made some very.... Interesting suggestions... But only if we both had webcams.

Before you even think it, yes she was a real woman, and not some 55 year old, obese man, looking to lure a younger man into the back of his white windowless van. I watched America's most Wanted, I knew the signs and I knew what to look for.

     The people who owned the building before my parents, turned the outside back patios of both the floors, into sunrooms. On the first floor, the room was connected to the kitchen, on the second floor, where I lived, it was connected to my bedroom. The bedroom itself was tiny, smaller than the sunroom, so small in fact, that I could barely fit both my bed and a dresser in it. So the sunroom is where I kept my TV and computer. It was a nice little setup, even had a futon in their facing the TV.

I had been home for about an hour or so after a long day of school, when Margret, the lovely woman from the internet, who was not a man, messaged me. I heard the notification bell my computer makes whenever I receive a massage. "Is now a good time? Are you parents around?"

Big honest smiles and vibrant red hair have always been my greatest weakness. I learned this as a young child, the night my parents forced my sister to take me along on her date with a not so suitable gentleman. My parents didn't trust her enough to be alone with this guy, but they trusted her enough to assume that she wouldn't take me to see an R rated film. Well she did, and the film she took me to see was Bram Stoker's Dracula. If you've seen the film, you'll understand my love for confident redheads.

     Which is exactly how Margret was. Beautiful and confident in herself, definitely way too good for me, and yet for some odd reason, she found me attractive. 

     We met on some random chat room, it's been so long though, that I can't remember what chatroom it was, I just remember answering three simple questions "A.S.L". I guess something about being a 17 year old guy from Chicago, just did it for her, or at least enough for us to start talking in  private chats. 

     She moved quickly and she wasn't the biggest fan of my hesitations. "Do you have the cam set up? Are your parents home?" She asked impatiently, as if we were in a do or die situation. I had bought a webcam the night before and mentioned to her. From that moment, she was ready to play the game of "I'll show you mine if your show me yours". Actually I was past due for showing her mine. 

   She was always honest with me, something that I truly loved about her, it made me feel safe, a theme you will notice with me. So early on she informed me that being nude in front of the camera wasn't new to her. There were other guys on the internet that she had shown herself too, it was a rush for her. I didn't care though, I knew nothing was gonna come from this, it was all just cyber fun, plus you know... boobs.

     What wasn't fun was that my nerves were shot and my hands shook with the frantic speed of a humming bird's wings. I had never done anything like this before. I mean, I had been with one girl at that point of my life, but that didn't change the fact that webcam nudity was new territory for me, and I wasn't sure as to how to approach it. Still I had to do it, I told myself, I needed to man up and give Michelle a show she would never forget. 

     I reached for the keyboard, stared at the screen all while trying desperately to shake off my anxiousness, so I could respond "Almost, my whole family is about to head out and watch some movie, so I'm gonna tell them I have too much homework to do and that I can't join them. Once they leave is when we can start." My heart was racing, I could actually feel the blood coursing through my veins with increasing velocity. The blood flow made my head feel weak and dizzy.

After about an hour my family said their goodbyes and headed to the movies and dinner. "We won't be back til late." My mother Massy yelled as she walked down the stairs. My mother was a tiny little woman, with the typical old lady short curly hair. Yet she had the voice of a viking when ever she yelled. 

 It was now past show time, my family had been gone for at least ten minutes, and at that point I was just wasting time, sitting on my bed, scared to shit. What if she found my body to be unattractive? What if she made fun of, the things I had to offer? None of it mattered, I reminded myself. I had to do this, I had something to prove, so I took a deep breath and proudly proclaimed "Here goes nothing." The last words of dead men.

     I turned on the web camera, and synced with her computer for a private event. We said our joking hellos, and she asked me if I was OK with this. She wanted to make sure that I felt comfortable, even if she was being pushy. I told her I was, but I needed a second, I wanted to check myself in the mirror one last time. She laughed "You're handsome, you have nothing to be nervous about. I get it though, I was scared to fucking hell my first time, so go ahead, we have all the time."

We really didn't though, eventually my family would return from the movies, but that was a technicality I wasn't gonna waste our limited time discussing. I quickly headed to the bathroom, not so much to make sure I looked fine, this was as good as I was gonna get, but more so for one last pep talk in the mirror. Get my head in the game, both of them.  

Then it happened, with every step towards the bathroom came a step towards the oppressing feeling I had the night M came to visit, as if I was making my way to something massive and hungry, with me being the only meal. Why now? The sun, while red, setting into the horizon, still shun its light through the windows of the sunroom and settling softly into my bedroom. I had always believed it's comforting glow would keep me safe, like my mother, all mothers, used to tell their children. 

Again, that gaze. The one I felt before, someone who wasn't there was watching my every move. The atmosphere became thick, it was hard to breath, I felt as if I was tumbling through, while gasping for air, between the crashing waves of a winding violent rapid. I reached for my chest to try and help myself breath deeply but quickly pulled it back when I felt my heart viciously hammering into my chest as if it would rather die then deal with what was up ahead.

"No!" I yelled to myself. "This was just anxiety from the cam show, it just finally got a hold of me." A desperate idea I attempted to use to free myself from my frozen drowning body. 

It worked, briefly, I stood in front of my bedroom door, that lead to to the bathroom hallway and dining room, my words of encouragement gave me the strength I needed to reach for the door handle. It shook in my hand. The screws, dull and loose from years of abuse, barely held the knob in its place on the heavy wooden door.

I half expected to hear the sounds of something inhuman, waiting for me on the other side, as I turned the creeky rusty knob. My expectations were shattered.

"Hel...lo?" A fractured, electronic sounding voice, coming from behind me.

( You don't belong here.)

The hairs on my arm raised high, as if they themselves were trying desperately to escape the disjointed voice I heard coming from behind me, coming from the sunroom. Spine tinglingly chills weakened my knees. I didn't want to turn around and see what was transpiring in that room.

"Haha, you ... so adorable and f...ny! but I'm ... tell yo... uncle to have you ... your face to me. ...Have to see ... really are."

 That voice, shattered and nestled in static.

"Now how do you ... that? You have ... even met ... before."

It took a moment to register, but I knew that voice, it was Margret's voice. Who was she talking too? I could barely hear her, but I couldn't make out any other voices. I started to think that she was just talking to herself or someone at her home, that was until I heard the creaking of the apartment's wood floors. 

It came from other side of the door with the sounds being distant and muffled at first. A second creek, a third, and fourth, each one louder and closer than the one before it.

 As the sounds came closer and closer to the door, it became clear that the old wood planks were being pushed upon by a heavy slow moving force.

Again the floors creaked and bent as something moved even closer, now it was coming from right across the door that I was standing in front of. The creaking became louder and the room started to sway back and forth, slowly. 

With the movement of the room, the thickness in the air and the sounds of wood giving away to an unseen pressure I felt as if I were trapped in the bottom decks of an old wooden ship, aged by the unrelenting force of the ocean. 

 The heavy movements stopped for a brief moment and the room slowed in its rocking but still moved like a hammock in a slow breeze. It was then that I noticed the room becoming darker. I watched in both horror and fascination as a shadow, fluidly moved from under the crack of the door and began to fill the room around me. I watched as the light from the fading sun behind me, became buried under a endless void that would drive even the greatest minds to madness. As it slowly made its way closer to the sunroom, objects in my room began to lose shape, I could no longer see what was where, if it was even there at all. 

Bile filled my throat as the darkness took hold of the world around me and movement of the room began to increase again. Then the sounds of wood snapping under some massive weight continued, but this time, the sounds were coming from my room, from right behind me!

"Scared? Well ... scared of t ... ... me, right?" Margret asked. Was she, and whoever it was that she was conversing with, talking about me? Was this silent voice telling Margret what was happening? Of how terrified I was at that very moment?

I felt a cold grip grab a hold of my soul, as I heard the creaking step behind me. . Not a malicious grip but one bursting with desire, a wanting for I had and for what it didn't. I began to understand what this thing wanted, it was obsessed with me, or more accurately it was obsessed with my essence.

My pervious thoughts of M were completely wrong. It wasn't her dead smile I felt on that first night. It was this... Thing! I knew I felt her presence sitting at my beds edge, that I never doubted, but when I felt her pacing at the bathroom door as I ripped that thread from my eye, it was because she was concerned, scared for me, and maybe for herself as well.

" Wait, ... Is M? ... he have ... girlfriend?" Margret asked hesitantly.

Margret mentioned M?! I knew now, for sure, that whoever Margret was talking to, that person was in my house. 

The sounds became more like steps as it made it's way to the sunroom, and with each step, the room swayed even harder. I could feel the wood floors beneath my feet begin to give way to the weight of this thing. I nearly lost my balance as one of the wood boards snapped and disappeared into the shadows.

Every fiber in my body begged me to just run out the bedroom, down to the front doors and make my way outside. To never turn back, to never return to this ghost filled abomination I reluctantly called home. My mind though, wouldn't let me. It was now perverse by all of this, it had become an adrenaline rush, a drug. I pierced into another world and my mind needed to know more.

"Oh, is yo... ..cle coming back? Well it was nice talking.. ... Sam, maybe next time you ... Be... scared so I ... your face."

     It seemed like the thing finally made it way to the doorway of the sunroom. The steps stopped and the room now jerked violently back and forth that I could barely stand. 

"Sam? Who's ... talking? ... sounds angry! Sam?!" Margret's voice was now filled with nervousness and concern, her happy playful attitude from just seconds ago, were now washed away. What did she hear? Was it the sinister  force which made its way across the room, that had changed her demeanor so quickly and deeply? 

I had to make my way back to the sunroom. I needed to know what was going on, but I was still so scared. I closed my eyes, and stumbled as I  turned my body towards the sunroom. Even though I knew I had yet to actually see a spirit, I was convinced that it was only a matter of time before I did. If there was a perfect time for a phantom to show itself, it would be at this moment. 

"Just open your eyes. Just open your eyes." I angerly told myself over "and over. Just open your eyes." 

Slowly I cracked open my eyes, one at a time and with a continuous flinch, until both were open fully, and ready to accept what lied before me, but just like before, nothing stood in front of me, and yet I knew something was there. I could feel it, and whatever this thing was, had a pull to it. The sensation of standing at the edge of a muddy steep incline, the ground slowly giving away to my weight, while this entity waited at the mouth of the drop with feverish hunger. It wanted something from me, but what I couldn't understand.

It didn't matter, I wasn't going to back down, I would learn all that I could while the opportunity was there. I gathered my nerves and cautiously took my first step. The floor now groaning to the extra pressure of my weight as I stumbled towards this thing. All light was now gone, I was in complete and total darkness, the air still filled my lungs like a thick liquid. I began to gasp for air, the room tossed and turned, I crashed into things in my room when either I fell towards them or when they shifted in the movement of the room.

My next step caused a loud pop in the floors causing me to fall completely, I was sure this thing ahead of me would notice my movements... nothing. I reached for where my bed should have been but the rocking of the room must have shifted it elsewhere. I couldn't get up and I could barely crawl. My breaths were getting more shallow and I was desperately fighting the vomit that continued to build in all the chaos. 

I heard Margret's voice one last time, but this time it was clear, there was no electrical static. "Sam?! Oh dear God Sam?! What the fuck ... is that?!"

                       Then... Silence.

                   (You don't belong here) 

Chapter 2: End

[wealmostaneckbeard]

This post is interesting to me because of the logistical/social dynamics required to romance an average skaven male.

Is it possible to ask a skaven out on a date? Yes of course, they are very social creatures, always looking for new slaves and spies. Is it possible to survive dating a skaven? Highly Unlikely, for myriad reasons.

Skaven are paranoid little guys, so they will eventually accuse you of betraying them or preemptively betray you. Trust doesn't come naturally to them.

Skaven won't adhere to any sort of BDSM contract despite being into Slavery. If you allow a rat man to dominate you, he'll use you until you're dead. And although it would be easy to dominate him, he would always be resentful and looking for ways to hurt you. The only way it could work is if you Switch as hard as possible, they do get confused easily when there isn't a clear hierarchy of command.

Skaven may have polycules but those groups last as long as a fresh Dire Rat corpse in a Breeder's den.

And then there's the diseases! There's going to be Earth analogous pathogens like Rabies and Bubonic plague. But then there's stuff that only Nurgle knows about that I'm going to make up: Herman's Gout, Crimson Cough, Swelling Blight, Claudia's Sores, Yellow Tongue... I'm pretty sure most Skaven are anti-vaccine and anti-hygiene so good luck trying to get them clean.

Oh and then there's the dangers of trying to hook up in a skaven workplace. You'll probably get cancer from warpstone exposure or tetanus from all the corroded metal. So be careful which storage cavern you scrum in.

Gods, The amount of protection you would need...

were I a warrior in the warhammer universe, I would simply DATE all the skaven. I'm built different.