Two Kakampinks walked into a café.
This was after they lost the elections, and they've recovered na from the hard-hitting reality. Mga one year later na 'to.
They were in 12th grade senior high when they chanted along with the pink crusade, now they're both in their first year of college. The first is taking up a course on secondary education, major in English; the second, business administration. Well, dahil unti-unti na silang nagiging busy sa kanya-kanya nilang buhay, minsan na lang sila magkita. That's why these two friends, when they found the time, arranged this date.
The café was a typical modern café. It was one of those minimalist-styled establishments na may maliit na blackboard sa labas with cute chalk doodles to highlight its business hours. The interiors were adorned with overhanging indoor plants. The wooden tables varnished to golden-brown shine. The walls were an of an aesthetic black, designed with white huge calligraphy of optimistic cliches nabbed online. The entire place had a yellow lighting, setting up the ambience, making the entire place worthy to be posted on Instagram.
Waiting naman the tables, is an apron-clad guy with a deep dimple and a bulging Adam's apple, who was handsome enough to be romanticized.
But the two Kakampinks didn't care for him, as they are in love to each of their boyfriend. That's characteristic of women. When they're in love with a guy, the other guys get ignored, no matter how handsome they are.
Anyway, there they were. Sitting side-by-side. In an intimate table for two, catching up with each other's lives, that is, chatting about that funny professor they've had, that campus event in their respective university, that latest episode of that Netflix show they watch, that one fond memory they keep recalling. There was noise, there was glee, there was laughter, there was whispering, and of course, as this was in a café nga, there was eating. Particularly the eating of a creamy carbonara; and of a mushroom soup; and of a red velvet cake; and of a frappe; and of other dishes and beverages and desserts that one has to take a picture of before eating it.
Well, the hours passed and the skies got darker. Without alcohol, they began to get drunk—drunk from the intimacy that only friendship can give. From the honesty that this drunkenness has granted them, things then began to get political, as one said to the other:
"I don't know if you feel it too pero I cringe about being a Kakampink."
This remark came from a train of thought that began with their discussion of the leftist initiatives they've heard in each of their campuses. To this, a reply:
"Oh my god, ikaw din?" with gleaming eyes, the other said. "I feel that too. Takot lang akong i-verbalize sa circle ko as that may be an unpopular opinion today. Ang binary na kasi ng lahat. Any anti-pink rhetoric can suddenly turn you into a pro-red apologist."
"Then, this is a good thing na we share the same sentiments. And I'm glad na it's with you, whom I can finally speak of this." she said, "you know, I keep seeing sa fb feed ko yung fb memories of the pink rallies. My friends keep resharing them ta's sasabihing the best era daw. Well, whenever I see shares like that, I feel this funny feeling of cringe. Primarily from my intellect."
"Same. Probably kasi, we used to belong in there?" she replied, "we used to be one of them, in that pink crusade."
"Probably."
"Pero, I guess, that's okay. A wise man once told me na cringing at your past self is one of the surest sign that you've progressed to maturity."
"I like that. Education through disillusionment." she said with an honest smile. And then, she asked: "well, what led you to your disillusionment?"
"I am not so sure." she said, "wala namang maling ginawa si Leni for me to stop supporting her—pero, i guess the disillusionment came from the closest Kakampink I know, namely my self."
"Yeah, what about your self?"
"I had this episode lang of being moved by the poverty of our people, while I was dining in an eat-all-you-can buffet," she said almost laughing at her self with cynicism, "The restaurant had glass walls, so kita mo yung labas, from the inside. Well, while I was eating nga, may madungis na batang pulubi na dumaan, holding his hand out to me, mouthing something at me. I know na nanghihingi siya ng limos. Pero, I just consciously ignored him, shoving a spoonful of rice na sinabawan ng kare-kare, straight in my mouth. After that epispde, I kept contemplating on the glass walls. Is that not what we're doing? Just the rich and the privileged looking through the glass wall that separates us from the hungry, while we eat and dine and have our fill?"
"You think we're one of the rich and the privileged?"
"Are we not? We think na mga pasistang pulitiko lang yung rich and privileged, yung may subdivision 'gaya ng mga Villar o yung may private jet 'gaya ng mga Marcos," she said, "pero, think about it: don't we belong there, too? As we enjoy all our iPhones Pro's? Our Aquaflask tumblers? Our eat-all-you-can buffets? Our boba teas?"
"Yes, I think we are," the other replied, "If that's how you would put it, we basically are."
"Well, yun," she explained, "I guess, that's the part that doesn't make sense to me. How can I claim to fight for the poor, join them in their plights, while at the same time, enjoy my self in such lavish comfort? I think that would be hypocrisy."
"I'm really glad we're having this conversation," she replied fondly. "cause what you said—it's so aligned with an idea that I've been thinking about since the pink era was over." she sipped from her milk tea, and then continued, "we both joined the rally 'di ba? And we both saw the people there. And we both saw na most of them had an iPhone. I was just thinking, in retrospect, na maybe, we're part of the oppression too?"
"What do you mean?"
"Where does the iPhone user get his prestige?"
"Well, as a user of one, I don't find my iPhone prestigious kasi I'm not that petty." she said, with a laughing pompousity. "pero i could honestly answer that, in behalf of those petty materialists. The prestige of the iPhone comes from the fact na mahal yun and not everyone could afford one."
"Exactly. And yung mga 'di maka-afford ng iPhone, will have to settle with an Android phone." the other remarked, "so the prestige of the iPhone users, is based on the poverty of the Android users. Now, you can apply that to any material object advertised as a social emblem of luxury. Gucci, Jordan shoes, Starbucks, even the Aquaflask tumbler. The prestige of having one, enjoying one, consuming one, is based on its expensiveness, on how Capitalism privileged it on a pedestal, and on the idea na not everyone could afford it."
"So the glory of the havings is based on the lacking of the having-not's"
"Wow, you've put that aptly in a nutshell." the other remarked excitedly, "and yes! That's about right. The reason why our ideas of luxury, prestige, and privilege exist is because of their lacking, their not having, and their poverty. We are rich because they are poor. That's why I posited na we may be part of their oppression, too."
"That indeed makes sense." the other replied, "that's probably why ide-Day ko ang Starbucks ko, kasi alam kong may maiinggit."
"Right." the other said, with a laughter, "You're getting the idea. Pero you're adding your own mean twist. But that's my point: we exist in a social pyramid of lower class, middle class, upper class, where each class is really stepping on the back of the one immediately lower to them to maintain the height they enjoy. Yung lower class yung pinaka-kawawa as two classes are above them. And in this case we're discussing, their oppression is through our idea of luxurious materialism and the prestige we attach to commodified objects."
"Kaya it won't make sense for us to say 'eat the rich' kasi that would mean we have to eat ourselves."
"Exactly." she said, "the pro-red apologist proud of his iPhone, is the same with the pro-pink proud of her iPhone. They're both from the same greed and gluttony, blinded by the same object fetishism espoused by Capitalism. That's why the Kakampink revolution is not really the revolution. It's a revolt against the dominant group of iPhone users, by just another group of iPhone users. A bourgeoisie revolution. And that does not change things, for as long as the same object fetishism exists, as long as the same ideals for luxury exists, as long as Capitalism's definition of what a self is exists—the true proletarian revolution will not happen. We simply replaced the rich with a new set of rich."
"Well, what should be done, then?"
"This may be corny, pero I'll say it anyway," she said, shyly, "what must be done is to follow what Christ said to the rich man: sell your possessions and give them to the poor."
"Yes," she remarked, in-between a laughter, "that is indeed corny."
"Yes," she agreed, and then explained: "pero i think it's the closest thing we have to achieve a truly equal, egalitarian paradise as this Christian advice encourages the complete abolition of self and private property by a complete and genuine charity to the entire community."
With a concerned look, the other then remarked, "And by that you mean, surrendering our iPhones, our Aquaflask tumblers, our eat-all-you-can buffets, our boba teas, our ideals of luxury, of vanity, of prestige— our spectacular self-images, right?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's too ideal." she said, scoffingly, "can you do that?"
"No, I can't," she admitted, with a secret despair, "maski ako, I can't give up those. I can't live without my iPhone, you know? Pero I guess, the important thing here is we have to be honest about that. Self-awareness is as important as social awareness. We have to see na not only are we inside Capitalism, but that Capitalism is also inside us. We are molded by the same greed, the same gluttony that shaped the fat, privileged capitalist we condemn." Then she adds: "kaya siguro i cringe at my past. i envisioned my naive activist-self as a holy hero in the pink crusade—that I was someone noble, fighting a just war. Pero, I can now see much clearer. I'm really just a noisy child with a silver spoon in her mouth, who knows nothing about poverty, and who happens to have read a thread on Twitter. A poser who could courageously scream 'eat the rich' but could not muster enough courage to 'feed the poor.' "
Emphatizing with the melancholia she just voiced out, the other replied, "That reminds me of a lyrics from a song: everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to die."
"Yeah, that's about it. That's so true," she said, realizing something. And then, she laughs it off, "grabe. we're on a different level of wokeness here."
"Kaya nga eh. Nagutom tuloy ako." the other assented, a change of mood then took place, "I'm craving for some Samgyup. May alam ka ba na nasa malapit lang?"
"Ay, meron. Walking distance lang from here," the other answered, "madalas kaming mag-date ng boyfriend ko do'n—tara, kain tayo."
They began to pack their things up, grabbing their shoulder bags, clutching their purses. As they walk out of the café, the bell chimes over the doorway signalled their departure. At this, the waiter then makes his move; he cleans up the mess they leave behind.
The two Kakampinks walking out of the café, will now head to that Samgyup resto, to eat and have their fill.

Loved the gloomrot patch, it was truly impressive I can't wait what stunlock will add in the future!
Here is a fan made patch list with stuff I would love to see someday if I were a designer at stunlock
Let me know what you guys would like to see too in the comments
Patch name: Throne of Blood
Patch theme: Focus on end game, servants and the control of Vardoran by the vampire factions, alongside the mighty Dracula himself!
New end game Dracula boss: - Castle in center of map location - Requires blood key to enter - Boss uses player vampire spellbook and fights like a player - Dracula uses all weapon types, and 3 random spells from a given spell school - Each 30 seconds he switches spell schools at random, with new 3 spells - When he switched he says a voice-line to announce spell school (for example he yells "I am unholy" for the unholy school) - Defeating Dracula unlocks a new vampire power: the spell loadout wheel, that allows you to switch your spells even in combat (cooldown 60 seconds) - Dracula will spawn blood clones of him depending on number of players fighting, so it will always be a 1v1, or 2v2, or 3v3 etc - Dracula AI is coded to be a strong vampire dueler similar to a real pvp player - Good for practicing dueling, even on pve servers - To start the Dracula boss you must raid his castle like you would a real player, and he will have servant NPCs and undeads defending his castle - Dracula has a center throne room arena where you may fight him
New World events system: - New npc caravan events for each of the zones - New summoning rituals that summon undead world bosses - New werewolf city attacks at night, with king's guard defending city - Events announced in chat
New Castle Grandeur system: - Each decoration gives grandeur score - Castle Grandeur buff gives movespeed while in your castle alongside with reduced blood drain rate - Wallpapers also give grandeur score - This would make decoration books be functional and useful
New dueling system: - You can now duel other players and at 0HP you don't die but play a kneel animation - Works on pve servers
New Servant companion system: - You can take servants with you in battle, but it takes up 1 spell slot each - Max 2 servants (replacing each of your 2 spell slots) - Each servant has a Command spell instead of your regular spell - Depending on what you mouse over, the command spell does different things - Actions like follow, attack, stay, defend - Blood mend now heals your servants too at the cost of more blood drained - Killing owner vampire makes servants be feared, allowing them to be easily killed
Servant balancing: - Servants now use a little durability while on missions or fighting with you, and broken gear no longer gives them gearscore - Servants can be sent on missions to enemy vampires to map layout of castle or to steal technology
New turbo official servers: - Both merciless, pvp and pve - 2x gather rates than vanilla - 1 week and 2 week wipe schedule variants - Wipes not in sync so each day you find a freshly wiped server
Raiding overhaul: - Walls now have double hp than doors - A door pathway to your castle heart is now a requirement - Each room gets a room size wall buff to HP to lessen the need for honeycomb - Stairs are now destructible and you can walk up on red destroyed stairs - Servants and mobs no longer hit by explosives through walls - Destroying palisades only starts breach timer for wooden walls, not stones
Balance changes: - Fishing gives more fish instead of ingots - Human form now hides vampire name, is immune to sun, and can fish. Blood drain increased greatly while in human form. - Doubled castle decay rate for pvp servers - Mutant blood and creature blood give claw damage buff (based on gearscore) and specific claw movesets (two for creature, two for mutant)
UI and interface: - New Compulsively take button - Legendary weapons have a glow based on infusion - New server filter sorting option: sort by recently wiped - Shift+E to compulsively count in chest at your mouse cursor (no need to open it, but it plays the chest open animation) - See clan name on territory on map
Misc changes: - You can now sit on chairs and benches - You can now place decorations on tables - Wallpaper textures now cover entire wall - Empty and filled bottles now stack to 50 instead of 10 - You can now fill bottles 10 at a time
I wish one day I would work as a designer for a great game like vrising instead of working on boring enterprise software
Hope you enjoyed the read. If you have more, post your ideas below.

Best interior designer in Bhubaneswar
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We are giving you Residental Design, Corporate Design, and Healthcare Interior Design.
Residential Design: Residential design is an art that aims to create a house that looks good and, with more quality, gives us the ability to live an enjoyable & comfortable life. The design of buildings could be one of the most important decisions in life we make in our lives. It can be a positive impact on your quality of life.
Many elements of residential design can be considered when designing a home. These include the floor plan, interior design, exterior design, and more.
· Corporate Design: Use textures: Textures can add depth and interest to a space. You can use textured wallpaper or textured paint to create a unique look.
· Perfection and simplicity: A blend of perfection and simplicity can make your office space more aesthetically delightful and efficient.
· Make it colorful: Adding color to your office space can make it more inviting and lively.
· Experiment with shapes: You can experiment with different shapes to create a unique look. For example, you can use circular tables instead of rectangular ones.
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Hospitality Interior Design:
· Socially-distanced changing room by Superfutures
· Contactless bar by Superfutures
· Experiential Veil by InsideOut
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· Ceiling-mounted bed by ReardonSmith Architects in collaboration with Suited Interior Design and Delight.
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Small Story Rant: Hi I rarely ever get callbacks after applying to jobs of anykind. Recently though through a friend i got a painting job for $22/H they never asked for a resume and i think i am the lowest paid worker they have, (i think their minimum is $23.5) but i was pretty deperate for a job so i took it. They already increased my pay by $1 (it was $21), the company also does pay under average, anyways its spring/summer and because of that I thnk I have alot of leverage in my market, as the hot season for painting is during the summer, I want to be paid above average a bit at $27/h and in the past have been up up to 30/h or nightshift for 40/h in my field.
My resume: My current template goes like this
Objective: Seeking a position that will allow me to have strong communication skills, work ethic, and ability to work well in a team to contribute to company success.
Skills:

1. Communications: Excellent presentation skills, written and verbal
2. Solid Time Management
3. Bilingual (Spanish)
4. Fast Learner
5. Hard Worker
6. Creative and Adaptive (Problem Solver)
7. Teamplaye Leader

Experience:
2015-2020 Commercial painting
I was around 15ish when i started as an apprentice and I was employed by alot of different companies during this time some as little as 2 week (i think as a subcontactor) but it was pretty independent work but my summary is:
Consisted of Manual Labor, Moving Equipment and supplies, Cleaning sites, Taping, Scraping, Sanding, Painting, and Varnish in a predominantly Outdoor environment consisting of Fences, Decks, Doors, Trim, and Stucco painting (using a Paint sprayer)
Then I decided to work for 1 company for a year because i realized i couldn put the above on a resume properly
Painting Company 2019-2020
Interior painting (idk what else to but that was really all i did and i added the other things i did to my previous)
I got tired of painting after like my 18th bday and was really depressed cuz of covid and stuff and took a long haitus and decided i wanted to try other industries so my next job was
Job at healthcare facility as servehousekeeper october-may
Worked isolated and independently; preparing and Serving food, Setting tables, Sweeping, Dishwashing, and Housekeeping.
But recently ive been self employed a bit trying differnt industries ( i was an apprentice for this in one of my other jobs but never added it)
Self employed wallpapering @ differnt places (i have them named but dont feel comfortable sharing)
Feb-September 2022
Worked in a pair to create beautifully wallpapered rooms
Volounteer
2 Places 2018-2019
Availability
ALL WEEK ALL DAY (Can do nightshift)
Education
Highschool
Refrences
Available upon request
I have no refrences noone has ever asked and i never added them because i dont keep track of numbers and have noone to vouch for me im also super uncomfortable adding them tbh (not cuz im a bad worker i just have a bad upbringing and get anxiety when people ask about me or my life)
and thats it I havent added my current company though
I have about 7 years of experience in Painting
1.5 Years in Wallpapering
and i was an apprentice last summer for Tiling and flooring for like 3 months (just tiles tbh but on the floor) I didnt add it though ebcause i felt it was useless to add since no job would hire me as a tiler with a 3 month apprentership so never added it
During covid though i was fired twice but only during trainings and never added it to my resume (I was extremely depressed and it was a struggle getting out of bed and it was really hard to motivate myself to go do mundane tasks for 8 hourrs and bus for an hour or 2 for a few bucks)
​
I also need a resume template because my resume is white and red and i dont think its a good template but i would prefer one that would somehow highlight my more relvent experience and not go mumbo jumbo everywhere :/ I just want one so i can see if i can get a higher paying job and just switch but also recently tried starting a business (that is currently burning to the ground and taking me with it) so i also want to work less hours but thats negotiable tbh working about 70-88/h (mostly 88) biweekly worked 100 one time though and usually work 10H/Day cuz i want to have friday sat sun off.
Also im in Canada if that helps cuz the flare asked for location but i have a question or something i guess
​
tldr: need resume template and help formatting//

I know I know, it will never happen, but of the three rebooted games I think that the second one could benefit the most from a remake. The first one is already really good in my opinion, and while I love the third one despite it's flaws, I'm not quite sure if all said flaws could be addressed by the kind of effort that a remake warrants. Also, I just find it really fun to think about this kind of stuff so to hell with it, if even one person finds my wannabe game designer rambling neat, then I'll be happy.

• Let's start with an obvious one, the crafting. I know it's been said a hundred times before, but if you input three gems with the same stat, the gem you get should also have that stat. That one's a no brainer. However, I think it'd also be great if you could combine two gems of the same rarity, picking one stat from each to carry over. If it's a yellow or red gem, you would have to pick which downside carries over. Maybe it could be a 50/50 toss up of which downside carries over if choosing which one give the player too much control. I'll admit that this is literally the only looter shooter I've ever played, but as much as I love this Shadow Warrior 2 I'd be lying if I said that the amount of rng involved in getting the gems you want hasn't turned me off the game multiple times.
• Related to the above, I think that the masamune orb craft costs should be drastically reduced. Either that or drastically increase the amount of orbs that are dropped, both would achieve the same effect. I'm pretty sure that as it is now, only the most absolute die hard shadow warrior 2 fans really bother with the orb grind.
• Another often discussed sentiment that I share is that enemies shouldn't have physical resistance/immunity, and I say that as someone who enjoys having a weapon dedicated to each element. I think that it's a fun option to give the player, but heavily punishing you for not using it really doesn't add much I feel. I mean, if you come across physical immune enemy weak to fire, you just use your fire weapon. If you don't have a fire weapon, you're just SOL. That's really about as much depth as those shape puzzle toys for kids, isn't it? I think that there's still plenty of incentive to utilize it if you want to. Aside from dealing extra damage to enemies with weaknesses, you have the helpful secondary effects like damage over time and slowing/immobilizing enemies. Also, doesn't if feel kind of counter intuitive for a game with this much customization to restrict half of your weapon wheel to this one mechanic?
• Does anyone ever use the parry move? Because 95% of the time I forget that it even exists, and I get the feeling that's the case for most other players too. There's just too little reward for the risk when you're better off just hacking away, even with the skill that improves it. (And seriously, 10 skill points for the last level!?) I had an idea for a rework of the mechanic where instead of that weak looking shove, you could hold a guard stance for a second or so. If it blocks an enemy's melee attack, they'd get thrown off balance for about three seconds. Then, if you choose to attack them with your melee again while they're stunned, you would perform a special attack that consists of a short series of rapid slashes to do some meaningful damage! Maybe there could be a cooldown if it ends up being too easy to abuse, with a successful parry having a shorter cooldown than a failed one. Sorry to go all armchair game designer with this one, I just wasn't quite sure how else to convey what I had in mind.
• I'm sure there are tons of things you could tweak to balance the massive amount of weapons there are, but I think that most everyone can agree that just about all of the medium fire arms are in dire need of a buff. More damage, maybe a much deeper ammo pool, I don't know what exactly would be the best way to do it. I try to make them work because I like to assign each type of bullet firing weapon to a different element, but anything that uses medium bullets is always noticeably less effective than anything else in my loadout.
• Oh and speaking of the weapons, am I the only one who will love a certain weapon's stats but dislike the way it looks? Like, I love the EX-GF01 minigun's bonus damage when stationary, but I prefer the aesthetic of the Raven so much more. I think that it'd be kind of nice if you could apply the appearance of one weapon as a skin for any other weapon of the same type. Very minor thing I know, but it wouldn't hurt anything either.

I think that's all the points that someone might find actually interesting. There's plenty of other things that I'd change if I could, but I know that this isn't an especially active sub so I'll leave it at that. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

***This post contains links to photos and talking about the tour.
​
Maybe it's all just convenience of what they could put together and just trying to make things come to life - so no need to over think it like I have been. But as we know almost nothing Taylor does is purely random, especially where a narrative or storytelling is involved.
One of the biggest surprises of the Eras tour is that the Lover House burns down two times - once when Fearless starts and then later during 1989. A lot of fans have pointed out that the house burning down signifies Taylor's ownership of the eras. And, since the house looks like it's been cleaned out and changed (Debut has stairs that go nowhere, there's no fish bowl in 1989, no NYE party in Red, the reputation attic looks much more like a basement from Lavender Haze, that definitely looks like what she's trying to say. On some very deep digging by Swifties, there's also odd choices (or easter eggs?) such as the yellow-dressed Taylor Swift stepping through a mirror in the Lover room.
At the same time, some details seem to be purely for aesthetic to take us specifically to those eras like the folklore/evermore cabin from the Grammys performance. Visuals like Taylor crying / the gravesite for My Tears Ricochet fits perfectly with the folklore era. However, other design choices / visuals like Wildest Dreams (some screencaps) where she is lying in bed alone with the room burning down around her highly contrasts the 1989 era and even the performance of those songs recreating the original tour.
When the reputation tour came out, a lot of fans were kind of confused about the set list and the production choices. I kind of feel the same way for the Eras Tour even though I love it. While the concept clearly seems to be taking us through the eras almost room by room, I still have a hard time trying to pin down the aesthetic / production design. So, I was wondering what ya'll thought about the visual story of the Eras Tour specifically like the Lover House burning down, and the story (if any) Taylor is trying to tell overall?
edited: try to rewrite some things

Hey it's me again. Decided to give it a try to the dreaded, Disney Trilogy. Already saw lots of memes and thumbnails about how bad it is, but I was like "Ok lemme see it for myself so I can formulate my own opinion". So here it is.
I got mixed feelings when the credits started rolling. So as your average reboot/sequel to a franchise, it tries to milk your nostalgia. References, classic soundtrack, parallels with the classics. The plot is clearly New Hope inspired. But with changes of course.
Droid is carrying super important information for the rebellion. First it was the weakness of the Death Star, now it's the location of Luke Skywalker, who has vanished. The second I read that in the opening crawl I had to pause. It's literally the first sentence in the crawl. "Luke Skywalker has vanished". And I'm like "Wow, this is how you start your reboot, the titular beloved character has vanished? Come on..."
But of course I kept watching. And I gotta say, I got hooked on the visuals of this. It's vibrant but not too saturated, it's pleasing to the eyes. I can see some shots being wallpaper worthy. Action sequences are good too. Just like my experience with Rogue One, it feels good to watch Star Wars with "modern graphics." (However, Rogue One's cinematography is still superior in my opinion).
Anyway, so we have this "First Order", which just sounds like The Empire with a different name. Almost like a bootleg, their colors are similar but not the same. You got Snoke, your bootleg Emperor Palpatine, you got Kylo Ren, your bootleg Vader. "Jedi who was being trained by a Master but got corrupted by a Sith Lord", same deal as Anakin, just replace Obi Wan with Luke and Palpatine with Snoke. They have a Death Star, except it's bigger now and can target multiple planets. And just like before it has a specific weakness.
I actually liked the idea of a stormtrooper rebelling against the Empire/First Order, so I was immediately invested in Finn's character. Though, I can't pin point what it is at the moment, didn't liked him as much throughout the movie. Kylo Ren's introduction was nice. Catching a laser in mid-air and just leaving it there until the end of the scene caught me off guard. I was like "Woah! Is that thing now? Another Force Trick?" But like I already said, he feels like a Vader bootleg, which I guess the movie is self-aware about it. I find it weird how he uses this mask just to modify his voice, to make it deeper, it's kinda funny. So what, is he insecure about his voice so he wears this thing to make it deeper?
Sounds a lot less cool than having your voice modified because you got so many cybernetic enhancements that you are practically a robot now.
Moving on, I'll try not to linger too much. Then we have Rey. And she's a bit weird. Because she just gets stuff. She knows how to do a Jedi mind-trick, without anyone teaching her, and without using her hands, which by the way I haven't seen anyone do this before without the hand movement so yeah that feels contrived/forced. And she can fight back against Kylo's mind-reading and even read his mind too. She's special because protagonism I guess. Luke's saber is calling to her, which I guess a thing light sabers can do now, as well as showing the future and the past. And she wins against Kylo Ren in a lightsaber duel despite never holding a lightsaber before. Okay?
Then the movie brings the legacy characters, Han, Chewie, Leia, it inevitably warms my heart. It was fun. Until they decide to kill Han. Yeah that was heartbreaking. Despite the re-used thing of "Vader killed Anakin", it was still a powerful, emotional moment, and Han Solo's death got me tear-eyed, but also mad at the movie. And mad at how his death was just glossed over. No funeral, no kind words or anything. Movie just moves on.
Sorry but I'm gonna have to end this post soon, I could probably write pages and pages and do a scene-by-scene breakdown but it would be too much for you guys.
So I'll just sum it up. The aesthetics of the movie are fine. Good visuals, good CGI (maybe a few moments of bad green screen), it feels like Star Wars, and they use some practical effects in some places, it's done well just like the good ol' days. It's nice to see the legacy characters back, bad move to kill Solo in your first entry. Kylo Ren feels a failed attempt at recreating Vader, The Script is with Rey, not The Force, Snoke doesn't come near to Palpatine, I have no idea why The First Order has that name, Finn is a cool character concept but something's wrong with him I can't figure out. Also the humor has its ups and downs. Movie is fine. 6/10.
On a last note, Luke doesn't look well in the end. He looks like a sad, broken man, someone get him a therapist!

Hi! I’m looking for more movies like the following: American Honey, Dixieland, Call Me by Your Name, Eighth Grade, Unpregnant, Never Goin’ Back, Fish Tank, Red Rocket, Tangerine, The Florida Project. These movies made me feel like I was transported into the movie. There is no major plot, mystery, etc., just watching regular people live their regular lives. Not sure if there’s a name for that. The aesthetic for most of these movies is kind of grungy and I want more of that 🙂

I’ve been waiting to talk about this. I’ve been looking for others with similar experiences, or… I dunno. Maybe I hoped I was insane. Months have passed, and I still don’t have the slightest idea what to believe. But no matter what is true and what isn’t, the memory of what happened to me is as true as can be.
And every time I put my hand to a door, I tremble.
​
I was looking for a house in the surrounding area. I know, being a homeowner at 27 seems like a dream. I know I’ve been fortunate. Even so, I wanted something remote, spacious, and comparably cheap.
I’d been looking for something nearby, but everything even close to a larger city quickly ran out of my price range. It wasn’t until I started looking at the rural outskirts that I started to see something realistic.
I’d been to four open house showings in the past week when I came across an ad that looked too good to be true. Another open house, but this one was just perfect. Apparently, they were looking to make a quick sale after a previous deal had fallen through.
​
I made my way to a small nearby town called Tomskog. There was a little billboard with a blue sunflower greeting me, and I took a hard right down a street named “Sunplenty Road”. There were only five houses there, and the one I came to look at was at the far end. Even from a distance, I could tell I wasn’t the only visitor.
I parked on the street outside and took in the sights. There was an “Open House” sign outside, again with the sunflower logo. There was a separate garage, and the house itself was smaller than expected. Homely, but small.
I was greeted by a cheerful man. He had thick glasses, a receding hairline, and the kind of “fun uncle” smile that told me he could get away with anything.
“Come on in,” he said. “You’re gonna love it.”
​
There was me, the realtor, and three other people. A middle-aged couple, and a younger woman. She had this messy black hair that kept poking her in the eye. Even at a glance I could tell the young woman was distraught. She wasn’t even looking around the house, she seemed more interested in the people wandering about.
The house had a simple and open layout. The bottom floor had a bathroom, a separate study room, an adjoining kitchen, and a lounge area. There were stairs leading to a sort of catwalk on the second floor, making the main room wide open. The second floor had another bathroom, a bedroom, and a guest room.
It had this sort of sullen 70’s vibe with grey and white flower-patterned wallpaper. There were little scuffs and tears pretty much everywhere, but the house itself seemed… fine.
​
The realtor, Anders, showed me all the details of the kitchen. He assured me that most of the appliances were to be replaced before the next homeowner moved in, and proudly displayed the new garbage disposal. It was a nice enough setup, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the young woman standing outside the study. I got the feeling that she was standing guard.
As the middle-aged couple walked downstairs, they asked her they could have a look.
“No,” she answered, with a shrug. “You can’t.”
“Don’t mind her,” Anders the realtor smiled. “Of course you can.”
“No,” she insisted. “They can’t.”
Anders walked up to her and leaned in. His demeanor shifted. They argued back and forth, and I could hear her repeat, over and over;
“This is not what we agreed to.”
​
The middle-aged couple and I just looked at one another. While the realtor and the young woman argued, we introduced ourselves. I smiled and gave them my name. They were named Helen and Sebastian, or ‘Seb’ for short. Typical midwestern salt-of-the-earth kind of people. They were suffering from an empty nest and seemed to want a place to start over. They made no secret about being interested in the place, although Helen wasn’t sure about having no direct access to the garage. Seb, on the other hand, wasn’t sure about the soil. He wanted a proper garden, and the soil seemed ill-fit to sustain greenery.
“Still,” Helen smiled. “Best place we’ve seen so far.”
“Sure is,” added Seb, giving Helen a little shake.
​
Anders kept arguing with the young woman. I could overhear her name as Whitney, and she was not willing to cooperate. Finally, Anders just pushed past her, putting his keys in the lock.
“Right this way, we’ll just take a quick peek.”
“We’re not done in there,” she said. “You can’t just-“
“It was supposed to be packed up, Whitney. I can’t help that you’re late.”
“That’s not… please. Give me an hour.”
“You’ve had plenty of hours.”
He clicked the door open and pushed it in. The three of us gave Whitney an apologetic look as we stepped inside.
​
The study was a mess. Old clothes strewn across various furniture, loose papers and books haphazardly thrown across a musky desk. An entire wall of bookshelves full of textbooks, ranging from discrete mathematics to philosophical physics. I stood there for a few seconds, taking it all in. Whitney pushed past us, grabbing an empty box from the floor.
“Don’t touch anything,” she sighed. “Just… look at it, and leave.”
Anders leaned over to us, lowering his voice.
“You have to excuse her,” he whispered. “There were some… complications, with the former owner.”
“Oh, she’s… the, uh, the daughter?” Seb asked.
Anders nodded.
​
While Anders told us about the east-facing windows and the top-of-the-line air conditioning system, I couldn’t help but to keep my eyes on Whitney. She was rummaging through the desk, dropping mementos, pictures, and notebooks into one of her many cardboard boxes. I could tell she was sleep deprived. She kept yawning.
Helen seemed eager to just leave Whitney to her grieving, while Seb kept to the practical details. He checked the hardwood floor, the insulation on the windows, the wall linings for pests. At one point, he almost knocked over a coffee table, and Whitney came running. She caught a vase that was about to topple off the table.
“Don’t… don’t touch anything!” she cried out. “Just… if you have to be here, stay… stay still!”
“I’m, uh… sorry,” Seb said. “I was just-“
“Just go over there!”
She waved her hands around, shaking the vase. There was a little rattle coming from it.
​
She shook it again, and I could see the color fade from her cheeks. Carefully, she tipped the vase, and something dark plopped into her hand.
A large bronze key.
Whitney pulled her hand back, letting the bronze key clatter to the floor. She covered her mouth, forgetting how to exhale. We just looked at her having what seemed, to us, like a mental breakdown.
“Nobody move,” she gasped. “Nobody… do anything.”
​
We all just stood there. Helen and Seb barely breathed, and I was suddenly hyper-aware of how still my feet were. Anders wasn’t impressed. If anything, he was fed up with this. He rolled his eyes, and picked up the key.
“Whitney, I’m sorry, you’re gonna have to wait outside.”
“Please, put… put that down.”
“You can put it with your things and take it outside.”
“Just… don’t move, you don’t know what you’re-“
Anders opened the door, stepped out of the study, and headed straight for the front door. Whitney dropped everything and ran after him. The rest of us followed suit.
“Wait!” she called out. “Please wait!”
​
As soon as Anders put his hand on the front door, Whitney stopped dead in her tracks.
“Anders, please, I’m sorry,” she said. “Just step away. Give me the key. I’ll leave, I promise. I swear.”
“That’s enough of that.”
“No!”
​
He opened the door and took a step forward. The bronze key passed the threshold.
​
We’d all stepped into the main lounge by now, and I heard the door to the study slam shut. There was a sort of pressure shift, making the wind move through the main lounge. Every door in the house slid shut with a click. All except the front door, which was wide open.
But there was nothing there.
Not nothing as in no one standing there. No, nothing as in “a nothing”. Just a blank, black space.
A viscous fluid where sunlight ought to be.
Endless, abyssal, ocean.
​
I stared at it, mesmerized. The contrast of the bright sun coming in from the windows, bouncing off the ripples of this deep ocean doorway.
And there, in the dark, humanoids. Tall, elongated silhouettes.
Anders stepped back, but it was as if parts of him refused to move. His arms were locked in place, seemingly by an invisible force. And as he stepped back, something started pulling him in.
His limbs grew long and twisted. His knees bending and snapping at impossible angles. His scalp pulled backwards, the loose skin of his face revealing the bottom white of his eyes.
“He… help!”
It was all he managed to say, as he was pulled into the dark. Limbs were quietly ripped from his sockets, as his human frame was bent, twisted, torn, and mangled. Black water mixing with marrow as dark shapes turned Anders into what resembled an underwater cloud of flesh and cloth.
Whitney threw herself forward, slamming the door shut, leaving the bronze key on the floor.
​
Screams erupted, and I didn’t even notice they were mine. It was this primal force being pulled out of me, this need to scream. Like a baby desperate for her mother. Helen backed into a corner and sunk to the floor, with Seb trying his best to comfort her. Whitney just sat there looking at the bronze key; her face breaking out in cold sweats.
I felt something turn in my stomach and headed for the bathroom. Whitney ran after me, but she couldn’t make it in time. I burst through the bathroom door and collapsed on the floor, hyperventilating. Whitney stayed outside, looking at me in shock.
“It’s… you’re… you’re fine,” she said. “You’re okay.”
I wasn’t. But compared to Anders, panicking on the bathroom floor seemed like a mercy.
​
Whitney stayed with me as I calmed down. Seb and Helen joined us. After a few minutes of silence, Whitney excused herself. She came back with pile of notebooks. She sat down across the hall from me, making sure not to enter the bathroom.
“My dad, he… found something,” she said. “I wasn’t sure exactly what.”
“We should… we should leave,” said Helen. “We should leave right now.”
“We can climb out a window,” said Seb. “If the, uh… the door is…”
“Just… please,” sighed Whitney. “Just stay. We’ll figure it out.”
“I-I mean no offense,” said Helen. “But what… what on earth was that?”
Whitney turned the notebook to a specific page and read aloud.
​
“I’ve been marooned in this house for thirty days. I never know where the Door is. Sometimes I can hear water, sometimes not. I tried the windows, but it nearly burst my eardrums from the pressure as water came rushing in. I can’t leave. I can’t move. They wait behind the Door. They wait for me to open.”
​
Whitney scratched her head. Helen looked back and forth, as if waiting for something to make sense. Seb just shook his head.
“What… what does that even mean?” asked Helen. “What happened?”
“It has to do with the doors,” Whitney explained. “They wait behind the Door.”
“There’s nothing there,” said Seb. “There’s light coming through the windows.”
“It’s… it’s not that easy. It’s when you open it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
​
Whitney stood up and handed Helen three notebooks.
“We can argue the details of dad’s quantum entanglement experiment later, but that’s not gonna help us.”
“So… let’s just go then,” said Seb. “Let’s leave.”
“You wanna take your chances on the front door? That it won’t come back? Go ahead.”
Seb took a few tentative steps up to the front door. Helen wanted to protest, but she just started looking back and forth. Whitney crossed her arms and turned away.
“I can’t hear anything,” said Seb. “Are you sure it’s there?”
“It’s somewhere,” said Whitney. “I don’t… I don’t know the rules. It has to do with the doors.”
​
I got up off the bathroom floor and looked at them. Seb took his hand off the front door and stepped back. Whitney turned her attention to me.
“You put yourself at risk,” said Whitney. “That could’ve killed you.”
“The bathroom?”
“The door to the bathroom. Any or all of these doors, it… it could be connected. Here, let me-“
Whitney walked up to Helen and took one of the notebooks back. She turned to one of the latter pages.
​
“The framework of passageway. Concept of thought. Paired in alignment, the darkness standing shy from the mirrored back of Empyrean. Realm unwilled and unbound, misshapen by collective subconscious. We cannot pass, our world-forgotten blocks dissipated. Like a bridge cannot be built of water, and a house cannot be built of wind. But the great craftsman blames not their tools; and eternal gold can be found in humble bronze.”
​
“Bronze,” I said. “Like the key.”
“Look, my dad, he… we weren’t on speaking terms. I’ve looked at all this for days, and all I can tell is that he was off his rocker. He died in that room.”
Whitney pointed to the study. Helen hugged Seb tight, holding back a sob.
“He couldn’t leave. He was convinced that the… the door would eat him.”
​
Helen sat down by the kitchen table. Thankfully, there was no door in-between the kitchen and the main lounge. Seb walked straight up to Whitney, grabbed her by the collar of her blouse, and slammed her up against the wall; his calm demeanor cracking at the seams.
“We shouldn’t be here,” he said. “This is your fault!”
“I-I didn’t know! It was all just ramblings! I didn’t have time to clear it all out, how… how could I have known?!”
“You recognized the key,” said Helen. “You chased after him. You asked him to wait.”
“That’s the only part that keeps coming back!” Whitney yelled. “Check the notebooks! The key, it’s… it’s everywhere! It’s everything!”
“So what do we do?” Seb asked. “Do we use it or destroy it?”
Whitney looked at the pile of notebooks she’d managed to gather from the study. It was only a handful of everything we’d seen in there, but it might be enough to get some semblance of an answer.
​
The house had six doors. The front door, the bathroom door, the study room door. On the top floor, there was another bathroom door, a door to the guest bedroom, and the main bedroom door. The bathroom door on the bottom floor was already open and considered safe. I could step in and out without a problem.
Whitney explained as best as she could.
Her father had grown increasingly paranoid since divorcing Whitney’s mother. He’d locked himself in his house, committing fully to his studies. He’d always been a bit agoraphobic, and having a reason not to leave the house was a bit of a blessing in disguise. But over time, that blessing turned into a curse. An early entry read;
“For years, I’ve longed for the presence of mind to devote myself. And now that I can, I find myself wanting. I can’t be certain. There is a Door, a passage. It binds itself seemingly spontaneously. There is a risk involved, and it is a risk I cannot take.”
​
Seb tried to call for help, but water started pouring out of his phone. Whitney found a page about “semi-passages” or “shortcuts”. Things that could be used as portals to another person or place. They weren’t as conceptually clean as a door, and thus wouldn’t invite “Them”, but the connection would go through that dark place. The place that, somehow, her father had stumbled upon.
I looked at the key for a long time. I didn’t dare to touch it. It was unassuming, in a way. It was old and had this sort of blocky texture; like it was made of little squares. While Helen and Seb rifled through notebooks, Whitney looked up and talked to me.
“He just wanted a way to go wherever he wanted, without having to traverse the space in-between. To just go from one door to another. All he needed was a key.”
“But why now? Why is… how are we trapped?” I asked. “We got in here just fine.”
“The realtor,” sighed Whitney. “He tried to leave with the key. I think that triggered it.”
“So how do we un-trigger it?”
Whitney shrugged and pointed to the notebooks.
​
We had endless discussions. We compared notes, drew out theories. Helen thought we could force the bronze key out a window, but Whitney theorized that it’d just leave us locked inside. I suggested we listened at each door, just to eliminate which ones were safe and which weren’t. We tried, but there was seemingly no way to tell. Sometimes I could hear rushing water on the other side. Scratches on the wood. Other times, nothing. Even going back to the same door, it’d sound differently each time.
We considered opening several doors at once. We spread ourselves out. I was at the upstairs bedroom door, right next to Seb by the guest room door. Whitney was downstairs by the study door, and Helen insisted on the front door. We all put our hands on the handles. I wasn’t sure if I could hear something on the other side or not; my heart was pounding too loudly.
There were six doors. Five were closed, one open. Someone was probably going to die.
“There is only ever one Door. He only speaks of it as a singular. It can change over time,” said Whitney. “This is our best shot.”
“We can’t know for sure,” said Seb. “And why do we even want to open them all? There’s nothing in the bedrooms, right?”
“We’re excluding,” I said. “Like we did with the downstairs bathroom.”
“We should close it,” said Helen. “Shouldn’t that improve our chances of… of our other doors being okay?”
“I have no idea,” sighed Whitney. “Are we doing this?”
Seb backed away from his door, taking the hand off the handle.
“It ain’t right,” he said. “None of it. It ain’t right.”
​
Everything erupted into an argument. Seb couldn’t bring himself to risk his life for anything less than an exit, and Helen couldn’t stop crying at the thought of that dark abyss. I couldn’t blame her. To this day, I can’t stop imagining it. Whitney, trying to act as a voice of reason, read aloud from one of the notebooks.
“The concept of the passageway, the Door, changes at the flick of a thought. An alien thought, like an invisible, uncontrollable shadow of the psyche. It refuses to be controlled. My exit could be my end; or as likely, a wooden frame. Much like we cannot control the smoke of a campfire, we cannot foresee the turning of the passageway.”
We all looked at one another. Helen collapsed by the front door, crying. Whitney was close to a mental breakdown. I felt this enormous burden settle in my stomach, like I was missing something.
​
“Let’s take the door off the hinges”, said Seb. “We’ll turn it into a… an arch. Then it ain’t a door anymore. You think that’ll work?”
“In theory, maybe,” said Whitney. “But how do we do that without opening it?”
“We’ll… we’ll take the whole frame off,” Seb said. “There’s a crowbar under the sink. Saw it when I checked the garbage disposal.”
Helen bent down next to the sink, put her hand on the kitchen cabinet handle. I gasped.
Was that considered a door? Could it kill her? Would it?
​
I imagined that dark, cold abyss. That enormous force pulling me in, turning my very form into this unrecognizable mass. Where no screams can be heard. All I’d have to show for such unimaginable anguish would be a burst of bubbles; then nothing.
“No!” I cried out. “Stop!”
But it was too late.
​
Nothing happened. Helen opened it, pulled out the crowbar, and that was that. But for a brief moment, I realized how Whitney’s father must’ve felt. That uncertainty, not knowing for sure if that one flick of the wrist would be damnation; or nothing.
Helen handed the crowbar to Seb, while Whitney gave me a pat on the shoulder. I couldn’t stop crying. My whole body was shaking from the sudden rush of adrenaline. Meanwhile, Seb walked up to the front door and started tapping the wood.
The theory was this; if there was no door, nothing could come through. There was no point in doing a test run, because if it didn’t work, someone would lose their life either way. It was better to have an honest chance of getting out.
Whitney gathered towels. She had this idea that, maybe, water might start leaking if the door was turned into a semi-passage, like a window. If so, we might have to find a way to quickly stop the flow.
By the time we got the towels, Seb started working on the door frame. As that first crack rang out, I heard a click.
​
The front door slid open.
​
Without a moment’s thought, Seb pushed it close. It had barely opened an inch.
We all held our breaths. We were fine. Nothing was happening.
​
“It’s… it’s clear!” Helen called out. “There’s nothing there! I saw it, it… it was nothing!”
“It can change!” Whitney yelled back. “We can’t take that risk again!”
“Like hell we can’t.”
Seb put his hand on the front door, but Whitney tackled him. The crowbar fell to the floor as Helen rushed forward to help.
“Listen!” Whitney yelled. “Just listen!”
​
A rumble, like a great whale passing in the distance. It was right there; on the other side of the front door.
Without a word, they all stood up and backed away. The door shook from the passing force. Something was definitely there.
“Then… then the rest should be fine,” said Seb. “We can get to the study.”
Whitney nodded, and the two of them burst into a sprint. Helen wasn’t convinced, but didn’t know what to say. Whitney dropped her crowbar, and as she bent to pick it up, Seb opened the door to the study.
​
Darkness.
“…no.”
Panic exploded. Helen grabbed his arms, trying to pull him out. Whitney crawled backwards, closing her eyes and covering her ears. I couldn’t watch. All I heard was Helen, screaming his name, over and over. There was a gargle. A scream turning into an inhuman screech, like a burning pig.
“Sebastian!” Helen kept repeating. “Sebastian! Sebastian!”
There was a click, and then nothing but crying. I looked up to see Helen collapsed against the study door. It had slid shut from the pressure on the other side.
“I’m… I’m coming, Sebby,” she cried. “I’m… I’m-“
She opened the door again.
And there was the study, just as we’d left it.
​
Helen collapsed on the floor, curling up into a fetal position. She kept making this child-like yowling, scratching the surface of the hardwood floor, as if trying to dig Seb back into reality. But there was nothing left. Not even water droplets on the floor.
Then there were her arms. She’d held on until the door had slammed shut. Her sleeves were torn, and her arms bloody. Not much, but there were these round little suction marks. They were already bruising, with spots of blood poking through the skin.
I sat by Helen as Whitney started rifling through the study. There were more notebooks, more theories, more diaries. Notes about experiments, clever tricks, and attempts. So far, every idea to understand the rules were in vain. We couldn’t make sure. No matter what, we could never be truly sure.
​
Two open doors. Four closed.
​
I don’t know how many hours passed. I managed to get Helen to the couch, but she was inconsolable. She could barely comprehend words anymore. She didn’t blink, and she could barely breathe. There were no coherent thoughts in her mind, just… darkness. This awful, soul-sinking darkness.
Whitney propped up the open doors with books and towels, to make sure they wouldn’t accidentally close. All the while, she kept trying to convince herself.
“We keep opening them one by one,” she said. “If we can get it to manifest in one single place, and keep that door open, we should be able to leave by another.”
The sun had started to set outside. For all intents and purposes, this still just looked like a house. The windows were clear, showing the greenery outside. Maybe it was all a lie. Maybe none of it was really happening.
But looking down at Helen, and her unblinking eyes, I knew it was the realest thing I’d ever experienced.
​
“We… there’s three of us,” I said. “Four doors. We can’t make it.”
“No, that’s perfect,” nodded Whitney. “That’s… we open all but the front door. It manifests. Then we can get out through the one safe remaining door.”
“Unless we all die. There’s nothing that says it can only be in one place.”
“It is implied,” said Whitney. “If you got a better plan, just tell me. But unless you want to starve to death, we gotta-“
“Starve?” I interrupted. “Is that what…”
I looked back at the study, where Whitney said her father had died. No words were necessary. She took a deep breath and nodded.
“He couldn’t bring himself to try,” she said. “So we have to ask ourselves what we want. A long but certain death, or a violent risk at life?”
​
The fridge, the freezer, and all the cupboards had been cleared out. Whitney found some raisins for us to share while we pondered what to do. Helen couldn’t eat. She stared blankly ahead, waiting for her mind to come wandering back.
It was dark outside. Whitney rolled the bronze key between her fingers.
“I wonder how he did it,” she sighed. “He never made any sense to me.”
“Maybe it doesn’t make sense,” I shrugged. “At least not to us.”
“Then what made him so special?”
“Well, he did have a lot of books,” I said, reaching into a pile we’d gathered from the study. “Just look at some of these.”
“Astrology of Abraham, Channels of Esoteric Geometry…”
“I like this one,” I said, holding up a little red book. “Diary of Emmett Rask.”
“Right. But it doesn’t beat the…”
Whitney pulled out another book from the pile, turning it over.
“… the thirteen faiths of the blameless mother.”
I shook my head, looking over at Helen. A handful of raisins slipped between her fingers. She didn’t even bother closing her hand.
​
Looking back at Whitney, I sighed.
“You’re right,” I said. “We have to try.”
So we did.
​
We lined ourselves up on the top floor. Helen on the far right, near the bathroom. I was on the far left, by the guest room. Whitney was in the middle, by the bedroom. Helen didn’t understand. She just mimicked us.
“We’re gonna open on three,” said Whitney. “And no matter what we see, just run. Run downstairs, and just… go. Get out.”
I nodded. Helen didn’t.
“One.”
I tightened my grip. I saw Helen follow my lead, giving me an exhausted look. She could barely keep her eyes open.
“Two.”
I started doubting which way to turn the doorknob. I’d turned a million doorknobs throughout my life, but that was the first time I’d really thought about which way to turn it. I imagined myself hearing water. Bubbles. Distant rumbles. I tried telling myself that it was all imagined. Fake. Tricks of the mind.
But in my heart of hearts, I knew it wasn’t.
“Three.”
​
We opened our doors.
All I saw was a well-made bed. A bag of toiletries; probably Whitney’s. I left the door open and turned around.
​
Helen was smiling as the darkness welcomed her.
“Come on!” Whitney screamed. “Leave her!”
The door to the bedroom was open. Clear. But I was standing just ten feet away from an endless abyss. Helen looked at it, as if searching for something. She touched the surface with an outstretched hand.
“Seb, honey,” she cried. “Sebby, please.”
A pulse shot through her. I could see the hair on her arm stand up. Her veins turning black.
“Oh, Sebby…”
​
In an instant, her flesh unraveled as it flayed itself from the inside out. Her scream stifled as something pulled her in, leaving splotches of blood behind from the outline of her feet. A pained moan escaped her; only to be turned to harmless bubbles in the pressurized void.
Whitney grabbed me by the neck and pulled me downstairs. We ran to the front door. We looked back a final time, just to make sure it was still manifested upstairs.
It was still there. We’d sacrificed Helen, but we’d make it out.
​
Whitney pulled the front door open – and stopped.
Darkness.
​
We’d been wrong.
​
Whitney turned to run as an impossibly long arm grabbed the flesh of her back; straight through her clothes. It pulled her back.
I crawled away, not being able to close my eyes.
“Help me!” she cried out. “For God’s sake fucking help me!”
I shook my head, not knowing what to do. I’ll never forget those desperate eyes. The betrayal. The pleading. She fought every inch of the way. She dug her nails into the hardwood floor. She kicked. She pulled. She screamed. But for every second she stayed, the more painful it was.
With a final snap, the fingers dug into her spine; folding her like a lawn chair.
A lifeless body, dragged across the floor. Unceremoniously pulled into the dark with a quiet squelch.
And the door, slightly damaged by Seb and his crowbar, slid shut.
​
I was all alone.
The door to the guest bedroom and the main bedroom remained open. There was the bathroom and study downstairs. Just two closed doors left; the bathroom and the front door. Both closed. Both… wrong.
There was no right answer.
​
I must’ve stayed there for days. I found some trail mix in Whitney’s bag. I had water. I could shower. I had a change of clothes. I scoured the notebooks over and over and over, trying to find the slightest hint on what to do. There had to be some way of knowing for sure. There had to be.
It wasn’t until I came across a final note that I realized it was over. It read;
“By will alone, we cannot make ourselves right. Right is right, independently of our actions and intentions. We cannot control that which never was, and we cannot be part of that which will never be. There could be no more perils for me to face, and yet, I cannot bring myself to leave. There is no certainty in the unknown, and I choose not to live by chance alone.”
​
I cried myself to sleep at night. I banged on the walls. I even tried opening a window, only to have my left eardrum blown out from the pressure drop. Got a nasty nosebleed as well.
I tried reading. I tried making up little worlds in my head. I imagined myself safe and sound.
But it was useless. In those final hours of desperate loneliness, I knew I couldn’t fool myself any longer.
I was going to die.
​
I found myself with my hand on the front door. I learned every crease of the wood. The temperature of the metal handle. I listened to it. Studied it. At times, it was quiet. At other times, it wasn’t. Sometimes I imagined it quiet, other times, I imagined voices coming from the other side.
Maybe I wasn’t imagining it.
Finally, I grasped the bronze key. Starving, exhausted, and mentally broken – I opened the front door.
​
Sunshine.
And there, on the fresh-cut lawn, was another realtor.
Just as confused as I was.
​
So, turns out I was only in there for about 16 hours total. And to this day, no one seems to remember neither Anders, Seb, Helen, or Whitney. According to every document I can find, the owner of the house had no children. The cars parked outside were unregistered. On paper, it seemed like the entire world had forgotten that these people were ever part of this plane of existence.
I don’t think anyone’s lying here. There was a sincere disbelief and confusion to every piece of my story. To onlookers, I seemed like a squatter that’d gone insane.
I’ve tried to find anything about this. They won’t let me go back to read the notes. The investment firm who owns the real estate company swept it all under a rug and tore the place down. I suspect they were the ones who made the bronze key mysteriously disappear from the evidence room.
I’ve tried to find copies of the books I found in there. Some of them have been seen in passing on strange message boards, and one just keeps making my computer turn off whenever I try to google it. Who the hell is Emmett Rask anyway?
​
If anyone knew these people, or have heard about this phenomenon, please… I need to know I’m sane. I need to know this isn’t all a dream. I need to know I won’t wake up with my hand on that front door, having imagined living a life back outside.
This has to be real. I am real. There is nothing on the other side of the door.
Go ahead, listen. There’s nothing there.
It can’t be.
​
Can it?

I got a new cutting edge pc like 2 month ago and almost since the beggining, I had 2 pretty annoying problems with my headset (Corsair Void Wireless) and media players on my computer. First, sometimes when using any kind of media player (Youtube, Streaming or WallpaperEngine), the audio of the media would just stop for like 2 seconds before the video stops too, waiting for the sound to reach the point where the video is and to be syncronised again. This happens like 2 or 3 times a day, and it seems to appear randomly. The second bug is the most annoying, it also seems to happens randomly 3 or 4 times a day. My ausio on my system would just completly stop and then all kind of media player I listed above (the main one I use, idk if other ones do the same) would just stop working. Youtube video would continue but the red bar and the timestamp locked, and the loading icon is visible on the running video. Wallpaper engine just slow down to like 1 or 2 fps and streaming website just stops working. ALl kind of audio doesn't wok but if I unplug and replug my headset dongle or if I change my output device, everything instantly goes back to normal. I find it pretty strange for the audio device to mess with media players on the system, but there is a link because it instantly fix the bug if I change my audio device to my speakers. I checked for corrupted drivers but nothing was found (but I already had 2 bsod for Driver RMA Verify Violation that didn't happened again). All my hardware is still under warranty and I can technically reinstall windows even if I prefer not to because it would take me ages to reinstall software, even if I keep personal files. Any help would be incredible

Hello friends!
I would love to hear your recommendations for where to find lingerie that skews more towards cutesy/dainty themes. By this I mean lingerie that tends to incorporate more pastel colors, cute patterns, soft fabrics, lace, bows, embroidery, is often vintage-inspired, and generally offers softelooser shapes in terms of the garments themselves. I've been growing my collection and would really appreciate to hear about what you've found :)
Some things that I like/am looking for, please let me know if you have any recommendations!

• Pastels/muted colors
• Cute prints or patterns (bonus points for vintage-inspired animal themed prints, especially kittens)
• Lace, bows, and ribbons
• Pointelle or other textured fabrics
• Sheer fabric in cute colors, preferably ruffled
• Embroidery
• Vintage-inspired cuts or themes
• Cute lacy camis, vintage/1950s inspired lingerie sets (especially with 50s style underwear), cotton nightgowns, ruffled panties, cute stockings, matching sets
• Cosplay-esque/e-girl adjacent is welcome as long as it isn't costume quality or overly costume-y.
• I love kittens. If it is remotely kitten themed I want to see it.
• Kink-adjacent shops are welcome suggestions, but nothing too fetish oriented. (e.g., a shop that might market items fitting the criteria as petplay or ddlg accessories is fine, but I'm not looking for gear specific to kink).
• I definitely prefer soft and comfortable fabrics. I'd like to be able to wear these pieces comfortably and feel cute, not itchy.
• I would definitely prefer cotton or other high quality material recommendations for underwear if possible.
• If possible, I would prefer no recommendations from Amazon or obvious fast fashion companies. Since I have the resources to support small or sustainable businesses or artists, I would much rather do that and have high quality pieces made to last. However, if you have a sworn favorite, feel free to share! But my primary interest is truly to find unique businesses that share my aesthetic.

​
I'll share some of my finds! I feel as though my list also places an emphasis on sustainability or supporting smaller businesses/artists as I try my best to be a mindful consumer.

• Purrfect Pineapples on Etsy makes handmade, vintage-inspired sets that incorporate lots of cute lace and adorable fabrics. I love that she sells complete sets with everything completely matching and that it's supporting an actual artist's small business. I bought a few of her kitten themed sets and they are so cute. She also does custom work!
• Dottie's Delights makes very cute vintage-inspired lingerie. I am a sucker for the babydolls and the dressing robes. I love the color scheme and the sheer fabric they use, as well as the cut of the clothing itself: it's a lot loosemore cutesy than most other sheer coverups I've found. I own the short dressing robe in pink and it's literally so cute and flowy and comfortable.
• Stripe and Stare has some very cute and comfy looking every day options. I've never bought from them but they check my boxes in terms of high quality fabric, cute prints, and lace. From what I can tell they're a sustainable business. I have my eye on their sets that come in pastels or have floral prints. I also LOOOOOVE the fact that they make matching camis!!
• AKAMYDINH on Etsy has some very cute cotton bralette/underwear sets as well as underwear. I've had my eye on these for a while and love the cut of the bottoms and how the sets seem so soft and comfortable yet look so cute. I have yet to order from them but definitely love the style of most of their lingerie/underwear.
• My Cocomimi on Etsy has some very cute clothing items and accessories. I particularly like the cuffs. They make some very cute and delicate looking sheer tops and accessories as well as bralettes that come in cute patterns.
• Nekollars on Etsy makes some very cute made to order strappy harnesses that come in different pastels.

Thank you for your help! I apologize in advance for any headaches caused by reading the word "cute" three times a sentence. I'm looking forward to hearing your suggestions, and if we have similar tastes, I hope you enjoy my finds!

it been a month (sorry but am even more poor now so i cant buy anything, i still have a few but i have to space it out)
am i sitting here at 10 pm (i write the review in multiple days sometimes lol) making a review because i have to declutter my cloths and am TERRIFIED, yes absolutely is it wort it yes
it a few days later and now am watching the fast and the furious am at the 8 right now, ill probably be done by tomorrow, it a fun marathon, right now the best one is the first, but like as a kid my fav was always the 3 one, guess when we grow up our taste grow up too lol
what's a duet: it a concept created by osmofolia (am pretty sure as i never seen it before) where a perfume is made by 2 perfume, so lets say you have exquisite corps that's the perfume you buy, when you receive it you gonna have 2 bottle, vanilla milk and smoked lavender musk, when you layer them on your skin, they become exquisite corps! but the fun part is that you have 3 perfume, and the 2 bottle you get are amazing layering notes (as it their hole purpose) so you can add them to any perfume you want
LIKES: tea, patchouli, tart fruits, close to skin smell, greens (grass, moss, leaf's of all sort (tomato leaf yum)), atmospheric/realistic, citrus, frankincense, cedar, most fruits actually, soil, roses, lavender, salt, sage, cannabis, rosemary, cozy gourmand, marshmallow, smoke, cinnamon actually most spice, pine/fir, violet leaf/violet, i like stuff that feel wet (fog, ocean, rain), ambergris
DISLIKES: ozone, aldehyde, oud, sandalwood, cinnamon leaf, big silage, white floral, especially tuberose and gardenias, but also just florals in general, alcoholics, vetiver, perfumy perfume, most milk, tar, when company say “for woman” or “for man”
HATE OR LOVE no in between: Hay, jasmine, incense, pink pepper, fancy woods, most resins, iris/orris, petrichor
to your attention: this is not really a critique, but it still normal i don't gush over everything, am talking about my taste not trying to sell you anything, i like all the company i talk about and if i don't i will say it. i am a bitch but don't let your feeling get hurt over a little dumb post please ;) love yall lets do this
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HONEY DUST you mean pollen right?
notes: pollen, hay, honey, beeswax, powdered sugar
though: so on the bottle there the name of the duet (what a spellcaster leaves behind) and a number not the name of the note, and when i got them i was too lazy to look it up to make sure i wrote the right name so i just did it by memory, so now on my bottle it written "pollen" lol. i do think it perfect for this perfume it super dusty to the point were if you have pollen allergy i would tell you to stay away from this, it also gives me the same harshness grass perfume give me sometime but it not at all green wish is kinda weird too maybe the hay? idk but it welcome, this perfume is the mix of comforting sweater and seasonal allergy, weird but i love that in a perfume
color: golden yellow dust of pollen in a gold ornate jar sitting on a red tinted wood table
+
ANTIQUE BOOK if vanilla ice cream and white wood had a child
notes: paper, leather, glue, old book, cedar, vanilla, cetalox
though: every single book fragrance is either super chemical or super woody marshmallow there just no in-between and this is a woody marshmallow that dry down to a sandalwood-y thingy, i don't hate it but i do think it better as a addition to another perfume then by it own. but on it own i think it perfect for the book ladies that are a little (a bit) more conservative then me (and always ladies in a non gendered way lolll i just have a booktok person in mind and shes a woman, but it not a woman perfume none are)
color: a hard cover book with no letter printed on any of the page (your gonna say, oh a drawing pad, nah, a small hard cover where they just made a mistake on the print and there nothing) and also you know the wood you can find around lake and the sea, it super white and soft, that but in a 2x4

WHAT A SPELLCASTER LEAVES BEHIND cream pollen
notes: pollen, hay, honey, beeswax, powdered sugar, paper, leather, glue, old book, cedar, vanilla, cetalox
though: this is interesting the antique book note almost lost itself in the honey dust, but then you smell honey dust on it own again and your like ok i see it much more chill on the dusty-ness, i get it i get it, it also a perfect on the name i love it! what a spellcaster leaves behinds it so descriptive and cute and definetly perfect for the perfume, you can imagine the scene, a big dusty book closing, the dust particule going everywhere, someone closing a candle and then a door.
color: a huge dusty, very dusty book, with gold corner and yellowing pages
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VANILLA MILK sweet brown milk (smell better then it sounds)
notes: cream, caramel , heliotrope, vanilla, milk, musk
though: that's not for me, for sure, i mean to be fair my skin don't work with anything milk, my only love is milk shaka from Damask Haus, to me this is sickly sweet, but i don't think most would think that, if you like a milk caramel this is for you for sure, this is concerning because of the realism, i mean it smell like warm milk, and the thick light brown caramel that looks like melted plastic but actually taste pretty good, just very artificial, witch is weird cuz caramel sauce is so easy to make and i don't get why restaurant and ice cream shop don't make it themselves it like 3 ingredient, butter, sugar and cream, (brown sugar if you want butterscotch) but anyway you also have a bit of a floral note but it just adds to the warm milk, really interesting i see this being very popular with the gourmand people
color: a room temperature glass of milk forgotten on a oval shaped table, you know the big ones in wood, with a super big feet underneath, they always have some middle piece of broderie made by some grand mother and and a flower pot full of fresh flower (white heliotrope this time) on the other side of the table there a caramel cream pie
+
SMOKED LAVENDER MUSK gay fur
notes: lavender, smoke, oakmoss, musk
though: lavender smoke is a pretty common mix, i don't particularly care for but i love this, it fun it sexy and the lavender pretty realistic. if you know a bit about queer history, lavender been a symbol of gay-ness (lol) since the end of the 19th century, and idk if it since i know this fact that i believe all lavender perfume are gay, well this not the exception (i really don't think there one, it like violet) idk know why exactly but this perfume is just very queer to me, only downside, cuz it really smell good, it that it doesn't last super long contrary to vanilla milk that's super persistent
color: light purple fur coat, and a black leather cat suit with cowboy boots and a big chunky belt, but truly it just a smoke lavender love

EXQUISITE CORPS They are cold like porcelain
notes: lavender, smoke, oakmoss, musk, cream, caramel , heliotrope, vanilla, milk, musk
though: you know i bitch a lot about name accuracy but this is spot on, does it smell like a crops, i mean no, not that i know of (and idk every dead i seen was in dust form not corps form) but it has this cold creaminess mix with the floral it just exactly the name. this is amazing if you put just a little bit of the vanilla milk (my opinion, but don't you think this concept is amazing for that you can dose your 2 perfume to make exactly the combi you prefer) i just think it better when it the smoky floral that take the lead it more mortuary less floral caramel
color: cold, soft but lifeless skin. resting on a pile of white and purple flower, white coffin, 2 small marble column on each side to witch rest on top flower pot. people crying
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7/11 STEAMED MATCHA LATTE a dammed good matcha latte
notes: steam, matcha, warm milk, green tea, cream
though: this is the best of them all, by far, on it own, it just so perfect, the matcha super realistic, it super creamy it has this amazing grass quality and i just sweet enough, as a tea note lover THIS, IS perfect. i were it the most out of the 6 and any combination of the 6. oh last thing it kinda also smell like white chocolate just so you know but there literally nothing else i can say to this perfume it a perfection in simplicity
color: white chocolate and matcha ganache, i kinda want to make a matcha latte recipe but it would be too long cuz there way to many step to make a fancy matcha latte, you'll have to imagine it lol
+
COLD RAIN ON PAVEMENT perfectionism
notes: cold air, humid air, puddles, rain, concrete, tar
though: i hate ozone/aldehydes, but objectifly this one is not too bad, osmofolia has a goesmin single note that is actually realistic rain this one is not (to me) but it still adjacent, it wet, bright, soapy and and a bit floral, i mean ofc i wont like a perfume that give me a headache, but that's not the perfume fault right like, i know this perfume is beautiful, it gives me Ghibli rain scene, like in Arrietty, Totoro or Kiki the Little Witch, it rain but in a very aesthetically pleasing way, am doing a fast and furious marraton but after i feel like watching all the ghibli movie
color: walking next to a flower shop after the rain, a little brightness in the thick of the concrete jungle

ON THE CORNER OF JINHU ROAD too pretty
notes: steam, matcha, warm milk, green tea, cream, cold air, humid air, puddles, rain, concrete, tar
though: every one that read my reviews know 2 thing for sure about me, i hate ozone/aldehydes like we seen right before and i have weird references, well weirdly i don't hate this, i mean not on me it would still give me a head ache like ozone/aldehydes always do but it pleasant, i think it the creaminess, it kinda chill out the harshness of cold rain on pavement, but it still has the buzz-ness, it like a soapy, after the rain drinking a matcha latte (that has some kind of white floral syrup in) it pretty, too pretty for me
color: walking next to a flower shop after the rain, a little brightness in the thick of the concrete jungle but the flower shop is also a coffee shop and you get yourself a matcha latte
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MIX AND MATCH, if you get it you get it if you don't you don't ok
Matcha + Milk = Brown Sugar Matcha Latte
Matcha + Lavender = Dirty Matcha
Matcha + Book = White Chocolate BonBon
Matcha + Pollen = Fancy HoneyBee With Her Little Tea
Milk + Book = Alpha, Eating At The Library
Milk + Pavement = Frolicking, Naked After The Rain
Milk + Pollen = Sexy Picnic
Lavender + Pavement = Smoking In The Flower Field
Lavender + Book = Gay Woodworker
Lavender + Pollen = Ashtray, Potpourri
Pavement + Pollen = Electric Bee, Buzz Buzz
Pavement + Book = Little Bookstore In Old Montréal
Pollen + Book = Reading in the Sunroom
​
i could do a combi of 3 perfume but that just to much work, but if you do please share in the comment your favs lolll
this month as been kinda hell, am still working on my move (to no where lol) and am nowhere near done, now am starting to make the boxes (tomorrow) and it stressing me the fuck out, anyway on that note, how do you make pr? loll (half joking) cuz yeah i miss doing these review, but dont worry i still have maybe 5 review left if i don't count the discontinued stereoplasm
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also, have a great night love xoxo

Part 2
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Recently, I have been hit by a writing bug for a story I’m working on, where the entire thing will be a combination of Warehouse 13 and Kingdom Hearts. I want the story to be a critique of both how postmodernism functions and how it destroys contemporary culture by trying to subvert that which works and that which people enjoy. In order for me to write this story, I am required to study both postmodernism and satire of postmodernism, which has strangely led me to a little cartoon from the middle of the 2000s known as Drawn Together.
It ran for 3 seasons, had a direct-to-DVD movie, and vanished from the face of the Earth after that. Nobody dares to mention it and yet there are tons of youtube clips of it that are filled with praise in the comments. People love the show, yet nobody can mention its name without social backlash from the woke left. Why is that? Well, let’s get into what the show even is to begin with.
Like every chick who dresses as Harley Quinn for Halloween, it has some severe issues that are treated as normal.
Postmodernism was already popular by the time we hit the 2000s, and by this time we have had postmodernist media for about 40 years. An entire generation worth of rejecting modernism. With this, we gained a lot of different media styles and new genres. The internet was growing into something capable of creating flash cartoons, movies like Fredy Got Fingered popularized shock comedy and neo dada, we started to have shock jocks take over the airwaves with uncensored satellite radio, and soap operas for the ladies were being replaced with reality TV.
Postmodernism allows for a blending of media and real life to create a hyper reality where we can’t see where media begins and reality ends. Media is part of our lives, all day every day, in this highly connected and social media focused postmodernist era. Even now, we wake up to our pop music alarm clock that holds notifications to our social media and the only way to escape media is to leave society and never read anything. That’s impossible for most of us, so we’re stuck in this hyper reality where we’re always watching others and we ourselves are always being watched. We’re at a point in history where people can become popular by just filming themselves making a goofy sound, vomiting, or taking off their clothes.
Usually it’s all three.
This should concern everyone, yet we tend to embrace the absurd reality that is postmodernism and reality tv. Despite common belief, reality TV began with Candid Camera, a show from 1948 where people would be filmed while being at the butt end of a prank. This kind of filming was a look into how real people provide real reactions to things when they aren’t expecting certain situations, which is actually in relation to the neorealism film movement that was inspired by the poetic realism french film movement. We enjoy seeing pranks being done because we get to see a real person provide real emotion and it’s no different than seeing a fight break out in real life, or seeing a car crash. It’s that train wreck mentality that keeps us glued to the scene as shit gets real.
Or was it the shit that glues us to the train as our real mentality gets wrecked?
It’s the same reason we love to see game shows and court shows and Jerry Springer. Add in some sexual exploitation like busty Ukranians and you have Naked Funny, which is a show people search for without caring about any words being said, since it’s a show with zero dialogue but plenty of mouth watering mammaries. Have the exploitation be where people are horrifically injured or do something sensational, and you have Jackass. Have a bunch of people pretend to be outraged and engage in scripted events while living in a single house, and you have The Real World.
That’s right: it’s a show with fake situations and it’s called The Real World.
This type of “reality” TV caused a massive issue in media because it allowed incredibly fake situations to pass as real, and there was no way to counter it because people were convinced it’s real. Just like professional wrestling, just like any show featuring a magician and a paid audience, just like any porno, there is a mix of real things and fake things that create this ambiguous state of hyper reality. Yes, a person can actually be hit by a chair or a sledgehammer, but there’s no way someone is going to be trying to win a match by holding their hand over the head of the sledgehammer and lightly tapping the other guy with it. Obviously, they don’t want to hit their co-worker, unless they’re in a porn shoot with a white woman. That’s when it’s fair game.
Postmodernism is a term that postmodernists try to avoid defining, because of the main doctrine of postmodernism: there is no such thing as a truth that can be verified by human experience. This means that anything being stated must be an opinion and thus everything being stated is completely disconnected from one another. A postmodernist is unable to make a clear and definitive statement that is true, because it goes against their doctrine. Everything must be vague and open-ended. Everyone has an equally valid interpretation. With that kind of mentality, art can be anything we want to call art. Rules are there to be broken, especially if they are rules of a broadcasting network. The R rating, the X rating, the unrated, these are products of postmodernism, due to the intention to break rules.
Subjectivity, blurring of genres, juxtaposition, playfulness, skepticism of a grand narrative, intertextuality, irony, pastiche, appropriation; all of these things are what makes postmodernism appealing to the masses. There is no desire to make something good, so the goal is to do something else, like be blindly entertaining or blindly propagandist. There is so much art before postmodernism and so much established through modernism, like science, that the goal of the postmodernist is to deconstruct all of that and make it feel like none of it matters.
Despite all of the deconstructionism and subversion that comes with postmodernism, media still has to appeal to an audience, and an audience reacts well to archetypes. We don’t know who to cheer for if we don’t know who is the heel and who is the good guy. There can’t be drama if there isn’t some red haired succubus or pampered shrew to throw a wrench in the circle of hotties. And at the same time, we can’t have all of them being that type of person, or else there’s nobody to root for. In the most ironic way possible, postmodernism is required to appeal to archetypes even more than modernism, due to the demand for audience retention and interaction.
Every reality show had to have at least one of every archetype, but remember: it’s totally real, everyone. It just so happened that there’s only one sneaky bitch and there’s only one cool guy and there’s only one innocent girl and there’s only one slacker. It was by random, totally not on purpose, and you’re crazy if you think producers are controlling the environment of these shows in any way. Same goes for dating shows like Next. It’s obvious that these people with their one liners and bad acting are being honest with all of us.
If you didn’t get it by now: I’m being sarcastic, these shows are faker than lady boy tits and the apologies from Bud Light for advertising with such fake tits. And yet, people can’t stop watching these pointless shows. Even I enjoy it, because of how dumb it is. A big part of my life after school was relaxing late at night with MTV and watching stupid reality tv shows. Even respectable ones like Cops were dumb because the entire show was about police officers finding people breaking the law. The entertainment comes from people ruining their day or their entire life with one dumb act after another.
You’re probably wondering: What does any of this have to do with Drawn Together?
Well, imagine all of these reality shows mixed into a cartoon and then each cartoon archetype is from a different type of cartoon. That’s Drawn Together, and the show gets more insane from that point on. The eras of cartoons are represented by the cast members who are to live in one house, as a satire of things like The Real World and as parody of cartoon archetypes. You have Princess Clara(a parody of the Disney Princess), Foxxy(a parody of 70s mystery solving cartoons like Scooby-doo), Xandir(a parody of 80s Nintendo and action cartoons), Wooldoor(a parody of 90s style Nickelodeon shows like Spongebob), Ling-Ling (a parody of anime like Pokemon), Spanky(a parody of internet cartoons from the early 2000s), Toot(a parody of 1930s black and white cartoons like Betty Boop and Popeye), and Captain Hero (a parody of 90s superhero cartoons like Batman Animated Series and Animated Superman).
These character types are all based on their known stereotypes when it comes to appearance, with their appearances never really mixing since these are all different types of cartoons from different styles. You never see a Pikachu with a Batman, or a human unmasker talk to a video game character, or a human princess from a fairy tale talk to a farting pig from the internet. These things never happen in their environment because these things don’t mix. Then the show puts all of these unrelatable characters into a single house to provide random challenges in the same way reality tv does in order to juxtapose the genres.
The art styles also are juxtaposed. Captain hero is drawn with a square jaw, while Toot is drawn incredibly circular and with a giant head. Woldor has giant white eyes while Foxxy only has pupils. Xandir and Claira are drawn rather similar, but even they have their differences with colors and the thickness of the outline. To the untrained eye, these are easy to miss, but to the artist, these are great homages to the very style something is drawn in. An important part to note is that these are all based on other things and are meant to represent them as symbols. There’s no reason for any of this, yet the show does it anyway.
This is what postmodernism is all about: doing things for the sake of doing it. Juxtaposition is a big part of postmodernism. Blending genres and mixing them around is a big part of postmodernism. Subverting tropes to claim originality is a big part of postmodernism. Non-sequitur is a big part of postmodernism. This entire show is one of the most postmodernist things you can find out there and I love everything about it.
You might be thinking “Is Erwin sick? He talks day and night about how postmodernism sucks and then says he loves Drawn Together. Is this an imposter?!”No, it’s me. I’m simply able to understand the purpose of the show, and I love the meta attempt in all of it: the show is a postmodernist attack on… postmodernism. Everything in the show is designed to be a massive middle finger to how postmodernism functions, by being the dysfunctional postmodernist mess it is. From how meaningless the challenges are, to how characters can never die all the way, to how 4th wall jokes stop the show, to how there is a mundane message tacked on at the very end. Everything in this show is a jab at postmodernism, but at the cost of the show’s own integrity.
In the story I’m working on, I would be required to present postmodernism in it so that I can critique it. But, if my entire story revolves around only that, then I would be presenting postmodernism the entire time, which means I can’t separate the thing that I’m attacking from my work, just how a story about the evils of racism would have to feature a racist. Postmodernists attacking postmodernists is the same as a racist saying “racism is fine, but only in the way I do it.”
But is all postmodernism really the same? The show is hated now, after all, right?
Yes, it’s hated now, because it(ironically) went against the grand narrative that postmodernists currently hold, but it was part of the narrative that was held during the early 2000s. Barely 20 years ago, less than half of a generation, millennials were being raised by exploitation. I know that the postmodernists hate it when I use this word to describe nearly all of postmodernism, but by definition, it’s exploitation. You can blame the 80s for this, because once home media became popular, we had movies that went straight to VHS and then later DVDs that were able to push the envelope.
That’s what postmodernism started as: a way to push the envelope.
South Park and Simpsons didn’t do things that were part of the status quo. They went against it to then become the status quo right after. In fact, there’s an amazing joke from the show Bevis and Butthead(another example of postmodernism) that captures this phenomena perfectly, where the two go to a radio show because they were the only caller, and then they influence the radio show by saying stuff sucks and stuff is stupid.
Their own stupidity and negativity was seen as a sort of punk culture by the viewers and so they demanded the radio host, who was angry at them, to do the same. And so, the next day, the radio host does exactly what he threw Bevis and Butthead out for doing. This complete hypocrisy that somehow there are rules, but they can be broken if the money is there, is something Drawn Together also tackled.
The entire first season was all about having pointless challenges with a character called Jew Producer, who was a parody of both Richie Rich and Donald Trump. How did they connect these 3? Easy: Donald Trump had a show called The Apprentice, Richie Rich was a cartoon, and a Jewish producer is a Hollywood cliche that's entirely true. A lot of Jewish people produce Hollywood stuff and TV shows. I don’t know why this is a controversial statement or why the left always gets insulted by that fact, but they constantly freak out the second someone mentions that someone like Harvey Winstein exists.
While I’m talking about controversies, Adam Carolla, the voice of Spanky, was blacklisted by Hollywood because he decided to do the cardinal sin of… demanding free speech in a country with free speech as a constitutional right. I know, how dare he! It shouldn’t surprise us that the former hippies who ran Hollywood on the backbone of free speech and demanded freedom of expression are now against… freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Meanwhile, Tara Strong, a proud jewish woman, voices a character like Princess Clara, with Princess Clara being a racist, homophobic, anti-semite who is also in a sexual relationship with her father.
So, let’s recap: a jewish woman is able to do the voice for such a terrible thing, yet an Italian male comedian is not able to ask for the acceptance to joke about such topics.
Why is this even a thing?Well, at first it really puzzled me, but like when we saw the left defending drag queen acts in front of children, it finally clicked. The problem in Hollywood isn’t that something terrible is said or written or put in a show. A white princess saying terrible things is normal to them, because that’s how they view white people. Their fear is that something might make a non-white person look bad. Something might make the LGBT look bad. There might be an “uncomfortable truth” revealed in a chain of unregulated jokes.
One of the most profitable postmodernist comedians around, Dave Chappelle, was canceled over making trans jokes, despite being a good friend of a trans person who killed themselves after… trans advocates hated the trans person due to being friends with Dave Chappelle. The woke are disgusting people, to put it bluntly. Zero people were harmed by Dave’s comedy, yet the woke harassing people has a death toll that’d make Pol Pot take notes on their efficiency.
So the difference between Tara and Adam is that Adam wants to make jokes about anything, while Tara is just doing her job and reading the script. The free thinker is the threat, while the obedient follower is not. That’s why Tara still gets jobs and Adam is off doing a podcast and somehow still making millions. I’m sure he’s wiping his tears with gold bullion over the thought of no longer being able to do voices for farting animated pigs.
But what exactly makes Drawn Together hated?
To be honest, I didn’t even know someone could hate the show until I was around 20 or so. Some online people I chatted with told me how offended they were by the show and I never understood what offended even meant until that era. I watched the show throughout my teen years without a care in the world. To me, it was another adult animated show that tried to do anything offensive and it was funny all around. Some of the subject matter, contains but is not limited to:

• Incest
• Self harm
• Suicide
• Homoerotic behavior
• Satanic rituals
• Genocide
• Mass murder
• Mass shootings
• Fat jokes
• Donkey shows
• Cannibalism
• Necrophilia
• Pedophila
• Mexican babies getting pregnant
• Asians and their inability to drive
• Black fathers leaving their kids
• Lewd conduct
• Shitting on a pizza
• A live action squirrel with big balls
• An old man with dirty balls
• And let’s not forget the idea that Clara’s vagina is a giant hentai tentacle monster

All of these things are put in the show to offend us, because the show intends on making people go “ew”. If the constant vomit, blood, shit, piss, burps, farts, cum, sweat, and queefs aren’t a dead give away of them trying to gross the audience out, I don’t know what is. The point of the show is to do exactly what the 90s and early 2000s is all about: doing stuff that is gross so you laugh at how gross it is. Nickelodeon was notorious for this intention of grossing people out, to the point where they would throw green slime around just for fun. As fun as it looks to be drenched in green slime like a Leprechaun bukkake, the goal is to make the audience say “ew… cool!” because that is a male oriented reaction.
And this is where we find the split in postmodernism. When postmodernism began as a means of subverting modernism and regulations, it quickly became a cesspool of creative INABILITY thanks to the woke taking over. We went from freedom of expression to being required to advocate, which is a detriment to comedy. Recently, we had a controversy over a show called Big Mouth, which was hated by the right for being considered pedophilic and indoctrination, because the characters were teenagers dealing with puberty monsters and were depicted as being sexualized.
This is one of the many areas the right is losing the battle on, because so many of them are trying to be Platoist or Mohism, meaning they want some kind of hyper utilitarian and aesthetic free environment due to a hatred of art. Plato believed that art was an “imitation”, that it was a “copy of a copy of a form”. It was a corruption and perversion of reality, thus he saw art as evil. Mo-Zi, a Chinese philosopher who shared a lot of his views, also saw art as a pointless distraction because it’s not the responsibility of the government. These kinds of “right wingers” are accidentally falling for philosophies that pave the way for socialism, so it’s hard to take their positions on art seriously when they can’t see how brainwashed their approach is.
I’m going to go with the Jews on this one and say that art is very important, and so is freedom to make art.
Big mouth is not a show that I will say is one of my favorites, but it’s nothing as how the right wanted to depict it as. Obviously these are just people who wanted the next Cuties outrage and they had a swing n’ a miss. The left, on the other hand, is able to say something like Drawn Together is offensive to them and so it must be canceled. And lo, we have the tumblr people unable to reblog about it, we have reddit radio silent about it, we have twitter people afraid to meme with it, but then it’s still prospering in places like youtube.
People want to watch it, but nobody is brave enough to talk about it in fear of being canceled.
The show is a Martyr in two ways:

1. It is a postmodernist work attacking postmodernism
2. It is a dead form of comedy due to both the left and the right trying to cancel things like it

I already went over the second point by talking about Big Mouth, but I will quickly reiterate: the right and the left want to cancel things that are offensive, but for different reasons. Something like Drawn Together would be hated by something like Daily Wire, and yet I am a conservative who loves the show. I understand that the show is making fun of stuff, I understand it’s gross out humor and pointless nonsense. I love that it’s aware of what it is, to the point where they had an episode where Spanky goes to see their #1 critic and it’s a Jewish, conservative, pro-life, born-again, overweight, Asian, homophobic, lesbian broad who cuts herself.
He then straight up tells her that she’s not their audience, so her opinion doesn’t matter on whether or not the show is good. And he’s right, if you aren’t the audience for something, why should anyone listen to your opinion on the thing you instantly don’t like? It’s like if I had an opinion about which sports team is better. I am 100% uninformed about anything sports related, and the only sport I ever willingly watched was professional wrestling. That’s a sport, right?
Either way, the show is aware that it’s offensive. It’s proud to be offensive. Each character has their own way of offending, both when it comes to a group and when it comes to art itself. This is when postmodernism kicks in and subversion is used to create a surreal environment suited for satire and parody.
As a quick reminder: Satire is when a subject is critiqued and parody is when a subject is used for a joke. An example of this would be where satire is when Scream uses movie tropes to figure out a murder and parody is when the alien from Signs pees with his finger in Scary Movie.
Princess Clara is the Disney princess. Usually a Disney princess seeks a prince to live happily ever after, and she is pure of heart. They subvert this by attaching a bit of reality to the word “princess” and have her in a sexual relationship with her father because princesses would sometimes do that to keep royalty in the family. She’s also a racist and Christian, because royalty in Europe was Christian and it’s “old fashion” for a rich white girl to be racist. Although they keep her desire to sing, the lyrics are still going to hold her views about people, so the humor comes in how she delivers terrible things with a cheery tone. Her character is meant to make fun of traditionalist people, all while using the Disney princess as a face.
With the way wokeness is going, I don’t see a difference between Clara and the current Disney princess now.
Foxxy Love is the Hanna-Barbera style mystery character who is meant to solve crimes, most likely inspired by Valerie Brown from Josie and the Pussycats. She suberts the role by causing crimes and being a degenerate all over. She is a slut, she acts ghetto, she constantly has abortions, you know the deal. This juxtaposition comes from the fact that Valerie is meant to be a hippie musician, and black women on reality TV are depicted as ghetto thanks to shows like Flavor of Love. And for those who don’t know, hippie musicians are usually promiscuous and incredibly loose, with zero regard for decency or sticking to one sex partner because they are all about second wave feminism.
Again, ironically the woke have caused this subversion to be their intentional norm for a lot of black female characters, only they see it as virtuous instead of comical.
Wooldoor Sockbat is the Nickelodeon style hyperactive loony toon who is meant to be both stupid and gullible. There’s not much subversion here with personality, but it’s all with how far he’s willing to go with his zany humor, such as randomly threatening to suck someone’s dick and having giant tits out of nowhere, which he will then squish into the camera while crying. He’s meant to be loud and random, just like Spongebob or Stimpy. However, with the way Spongebob has become after their first movie, the only thing separating Wooldoor from something like Spongebob is direct word usage.
Plus, Ren and Stimpy had their adult party cartoon reboot made by the creator, so doing something gay and entirely disturbing is nothing new for that kind of character. I still can’t believe that it came out in 2003. In fact, I can’t believe Ren and Stimpy was on Nickelodeon with the stuff they put in there. But, that’s the appeal of Wooldoor, because he does the stuff people have been doing with characters like him for years. I would even say he’s not much of a satire since he’s so close to the content he’s meant to make fun of.
Xandir Wifflebottom is the 80s action cartoon parody, as well as early video game cartoons. During the 80s and 90s, we had a lot of Nintendo shows like Legend of Zelda, which took after plot scripts like Transformers, GI Joe, He-Man, and other product placement shows during that time. Only a few episodes of Drawn Together make fun of these simple action plots, but this connection between the merchandise advertising shows and video game cartoons is important, since they are the same thing, and it’s a product of postmodernism. Shows during the 80s and 90s that were simply there to sell something with the show, whether it was a game or a toy, were part of this media and real life blur. His gayness comes from how people viewed both He-Man and Link, since Link was a feminine looking elf and He-Man was a muscular dude who didn’t wear a shirt when he’s fighting.
This one is kind of interesting since it touches on the subject of queer coding. The left is so desperate to feel like the LGBT is represented, they will declare something is gay because it “feels gay”. This feeling is based on whoever is attracted to a fictional character, so if gay men are attracted to He-Man, or if they like his outfit, then that means he’s totally gay. Link is a character who has sadly been considered a “gay icon” by websites like Polygon, all because the designers made him rather gender neutral in later games in order for him to appeal to a female fanbase that was growing. And when they say gender neutral, they mean “he’s not muscular and he has a pretty face”, similar to practically any 00s alt rock band memeber.
Apparently, having that and then having gay people make gay fanfics about the character instantly means the character is gay. The show made fun of this queer coding nonsense by making Xandir a raging homosexual that is constantly killed like a Mortal Kombat character.
Captain Hero, my favorite character, is the comic book show hero that we all know and love. He’s meant to save the day from evil villains, but they subvert his role by having him be entirely useless and usually the cause of mass destruction. He has superpowers, but he’s so stupid and useless that he doesn’t use them most of the time, like when he is immune to bullets but he still grabs a random woman to use her as a “hero shield” when getting shot at. His character makes fun of how postmodernist super heroes try to depict the classic hero as a terrible monster or some kind of morally warped anti-hero. This is due to how Batman went from whacky detective to psychotic nut job during the transition from the 60s to the 80s, thanks to influences like Alan Moore’s Watchman and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. His character is more like a Superman, which the Bizzaro Superman comics have covered that kind of thing to make way for a super powered idiot who has sex with corpses.
Why does he have sex with dead bodies? Well, because he’s “alien” to us, the point of the joke is that he’s so super powered that he can do whatever he wants, and uses his powers to have sex with something that can’t fight back. Kind of a “he can have any woman he wants, but he would rather have sex with a rotten corpse” kind of thing. Or maybe it’s making fun of how Superman cares about Lois Lane even though she might as well be a rotten corpse to him, because she’s a human and he’s an alien. Either way, it covers a big problem we started to get in the 90s where superheroes were quickly becoming hyper violent assholes who do anything disgusting for the sake of shock value.
Ling-Ling is basically a Pikachu, but here he will battle with anything and cause gory deaths upon his opponent. The joke is that kid shows featuring these little monsters, like Pokemon and Digimon, will have zero blood, and yet the attacks they do are strong enough to cause giant explosions. Thankfully, these go past the typical Dorkly joke and Ling-Ling will also have jokes centered around being Asian and have a made up language that sounds Japanese because he says “kitowa” a lot.
Just like Xandir, Ling-Ling is treated like a punching bag by the others in nearly every episode, and I think it has to do with the video game relation, since Pokemon began as a video game and the show was there as a way of advertising the product. Plus, during the 00s, there was little respect for something like anime, no matter how much someone knew about the golden age of 80s anime.
Spanky Ham is something I’m not really sure what influenced him, but it’s said it might be an early flash cartoon called Evil Piggies. However, there is a flash cartoon from 1997 made by John K, the creator of Ren and Stimpy, called The Goddamn George Liquor Program, that seems more in line with Spanky’s scat fetish. Early internet cartoons usually had people’s faces done in a South Park style, where the mouth moved by cutting the bottom half off and moving that up and down. When I went on Newgrounds during that time, all I would see were stick figures, parodies of existing cartoons, and something like Ctrl+Alt+Del where the characters were drawn as humans in that typical web comic style. He might have also been inspired by Happy Tree Friends, which first came out in 1999, so the idea of cute animals dying randomly, and the crude humor of The Goddamn George Liquor Program might have caused a farting pig to come into fruition.
The joke is that he’s a pig who likes to drink and have sex, as well as be disgusting, but then somehow he’s also like Ren where he has schemes to make money. I forget if there is a word for this kind of character, but he’s the Squidward type who always gets harmed by his own greed. There is also a lot of Fritz the Cat in his character, which was an animated movie based on an underground comic about a cat who would go on sexual escapades. This “cartoon animal doing adult stuff” has been a joke since the 60s, and even Howard the Duck had issues with what Nostalgia Critic calls “duck boobies”. Speaking of adult ducks, there is even a show called Duckman that was made by the same company that made Rugrats.
People treat Bojak Horseman as this hip new thing when it’s simply part of a long line of animated foul mouth farm animals wearing suits.
Finally, Toot Braunstein is the representative of silent cartoons. Betty Boop was seen as sexy for being curvy, and the joke is that Toot is just plain fat and old, with her body hair and repulsiveness, as well as her tits always sagging to her cankles. She is always harming herself because of a self-esteem issue, caused by her weight and age, which is joined by an alcoholic problem due to her being from the roaring 20s. The joke is that she’s that girl in every reality TV show that is completely disgusting to look at, but she’ll see herself as a hot chick despite hitting the wall so hard that illegals can pour through the cracks. Plus, people believe Betty Boop was based on Clara Bow, who was a flapper “it girl” who suffered from hard drug use, schizophrenia, and was constantly rejected for being too fat.
Toot is the only one in the list who’s not directly a product of postmodernism, but there was a particular charm to rubber hose animation(gained its name for how limbs acted like rubber hoses) that continued onward to create things like Ren and Stimpy, Loony Toons, Tom and Jerry, and even some movies that tried to revive properties of the 30s. The Popeye movie is a great example as to how studios in the postmodernist era tried to desperately mix live action with cartoons, and same goes with Who Framed Roger Rabbit with how it was a movie that mixed live action with rubber hose animation.
Part 2

Hey running friends
I've recently been eyeing a new pair of running sunglasses, but before making the investment, I wanted to gather some insights and reviews from this knowledgeable community.
The sunglasses in question are the from Rightochamp ( link below). From what I've seen, they appear to have some great features: UV protection, lightweight design, anti-slip grips, and a sleek aesthetic. But as we all know, marketing can sometimes be a bit over-enthusiastic compared to real-life use.
If anyone here owns or has used these sunglasses, could you share your experience with them?
How comfortable are they during long runs?
Do they truly stay put even with sweat and movement?
How durable are they, especially when faced with drops or rough handling?
Do you find that the UV protection is sufficient?
Would you say they are worth the price tag?
If there are any other aspects or features you think are worth mentioning, please don't hesitate to share! I'm looking for a pair that will last me through many miles and different weather conditions, so all feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Happy running!
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at the start of the year, I decided I wanted to run a campaign for some friends, and to save myself some effort, I thought I would run a pre-written game. I looked up Eberron adventures, and the convergence manifesto looked like it would suit the quick, very-slightly-casual-ish campaign I wished to run. While I haven't finished the campaign yet, I want to write out some thoughts about it.
WHAT FOLLOWS WILL SPOIL THE CONVERGENCE MANIFESTO CAMPAIGN. DON'T READ IF YOU INTEND TO PLAY IT.
ALSO, PARTS OF THIS MIGHT NOT MAKE SENSE IF YOU HAVEN'T READ OR RUN THE ADVENTURES BECAUSE I'M BAD AT EXPLAINING THINGS.
To start with, I'd like to say that some of my criticisms of the campaign are probably problems with me. I have focus issues, and I'm a picky perfectionist, and to be fair to all the writers involved, they have done better jobs than I would in their shoes.
A note on my group: our party consisted of a human wild magic sorcerer (ex-skycoach driver), human wizard (aundairian expatriot), a gargoyle barbarian (used the rules for a Hadozee), an eladrin eloquence bard, and a goblin rogue (retired Conquerer champion looking for something new to do)
The Campaign As a Whole:
The premise of the Convergence manifesto is that Nigel Faurious, Provost of Morgrave university, wants a bunch of relics that are each attuned to one of Eberron's planes. Each adventure is a mission to some location on Khorvaire to retrieve or create such an item.
Each of the adventures is written by a different author, and as a result I think they vary pretty wildly in quality.
Adventure 1: Fired and Forgotten.
Synopsis: PCs go through hazing ritual to join adventuring guild in Sharn, get sent to pick up bespoke Fernia-linked magic item from a forge in the Cogs, discover forge has been shuttered due to warforged workers protesting - they have to convince the owner to be less of an ass. Then Daask show up.
This one was good! A strong start. Everybody enjoyed the hazing ritual, and I decided to use the optional NPC with the aberrant dragonmark manifesting (for reasons I'll explain further down). The warforged union situation was a very good introduction to what is special and different about the Eberron setting. This might be an issue with me as GM, but I found that the PCs dealt with the non-combat parts of the adventure VERY easily through use of skills and illusions, never thought about leaving the immediate vicinity of the forge (and thus missed some content), and I felt kind of bad having the forge owner not immediately cooperate in the face of 20+ results on Persuasion and Intimidate.
The daask Ettin bruiser being toned down for a bunch of level 1s was a very nice touch, but throwing that at the players right after the fight with the mephits made that bit rough.
Adventure 2: Live Another Day
Synopsis: PCs get air-dropped into Droaam so they can find a hidden valley with an Irian manifest zone, so they can charge up a crystal. On the way they may encounter some ogres, have to navigate a hidden set of tunnels, and then on arriving discover a clan of harpies is living in the valley, as they are persona-non-grata in Droaam. When Droaam monsters follow the PCs into the valley, they have to fight them off before the harpies will let them complete their mission
So, slight issue with this one, probably unique to my party - the adventure calls for a lot of Survival rolls for the overland travel and nobody in my party had survival. They were a bunch of city-slickers. Seemed a little odd the adventuring guild picking the party to do this.
While the adventure was somewhat rail-roady, it at least makes sense in that the PCs are following in the footsteps of a prior explorer. My main issue was the last portion - once the PCs get to the valley, there will ALWAYS be Droaamite monsters on their heels. Firstly, this discounts the possibility that the party had been religiously using Pass Without Trace or doing other things to make them untrackable. My party didn't, but a party with a ranger and/or druid might have. Secondly, the fight as written is a bit boring. It's two Gnolls. Two gnolls shouldn't be a threat to a clan of harpies. Once the gnolls are dead, three goblins show up. After that, two half-ogres show up. You can optionally add some more scenes fighting gnolls and chasing anything trying to get away. I revamped the fight a bit by making all of these fight scenes one long drawn-out battle with reinforcements arriving, and I re-contextualized the Harpies wanting the PCs to fight the monsters without their help - the Harpies could probably run rings around the ground-based humanoids, but the Harpies both thought this was the PCs fault they were here, and didn't want to show themselves in case any stragglers got away to report on the Harpies' presence.
Weird thing my party did: when they encountered the ogres at the start of the adventure, the group came up with a plan to pretend to be fellow Droaamite monsters if they failed to sneak past - they then snuck past the ogres without any issue, and were disappointed that they couldn't use their disguises... so they used them when the encountered the harpies, not knowing the harpies were enemies of Droaam. This very nearly turned into a combat situation, but the bard managed to talk everybody down and explain why they had been lying.
Adventure 3: Rime or Reason
Synopsis: Nigel sends PCs to Icewhite island to get a Risia macguffin after another expedition failed to return. They have to contend with a blizzard, find a tower of ice in the middle, and defeat ice monsters, a puzzle/trap, the possibly backstabby survivors of the failed expedition, and then deal with the tower collapsing once they find the item.
Some parts of this one were good - my party really seemed to enjoy trying to find a solution to get through the blizzard despite their lack of survival skill proficiency. Two of the casters were constantly casting prestidigitation to keep the Constitution 8 rogue from succumbing to hypothermia, and even then it was a bit touch and go.
Now, I had some issues with the ice tower as presented. First, the adventure says it's an ancient dwarven ruin, dating back to when the dwarves came down from the Frostfell. Personally, that didn't make great sense to me - why would you willingly make a building in a risian manifest zone? The whole of Icewhite island is freezing cold, and the manifest zone is worse.
Second problem - there is door, with a puzzle. The puzzle is so easy that I worked out the answer the instant I looked at the handout at the back of the adventure, before even reading the description - there are four columns of symbols (a book, scroll, wand, potion - again, not terribly dwarf-y?), and each symbol rotates a certain number of octagonal faces from one row to the next, and you just have to make the last row match the pattern. If you mess it up, it will spring a trap that will potentially either tickle the PCs a little, or cause a TPK if they're messed up from any prior fights because anybody reduced to 0 HP by the trap is frozen solid until freed by greater restoration, which no PC at this level of adventure will have.
Third problem - the tower is only four storeys tall. As described, it more cube-shaped than tower shaped. Also, as described, a PC with misty step standing on the shoulders of another PC of above average height could potentially teleport to the top of the tower and avoid 50% of the adventure content.
Fourth problem - the top of the tower is described as a garden made of icy plants... which doesn't make sense with Risia's canonical loathing of life.
my fixes: I changed the backstory of the tower, rather than being a dwarven relic, it was an Aundairian Magical Congress research facility, set up during the war to try to draw weaponizable power out of the Risian manifest zone - a wizard tower felt more right than a dwarven one. I then changed the solution to the puzzle - the symbols still had to be rotated, but what columns they were in had to be swapped, to represent the Congress sharing magical knowledge. I had the other expedition that was there explain they had tried the obvious solution and it hadn't worked. I also made the tower taller, mostly as an aesthetic thing, and so that the stand-on-shoulders-and-teleport trick only got the party Eladrin up to a balcony, rather than the roof. I kept the set-piece of the tower collapsing, saying that the magic the Aundairians had been trying had kept the manifest zone coterminous and removing the macguffin broke the spell holding the ice tower together.
Adventure 4: Living Legend
Synopsis: the party goes to Darguun, hunting a legendary hobgoblin hero. They get to see the fact that bugbears take slaves, follow a guide to a Thelanis manifest zone, and undertake several trials to prove they are worthy of claiming the hero's weapon to bring back.
So... the premise is cool. The execution is anything but
Even setting aside the fact that some parties might get entirely side-tracked by fighting slavers, the issue I had was that the trials in the adventure didn't seem to really key into the fact that Eberron goblinoids are supposed to have some different and interesting cultural mores.
The trials aren't bad, per se, but they don't feel goblin-y at all.
Worst of all, though, there is a Hobgoblin you encounter during the trials who is one of the Dhakaani fallout-vault people who is set on passing the trials to claim the weapon herself. As written, she is quite easy to befriend, will readily tell the PCs that she is from a hidden vault of survivors of the goblinoid empire, and if they DO befriend her, doesn't leave the room she's in despite the fact she's here for the same cultural relic the PCs are. WHICH FEELS INSANE. Every bit of canon and kanon lore I've encountered about the Dhakaani suggest that they distrust non-Dhankaani at best, and outright loath them at worst, and are trying to keep their presence secret. She should be either fighting to the death or keeping her origin secret then betraying the PCs, or not here at all.
Between the un-goblin-ish trials, and the insanely cooperative yet unhelpful NPC, this one needed the most fixing to satisfy my tastes. As I didn't have the time and brain juice to do that before the session, I decided to skip this adventure, and have the PCs collect a Thelanis macguffin as part of the later adventurer where they go to a Feyspire (adventure 12: Lost in Dreams).
Adventure 5: Perfect Timing
Synopsis: PCs get on a lighting rail intending to jump off it as it goes over a bridge, so they can appear in Daanvi to acquire the macguffin. twist: there's emerald claw terrorists on the train, and one of them has stolen the thing the PCs need to get into Daanvi, intending to go himself. Once in Daanvi, it's a race against the Emerald Claw guy to fill out all the paperwork to get the macguffin first
So, over-all, this one is really good. The premise is good. Situation is hilarious. It's very Eberron
Minor issues: the train has SO MANY COMBAT ENCOUNTERS. the PCs start at one end, and have to fight their way to the other, with one fight in every single train car, one of which is purely due to a misunderstanding. It took two sessions to get through the train half of the adventure, and that is with me having skipped two of the fights. In hindsight, I would have maybe also varied the stats of the enemies a bit more.
Also, while I comprehend the drama of having the thief jump out of train with his accomplices during a fight, this presumes the PCs don't kill every single one of his accomplices. I had to pull some shady DM shenanigans to get the guy out of the train in one piece, and give him new allies to help in the final battle at the end of the paperwork race.
My players enjoyed this one a heap, but one did comment that he thought it should have come later in the campaign, as it was such a departure from the others.
Adventure 6: Night's Gambit
Synopsis: PCs have to infiltrate Fort Bones in Karrnath and steal a mabaran macguffin from under the nose of the military there.
Another really good one, although not without it's issues. The adventure presents interesting characters in the form of the fort's up-tight commander and relatively chill head necromancer, a timeline of what they will be up to at various times of day, and has options of all kinds of approaches: sneaking in, joining up with what is basically the Karrnathi Foreign Legion, or acting as bodyguards for a visiting inspector. I loved that it gave all these options.
my only complaints were that the timeline was a little hard to make sense of as presented, and the map of the fort seemed... a bit too small and simple for the facility as it's described. I feel like you'd expect one of Karrnath's most important border forts to be at least a two-storey building (I fixed that by describing the fort's upper levels as being still under construction after the last time it was sacked).
How my party handled it: so, my group aren't terribly sneaky on the whole. They also do not look like adventurers - to glance at, they are a Gargoyle, the hottest and floweryest elf you've ever seen, a depressed cab driver, the least magical aundairan wizard ever, and a goblin grandmother. So they couldn't really sneak in, wouldn't blend in as recruits, and I felt wouldn't really be the kind of people the inspector would hire as bodyguards....
...so they decided to BE the inspector. Eladrin lady was the inspector herself, gargoyle got dressed up as weird undead bodyguard, aundairian wizard was silent note-keeper, grandmother was a servant, and cabbie became the coach-driver. The group arrived a day early ("surprise inspection"), and were given a tour of the fortress. They executed everything perfectly. In the end, the only fight they had was an ambush on the necromancer in his own bedroom at 3am, wherein they beat him senseless, put him to sleep with a spell, and healed him back to full HP, so when he woke up in the morning he had no physical proof that anything had happened and was questioning his own sanity. They even fashioned a replica of the macguffin (it's a conqueror piece - the goblin rogue had her own set, which the wizard imbued with some necromantic energy), so the alarm wasn't raised for several hours after the PCs had left the fort.
Adventure 7: The Silvered Edge of Twilight
Synopsis: PCs go to Thaliost to pick up a Lammanian macguffin from a silver flame priest - when they get there, it's been stolen. They do some investigating, track the theives to the railway station, and chase them down to the Eldeen reaches where they fight Ashbound druids and lycanthropes.
Kind of middling adventure - nice premise, but very railroady. For starters, there's an NPC (who I edited out) who gets sent with the PCs for all of the investigation portion who basically seems to exist to keep them on track and/or provide lore about Thaliost and also to force them into a fight they might otherwise be able to avoid. Even outside of that, the investigation seemed a bit being-led-by-the-nose, although maybe that came down to how I was running it.
The issue, for my run at least, was once they were on the train. As written, the PCs need to track down the missing item on the train - it's written with there being a few red herrings as to who might be the thief, but it's a magic item. I have never seen a group of PCs who didn't have access to detect magic, so my PCs just bypassed all the red herrings with a single spell.
Next, there is supposed to be a set-piece fight where the were-tiger with the item jumps off the train, and leaves here were-rat minions to fight the PCs. I can't really criticise the adventure writer for not forseeing what my PCs did: the eladrin bard walked scootched up to the were-tiger, went "hey, I gather you're a nature-themed terrorist? I am too! I hate civilization. Can I tag along and then borrow your item when you're done with it? Also are you single?" and then rolled a 27 for persuasion.
The PCs came along and jumped the lycanthropes a day later. To be fair, the adventure never explained how the were-tiger was supposed to get to the final battle before the PCs as she jumped off a moving train and is slower than it is.
Adventure 8: The March of Madness
Synopsis: PCs go to an ancient dungeon in the Shadow Marches, go on a vision quest before being allowed inside by the druid guardian, and then have to contend with/repair the wards inside the dungeon before they can get their Xoriat macguffin. Depending on how it plays out, they may or may not end up accidentally killing an ancient orcish guardian inside the dungeon, and may or may not be betrayed by an insane warlock.
The adventure is very solid, great even. The map that comes with it is... very uninspiring, so I re-mapped the dungeon and added a bit of extra flavour to one room (there's a weird trap that doesn't make much sense, so I made it a weird manigest zone effect rather than a deliberate thing), but that is basically the only changes I made. 4.5 stars!
Adventure 9: Weathering the Storm
Synopsis: PCs get sent to the Lazaar principalities to receive a Kythri macguffin that is being imported. Ship doesn't arrive, investigation leads to sky pirates, which in turn leads to an attack on a skyship.
So, again, really nice premise. Some issues with the execution, though - see, the synopsis in the adventure itself makes reference to the Chaos Fleet, a concept introduced in 4th edition, where there was a pirate fleet in the principalities that were basically Davy Jones' crew from Pirates of the Carribean, if they went all elemental-y rather than all fish-y.
Except, the Chaos Fleet never actually show up in the adventure at any point. All the opposition in the adventure is Wind Whisperer pirates. ALL of it. Literally, it's only the one statblock for everybody except the final boss.
my fixes: when the PCs are inspecting the wreck of the vessel that had their macguffin on it, rather than Wind Whisperers returning to the scene of the crime, I had a Chaos fleet ship turn up chasing the scent of the macguffin that they were lusting after - I used weirds from the Ravnica book, and some mephits. After that, I fed the PCs info of sightings of Chaos Fleet ships chasing after a skyship in the heart of a storm - the Chaos guys I described as not usually a threat because they're terminally incapable of cooperating with each other, but this was concerning because the Wind Whisperers seemed to be trying to use the macguffin to draw all of them into their wake and then force them into Regalport.
In the adventure as written, then PCs are airdropped onto the macguffin-holding skyship with some friendly Regalport sailors to help them (and to keep the fight against the Wind Whisperers manageable). I gave the wind whisperers some more variance in statblocks (scounts, thugs, deck wizards from ghosts of saltmarsh), and had the ship under attack by elementals at the same time, rather than give the PCs allies.
I also had the aberrant dragonmarked NPC from adventure 1 show up in Regalport, saying she had been given a grant by Nigel to continue her studies somewhere other than Sharn.
Adventure 10: At Death's Door
Synopsis: PCs sneak into the upper level of the Lair of the Keeper to get a Dolurrh macguffin while the (alleged) Keeper is out having a meeting with some minions. It's a dungeon crawl.
This is the best one. Almost every encounter can be fought or talked through (with varying difficulty). The Rakshasa is great. The demon and the bodak are great. The Orcs are great. I loved it. No fixes. No notes. 5/5 stars.
Further Adventures:
This is as far as we've gotten at time of writing. I'm currently gearing up to run A Heart in Mourning, and am running into some of the same issues as Rime or Reason - the adventure site feels too small, the approach to it a bit too rail-roady due to being a tower, combined with the fact it doesn't really feel like it's Shavarath-ish enough. Also, ending with a collapsing tower seems repetitive at this point.
I need to read Lost in Dreams in more detail. It looks complex, so I'll report back on that one.
As for the last adventure - a read-through revealed some really neat set-piece fights and the stupidest twist I've ever \***ing heard of*. As written, the adventure reveals that Nigel Faurious has secretly been... a gnome woman from zilargo who the PCs have never heard of and who wants revenge on Sharn for her sons dying in the War.
...What???
I at least have a fix for that: Nigel Faurious is... actually Nigel Faurious. Nothing secret going on there. He came to Morgrave university in his 20s in hopes of studying to help his fiancé - the fiancé had an aberrant dragonmark that meant they would create spontaneous manifest zones temporarily. One day they had a bad flare-up, and got killed by a mob, just like the NPC nearly is in adventure 1. After that Nigel as spent the last 20 years trying to reverse-engineer the manifest-zone creation effect with the intention of destroying the city that killed the love of his life.
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Thanks for reading all this way, I know this has been a really long post. I appreciate the effort.