Bubble Guppies Dvd Set

hi, i don’t know if i’m in the right place for this but i have this: https://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Network-Universe-Complete-Collection/dp/B08JDTP2F1 and i’m looking to sell it, international shipping would be costly (about 60 usd) but seeing as it’s not sold anymore i thought maybe someone would be interested in it. it’s barely used and only has a bit of shelf-wear. feel free to dm me if it interests you 🩷 i’ll attach some pictures :) submitted by /u/iwillsue to r/stevenuniverse [link] [comments]

First time posting here so sorry if this post is a little off. Both are in Aniplex original shipping boxes with minimal wear on the cardboard. Both are still pristine and brand new, only opened 3 times each for condition confirmation and listing pictures (all bubble wrap, wax paper, foam coats, and seals on). All artbooks were never flipped open or creased. No stains, scratches, blemishes, warping, or smudges on anything. Both are kept indoors in a nonsmoking, no pet house. Prices are extremely negotiable, listing price is what I would like but I'm willing to go pretty low, I just need these gone, literally just shoot me any offer worst I can say it no. PM me for details or questions, I'll answer whatever whenever. Pics: https://imgur.com/a/joTzSDw https://imgur.com/a/6vKvqZy Rurouni Kenshin 10 Year Anniversary DVD Box Complete Works: $325 Shipped OBO City Hunter Complete DVD Box: $675 Shipped OBO USPS media mail for shipping. submitted by /u/Orimoru to r/mangaswap [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/RareSun_ to r/AntiPiracyScreens [link] [comments]

This has been very confusing and I'm hoping someone can help me. I want to purchase a full Big Hero 6 the series DVD set so that I can own the full series in physical form. The Wikipedia page for the show says this: https://preview.redd.it/eza91b2vabhg1.png?width=1250&format=png&auto=webp&s=cbfdf263310115815a1d528ca1ddcbaa25fdb3a2 In other words, there is (according to Wikipedia) only one physical media release for Big Hero 6 the series. This set called "Back in Action" which is currently available on most online stores. This page says it contains episodes Baymax Returns to Failure Mode. That's seven episodes between those. However, the episodes column says "22." So that's where the first piece of confusion comes in. However, I'm pretty sure the page is just in error and the set actually does have just seven episodes. I don't want just seven episodes, I want the whole series. So the hunt continues for an actual full set. So I ordered this one from Walmart.com (pretty legit sounding source right?). It arrives and it's weird. First of all it comes all wrapped up in tape and bubble wrap. Second of all, it ain't no box set. It's three regular DVD boxes, each with several DVDs inside each. The DVD boxes have the exact image displayed on the website, on both sides of the box (no description on the back or anything, no legal jargon on the bottom, etc.) and the disks inside also have that same picture. Furthermore, the spine of the DVD has the Big Hero 6 the Series logo stretched horrendously across the entire spine. Also the address was from India or something so make of that what you will. All in all, it seems very fake and weird. Haven't actually tried playing the disks yet but I don't expect anything much better. And I care about quality and stuff so I don't want to keep these even if they do play the episodes just fine. I don't know why Walmart.com would be selling these, and whether it's even legal to do so if this is a fake set. The second one I found is here. I haven't ordered yet, because I'm going to be more cautious now to get the right one. This one looks very strange. The prints on the back do not seem to have any official Disney-affiliated information. Furthermore, there are approximately 1.4 jabillion listings of this exact same thing, all with the same price too. Now I've done very little ebay shopping in my time, so I really don't know what I'm dealing with, but these definitely seem extremely fake to me. What do you think I should do? Is there a legit option out there? Why is this obvious fake set available on Walmart.com? And why are there a million listings of this same seeming-fake on ebay? submitted by /u/Nightwatch2007 to r/BigHero6 [link] [comments]

This subreddit showed me that the original "The Complete Series" DVD set I bought was bootlegged, so I bought a real set from GRUV, who packaged it in a barely bubble-padded envelope, resulting in these awesome dents in my slipcover. The scammers who sold me the bootleg copy did a much better job protecting their fake boxset than the real company did protecting my real boxset. I don't think there's even a point in trying to return this, as I'm assuming they'll just send it in the same crap packaging again. All the DVDs are intact, and that's really all I care about. submitted by /u/NGSHogs to r/venturebros [link] [comments]

The kids' show Bubble Guppies has a solar power episode ("Solar Light Spectacular!) that embraces solarpunk. The episode is set in a city completely built around solar power infrastructure including mass transit. The plot line revolves around an antagonist robot who attempts to steal batteries when his own power source becomes obselete, and the resolution is to give him a solar paneled top hat to charge him up. Bubble Guppies deserves credit for not only covering solar power but presenting an optimistic vision of a solar society and even including a plot line related to adaptation conflict in a 20 minute show for preschoolers. The only major issue issue is the tension of the plot rests on solar intermittency and the need for battery storage. submitted by /u/DryWittgenstein to r/solarpunk [link] [comments]

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Seasons 1 & 2 [Blu-ray] $29.72 $34.98 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning [Limited Edition] [Blu-ray] $51.67 $64.94 The Tiger's Apprentice $18.89 $24.55 The Time Machine [Blu-ray] [Import] $13.49 $19.99 The Visions Of Escaflowne - The Complete Series [Blu-ray] $50.67 $69.98 The Wild Robot - Collector's Edition 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray (Bilingual) $18.09 $32.99 The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic - The Complete Season [Blu-ray] $48.88 $96.75 Thor: Love And Thunder [Blu-ray] (Bilingual) $20.73 $26.99 Thorn Birds Collector's Set $21.99 $33.74 Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan - Season Three [BLU-RAY] $28.89 $35.99 Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan - The Final Season [Blu-ray] $30.09 $35.99 Tomo-Chan Is A Girl! - The Complete Season [Blu-ray] $48.25 $95.67 Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Bilingual) [Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy] $11.29 $ Trolls 3-Movie Collection - Blu-ray (Bilingual) $19.19 $39.99 Trolls Band Together - Sing-Along Edition Blu-ray + DVD (Bilingual) $10.19 $26.99 Tulsa King: Season Two $28.79 $37.23 Universal 10-Film Sci-Fi Collection [Blu-ray] $39.59 $74.98 Vinland Saga - Season 2 Part 2 [Blu-ray] $48.22 $69.98 Violet Evergarden - The Complete Series [Blu-ray] $51.32 $64.98 Violet Evergarden: The Movie [Blu-ray] $29.62 $39.98 Voltron: Defender of the Universe - The Complete Original Series [DVD] $47.09 $74.99 Waltons The: The Complete Series (RPKG/DVD) $101.89 $194.99 Westworld: The Complete Series - Blu-ray $60.39 $153.62 Whiplash - 4K UHD/Blu-ray Combo (Bilingual) $19.05 $30.99 White Christmas (Diamond Anniversary) [Blu-ray] $19.69 $31.99 Woody Woodpecker and Friends Collection Vol. 2 $19.49 $30.99 Yellowjackets: Seasons One & Two Collection $34.09 $33.99 Zack Snyder's Justice League Trilogy (4K Ultra+ Blu-ray) $56.09 $84.99 submitted by /u/lbabinz to r/MovieDealsCanada [link] [comments]

Okay they’re mer-people. Got that, no problem. But what is up with the regular animals that are supposed to be land animals down there? Also they have had regular people with no scuba gear on the show breathing fine. I don’t understand the rules of their world. Songs are fire though. submitted by /u/nayandnem to r/DanielTigerConspiracy [link] [comments]

The sauna we were calling a bus slowly bounced down a crude path forcefully etched into the skin of Earth by journeys no different than this one. My lazy gaze was fixed on unending scenery drifting by, hoping to catch a glimpse of monkeys or an elusive jaguar whose predecessors dominated these smothering trees with unchecked ferocity. This section of untamed jungle is rich in ancient history and superstition, something our guide blabbed on about all day. “Okay folks!” Guillermo shouted, gyroscopically standing at the front, wearing the exact Cheshire smile he had on at the main building complex. His white uniform, accented with gold appointments, had no visible perspiration as he addressed this bus of slick and gummy people. “We are about to reach the “Well of Sacrifice” The largest and most religiously significant cenote in ancient Mayan civilization! Countless people were decapitated and thrown down into this exact cenote! The Mayan people who called this tropical paradise home, believed cenotes were portals to the underworld! Sacrifices had the exciting pleasure of being adorned in dazzling precious gemstones and as much gold as physically possible to appease their gods!” Thin chuckles rotated against Guillermo’s dry sarcasm in the moist air. My body was just going through the motions all day from activity to activity, it was difficult to focus on anything other than how increasingly sticky, hungry, and thirsty I was becoming. Sitting in a pool of myself, I tried to picture what water holding an unknown amount of damned souls could look like. • • • My herd meandered up a steep hill, exchanging pleasantries while I rushed upwards to get my eyes on this historic site as fast as I could. It was truly breathtaking. A deep, round pit in the crusty shell of our planet was filled a third of the way to the top with fresh, deeply saturated, blue liquid. The unrelenting jungle was desperately trying its best to reclaim the exposed stone from all angels. Vines and roots grew over each other, reaching down from every direction with a slow, deliberate, unseen might that ached to graze the water's surface. I couldn’t see the lowest point, it is and always will be covered in what remains of headless bodies, rotted away by the fourth dimension. My mind struggled to grasp the mud's depth, it certainly was bountiful enough to coat the entire exposed bottom. The primeval, siren call of fauna and flora fizzled from my ear canals decibal by decibal. I would not have moved my eyes away to behold Rapture; not even the jaguar I was searching for all day. I was staring into one of Earth’s pupils and I felt her looking back with curiosity and longing matching my own. I imagined she would blink her dark blue, all seeing appendage any second, naming me the victor of our impromptu competition of visual prowess. Giddy vacationer banter broke the spell cast on me. They finally reached the precipice and were looking at the grandeur before us that mother nature carved into her own physique. We were only sightseeing here, at the next site, we got to swim. More than eager to hurry back into our personal brazen bull on wheels to be driven to our ancient and heavenly relief, we departed. No one commented on it. No one seemed to notice someone or something staring up from down in that murk. Every hair on my body standing at attention, trying my best to brush it off, I told myself the clingy heat and dehydration were getting to me. I was absolutely elated for the first time that day. Crammed in a decrepit steam room, trudging through tightly and unevenly packed trails below our smelly feet, bumping sticky legs with the person next to me, I was smiling damn near ear to ear. • • • I was among the first three to arrive at our next pit stop after a short drive and hike through the labyrinthine foliage. Our flock was busy snapping photos of every bright spider in its mesmerizing web or lone wolf flower along our path. Guillermo chatted under his breath and laughed whole heartedly with the matching photographer that silently documented, and later sold to us, the day's adventure. A trillion imprisoned drops of precipitation huddled together amassing a volume ⅓ of the Well of Sacrifice’s. The digit hid its gaze, if it had one. Fresh, emerald green and cloudy, the true depth evaded my focused robotic-like analysis of what was before me. I convinced myself with desperate ease the green lagoon was filled with innocuous leaves, twigs, and dirt. Teeming with just as much, if not more life than the last cenote, the stranded pond harmonized along eerie notes sung by the lively jungle symphony, I could practically see the air vibrating. “Folks!” Might as well be his catchphrase at this point. “Who’s first?” Guillermo said with a smile seeming to stretch all the way around his head. One limp hand rested on the smooth metal handle bar of an old mossy zipline. No one dared make an audible peep or sudden move. “Me.” I blurted out to my own surprise, not wanting to sweat anymore and still feeling the liquid confidence of tequila tasting earlier in the day. “Can I do a backflip?” “Hah!” Guillermo gaffawed from the bottom of his soul “If you know what you are doing! Sure! I'll shout and let you know when to let go of the handle bars!” I have no idea what possessed me to decide I was capable of such a feat, considering my first zipline experience was earlier that same day. Regardless, I took a confident step off the thirty foot high cliff, and went zooming toward cool relief. “Let go!” I mustered all my force to throw an imaginary bowling ball over my head and pull my knees into my chest, ready for the water's enchanting embrace. Amidst my air borne flails, reminiscent of a baby bird jumping out of its nest for the first time, I thought I caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a toothy grin and a set of evilly joyful eyes tightened to waning crescents with sheer jubilation, far below where I was about to land. With an unexpected stinging force, my back broke the serene appearing surface of the perfectly still snapshot in paradise. slap My attention was split between the over joyed face I certainly had hallucinated in my dehydrated, epinephrine filled delirium and the embarrassment of falling off of that tall ledge in such a manner. I collected myself as best I could in the moment to turn back toward the cliff I just plummeted from to see the group staring at me, holding their laughter behind tightened cheeks and balled fists. “The water is perfect!” I exclaimed while shooting a thumb up, my face hot and still managing to sweat. A sense of uncertainty continuously nipped at my toes while I treaded in water that could be 150 feet deep for all I knew. My family was ziplining in with much more grace than me as I swam around, my embarrassment faded with my tight muscles relaxing. The beautifully green hued heterogeneous mixture was a checkerboard of perfectly warm and teeth chatteringly cold spots, I searched hard to find a comfortable spot to float on. I found my resting place thirty five feet away from laughter and playful splashing. Under a tree growing over prehistoric rainfall, sounds of lapping hydration ever so gently echoed off two stone walls eroded smoothly together, and the same flippant solution that set my skin ablaze now apologetically kissed at my fiery back. I began to close my eyes while floating on my back. Before they had shut completely, the cenote I was comfortably bobbing in, solidified around me. I felt as if I was instantly assimilated into the world's biggest bowl of jell-o. In the darkness, I was resting on a bed that doesn't exist anywhere on this green and blue planet. A bespoke embrace manifested for me and me alone. I felt an alluring vibration, creeping into every cell of my body, coaxing me to sink further. I counted one second in this divine blob before I was struck from the depths below by a lightning bolt composed of peace, belonging, and tranquility touching my mind, body and soul in a divine way I thought only happened to people in the Bible. I didn’t have a brain anymore. Reduced to pure energy, my earthly suit was zapped away from me. It was somewhere close by, just in case I needed it, I couldn’t tell where. I didn’t care where. In second three, voices I knew better than my own echoed biomes away. Voices I couldn’t quite make out but felt instinctually familiar with. “We know you are faking!” “Derick!” “We are going to leave you here!” “Derick!” “Wake up!” Crash Spat out into the damp jungle, forcefully shoved back into my terrestrial constraints, my eyes shot open. I gasped for air while thrashing like someone who never touched water before. My eyes struggled to adjust to the cluttered landscape around me as my brain tried to make sense of being inside flesh and bone again. In the adrenaline charged panic, my eyes were able to make out my dad at the opposite end of the water swimming towards me, and my mom stood at the water's edge behind him. The entire group was nowhere to be seen. My brain felt like warm pudding sloshing around my head, coating the walls and clumping in soft, irregular pieces while I was trying to learn how to swim again right on the spot. My dad treaded in place as embers of life crackled deep within my eye sockets. “Haha, good nap? Don’t worry we all kept our eyes on you and made sure you didn't drown. We thought you were faking at the end! We figured you needed the rest.” My dad cheerfully shared as I began moving out of the water like a zombie, not forming any real thoughts yet. His words orbited my head in a figure eight pattern, repeatedly echoing into one ear and out the other. “Come on nene, it's time to go to the next cenote. I brought you a towel.” My moms loving words bounced around my cranium like a jumping bean that escaped a black hole, somehow begrudgingly surviving the trip through our dense atmosphere to bore itself within my chowder-filled head. I dragged my haggard self between the creaky walls and oblivious vacationers. Collapsing into the first open seat I could find, I finally had a second to think about what on God's green earth I just bore witness to against my will. My still squishy mind spun and contorted in countless directions. I felt like a scientist who made a new discovery. The group yapped on about this and that while I silently spiraled. Trying hard not to question my sanity, I focused on what I knew to be true. We were rapidly approaching the next Cenote. • • • This site was different in almost every way than the first, being completely underground. Crude stone steps abstractly coated in moss and slippery slime, carved by god knows who, led forty feet into brittle earth revealing a damp, dimly lit cavern. Scant rays of light shone lackadaisically through a man made hole in the ceiling, deliberately centered above a round stone platform in the middle of the pond. Darting iridescent fish, no longer than your pinky, caught diluted light for fractions of seconds, creating a dazzling treat my eyes ate up from the lack-luster pond. Energy of ancient rites felt trapped in this perpetually wet, limestone relic of the past. The dank air felt charged to the point that I reasoned, if I squinted hard enough, I might be able to see the ghosts of my ancestors, splashing, celebrating, and laughing like there would be no tomorrow for them. The wise, primordial bond of hydrogen and oxygen rose only to my waist, save for a small area directly in front of the round platform, deep enough for people to safely jump into. As much as my pupils struggled to dilate to the correct size, my gaze effortlessly shattered through the glass-like ecosystem. Every piece of gravel or anxiety riddled guppy calling this place home in plain view. Opting to walk in rather than cannonballing into this precious piece of history, my senses were sharp enough to register in the tens on the BESS scale as I waded through mother nature’s warm lifeblood. Fat chance I would close my eyes this time, if something were to happen, I wanted to be able to really take it all in. These refreshing, hallowed bodies trapped in this expansive cave system were feeling ever more intricate by the minute. I waded through the water housing curious inhabitants, waiting, listening. 5 minutes… 10 minutes… 20 minutes… My sense of discovery and wonder was replaced by unbridled child-like frustration. My heart revved toward its physical limit rapidly and angrily, and with furious purpose. I wanted to scream until the escaping vibrations shook the next micro-ecosystem over. How dare I let myself fall for my own whimsical dreams and belief that something special was reaching into my stiff life and shaking with no intention of stopping. Clearly, I was dehydrated to the point of delirium and delusion. Somewhere during the day a neon spider must have hitched a ride and left its puny, vampiric mark behind. Exhaustion combined with supernatural beliefs being fed to me all day resulted in a strange dream. Reason arrogantly and aggressively usurped the helm of my cognition out of whimsy’s delicate grip. I decided it was time to sulk on my own for the remaining minutes we would be inside what now felt like a claustrophobic tourist destination. I shambled exaggeratedly out of liquid crystal, moving like a geriatric soul trapped in a young body. My knees buckled out from under me for a millisecond when the water was down to my ankles. Something shocked my feet with a tiny current; the sensation you get from trick pieces of chewing gum that tingle your fingers. Not exactly painful, certainly not pleasant. The alluring call of relaxation returned, riding a cool, refreshing breeze, trying to make its way onto the dance floor with my soul from what seemed like three musty chambers away. I wanted it to rend my existence once more. One for the road. I caught my tired body before I collapsed into jagged pebble peppered stone and almost let a crooked laugh escape my sandy throat. “So I'm not going mad!” I thought to myself. I shifted my weight backwards to let the pool envelope me, swimming quietly on my red back towards the circle my family formed. I did my best to tune out their incessant waffling that could potentially be overpowering any noise being made for me. I flipped over onto my feet and forcefully injected myself into their joyous conversation, “Do you guys hear that?” Conversation fell dead in the water, everyone listened, shook their heads no and began tossing gab’s dripping corpse between each other again. “Okay folks let’s head back to the bus and get going to the last Cenote of the day!” Guillermo’s voice blasted through the stone grotto like dynamite. The white noise bubbling in humid air ceased as soon as his first syllable rebounded against gray-green rock. I was absolutely frothing to be on our way, the rest of my family however was dragging their feet literally and figuratively. • • • It began to rain lightly, sucking any shred of morale further into the soft dirt beneath our blistering toes. No one really wanted to be there other than me, but it was part of the day's plan so Guillermo would make sure we completed his entire itinerary if it was his heroic martyr. Seventeen people sought refuge around dusty plastic tables under tired and sun bleached umbrellas. This seemingly forgotten pore on the complexion of our planet was hardly a sight to behold, it seemed completely devoid of life. No visible moss or fish and no trees or vines grew around the edges. No colorful iris juxtaposed my damp wood colored stare. Crystal clear hydration from heaven revealed every crack and crevice below. This ”cenote” stood completely alone, not connecting to the main cave system of the area like almost all do. Curiosity was getting the cat’s goat as I made my lonesome way down a staircase slippery in cold rain, leading to one of three rock platforms around this jagged kettle that seemed to boil under the sky's pressure relieving release. I planned to jump in with my eyes closed to, hopefully, get the full experience from the get-go. With no one trying to keep their hair dry near me, why not have a little fun with it? No matter how big of a splash I made, no one was anywhere close enough to get caught in the fallout. “Cannonball!” Echoed through the porous sponge that was temporarily taking my brains place as I curled into a ball and hurled myself into the abyss, ready to soak up whatever I would be placed in. Splash I reached the deepest point of my trajectory, gentle resistance brought my body to a halt. Everything was wrong. Liquid that universally will acquiesce to its container grew a thousand rounded points that poked and prodded into every part of my body. Where there was once enough resistance to propel myself upwards, was now a shifting slurry of pokey elbows and boney knees, all writhing over one another, fruitlessly and eternally searching for the surface. The abnormal chill of my environment sucked away my breath in half a heartbeat. My brain entered full fledged fight or flight mode, moving me with no input of my own. Primal fear lodged one action and one word into every muscle I have; ESCAPE. Even with my frenzied eyes forced to full moons, all I saw was black, there was no waters edge to be moving toward even if I figured out how to move properly. My cramping hands clawed and yanked at whatever they could, digging into and tearing apart what felt like rotten tropical fruit and their dense pits. My legs turned to useless anchors, each kick sunk me further into human composed quick sand. My desperate grip snapped apart invisible, crispy, hollow sounding bones of every shape and size. Each break was guttural and evoked more panic with each crackle and snap. I began to lose consciousness while my body was seizing and twitching every which way in vain Hail Mary attempts to grasp solid ground. I found myself painfully flopping on the rocks with my back to the water, slowly coming to, covered in tiny scrapes and tender sore spots from my getaway. Whether I was allowed to escape or somehow fought my way out didn’t matter to me. My heart was cramping and beating irregularly as I choked on my survival. My organs screamed in blasphemous unison what seemed to be my own requiem. Reality violently exploded into perspective and the godless symphony within me crumpled down and hid itself deep when someone spoke to me just out of view. “Why do you think no one else is down here Rat?” My older brother said with an unamused look on his face, tossing me my half wet towel “It’s freezing.” “Thanks.” Escaped from my chattering teeth. The entire ordeal was out of view from everyone, for better or worse. I felt unsatisfied, unsatiated, and greedy. I still didn’t understand what was happening, not that I planned on solving the jungles’ mysteries. I was just upset that the experience would end on that note. “How anticlimactic.” I found myself thinking. I fixed my jittery gaze on the infected pore, feeling a little let down. “Maybe if I stare long enough this one will open its eye as well?” I mopishly hoped. As cold as I felt, Guillermo’s words chilled my blood to its freezing point. “Unfortunately folks due to the weather, we will not be able to go snorkeling on the beach anymore, it’s not safe to be out there right now. However! As compensation for the inconvenience, we would like to offer you free food and drinks next to another Cenote you have not seen today!” I felt my heart skip a beat. It began slamming wildly against my lungs and seemed to rhythmically punch against my ribs, trying to escape. Our guide's words awoke a passionate drummer. I hadn't the smallest shed of an inkling the fellow lived in my cavernous, empty chest. Ecstatic is an understatement for the feeling of fullness that rose out of my quaking core after hearing the words of this beautiful messenger from God. The rest of the group unanimously decided this was a fair alternative to snorkeling as we had been walking and driving from place to place all day, a moment to relax sounded appealing. So onto Guillermo’s chariot we climbed, and down the winding hallway through the thick greenery our steed shambled. • • • The sky opened once again and our star began its thankless work of redistributing excess moisture throughout the air. A small squeaky clean cocktail cart struggled through the uneven terrain towards us, the sound of expensive bottles burst the ambient lullaby. Three overly attentive employees, dressed tightly in the compound's trademark collared white and gold uniforms, took food orders with blinding pearly whites on display. Happiness filled the clearing to its brink. Little plastic cups of pricey liquor swirled and were dumped down gullets with reckless abandon, chased with hearty and unifying laughter. The party carried on over my shoulder as I drew closer to the enigma that I hoped would deliver me. A 15 foot cliff rose above a pleasantly blue homogeneous waterhole. The color attempted to conceal the ground. From the precipice I was perched, I could tell I would never be able to reach the deepest depths here. Even if I dove head first and swam with ferocity downward, my lungs would burst before I touched limestone. So I did. Without giving it a second consideration, I flattened my body into the shape of a sharp pencil, my feet being the point, and plummeted toward my target. I intended to pierce the writhing digit with the weight of the world pulling me towards itself. As the muffling pressure swallowed me whole and halted gravity’s acceleration, I flipped upside down and began descending further. Having ripped and kicked through three armfuls of azure, I opened my eyes and had to force my breath from escaping as I took in a jaw dropping sight. All around me as far as I could see in the darkening blue, were gleaming specks of every color and blinding gold bits, slowly drifting into the infinite void extending forever and ever right over my inverted gaze. 360 degrees around me, bedazzling the clear heavens over my feet and blue murk below, intricately worked pieces of gold and loose precious gems drifted lazily one after another. My forceful descent was halted in its bubbly tracks, my jaw wanted so bad to slack in awe. Enough wits remained about me to know better. Every second I was suspended felt stretched into muddled millennia. Such vast amounts of time, holding separative power immeasurable on our metrics, made the concept begin to lose any concrete structure. The mouth I felt trapped in seemed to be passing back and forth over my soul with tastebuds the size of our bus, deciding if I tasted good or not. Every so often, a loud, commanding thump resonated through this microcosm. Every loose, forgotten piece stuck here, forever sinking deeper in formless aggregate, shook in perfect unison. All negative emotions melted away, dissolving into molten time. I was sinking much slower than all that glittered around me. I had no desire to move any muscles other than those in my neck in order to gulp as much as my greedy eyes could swallow. I blinked one too many times, and someone flipped the display off. I felt dizzy as the world around me seemed to instantaneously be walled off. As quickly as the show was shut down, my heart became aware of its extreme lack of fresh air. BOOM One… CRACK Two… SPLASH Three… Four… Five, six… Seven… Eight, nine and ten… Ten explosions burst one after the other. Cutting through mortar blasts all around me, my failing organs resumed their requiem while questionably clean water blasted against and past my bare eyes. I was 25 feet below the surface. I consider myself an exceptional swimmer, but exhaustion working with suffocation against my new goal of oxygen, caused this short distance to be the most strenuous task in my life to date. I emerged like a new born beast, startling the refreshed ten people who had jumped in while I was below. “What the-?!” “We didn’t even see you in here!” “We thought you were on a walk!” “Are you okay? Did anyone land on you?” People all around me, half amused, half confused, all talked at once at my shut ears. I didn’t respond. I took a few deep breaths before pushing my head into the cenote and diving as if I was a, one of one, fresh water sperm whale species. All there was in the gradient, were legs kicking against the invisible pull Earth produced. Frustration flickered again. It was these people’s fault. If they hadn’t jumped in, I’d still be down in my personal solar system. I began my angry ascent, and repeated variations of that same thought over and over. If they hadn’t jumped in, I’d still be down there. The weight of my outlandish fervor tethered itself to reality, almost pulling me to the untouchable ground like a boulder tied to my wrists. In my brief moment of clarity, the unnoticeable spell I was under petrified me. I surfaced, through catching my breath I responded to the 20 eyes coalesced on me, “Ya I’m fine, I thought I saw an iPhone down there. I can’t hold my breath long enough to touch the floor so it’ll rest there forever I guess. Haha!” “Really? I want to try!” My sister cheered. “If I grab it first, it’s mine, Rat.” My brother proposed. Both dove, my new drummer friend let loose between my ears waiting for them to come back up. 10 grueling seconds dug razor sharp claws over my whole body. splash “There’s nothing down there Rat.” My sister threw her words at me like a primitive spear. “I saw something down there.” My brother solemnly shared. “What? What did you see? Tell me.” I feverishly responded. “A ghost.” My heart sank as I was on the brink of having a conniption. “Here it comes!” He said with a firm push on the water in front of him, moving him back a foot. Tears were about to spill over my face. Pbbbt Bubbles rose behind him. He burst into obnoxious laughter. Deciding between rage and relief, a smile crept onto my face. I splashed water into his face and momentarily forgot how close I was to browning the water. “Last call for food and drink orders!” Guillermo called like a caring mother from the precipice above. I knew we would definitely not be seeing anymore cenotes, and with my brother's age old prank, hunger tore into my guts. I joined the remainder of my group and ordered half the menu. I did my absolute best to push this experience deep into the recesses of my mind for the remainder of the vacation. It was effortless at first, but the seed sneakily stuck onto my soul had yet to bear fruit. Upon my return to Arizona, roots festered within. • • • It started harmlessly enough with pleasant dreams of being around or in a cenote. Backstroking in warm water, only to wake slick in my own self produced pond, the sheets revealing a dark, wet outline extending several inches past where my motionless body laid. Each dream showed me a different site. Sites I hadn’t seen with my own two eyes. If I dreamt the same place, the most notable difference was the color of the ponds. Clear, brown, red, blue, green, gold, and gray were all hues I witnessed. On rare occasions it was nighttime or cloudy out, but it was perfectly sunny and warm for the most part. As the visions increased in intensity and quantity, my sleep felt less and less restful. No matter how many hours I laid unconscious, I arose ever more tired. Anxiety blossomed and rapidly spread over my existence starting from the crown of my head to the round points of my feet that keep me rooted and upright. Every new room I stepped into brought panic and a heart pounding sense of atmospheric pressure closing in on all sides. Standing or sitting in a room with people plunged me in cold sweat. The safest, most relaxing place I could be was in my room. I chose to build and reinforce the cage that grew smaller on its own every day. My chrysalis felt incomplete, empty, and dead. I manically searched my family home for anything I could assimilate into my cocoon to bring any sense of comfort. Maybe a forgotten drawing, an old picture of myself, a dusty toy I used to play with, an old gaming console I used to sit with for hours, dvd’s I grew up watching, anything. Sitting on a windowsill, dusted in skin flakes, dog dander, hair, and dirt, sat a sight for desperate, bloodshot eyes. A healthy, poorly maintained, hydroponic bamboo plant from Ikea. My manically pulsing heart slowed ever so slightly and my skin grew tiny little bumps of excitement all over. I was barely hanging onto my job at this point, my lack of sleep and overarching sense of fear, discomfort, inability to focus, paranoia, and ostracism sent my performance six feet into worm wiggling earth. I grew angry with no outlet. I wanted to shut the world out more every day. I was furious that I had fallen for this trap. Fuming that I had swallowed these things carefully laid bait. Hook, line, and sinker, I could feel the rod tightening inch by inch, hour by hour and it enraged me. I know after thrashing in the soup for as long as I can, I will be pulled in, floating lifelessly on my side. I’m going to be scooped up in a net to be bled, gutted, descaled, cooked with aromatics and butter before my bones will be tossed somewhere into Mother Nature. It all melted away for a second as I grabbed the bamboo’s water stained vase and brought it into my bedroom. Gingerly placing the young bamboo plant I named Bo on my nightstand, I promptly fell into the deepest slumber I had in the three months since my vacation to those god forsaken, infected appendages littered across that hallowed swathe of foliage. My dream that night followed a group's expedition unto a distant, foreign land where rumors claim treasures sat in pools of enchanted water. Grottos brimmed with prosperity eternal. Righteous gods laid claim and rewarded those who were devout. Through an echo of the distant past, I saw 5 men. Four including myself were rapidly scouring the floor of what I call “the infected pore” cenote. Two were standing on stone platforms around the waters edge holding large leather bags in one hand and grabbing dripping gold jewelry from us four with the other. I used both hands to sift through brown sludge, pulling anything solid to the surface. My hands filled up with ounce after ounce of pure gold jewelry when I heard five air cutting, ephemeral whistles preceding five ugly thuds, crescendoing into two synchronized splashes. The sinkhole, clouded with brown sediment, was being taken over by crimson. Five bodies laid face down, small bubbles escaped their agape mouths in neat columns. My looting party adorned skewers, the chiseled flint tips were safely tucked away between hemispheres of gray matter. Their last moments overflowed with greed and misguided fervor. They appeared peaceful, as if snorkeling, before being obscured by the slurry of color fighting for dominance. I raised my hands in surrender. Heavy gold rings, anklets, bracelets, and head pieces tumbled from my grasp, splashing into colorful murk all around me. Surrounded by bow-wielding people speaking a different language than me, a sharp whistle somewhere behind me woke me from the hazy memory that didn't belong to me. I felt rested. • • • Another restless month dragged me by my hair before I lost my job. “Lack of motivation.” They told me. Depression and anxiety became screaming monkeys on my back. My parents could tell and told me to take all the time I needed to recover. I had some savings meant for moving out and a new car, dipping into that nest egg would be a small price to pay for my sanity we figured. Therapy begat none. Medication was a bust. Change of lifestyle; wasted energy. The sleeping visions were none existent. Thinking back to what worked last time, I got abstract and bought three house plants for my bedroom, desperate to wake up feeling like I actually rested. One more bamboo plant and two leafy ficus. I threw my nightly handful of Benadryl, sleeping pills, and melatonin down before wrapping my shaky body in dank blankets and shutting my eyes, trying to ignore the constant hot claminess persistently stuck to my skin. My vision was overtaken by buzzing gold light, my lactic acid filled muscles faded into bright holiness. As I became aware of it, something snapped its fingers, my body returned and collapsed onto unforgiving wood floor, my dark sunken eyes honed their stabby, tired look with purpose of their own, onto a hanging dogwood cross with inlaid gold seams. A precious gift left to me by my grandparents. I felt limp enough to sink through the ground. In my priceless newly returned clarity, I went out and bought three gallons of gold paint, two green, and ten more leafy friends. Over the course of two headache filled, sleepless days, I began by laying brown butcher paper over my entire floor and moving everything out of my room. Every supply I needed was lying around the house somewhere, I just needed to ask permission. At his wits end of how to help, my project went unopposed by my dad. I carefully covered my bedroom’s white trim in blue painters tape and furiously spread glossy gold paint evenly over every wall and the ceiling. Before it had dried, I dipped my hands in green paint to abstractly throw globs into the rough shape of bushes and trees. Once I felt satisfied with the ratio, I fell onto my butt and gave myself a much needed break. I spread eagle with hands that grew encrusted in paint and passed out. I was walking through the jungle, trees moved aside with every step I took forward. My path was lined in puny solid gold crucifixes, 2x1 inches, protruding perfectly vertical from hallowed dirt. The further I walked, the distance between crosses grew larger. I wasn’t far from someone standing with their hands comfortably resting behind their back. It was Guillermo, bearing his overly toothy smile and jubilation lined eyes. The photographer hid out of view, constantly sending bright flashes at us with a mechanical click and frantic scurry to capture as many angels as possible. Guillermo extended both arms as if to embrace me. I raised my own, only to see filthy, false jungle green hands rise from the bottom of my vision. His face contorted into a hideous frown before he pushed me firmly to the floor. Refreshed and wide awake, I became aware of my hands painfully tightened around the dogwood cross that I had stored in the next room over with all my other belongings. It was covered in green paint from my hands. The sudden sensation of unimaginable filth blasted into my cocoon. I opened my window to let the blistering Arizona air in. I ran to the bathroom I share with my brother to cleanse my body and heirloom in steamy, sudsy water. With my whole body red from scrubbing with a loofah, I began deep cleaning my pseudo wilderness. I tore the now brown-green paper from the ground, pulled off the half gold painters tape, moved my 14 leafy plants all around the room's edge, and decided I didn’t need any of my furniture. Not even my bed, I replaced it with an open sleeping bag. Every night before laying to rest, I watered all 14, the humidity was almost thick enough to sustain a fish. The remainder of my nest egg was thrown at pure gold jewelry, ordered online from my sparklingly clean cocoon. 10 rings, 4 bracelets, 3 delicate necklaces, and a crown bedazzled in lab grown emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and amethysts. I spent day and night obsessively dusting and pruning my chlorophyll family and laying motionless on the hard ground in my silent bedroom, hoping and praying to greet Guillermo on his home turf through my restless visions. I never took my jewelry off, even to shower three times a day. The incessant stickiness growing through my pores drove me mad and made me feel utterly filthy. I washed my hands and face over 20 times a day. My family looks at me sideways. I don’t care anymore. We are currently in Mexico City to celebrate Day of the Dead. I haven’t told any of them yet, but I plan on staying here. I have my eyes set on a new job. submitted by /u/Derick_Mtz to r/writers [link] [comments]

The sauna we were calling a bus slowly bounced down a crude path forcefully etched into the skin of Earth by journeys no different than this one. My lazy gaze was fixed on unending scenery drifting by, hoping to catch a glimpse of monkeys or an elusive jaguar whose predecessors dominated these smothering trees with unchecked ferocity. This section of untamed jungle is rich in ancient history and superstition, something our guide blabbed on about all day. “Okay folks!” Guillermo shouted, gyroscopically standing at the front, wearing the exact Cheshire smile he had on at the main building complex. His white uniform, accented with gold appointments, had no visible perspiration as he addressed this bus of slick and gummy people. “We are about to reach the “Well of Sacrifice” The largest and most religiously significant cenote in ancient Mayan civilization! Countless people were decapitated and thrown down into this exact cenote! The Mayan people who called this tropical paradise home, believed cenotes were portals to the underworld! Sacrifices had the exciting pleasure of being adorned in dazzling precious gemstones and as much gold as physically possible to appease their gods!” Thin chuckles rotated against Guillermo’s dry sarcasm in the moist air. My body was just going through the motions all day from activity to activity, it was difficult to focus on anything other than how increasingly sticky, hungry, and thirsty I was becoming. Sitting in a pool of myself, I tried to picture what water holding an unknown amount of damned souls could look like. • • • My herd meandered up a steep hill, exchanging pleasantries while I rushed upwards to get my eyes on this historic site as fast as I could. It was truly breathtaking. A deep, round pit in the crusty shell of our planet was filled a third of the way to the top with fresh, deeply saturated, blue liquid. The unrelenting jungle was desperately trying its best to reclaim the exposed stone from all angels. Vines and roots grew over each other, reaching down from every direction with a slow, deliberate, unseen might that ached to graze the water's surface. I couldn’t see the lowest point, it is and always will be covered in what remains of headless bodies, rotted away by the fourth dimension. My mind struggled to grasp the mud's depth, it certainly was bountiful enough to coat the entire exposed bottom. The primeval, siren call of fauna and flora fizzled from my ear canals decibal by decibal. I would not have moved my eyes away to behold Rapture; not even the jaguar I was searching for all day. I was staring into one of Earth’s pupils and I felt her looking back with curiosity and longing matching my own. I imagined she would blink her dark blue, all seeing appendage any second, naming me the victor of our impromptu competition of visual prowess. Giddy vacationer banter broke the spell cast on me. They finally reached the precipice and were looking at the grandeur before us that mother nature carved into her own physique. We were only sightseeing here, at the next site, we got to swim. More than eager to hurry back into our personal brazen bull on wheels to be driven to our ancient and heavenly relief, we departed. No one commented on it. No one seemed to notice someone or something staring up from down in that murk. Every hair on my body standing at attention, trying my best to brush it off, I told myself the clingy heat and dehydration were getting to me. I was absolutely elated for the first time that day. Crammed in a decrepit steam room, trudging through tightly and unevenly packed trails below our smelly feet, bumping sticky legs with the person next to me, I was smiling damn near ear to ear. • • • I was among the first three to arrive at our next pit stop after a short drive and hike through the labyrinthine foliage. Our flock was busy snapping photos of every bright spider in its mesmerizing web or lone wolf flower along our path. Guillermo chatted under his breath and laughed whole heartedly with the matching photographer that silently documented, and later sold to us, the day's adventure. A trillion imprisoned drops of precipitation huddled together amassing a volume ⅓ of the Well of Sacrifice’s. The digit hid its gaze, if it had one. Fresh, emerald green and cloudy, the true depth evaded my focused robotic-like analysis of what was before me. I convinced myself with desperate ease the green lagoon was filled with innocuous leaves, twigs, and dirt. Teeming with just as much, if not more life than the last cenote, the stranded pond harmonized along eerie notes sung by the lively jungle symphony, I could practically see the air vibrating. “Folks!” Might as well be his catchphrase at this point. “Who’s first?” Guillermo said with a smile seeming to stretch all the way around his head. One limp hand rested on the smooth metal handle bar of an old mossy zipline. No one dared make an audible peep or sudden move. “Me.” I blurted out to my own surprise, not wanting to sweat anymore and still feeling the liquid confidence of tequila tasting earlier in the day. “Can I do a backflip?” “Hah!” Guillermo gaffawed from the bottom of his soul “If you know what you are doing! Sure! I'll shout and let you know when to let go of the handle bars!” I have no idea what possessed me to decide I was capable of such a feat, considering my first zipline experience was earlier that same day. Regardless, I took a confident step off the thirty foot high cliff, and went zooming toward cool relief. “Let go!” I mustered all my force to throw an imaginary bowling ball over my head and pull my knees into my chest, ready for the water's enchanting embrace. Amidst my air borne flails, reminiscent of a baby bird jumping out of its nest for the first time, I thought I caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a toothy grin and a set of evilly joyful eyes tightened to waning crescents with sheer jubilation, far below where I was about to land. With an unexpected stinging force, my back broke the serene appearing surface of the perfectly still snapshot in paradise. slap My attention was split between the over joyed face I certainly had hallucinated in my dehydrated, epinephrine filled delirium and the embarrassment of falling off of that tall ledge in such a manner. I collected myself as best I could in the moment to turn back toward the cliff I just plummeted from to see the group staring at me, holding their laughter behind tightened cheeks and balled fists. “The water is perfect!” I exclaimed while shooting a thumb up, my face hot and still managing to sweat. A sense of uncertainty continuously nipped at my toes while I treaded in water that could be 150 feet deep for all I knew. My family was ziplining in with much more grace than me as I swam around, my embarrassment faded with my tight muscles relaxing. The beautifully green hued heterogeneous mixture was a checkerboard of perfectly warm and teeth chatteringly cold spots, I searched hard to find a comfortable spot to float on. I found my resting place thirty five feet away from laughter and playful splashing. Under a tree growing over prehistoric rainfall, sounds of lapping hydration ever so gently echoed off two stone walls eroded smoothly together, and the same flippant solution that set my skin ablaze now apologetically kissed at my fiery back. I began to close my eyes while floating on my back. Before they had shut completely, the cenote I was comfortably bobbing in, solidified around me. I felt as if I was instantly assimilated into the world's biggest bowl of jell-o. In the darkness, I was resting on a bed that doesn't exist anywhere on this green and blue planet. A bespoke embrace manifested for me and me alone. I felt an alluring vibration, creeping into every cell of my body, coaxing me to sink further. I counted one second in this divine blob before I was struck from the depths below by a lightning bolt composed of peace, belonging, and tranquility touching my mind, body and soul in a divine way I thought only happened to people in the Bible. I didn’t have a brain anymore. Reduced to pure energy, my earthly suit was zapped away from me. It was somewhere close by, just in case I needed it, I couldn’t tell where. I didn’t care where. In second three, voices I knew better than my own echoed biomes away. Voices I couldn’t quite make out but felt instinctually familiar with. “We know you are faking!” “Derick!” “We are going to leave you here!” “Derick!” “Wake up!” Crash Spat out into the damp jungle, forcefully shoved back into my terrestrial constraints, my eyes shot open. I gasped for air while thrashing like someone who never touched water before. My eyes struggled to adjust to the cluttered landscape around me as my brain tried to make sense of being inside flesh and bone again. In the adrenaline charged panic, my eyes were able to make out my dad at the opposite end of the water swimming towards me, and my mom stood at the water's edge behind him. The entire group was nowhere to be seen. My brain felt like warm pudding sloshing around my head, coating the walls and clumping in soft, irregular pieces while I was trying to learn how to swim again right on the spot. My dad treaded in place as embers of life crackled deep within my eye sockets. “Haha, good nap? Don’t worry we all kept our eyes on you and made sure you didn't drown. We thought you were faking at the end! We figured you needed the rest.” My dad cheerfully shared as I began moving out of the water like a zombie, not forming any real thoughts yet. His words orbited my head in a figure eight pattern, repeatedly echoing into one ear and out the other. “Come on nene, it's time to go to the next cenote. I brought you a towel.” My moms loving words bounced around my cranium like a jumping bean that escaped a black hole, somehow begrudgingly surviving the trip through our dense atmosphere to bore itself within my chowder-filled head. I dragged my haggard self between the creaky walls and oblivious vacationers. Collapsing into the first open seat I could find, I finally had a second to think about what on God's green earth I just bore witness to against my will. My still squishy mind spun and contorted in countless directions. I felt like a scientist who made a new discovery. The group yapped on about this and that while I silently spiraled. Trying hard not to question my sanity, I focused on what I knew to be true. We were rapidly approaching the next Cenote. • • • This site was different in almost every way than the first, being completely underground. Crude stone steps abstractly coated in moss and slippery slime, carved by god knows who, led forty feet into brittle earth revealing a damp, dimly lit cavern. Scant rays of light shone lackadaisically through a man made hole in the ceiling, deliberately centered above a round stone platform in the middle of the pond. Darting iridescent fish, no longer than your pinky, caught diluted light for fractions of seconds, creating a dazzling treat my eyes ate up from the lack-luster pond. Energy of ancient rites felt trapped in this perpetually wet, limestone relic of the past. The dank air felt charged to the point that I reasoned, if I squinted hard enough, I might be able to see the ghosts of my ancestors, splashing, celebrating, and laughing like there would be no tomorrow for them. The wise, primordial bond of hydrogen and oxygen rose only to my waist, save for a small area directly in front of the round platform, deep enough for people to safely jump into. As much as my pupils struggled to dilate to the correct size, my gaze effortlessly shattered through the glass-like ecosystem. Every piece of gravel or anxiety riddled guppy calling this place home in plain view. Opting to walk in rather than cannonballing into this precious piece of history, my senses were sharp enough to register in the tens on the BESS scale as I waded through mother nature’s warm lifeblood. Fat chance I would close my eyes this time, if something were to happen, I wanted to be able to really take it all in. These refreshing, hallowed bodies trapped in this expansive cave system were feeling ever more intricate by the minute. I waded through the water housing curious inhabitants, waiting, listening. 5 minutes… 10 minutes… 20 minutes… My sense of discovery and wonder was replaced by unbridled child-like frustration. My heart revved toward its physical limit rapidly and angrily, and with furious purpose. I wanted to scream until the escaping vibrations shook the next micro-ecosystem over. How dare I let myself fall for my own whimsical dreams and belief that something special was reaching into my stiff life and shaking with no intention of stopping. Clearly, I was dehydrated to the point of delirium and delusion. Somewhere during the day a neon spider must have hitched a ride and left its puny, vampiric mark behind. Exhaustion combined with supernatural beliefs being fed to me all day resulted in a strange dream. Reason arrogantly and aggressively usurped the helm of my cognition out of whimsy’s delicate grip. I decided it was time to sulk on my own for the remaining minutes we would be inside what now felt like a claustrophobic tourist destination. I shambled exaggeratedly out of liquid crystal, moving like a geriatric soul trapped in a young body. My knees buckled out from under me for a millisecond when the water was down to my ankles. Something shocked my feet with a tiny current; the sensation you get from trick pieces of chewing gum that tingle your fingers. Not exactly painful, certainly not pleasant. The alluring call of relaxation returned, riding a cool, refreshing breeze, trying to make its way onto the dance floor with my soul from what seemed like three musty chambers away. I wanted it to rend my existence once more. One for the road. I caught my tired body before I collapsed into jagged pebble peppered stone and almost let a crooked laugh escape my sandy throat. “So I'm not going mad!” I thought to myself. I shifted my weight backwards to let the pool envelope me, swimming quietly on my red back towards the circle my family formed. I did my best to tune out their incessant waffling that could potentially be overpowering any noise being made for me. I flipped over onto my feet and forcefully injected myself into their joyous conversation, “Do you guys hear that?” Conversation fell dead in the water, everyone listened, shook their heads no and began tossing gab’s dripping corpse between each other again. “Okay folks let’s head back to the bus and get going to the last Cenote of the day!” Guillermo’s voice blasted through the stone grotto like dynamite. The white noise bubbling in humid air ceased as soon as his first syllable rebounded against gray-green rock. I was absolutely frothing to be on our way, the rest of my family however was dragging their feet literally and figuratively. • • • It began to rain lightly, sucking any shred of morale further into the soft dirt beneath our blistering toes. No one really wanted to be there other than me, but it was part of the day's plan so Guillermo would make sure we completed his entire itinerary if it was his heroic martyr. Seventeen people sought refuge around dusty plastic tables under tired and sun bleached umbrellas. This seemingly forgotten pore on the complexion of our planet was hardly a sight to behold, it seemed completely devoid of life. No visible moss or fish and no trees or vines grew around the edges. No colorful iris juxtaposed my damp wood colored stare. Crystal clear hydration from heaven revealed every crack and crevice below. This ”cenote” stood completely alone, not connecting to the main cave system of the area like almost all do. Curiosity was getting the cat’s goat as I made my lonesome way down a staircase slippery in cold rain, leading to one of three rock platforms around this jagged kettle that seemed to boil under the sky's pressure relieving release. I planned to jump in with my eyes closed to, hopefully, get the full experience from the get-go. With no one trying to keep their hair dry near me, why not have a little fun with it? No matter how big of a splash I made, no one was anywhere close enough to get caught in the fallout. “Cannonball!” Echoed through the porous sponge that was temporarily taking my brains place as I curled into a ball and hurled myself into the abyss, ready to soak up whatever I would be placed in. Splash I reached the deepest point of my trajectory, gentle resistance brought my body to a halt. Everything was wrong. Liquid that universally will acquiesce to its container grew a thousand rounded points that poked and prodded into every part of my body. Where there was once enough resistance to propel myself upwards, was now a shifting slurry of pokey elbows and boney knees, all writhing over one another, fruitlessly and eternally searching for the surface. The abnormal chill of my environment sucked away my breath in half a heartbeat. My brain entered full fledged fight or flight mode, moving me with no input of my own. Primal fear lodged one action and one word into every muscle I have; ESCAPE. Even with my frenzied eyes forced to full moons, all I saw was black, there was no waters edge to be moving toward even if I figured out how to move properly. My cramping hands clawed and yanked at whatever they could, digging into and tearing apart what felt like rotten tropical fruit and their dense pits. My legs turned to useless anchors, each kick sunk me further into human composed quick sand. My desperate grip snapped apart invisible, crispy, hollow sounding bones of every shape and size. Each break was guttural and evoked more panic with each crackle and snap. I began to lose consciousness while my body was seizing and twitching every which way in vain Hail Mary attempts to grasp solid ground. I found myself painfully flopping on the rocks with my back to the water, slowly coming to, covered in tiny scrapes and tender sore spots from my getaway. Whether I was allowed to escape or somehow fought my way out didn’t matter to me. My heart was cramping and beating irregularly as I choked on my survival. My organs screamed in blasphemous unison what seemed to be my own requiem. Reality violently exploded into perspective and the godless symphony within me crumpled down and hid itself deep when someone spoke to me just out of view. “Why do you think no one else is down here Rat?” My older brother said with an unamused look on his face, tossing me my half wet towel “It’s freezing.” “Thanks.” Escaped from my chattering teeth. The entire ordeal was out of view from everyone, for better or worse. I felt unsatisfied, unsatiated, and greedy. I still didn’t understand what was happening, not that I planned on solving the jungles’ mysteries. I was just upset that the experience would end on that note. “How anticlimactic.” I found myself thinking. I fixed my jittery gaze on the infected pore, feeling a little let down. “Maybe if I stare long enough this one will open its eye as well?” I mopishly hoped. As cold as I felt, Guillermo’s words chilled my blood to its freezing point. “Unfortunately folks due to the weather, we will not be able to go snorkeling on the beach anymore, it’s not safe to be out there right now. However! As compensation for the inconvenience, we would like to offer you free food and drinks next to another Cenote you have not seen today!” I felt my heart skip a beat. It began slamming wildly against my lungs and seemed to rhythmically punch against my ribs, trying to escape. Our guide's words awoke a passionate drummer. I hadn't the smallest shed of an inkling the fellow lived in my cavernous, empty chest. Ecstatic is an understatement for the feeling of fullness that rose out of my quaking core after hearing the words of this beautiful messenger from God. The rest of the group unanimously decided this was a fair alternative to snorkeling as we had been walking and driving from place to place all day, a moment to relax sounded appealing. So onto Guillermo’s chariot we climbed, and down the winding hallway through the thick greenery our steed shambled. • • • The sky opened once again and our star began its thankless work of redistributing excess moisture throughout the air. A small squeaky clean cocktail cart struggled through the uneven terrain towards us, the sound of expensive bottles burst the ambient lullaby. Three overly attentive employees, dressed tightly in the compound's trademark collared white and gold uniforms, took food orders with blinding pearly whites on display. Happiness filled the clearing to its brink. Little plastic cups of pricey liquor swirled and were dumped down gullets with reckless abandon, chased with hearty and unifying laughter. The party carried on over my shoulder as I drew closer to the enigma that I hoped would deliver me. A 15 foot cliff rose above a pleasantly blue homogeneous waterhole. The color attempted to conceal the ground. From the precipice I was perched, I could tell I would never be able to reach the deepest depths here. Even if I dove head first and swam with ferocity downward, my lungs would burst before I touched limestone. So I did. Without giving it a second consideration, I flattened my body into the shape of a sharp pencil, my feet being the point, and plummeted toward my target. I intended to pierce the writhing digit with the weight of the world pulling me towards itself. As the muffling pressure swallowed me whole and halted gravity’s acceleration, I flipped upside down and began descending further. Having ripped and kicked through three armfuls of azure, I opened my eyes and had to force my breath from escaping as I took in a jaw dropping sight. All around me as far as I could see in the darkening blue, were gleaming specks of every color and blinding gold bits, slowly drifting into the infinite void extending forever and ever right over my inverted gaze. 360 degrees around me, bedazzling the clear heavens over my feet and blue murk below, intricately worked pieces of gold and loose precious gems drifted lazily one after another. My forceful descent was halted in its bubbly tracks, my jaw wanted so bad to slack in awe. Enough wits remained about me to know better. Every second I was suspended felt stretched into muddled millennia. Such vast amounts of time, holding separative power immeasurable on our metrics, made the concept begin to lose any concrete structure. The mouth I felt trapped in seemed to be passing back and forth over my soul with tastebuds the size of our bus, deciding if I tasted good or not. Every so often, a loud, commanding thump resonated through this microcosm. Every loose, forgotten piece stuck here, forever sinking deeper in formless aggregate, shook in perfect unison. All negative emotions melted away, dissolving into molten time. I was sinking much slower than all that glittered around me. I had no desire to move any muscles other than those in my neck in order to gulp as much as my greedy eyes could swallow. I blinked one too many times, and someone flipped the display off. I felt dizzy as the world around me seemed to instantaneously be walled off. As quickly as the show was shut down, my heart became aware of its extreme lack of fresh air. BOOM One… CRACK Two… SPLASH Three… Four… Five, six… Seven… Eight, nine and ten… Ten explosions burst one after the other. Cutting through mortar blasts all around me, my failing organs resumed their requiem while questionably clean water blasted against and past my bare eyes. I was 25 feet below the surface. I consider myself an exceptional swimmer, but exhaustion working with suffocation against my new goal of oxygen, caused this short distance to be the most strenuous task in my life to date. I emerged like a new born beast, startling the refreshed ten people who had jumped in while I was below. “What the-?!” “We didn’t even see you in here!” “We thought you were on a walk!” “Are you okay? Did anyone land on you?” People all around me, half amused, half confused, all talked at once at my shut ears. I didn’t respond. I took a few deep breaths before pushing my head into the cenote and diving as if I was a, one of one, fresh water sperm whale species. All there was in the gradient, were legs kicking against the invisible pull Earth produced. Frustration flickered again. It was these people’s fault. If they hadn’t jumped in, I’d still be down in my personal solar system. I began my angry ascent, and repeated variations of that same thought over and over. If they hadn’t jumped in, I’d still be down there. The weight of my outlandish fervor tethered itself to reality, almost pulling me to the untouchable ground like a boulder tied to my wrists. In my brief moment of clarity, the unnoticeable spell I was under petrified me. I surfaced, through catching my breath I responded to the 20 eyes coalesced on me, “Ya I’m fine, I thought I saw an iPhone down there. I can’t hold my breath long enough to touch the floor so it’ll rest there forever I guess. Haha!” “Really? I want to try!” My sister cheered. “If I grab it first, it’s mine, Rat.” My brother proposed. Both dove, my new drummer friend let loose between my ears waiting for them to come back up. 10 grueling seconds dug razor sharp claws over my whole body. splash “There’s nothing down there Rat.” My sister threw her words at me like a primitive spear. “I saw something down there.” My brother solemnly shared. “What? What did you see? Tell me.” I feverishly responded. “A ghost.” My heart sank as I was on the brink of having a conniption. “Here it comes!” He said with a firm push on the water in front of him, moving him back a foot. Tears were about to spill over my face. Pbbbt Bubbles rose behind him. He burst into obnoxious laughter. Deciding between rage and relief, a smile crept onto my face. I splashed water into his face and momentarily forgot how close I was to browning the water. “Last call for food and drink orders!” Guillermo called like a caring mother from the precipice above. I knew we would definitely not be seeing anymore cenotes, and with my brother's age old prank, hunger tore into my guts. I joined the remainder of my group and ordered half the menu. I did my absolute best to push this experience deep into the recesses of my mind for the remainder of the vacation. It was effortless at first, but the seed sneakily stuck onto my soul had yet to bear fruit. Upon my return to Arizona, roots festered within. • • • It started harmlessly enough with pleasant dreams of being around or in a cenote. Backstroking in warm water, only to wake slick in my own self produced pond, the sheets revealing a dark, wet outline extending several inches past where my motionless body laid. Each dream showed me a different site. Sites I hadn’t seen with my own two eyes. If I dreamt the same place, the most notable difference was the color of the ponds. Clear, brown, red, blue, green, gold, and gray were all hues I witnessed. On rare occasions it was nighttime or cloudy out, but it was perfectly sunny and warm for the most part. As the visions increased in intensity and quantity, my sleep felt less and less restful. No matter how many hours I laid unconscious, I arose ever more tired. Anxiety blossomed and rapidly spread over my existence starting from the crown of my head to the round points of my feet that keep me rooted and upright. Every new room I stepped into brought panic and a heart pounding sense of atmospheric pressure closing in on all sides. Standing or sitting in a room with people plunged me in cold sweat. The safest, most relaxing place I could be was in my room. I chose to build and reinforce the cage that grew smaller on its own every day. My chrysalis felt incomplete, empty, and dead. I manically searched my family home for anything I could assimilate into my cocoon to bring any sense of comfort. Maybe a forgotten drawing, an old picture of myself, a dusty toy I used to play with, an old gaming console I used to sit with for hours, dvd’s I grew up watching, anything. Sitting on a windowsill, dusted in skin flakes, dog dander, hair, and dirt, sat a sight for desperate, bloodshot eyes. A healthy, poorly maintained, hydroponic bamboo plant from Ikea. My manically pulsing heart slowed ever so slightly and my skin grew tiny little bumps of excitement all over. I was barely hanging onto my job at this point, my lack of sleep and overarching sense of fear, discomfort, inability to focus, paranoia, and ostracism sent my performance six feet into worm wiggling earth. I grew angry with no outlet. I wanted to shut the world out more every day. I was furious that I had fallen for this trap. Fuming that I had swallowed these things carefully laid bait. Hook, line, and sinker, I could feel the rod tightening inch by inch, hour by hour and it enraged me. I know after thrashing in the soup for as long as I can, I will be pulled in, floating lifelessly on my side. I’m going to be scooped up in a net to be bled, gutted, descaled, cooked with aromatics and butter before my bones will be tossed somewhere into Mother Nature. It all melted away for a second as I grabbed the bamboo’s water stained vase and brought it into my bedroom. Gingerly placing the young bamboo plant I named Bo on my nightstand, I promptly fell into the deepest slumber I had in the three months since my vacation to those god forsaken, infected appendages littered across that hallowed swathe of foliage. My dream that night followed a group's expedition unto a distant, foreign land where rumors claim treasures sat in pools of enchanted water. Grottos brimmed with prosperity eternal. Righteous gods laid claim and rewarded those who were devout. Through an echo of the distant past, I saw 5 men. Four including myself were rapidly scouring the floor of what I call “the infected pore” cenote. Two were standing on stone platforms around the waters edge holding large leather bags in one hand and grabbing dripping gold jewelry from us four with the other. I used both hands to sift through brown sludge, pulling anything solid to the surface. My hands filled up with ounce after ounce of pure gold jewelry when I heard five air cutting, ephemeral whistles preceding five ugly thuds, crescendoing into two synchronized splashes. The sinkhole, clouded with brown sediment, was being taken over by crimson. Five bodies laid face down, small bubbles escaped their agape mouths in neat columns. My looting party adorned skewers, the chiseled flint tips were safely tucked away between hemispheres of gray matter. Their last moments overflowed with greed and misguided fervor. They appeared peaceful, as if snorkeling, before being obscured by the slurry of color fighting for dominance. I raised my hands in surrender. Heavy gold rings, anklets, bracelets, and head pieces tumbled from my grasp, splashing into colorful murk all around me. Surrounded by bow-wielding people speaking a different language than me, a sharp whistle somewhere behind me woke me from the hazy memory that didn't belong to me. I felt rested. • • • Another restless month dragged me by my hair before I lost my job. “Lack of motivation.” They told me. Depression and anxiety became screaming monkeys on my back. My parents could tell and told me to take all the time I needed to recover. I had some savings meant for moving out and a new car, dipping into that nest egg would be a small price to pay for my sanity we figured. Therapy begat none. Medication was a bust. Change of lifestyle; wasted energy. The sleeping visions were none existent. Thinking back to what worked last time, I got abstract and bought three house plants for my bedroom, desperate to wake up feeling like I actually rested. One more bamboo plant and two leafy ficus. I threw my nightly handful of Benadryl, sleeping pills, and melatonin down before wrapping my shaky body in dank blankets and shutting my eyes, trying to ignore the constant hot claminess persistently stuck to my skin. My vision was overtaken by buzzing gold light, my lactic acid filled muscles faded into bright holiness. As I became aware of it, something snapped its fingers, my body returned and collapsed onto unforgiving wood floor, my dark sunken eyes honed their stabby, tired look with purpose of their own, onto a hanging dogwood cross with inlaid gold seams. A precious gift left to me by my grandparents. I felt limp enough to sink through the ground. In my priceless newly returned clarity, I went out and bought three gallons of gold paint, two green, and ten more leafy friends. Over the course of two headache filled, sleepless days, I began by laying brown butcher paper over my entire floor and moving everything out of my room. Every supply I needed was lying around the house somewhere, I just needed to ask permission. At his wits end of how to help, my project went unopposed by my dad. I carefully covered my bedroom’s white trim in blue painters tape and furiously spread glossy gold paint evenly over every wall and the ceiling. Before it had dried, I dipped my hands in green paint to abstractly throw globs into the rough shape of bushes and trees. Once I felt satisfied with the ratio, I fell onto my butt and gave myself a much needed break. I spread eagle with hands that grew encrusted in paint and passed out. I was walking through the jungle, trees moved aside with every step I took forward. My path was lined in puny solid gold crucifixes, 2x1 inches, protruding perfectly vertical from hallowed dirt. The further I walked, the distance between crosses grew larger. I wasn’t far from someone standing with their hands comfortably resting behind their back. It was Guillermo, bearing his overly toothy smile and jubilation lined eyes. The photographer hid out of view, constantly sending bright flashes at us with a mechanical click and frantic scurry to capture as many angels as possible. Guillermo extended both arms as if to embrace me. I raised my own, only to see filthy, false jungle green hands rise from the bottom of my vision. His face contorted into a hideous frown before he pushed me firmly to the floor. Refreshed and wide awake, I became aware of my hands painfully tightened around the dogwood cross that I had stored in the next room over with all my other belongings. It was covered in green paint from my hands. The sudden sensation of unimaginable filth blasted into my cocoon. I opened my window to let the blistering Arizona air in. I ran to the bathroom I share with my brother to cleanse my body and heirloom in steamy, sudsy water. With my whole body red from scrubbing with a loofah, I began deep cleaning my pseudo wilderness. I tore the now brown-green paper from the ground, pulled off the half gold painters tape, moved my 14 leafy plants all around the room's edge, and decided I didn’t need any of my furniture. Not even my bed, I replaced it with an open sleeping bag. Every night before laying to rest, I watered all 14, the humidity was almost thick enough to sustain a fish. The remainder of my nest egg was thrown at pure gold jewelry, ordered online from my sparklingly clean cocoon. 10 rings, 4 bracelets, 3 delicate necklaces, and a crown bedazzled in lab grown emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and amethysts. I spent day and night obsessively dusting and pruning my chlorophyll family and laying motionless on the hard ground in my silent bedroom, hoping and praying to greet Guillermo on his home turf through my restless visions. I never took my jewelry off, even to shower three times a day. The incessant stickiness growing through my pores drove me mad and made me feel utterly filthy. I washed my hands and face over 20 times a day. My family looks at me sideways. I don’t care anymore. We are currently in Mexico City to celebrate Day of the Dead. I haven’t told any of them yet, but I plan on staying here. I have my eyes set on a new job. submitted by /u/Derick_Mtz to r/creepcast [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/AliceJoestar to r/magicthecirclejerking [link] [comments]

Came back from work, switched on the light—and this was the scene that hit me, CO₂ diffuser bubbling like crazy. Turns out it was my brother had the CO2 turned on this morning, setting it to around 3 bubbles per second before he left. What he didn’t know is that this CO2 knob usually gets tight when it’s been off for a while and the bubbles start slow but gradually increase. He turned it too much without knowing, and by the time I got home… it was chaos. All neocaridinas gone, many of them berried. Every tetra, every guppy, gone. Guess the acidic water and sudden huge pH swing got all of em. Devastated. Fuck. submitted by /u/holeemomma to r/shrimptank [link] [comments]

Part 1 - The Game Stops Part 2 - The Masterpiece You are here: Part 3 - The Game Begins Part 4 - The Timeline Ends Part 5 - The Crash (20% done) In honor of Kitty. As always, feedback on improvement is very welcome. NFA. “Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called ‘The Pledge’. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called ‘The Turn’. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call ‘The Prestige’.” Volume - Botox Between August 13-31, 2020, Ryan Cohen bought over 6 million shares (9% of GME) and disclosed his filing. The share price doubled and GME's volume on the OTC market exploded. Since then, about 50% of GME's volume went through the OTC - in January 2021 it took off completely: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/tdw59e/the_crooks_keep_cookin_like_nobody_is_lookin/ After Cohen's filing, FTDs grew and on September 22, GME was added to the Reg-SHO list. On October 5 (35 days after the filing), GME and volume increased again. October 8 was GME's 13th consecutive trading day on the list. In a single day, volume exploded by a factor of 23 and GME increased by 42%. 110 days after Cohen's filing was December 19. On December 18, Cohen had increased his position to 9,001,000 shares (12.9% of GME), which was disclosed on the 21st. Did Cohen know the secret rule? https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1dliz91/i_would_like_to_solve_the_puzzle_my_8_ball_answer/ In hindsight, it was clear that GME's price development in 2021 had been controlled with an iron fist by 90-day cycles. A thorough analysis explained the rules and mechanisms behind this timing and showed that it had been going on since (at least) 2016. For most of the cycle, GME was shorted, but when the cycle expired, GME rose and a new cycle started. In 2022, this predictable strategy changed: https://web.archive.org/web/20211118135541/https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/quj97o/gme_evidence_of_predictable_cycles_gme_explained/ Further analysis revealed that the 90-day cycle could be due to variance swaps. Here, it is only the volatility of the stock (price fluctuations) and not the share price that determines the success of the strategy (profit). When algorithms short (sell) variance swaps, they are betting on less volatility that is easy to handle at low volume - another good explanation for the use of OTC and dark pools. For the algorithm to hedge the shorting of a variance swap, it requires calls (the right to sell shares) or puts (the right to sell shares) with very high volatility - in practice at the lowest and highest share prices. These two “ends” pull in opposite directions, fixing the share price and resulting in low volatility. However, this low volatility results in cheap calls and puts (together called options) - the strategy’s major downside: https://web.archive.org/web/20211115185827/https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/qujkk5/gme_evidence_of_predictable_cycles_gme_explained/ After the spring of 2021, volume on OTC and in dark pools fell and stayed low until May 13, 2024, when it suddenly exploded - beating all other stocks' OTC volume. On June 3 (the day after Gill's first YOLO), GME broke its OTC record again. It suddenly made sense why Gill had bought calls at 20 and 25 dollars - they acted like a magnet, pushing GME away from the artificial equilibrium point between the extreme calls/puts. The algorithms had to hedge or deliver FTDs: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1dehtux/the_gme_otc_conspiracy_a_deep_dive_into_over_200/ If the algorithms were indeed “restarted”, GME could expect steadily decreasing volume and volatility - and very cheap calls. In fact, a possible variance swap had been spotted as early as May 15. Lola got ready at the roulette wheel for her third and final bet - how long would the price of calls fall? https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h6xlx6/comment/m0i6luy/ On October 4, Cohen sent a tweet of himself with wrinkles on his forehead and the text “Botox?”. Exactly one year earlier, Cohen had sent a tweet showing him out of date with a wrinkled face - a face swap with the famous investor Warren Buffet. What had Cohen meant - and anticipated? https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1fwijsf/104_rc_tweets_wrinkled_waves_tinfoil/ According to speculation, it could refer to a 2010 article that described the banks' artificial injections as “financial botox”. On October 18, the S&P 500 index peaked as predicted - the mysterious 110 days were confirmed. On October 25, Cohen deleted the “Botox?” tweet and changed his profile picture to a youthful face with a smooth forehead - in black and white. Were the banks getting ready for a final round of botox? https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1fwfl5d/rc_tweet_decoded/ The wick burns out - Melt-up For the rest of the fall of 2024, volume dropped and GME was fixed at 20-21 dollars - calls became historically cheap. On September 23, the 20 million shares were finally sold. GameStop now had 446 million shares in play in the market and 4.6 billion dollars in its war chest. On September 27, a very large amount of calls were purchased at 20 and 25 dollars that would expire on January 17, 2025 - was this Lola's third bet? https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1fqybbd/5105_20_and_13325_25_calls_loaded_up_for_jan_17/ On October 25, Cohen sent an interesting series of tweets. The first said “yolo” - would Cohen go “all in”? Next, he sent “Trump Is The Shit” (TITS) and then a blushing emoji. When Cohen sent a blushing emoji on December 9, 2020, 35 days passed before January 13, 2021 - then, GME rose for 15 days. The first emojis on Gill's timeline were a blushing emoji and a “shit” emoji - Cohen's emojis were in reverse order. Would January 13, 2021 repeat on November 29 (35 days after October 25)? Or maybe Cohen pointed back to a “hidden” YOLO on September 20? If GME rose for 15 days after November 29 (like the run-up to January 28, 2021), it would hit December 16 (the 14th was a Saturday). Would the run-up to January 28, 2021 restart on December 16, 2024? This was 145 days after GameStop raised the blood-red pirate flag on July 24. Short sellers had actually gotten three stock sales (warning shots) - “no quarter”. Did it make sense to add the 110 and 35 days together to 145? It turned out that 145 days after “Flipmode 9 7” was November 29 (December 1 was a Sunday). And 145 days after Gill's YOLO and Uno Reverse cards landed on Cohen's “yolo” - did Cohen nod to Gill? The “145” acted as a strange decryption key. On December 18, 2020 (9 days after the blushing emoji), Cohen had finished increasing his position to 9,001,000 shares. Did his “yolo” and blushing emoji on October 25 foreshadow a new stock purchase on November 3rd (9 days later)? There was another cryptic possibility. 145 days before November 3 was June 11, when Gill had posted one of his 10 new memes - about calls. Would Cohen buy calls? On June 12 (the equivalent of November 4), two more memes appeared - a handshake between Roaring Kitty and GameStop, and then “My Masterpiece”. And on June 13 (November 5), Gill posted a “thumper” (from the movie Dune) luring a sandworm - a powerful creature that you can ride on. During the presidential election, on November 5, all eyes would be on the flag (emoji) as the overture began. GME would soon ride the sandworm, but what was it? Did Gill actually have a plan? According to analysis that predicted the price rise at the end of August, 22 dollars was a crucial front if GME's underlying mechanisms were to result in a melt-up. On October 28, GME rose 10%, and when the share price tried to fall below the critical 22 dollars, it immediately rose again - the algorithms had cemented a hard floor under GME that could not be broken. Remarkably, October 25 (the 27th was a Sunday) was 110 days after “Flipmode 9 7 “ (July 9): https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1gefy93/theres_still_1_hour_left_in_extended_hours/ GME's melt-up had finally begun: https://x.com/JRoland_/status/1851095931212423315/video/1 On October 29, a message from the Reddit user “Avocado” was restlessly awaited. In 2021, 2022 and 2023, the user had written the message “Happy Cat Day” on this date. Reminiscent of when Gill said “I'm not a cat” at Congress, it had long been suspected that this was his alternative profile. In 2024, there was not a message, but a filing - Gill had sold his "Dog" shares on September 30. Had we reached the dog emoji on the timeline - Dog Days Are Over? If Gill had converted to GME right away, the FTDs from here would close on November 4 - on top of the UBS cycle. At the same time, the data for "Dog's" FTDs was released. Most days showed “zero”, but on September 20, when Wolverine got a margin call, there were 9 million FTDs... "Dog" (XRT’s largest position) was broken, just as Gill's meme had suggested. XRT was used to bend the rules at FINRA and DTCC: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1gfv0pv/roaring_kitty_shows_prices_are_fake_and_markets Reverse Flipmode - Banana Enthusiast The mysterious 6399 calls held another secret. Formatted as dates, the number could mean 6/3 and 9/9 - June 3 and September 9. 145 days after June 3 would be October 25 (the 26th was a Saturday), when Cohen wrote “yolo” and the blushing emoji. 145 days after September 9 would be January 31, 2025 (February 1 was a Saturday). It was especially striking that 145 days after September 7 (the reverse formatting of “Flipmode 9 7”) was January 30, 2025 - the day before. Were the mysterious calls from GME's unknown guardian angel protecting the share price until a “reverse Flipmode” arrived? It had previously been shown that price trends in August/September 2020 and May/June 2024 mirrored each other. If the trend had continued, January 2021 would have repeated itself in mid-October 2024: https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1dgj1x2/its_a_fking_mirror_i_hope_youre_ready_to_make/ Already in 2023, analysis had shown that the algorithms guided GME through a series of recognizable patterns that repeated within themselves and in varying lengths of time - fractals. It was striking that the number of memes Gill had sent formed a fractal - 110, 10 and 1. Was it a clue? https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/11lp5p0/gme_has_no_price_discovery_at_all_its_3_seperate The technical analysis had failed to predict the price development because the algorithms changed the fractals continuously: https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1gyda5f/the_fractal_is_repeating_part_2/ A thorough analysis showed that algorithms had been controlling GME in this way since (at least) 2013: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/owlg3z/the_algorithm_has_been_doing_this_shit_for_years According to Gill, he had been following GME since 2013, so it was possible that he had been decoding the algorithms and milking the corrupt system for profit for years - e.g. since 2019, when he bought GME for the first time: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h9osrf/rk_revealing_hes_been_tracking_gme_for_over_a/ At the end of October, it was obvious that GME’s price development from January 2021 to May 2024 looked like the movements from May to October - the fractals just moved 7 times faster. May 14 seemed set to repeat itself on November 29 - at “Flipmode 9 7” (price) and “January 13, 2021” (volume): https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1gfg57s/comment/luif67p/ As of November 5, the S&P 500 index's expected crash came to an abrupt halt, the botox bubble reached new heights, and GME began to rise steadily. Remarkably, Gill had posted a meme titled “SQUEEZE” exactly 4 years earlier - “Remember, remember, the 5th of November”: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1gjvlit/rk_tweet_from_2020_5_november/ November 5th was 145 days after Gill increased his position to 9,001,000 shares and planted a thumper. It now appeared that large funds (primarily BlackRock and Vanguard) and other institutions had purchased over 30 million GameStop shares in the previous two quarters - was GME riding the sandworm? https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1gri125/according_to_recent_13fs_institutions_now_own/ It was a curious coincidence that roughly the same amount of shares had been purchased through dark pools since Gill's YOLO in May. Had institutions bought tickets for GME's Moon trip on the black market? https://x.com/ShaunFitzzzy/status/1833218066173595816 On November 29, GME's melt-up ended. From October 25, the share price had increased by 50%. It was a reassuring nod that Gill's Reddit profile had updated itself with “Banana Beginner” on October 28, and “Banana Enthusiast” on November 29. October 25 (the 27th was a Sunday) was 110 days after “Flipmode 9 7”, and then GME rose over precisely 35 days. 110 days after a critical event seemed to kickstart the closing of a cycle of FTDs. This explained the “145” - the 145th day was the deadline. In fact, 110 days before “Flipmode 9 7” was March 21 - when the Yen's interest rate was raised for the first time since 2007. Would GME’s melt-up restart 110 days after October 27 - on February 14, 2025 [Well, well, well... 167800 dollars, eh?]? https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h2wffw/the_last_time_the_kitty_got_caught_online/ Stock charts - Requel and MOASS On April 26, 2024, Gill had updated his stock charts - with four dates in a sequence: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1dcs3cn/rory_kittenger_stock_chart_update_10_jun_2024/ October 28: 145 days after 7 billion FTDs hit the market, GME's melt-up started November 28: GME’s melt-up over 35 days ended on November 29 (November 28 was closing day), postponing “Flipmode 9 7” (price) and “January 13, 2021” (volume) December 30: 145 days after the global mini-crash (December 28 was a Saturday) December 7 (a saturday): 145 days after GME peaked on July 17 (“Flipmode 9 7”) This seemed to say that history would repeat itself. The tsunami of FTDs would rise from the depths, GME would rise and there would be another crash. Eventually, GME would “fly to the Moon”. One meme had actually mentioned that Gill was building a Requel (a mix of “remake” and “sequel”) of January 2021. The chronology disappeared at the fourth stock chart, suggesting that in the end you had to go “backwards to win” like Gill's meme of the movie Ready Player One - a “reverse Flipmode”? The fourth stock chart actually marked the anniversary of Japan's parliament removing the microphone. When the interest rate on the Yen rose, it fueled a fire sale of US stocks and Treasuries - the mini-crash. At the Fed’s September meeting the interest rate on the Dollar was lowered - “All eyes on the Fed”, as the financial media always wrote. If the musical notes referred to the somber phrase “When the music stops...”, the eyes, the flag, the microphone and the musical notes on the timeline made coherent sense: https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1gu179l/will_japan_selling_off_us_debt_trigger_a_fire/ The flame would soon approach the microphone, but when was the explosion? On September 13, exactly 4 months after Gill posted the first of his 110 memes, his brother had posted a picture online that said “Midway” and 4 months later was January 13... If January 13 meant November 29 and this was the halfway point, then “something” would begin after another 4 months - March 29, 2025. That would be exactly two years after Credit Suisse's fateful swaps expired... March 29 was 145 days after November 4, when the FTDs from Credit Suisse's supposed LEAPS should have been closed. All indications pointed to the fact that Credit Suisse's 2-year swaps were renewed at the last minute in 2023 which left UBS hanging out to dry. Since March 29, 2025 was a Saturday, UBS would possibly explode on March 31? https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1fgb0kq/midway/ The problem with Credit Suisse became apparent in December 2022, when the American institution FDIC, which insures bank deposits, held a long meeting with the European clearing houses. A large, unknown player was at risk of going bankrupt, and this would cause a European clearing house to fail. There was no plan of action or way out, and the US announced that they could not help. Credit Suisse was forced to merge with the country's largest bank, UBS. If UBS went bankrupt, the house of cards would collapse: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/zyevfz/complete_dd_of_the_fdic_meeting_credit_suisse_is When GME rose violently on May 13, 105 days passed before Bruno arrived on August 26. Then, GME rose from August 27 to September 3 - over 5 trading days (September 2 was a closing day). The 110 days seemed to consist of three cycles of FTDs amounting to 105 days, which ended with 5 trading days where FTDs were closed. It looked like a kind of domino where the short seller, the broker and the bank (3 cycles) gave up and left the problem to the DTCC. The 5 trading days matched FINRA's “REX code 060” and “REX code 061”, both dealing with capital shortages - a possible explanation. It was also possible that FTDs ended up in DTCC’s Obligation Warehouse where the pile was left to grow. 105 days after September 3 would be December 17 (right after “no quarter”), so if Bruno returned there, GME could expect to rise between December 18-24. After another 105 days, April 8 was reached, which oddly enough was 35 days before May 13, 2025 - exactly one year after Gill's explosive return. Was this pointing to Requel in January-March and MOASS in April-May? https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/key-topics/margin-accounts/extension-reason-codes#060 TIME - 69420 On December 5, Gill sent a tweet of an edited Time Magazine cover with the headline “TIME” and a blank video player with the numbers “1:09” and “4:20”. It could just be a joke, as 1 minute is 60 seconds and 69420 is a known internet number. However, December 5 was the reverse formatting of May 12 (5/12) - Gill’s chair meme. It was also notable that 35 days after the tweet would be January 9 - so, “1:09”. In fact, the numbers went on and on. Around 4:20 into his live stream (from June 7), Gill woke up and when the computer clock showed 1:09pm, he said “It might be time”. In addition, some of Gill's memes used music from the game Furi, and on the game's playlist there were two tracks that lasted exactly 1:09 and 4:20 - they were titled “Time to wake up” and “A Monster”. In Gill's meme, Wolverine came to life at 1:09. Would the market maker have a rude awakening in January? https://x.com/EimajNoraa/status/1868577491000197218 It was also possible that Gill was referring to the sandworm - or perhaps to one of his old videos? Gill released a video titled “Monster...” on August 31, 2020, when Cohen bought 9% of GME: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Af9T8TU2OM&list=PLlsPosngRnZ1esbvs4VbjfIOk9F5QYYXS&index=12 Another video was called “Cheers everyone!”, which Gill always introduced his live streams with. However, this one was unusually short - just 1:09. The video was from April 17, 2021 - the day after Gill's doubling: https:// www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h7i82m/tinfoil_time_rks_video_titled_cheers_everyone_has/ Even Cohen seemed to use these numbers. On April 20, 2021, he had tweeted Teddy (from the movie of the same name) making a drink - did Cohen toast back? https://x.com/ryancohen/status/1384616641087086596 And on January 9, 2023, Cohen had sent a cryptic tweet about being naked - just like Gill's chosen portrayal of Wolverine. The time stamp was 6:20am - could it be 4:20am in another time zone? https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/1hejo26/jan_9th_tweet_620_am/ Was Gill planning to increase his position to 12.9% of GME (equivalent to 57 million shares) around April 20, 2025? Did Gill and Cohen know that someone got caught between “1:09” and “4:20”? Historically, these dates were not all random. On January 1-8, 2021, Archegos started getting into trouble with its 13 billion dollars’ worth of swaps, and on April 22, Credit Suisse said it had dealt with them... Note: Link removed because of the brigading rule (PM and I'll send the source). A thorough analysis showed that 4-year swaps from 2017 could also be in the mix. Volume on almost all the interesting dates in 2021 mirrored 2017, and now 2025 was rapidly approaching: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hbyto8/gme_has_been_riding_4year_cycles_since_2017_the The timing of the “TIME” tweet was revealing. When the tweet was sent at 1:45pm, GME rose by 10% - and by 1% at 1:45pm the next day. It was precisely at this time that the major British clearing house LCH performed margin calls on swaps. In fact, if you searched for the words “time you cover”, the “TIME” front page appeared. Gill seemed to know exactly when short sellers were covering their costs: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h9eamp/1345_margin_calls_fuck_a_mcrib_ill_take_a_green On December 10, the quarterly report beat expectations again and it was announced that there would be no more share sales until the fiscal year ended in February 2025. Would GME's “reverse Flipmode” (Requel) begin in January like the 6399 calls predicted? The three stock sales (warning shots) were spent - Lola's third bet had free rein. From December 18-24 (over 5 trading days), GME increased by 9% - Bruno returned just as expected. On December 23rd, XRT was added to the Reg-SHO list. It was an interesting coincidence that the time next to the share price in Gill's live stream was frozen (edited) to 12:22pm - when XRT got on the Reg-SHO list, GME began its thaw. If XRT remained on the list through January 3, 2025 (13 consecutive trading days), shorting via XRT would be restricted - and the countdown to the forced closure of XRT's FTDs would begin. Last warning: “It's TIME you cover”: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hla3d6/here_we_go_baby_xrt_made_it_back_on_the_nyse XRT’s lent shares - SEC's missing FTDs Despite the Reg-SHO listing, XRT's short percentage continued to increase from 284 to 354 and the number of GameStop shares that market makers borrowed (shorted) from XRT increased by 55%. It was calculated that market makers must have borrowed over 4 million GameStop shares from XRT. GameStop shares from XRT for the ETF to end up on the Reg-SHO list - however, XRT only held 6 million shares in total... In fact, data revealed that the price market makers paid to borrow from XRT had remained high (and constant) ever since May 2024: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/s/auG6htqKq5 On top of that, it turned out that in October 2020, XRT's market maker, IMC, was bought by Citadel Securities (Ken Griffin) - the old acquaintance who, according to the congressional report, helped Robinhood and lied under oath: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hk0dts/look_what_the_cat_dragged_in_why_imc_may_be_the/ In practice, SEC rules allowed a large player (e.g. Citadel Securities) to borrow shares (e.g. GME) from an ETF (e.g. XRT) to satisfy Reg-SHO: https://x.com/trvsrdrgz2/status/1876834969429082348?mx=2 When the loan of GME from XRT had to be closed, it could even be filled with a completely different stock... XRT's sky-high short percentage was no wonder - the ETF was stuffed with everything else than it should be: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/s9q8qr/how_are_they_shorting_through_etf_fuckery_xrt_as One academic study even found that 80% of all FTDs came from ETFs - it was a strategy: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1imqtts/richard_evans_associate_professor_of_business/ The huge loans from XRT should leave a clear trail of FTDs, but the SEC consistently removed FTDs from certain dates - in August and September 2024, data was missing for half of GME's FTDs. When a Reddit user legally requested the missing FTDs, the SEC refused, since it was “confidential information” that could cause “foreseeable harm”. The SEC wouldn't release the data because it revealed the corrupt players' trade secrets - and the SEC's interference: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hof6eq/my_foia_request_for_missing_gme_ftd_data_secs One analysis actually showed that GME used to have quite a few days with missing FTDs, but that this changed in 2021 and that the problem had accelerated since - especially after high volume days: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1g6k5xa/sec_strategically_failing_to_deliver_ftd_data/ Another analysis showed that GME consistently decreased during periods with missing FTDs. Further calculation showed that without these shadowy periods, GME could have hit 80 dollars in December 2024: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hrpbik/the_data_does_not_lie_there_is_something/ At the same time, the machinations were unfolding. It should not be difficult to release FTDs immediately, but the SEC delayed FTDs for two weeks (according to its own rules) and divided each month into two periods - 1-15 and 16 onwards. When GME's and "Dog's" first batch of FTDs from December were released, it was surprising that the last few days were completely missing - not the FTD data, but the days themselves. The same dates were missing from XRT and IJH - the main ETFs from which market makers often borrowed GameStop shares. It was interesting that Friday the 13th of December didn’t exist - “Bear beware”. If someone had gotten a margin call with REX code 068, which ended here, it would originate on November 6, where GME's FTDs were missing. If you went backwards one more REX code 068, you would hit October 1, where FTDs were also missing. It was striking that the previous day was September 30, when Gill sold his "Dog" shares, and UBS' supposed LEAPS had expired. A margin call was likely postponed and hidden: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1i1xp92/jan_17_is_c35_after_friday_the_13th_of_dec_2024/ It was striking that a cycle of FTDs (35 days) after September 20, when "Dog" had 9 million FTDs, landed on October 25 - when the melt-up began. On November 29 (after 35 days), GME paused. January 3 (35 days later) would be XRT's 13th consecutive trading day on the Reg-SHO list... What's in the box? - Give It To Me Baby On December 25th, the anniversary of the TIME cover, Gill sent out a tweet of a Christmas gift. It was classic red and green, but the gold gift ribbon was telling. A “golden ribbon” means that a stock's recent price performance is overtaking the long-term averages - a very bullish sign: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hndl3n/i_have_never_seen_such_a_beautful_display_of_mas/ It was striking that the time bar in the TIME video player had the same shape as the third sign in the movie Signs - a circle and a long red line. The first and second signs were shown as relatively small, while the third was huge. If this reflected the price increases on May 14 and June 6, GME’s third sign could easily reach thousands of dollars - ”The third sign you won't believe”: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h7jahi/there_will_be_signs_it_is_time/ It was also striking that Gill's live stream in June had begun at 12:25pm - on December 25? The timing also fitted with a meme of the movie Shawshank Redemption - “Pressure and time...” It was finally time, and the pressure was in the gift. On December 27, GME closed at 32 dollars, which was the highest share price on a Friday since August 2022. In the stock market, Fridays are important because they mark the expiration date of options. Gill had previously used the quote “What's in the box?” from the movie “Se7en”, but it also applied to Dune (the movie with the sandworm) - in both cases the answer was “pain”. In the financial world, Max Pain is the share price of the week with the most open contracts on options - now GME exceeded this threshold. Gill's Christmas gift could indicate that more calls could be converted into shares (green), and pain for short sellers (red). On December 31, the short percentage suddenly doubled for IJH - the largest ETF holding GME (12 million GameStop shares). What had happened? https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1i2oe2e/ijh_which_is_the_top_etf_holding_of_gme_12124924 On January 1, Gill posted a meme of the song Give It To Me Baby - had Gill purchased a large amount of shares that had not been delivered? The song was originally from a purple record album that resembled the purple circle at depository Computershare. What would happen if Gill registered all his shares? https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hri0uo/the_chapelle_skit_from_rk_post_the_song_playing If the system was fair and there was no naked shorting, it shouldn't ever be a problem… https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/v7yucj/virtu_ceo_to_the_extent_there_is_not_liquidity_on Remarkably, the words “Wait till I squeeze you” came 2:24 into the song - on February 24, 2021, GME soared. Gill's meme also appeared as a thumbnail in an episode of Comedy Central, and when the clip came on, it read “The wait is finally over.” So, when would the wait be over? https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1hrhul2/listen_to_what_the_narrator_says_when_roaring/ On the old Comedy Central DVD's playlist, the episode appeared twice, and if you went chronologically backwards from here (“to win”), you hit two release dates. February 24, which could be “Wait till I squeeze you”, and March 4, which could refer to “The wait is finally over”: https://angry-grandpas-media-library.fandom.com/wiki/Crank_Yankers:_Season_Two,_Volume_One_(2005_DVD)) It was also interesting that the length of the album was 4:07. It was reminiscent of another of Cohen's cryptic tweets (from January 18, 2023). It showed the fictitious news headline “GameStop chair decided on monday to buy all the stocks” and the time “4:07”. Unlike previous years, April 7, 2025 would actually be a Monday... https://x.com/ryancohen/status/1615752534013902857 April 7, 2025 didn't seem random. It would be the day before Bruno's expected third arrival, and exactly 330 days (3x110) after May 12, 2024 - when Gill sent his chair meme. In addition, 35 days after April 7 would be May 12, 2025 - the 330 and 35 days added up to 1 year. This fit with the plot of V for Vendetta, where it took exactly one year for the climax to happen. On May 12, 2021, GameStop's media profile had actually tweeted “Oops *moass* my bad”. The cryptic dates whirled around: https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/1h7ig8n/oops_moass_my_bad/ [Exceeded post limit... Go to comments for the final section and TL;DR] submitted by /u/Carpetman8900 to r/Superstonk [link] [comments]

I became a renter for the first time in my mid 30's, pretty late in life. Before that, I'd been on the other side of things. I'm a landlord and developer, which I realize doesn't endear me to most readers, but in my partial defence, I've built everything that I own, and with my own hands for the first few years. I started doing painting, finishing carpentry/millwork/cabinetmaking to make money during university, and when I graduated I had saved up enough to get horribly into debt at an extremely high interest rate which I had to build my way out of. The first place I lived in after the dorm was a dangerously neglected warehouse that I had just bought, and ended up reconstructing into a fourplex - I lived there for the next 10 years while subsequently getting into new greenfield rental developments. Just before COVID I ended up selling that first place I had built, and the buyer wanted me out so they could raise the rent to market. This was to be my first time getting "evicted," but the pain was numbed by the sale price during that huge market runup. I also thought it might be tricky to navigate being a tenant in a building that I had built and owned for years. I decided to treat myself by renting a condo downtown - a huge step up from my previous 1 bedroom that was chosen for its ROI rather than owner-occupancy appeal. I spent around 3 months looking at dozens of places and built up a good sense of the rental market as my pride insisted I get the best deal possible. I quickly learned that the market that had been so favourable to me The Landlord was extremely difficult for me The Tenant. I got incredibly lucky when I took a chance and viewed a condo on craigslist that had no photos in the listing, never a good sign. It turned out the lack of photos was not an attempt to cover up, but simply the inability of the owner to work a digital camera (he did not have a smartphone.) It was perfect - 2005ish building, floor to ceiling glass, high floor with 270 degree views, A/C, open layout, well priced. The only problem? Very worn out, shabby 2005ish kitchen and bathroom, and the reddest looking cherry wood flooring you could imagine. Horrible cheap honey coloured fake wood veneer cabinets, gloss black appliances. Brushed aluminum finish everywhere, lots of frosted glass on the light fixtures. A simpler time. The landlord seemed like he would be pretty hands-off, and my application pitch was that if he was okay with it, I would take care of maintenance myself and just e-transfer him rent every month and not bother him. He loved the sound of that. He said he had bought a house in the suburbs and wanted to keep this condo for rental income for about 10 years until he retired - there are pretty strong tenant rights where I live, so long as he didn't sell there were no "no fault" eviction options. We signed the tenancy agreement, paid the deposit and moved in. The last time I saw him was during the move-in inspection, after which he exclaimed “If you treat this place well, I promise you can stay here as long as you want!” Big, firm, job-interview winning boomer handshake, and he was gone. We loved the new place – a complete change from the “up and coming” part of town we had just left, 400 feet above the street. The absolutely horrible kitchen, bathrooms and floors haunted me, but I had a plan and it was only a matter of time. One of my carpentry/millwork subs did a lot of retail tenant improvement as well as... model homes and apartments for much bigger developers. When you are building a 30 story highrise, you typically spend a few hundred grand to several million mocking up a unit in a retail showroom somewhere offsite to help you collect deposits. After the building sells out? That stuff gets either junked or sold on craigslist. When I was doing single digit unit buildings, I had bought a number of new old stock appliances, cabinets, flooring etc out of a marketing manager's garage for cash... A few months later and it's the summer of 2020 and COVID is in full swing, and my carpenter emails me - one of his clients is cancelling their project, and since they are ghosting him on his draw, he is taking down their display unit. The drawings show an almost exact match to my unit in terms of dimensions. The spec sheet is jaw-dropping: almost 20' of Snaidero cabinets, gloss white with champagne bronze hardware, Sub Zero/Wolf appliance package, white marble counters and back splash, Kallista faucets... easily $100,000+ retail not including install. Oh, and 1200 square feet of herringbone light oak planks if I don't mind pulling them up myself. How much does he want? $10k cash. Well, my jobsite is shut down for the foreseeable future, the government is making 75% of my payroll and I don't have anything to do except stare at my awful kitchen all day. After about 3 hours with my measuring tape and pencil, I ask my carpenter if he is willing to join my bubble for $40/hr cash for a few weekends. He is. One last step - email my landlord and ask if he doesn't mind me doing a complete renovation on his condo. Crucially, I conclude the offer with "I'll undertake to return it to move-in condition before I leave." Not surprisingly, he accepts. "That's okay, do whatever you want, we love having you as a tenant." Time to go to work. I get the old kitchen out in about 2 days, hampered by my need to work quietly as I'm doing this without permits (not like they are doing inspections anyways, but still..). A side effect of this slow pace (and my wife's current obsession with Marie Kondo) is that everything is removed intact, and carefully taped and labelled. Taking out the old kitchen does indeed spark joy. The old floating cherry wood floor comes up in a morning, also tagged and labelled and bundled in the order it was removed. The carpenter comes over, and he gets the "new" kitchen installed in less than 2 days while I lay down the floor. The floor actually ended up taking me a week, mainly because I had to make the end cuts at my storage unit across town, since I definitely couldn't run a mitre saw with everyone at home during lockdown. After just under 2 weeks, I had effectively a brand new, ultra high end condo for just under $12,000 out of pocket. At this point I'm sure everyone reading this is facepalming as they wonder why on earth I'm proud of renovating someone else's condo at my cost - it did make sense at the time, as I was under the impression I'd be there for a good 10 years - plus the fact I was paying about $500/month under market at move-in, and more like $1500/month under market in the current condition. There are a variety of economic and market conditions and segments where it makes more financial sense to rent than it does to buy. For example, my monthly rent would not have even covered the interest portion of a mortgage, let alone condo fees, insurance, taxes and the opportunity cost of the downpayment. In other words, it was cheaper to rent the condo than it was to rent the money that I would need to buy the condo. Also, as a builder, cash is a critical tool, and the more cash I can hold onto, the bigger I can build. With my 1 year lease, and the fact I had lots of free time, it didn't seem like such a reckless move. And who can say no to a $2000 kitchen faucet. Filling a glass of water feels like working the bolt on a well-oiled Holland & Holland rifle. Worst case I could probably get most of it back by selling just the appliances if something unexpected happened. Which it did. I had undertaken all this after evaluating all the possibilities and weighing the risk of putting time and money into a place I don't own. I had failed to consider one important detail - the wife. By the spring of 2023 the upgrades had, in my opinion, paid for themselves after nearly 36 months of use. I hadn't seen the landlord since I moved in and he hadn't been in touch since approving my renovation except for the monthly confirmation he'd accepted my rent transfer - so naturally I began to get concerned when by the end of the first week of May, he hadn't deposited my rent. Two emails went unanswered, until there was a knock on the door. I opened up and was hit with a wall of flowery perfume, which perfectly matched the wall of floral print and red heels standing in my doorway. The landlord had contracted COVID (in 2023!) and sent his wife to collect the rent. I get out my phone to cancel the transfer and go into my office to look for my chequebook. I come back to find her (still in her heels!!) standing in the middle of the living room spinning like a technicolour top. "Oh wow, this looks fabulous! I heard you were doing some renos but I never thought it would look like this! Is that a Sub ZERO fridge?" She opens the fridge. My fridge. "I looove the floors.. and are these custom cabinets?" She turns the kitchen faucet on and off probably 6 times. It took days to air out the smell of perfume after she left. Several hours later my wife came home, and given the lingering smell in the apartment, I'd already briefed her on who had stopped by. “Fuck. I can tell by the smell she's seeing dollar signs.” Sure enough, 3 weeks later I get a call from a realtor who wants to schedule the photographer to take listing photos as the landlords are selling. Of course the landlord, who has now recovered from his COVID, will not take my calls and won't respond to my emails. I'm upset that he doesn't have the courage to admit what he is doing, my wife is upset because she doesn't want to move, and I'm feeling embarrassed that I trusted this guy... I'm not really losing much since we've lived there for 3 years and paid tens of thousands less than market rent during that time... but it still stings. Even in the slow market the place sells in 3 weeks and yes, the new owners want to move in. They give me the required 3 month's notice and pay the 1 month rent compensation. I note that the listing has advertised “Exquisitely renovated with top of the line appliances, cabinets and built-ins. No expense spared.” My first instinct was to at least contact the realtor and suggest he check with the landlord about what was included with the apartment, and what was being represented, but the description in the listing infuriated my wife to such an extent that we agreed to let them do their own due diligence. I think you can all guess where this is going. This time it only took 3 days to pull the "new" kitchen out and put the "old" kitchen back in. Same with the floors - turns out you can lay 1000 square feet of flooring in about 2 hours if it's all pre-cut and labelled. But, some of the T&G was a bit loose so I made sure to glue that bitch down to the concrete nice and tight to make sure it doesn't creak or pop. It's exceptionally cheap so it's going to splinter and separate if it ever needs to come back up... The old Home Depot Glacier Bay $49 kitchen faucet unfortunately started leaking when I put it back in, so I treated the new owners to a brand new replacement (now $60). The new one leaked as well, but not much, and only when it was on. I re-watched the move-in inspection video to refresh my memory and made sure everything was exactly as it was when I moved in, right down to a few small holes in the drywall - I had also forgotten that the old oven control board was fried which meant it kept shutting off every 10 minutes. My wife and I debated leaving a wireless camera up on the wall to capture the new owner's delight at how faithfully we upheld our tenancy agreement as unfortunately we moved out about a week before their planned move in date but there was/is (still?) a reasonable chance of getting sued so we opted not to, as intent is half the battle. I don't actually know what happened since I've ignored the dozens of phone calls from the landlord and the new owners, and just sent them a registered letter with my tenancy agreement, move-in inspection video on DVD and a copy of the email exchange with the landlord from 2020 where he allowed me to renovate the condo provided I put everything back the way it was when I moved in. I did get a text from the realtor calling me a petty, vindictive asshole and that I'm lucky I'm not getting sued (implying that my landlord probably IS getting sued, and furthermore, one or all of them has looked into suing me and were advised against it.) The concierge recently told me that nobody has moved into the condo yet which presents another intoxicating possibility - because the new owners evicted us for their personal use, according to the tenancy law, if they fail to move in within 6 months they owe me a full year's rent as compensation for a fraudulent eviction. I still haven't bought a place, I ended up unfortunately having to pay a fair bit more in rent to move upstairs in the same building, with a different layout but thankfully much nicer finishings. I have an alert set for the building that tells me if a unit gets listed – I'm ready to make an offer if there is a fixer upper that comes up for sale - I even have a kitchen that might just fit. submitted by /u/IknowwhatIhave to r/pettyrevenge [link] [comments]

Update: Thank you all for the replies. I have added a lot more water and it is looking better. A few additional updates I wanted to make to clear things up: I see all the helpful comments and am using them and doing my own additional research. Firstly, I have ordered a new water heater. Second, instead of keeping 2 guppies and 2 tetras, I will be having 5-6 guppies (maybe tetras) since they are schooling fish. Third, I will go on Wednesday to get some live plants to help with the oxygen levels. Also I will test the water next weekend. If it's not ready I will wait another week before adding the fish and shrimp. I am also researching nitrogen cycles and an researching everything about guppies and tetras. Finally, thank you too all the helpful comments explaining everything, there was so much help with everything and I know so much compared to 10 hours ago, but I'm glad I'm just surprising my brother with an aquarium and not joining this unnecessarily toxic and pontificial community. I'm definitely in some toxic communities but I didn't expect it from aquatic enthusiasts. Anyways thanks for all the help. I'll just have to wait until the heater comes and the water test comes back good for the fish. I'm going to keep researching till then. Thanks! 🙏 submitted by /u/ButterscotchBudget47 to r/Aquariums [link] [comments]

Hey everyone, Im looking to sell or trade off some of my items. All items that are bought with paypal will be 10% off eBay below eBay sold market price, and items traded will be priced around the market price. Im flexible and like to do bundle discounts for sale, so feel free to negotiate with me. Shipping will be $1 for PWE, and $4 for bubble mailer, anything above $50 will include free shipping, and trades of course will be covered by both parties doing the trade. Feel free to ask any questions, or requests any photos, I will also let you know the conditions of the cards. I should be on daily reddit, so comments and DM works fine with me. Japanese modern singles(Ignore the 4 display cards in the first picture, only the cards in toploaders are for sale)(Almost all NM condition)-Prices will be 10% off of eBay sold Japanese full art trainers(Almost all NM condition)-Prices will be 10% off of eBay sold -JP Brigette Full at LP-$350 Shiny collection/amazing rares(Almost all NM condition)-Will be 10% off of eBay sold ​ Japanese vintage(Some NM, most cards have a bit of whitening on the edges and sides)-Will be 10% off of eBay sold Graded slabs (Prices will be in order)(Mixture of English and JP cards) -Vile Plume GX full art PSA 10-$315 -Lillie Full art PSA 10-$950 -Bea full art PSA 10-$225 -N Resolve full art PSA 10-$150 -Piplup CHR PSA 10-$125 -Silvally GX HR PSA 10-$135 -Single/rapid strike Urshifu PSA PSA 10-$125 for each, $230 if you buy both -Mallow Full art PSA 8-$60 -Marshadow and Machamp GX alt art PSA 9-$120 -Neo Lugia holo PSA 6-$70 -Nessa Full art PSA 9-$110 - silvally GX full art PSA 10-$180 -Cynthia Ambition full art PSA 9-$85 -Charizard and Reshiram GX HR PSA 10-$225 -Dedenne full art alt PSA 10-$200 -Charizard Radiant collection PSA 9-$50 -Mina full art PSA 10-$375 -Mimikyu CHR PSA 10-$215 -Dedenne full art alt CGC 9.5-$170 -Gardevoir and Sylveon HR PSA 10-$200 -Mimikyu CHR PSA 10-$215 -Vileplume GX full art PSA 10-$315 -Lillie full art PSA 8-$115 -Marnie signed promo PSA 10-$365 -Jirachi Tohoku pokemon center promo PSA 10-$470 -Marnie gym stamp promo PSA 10-$200 -Lucky Zapdos Chubu Gym stadium promo PSA 9-$170 -Shiny Metang CGC 9.5-$15 -Roxy full art PSA 9-$190 -Sonia full art PSA 8-$60 -N Premium Trainer collection full art PSA 9-$115 -Adamen full art PSA 9-$35 -Shiny Gardevoir evolution set(3) PSA 10-$300 for all three slabs PSA 9 Sky Splitting Charisma booster pack -$115 Japanese movie DVD sets(Both are sealed with the movies/music dvd inside, along with the promo cards) -$200 each, both $360 Japanese deck box(Mixture of sealed and open deck boxes, most will still have the deck dividers)-Price will be based on eBay's last sold WANTLIST-(Cards can be in any condition I don't care, they are mainly for my binder, Il take even damaged cards if they are part of my list) -Any Cards from SM8b Ultra Shiny GX Japanese(Mirror foil/SR etc) -Any Cards from SM12a Tag Team GX all stars(Mirror foil/SR etc) -Any Cards from S8b VMAX climax (Mirror foil/SR etc) -Japanese booster pack from BW, XY, and SM era -Japanese BW, XY, and SM era promo cards -Japanese full art trainers -Japanese Sealed -Japanese-graded slabs submitted by /u/Willy618 to r/pkmntcgtrades [link] [comments]

Hey everyone Im looking to sell or trade some of my collections today, all my items should be priced below certain market prices due to not having to pay some market place fees, and all shipping will be covered by me with either bubble mail or PWE. All cards are sleeved, toploaded, or placed into a card saver, and items will be wrapped in either paper or bubble wrap. If you have any questions or requests such as picture request, bulk/bundle discount, or trade request, please let me know in the comments or just send me a private dm. -Paypal goods and services -All items are priced in order to the pictures Japanese singles (Most of them are all Mint/NM, but a few of them do have some whitening) |coco movie promo|sold| |Kanazawa Pikachu promo|sold| |Pikachu campaign promo |sold| |Necrozama full art|$8| |Sandaconda full art|$5| |Volcanion full at|$5| |Charizard LV 60 holo{small whitening}|$16| |Mewtwo strikes back movie promo |sold| |Shuckle full art|$6| |Scissor prime|$35| |Houdoom prime|$20| |Tyranitar prime|sold| |Steelix full art|$8| |Wishiwashi|$20| |sigilyph full art|$6| |Palkia full art|$18| |Orochi rainbow rare|$6| |Alolan Exeggutor rainbow rare|$12| |Magcargo full art|$6| |Alolan Nintail rainbow rare|$35| |Alolan Exeggutor full art|$10| |Kingdra full art|$10| |Centiskorch full art|$6| |Gyrados full art|sold| |Incineroar full art|$8| |Hoopa full art|$8| |Torkoal full art|$6| Full art trainers/support cards |Piers full art |$18| |Kabu full art|$7| |Allister full art|$12| |Leon full art|$22| |Pokemon Breeder Rainbow rare|$7| |Bruno|$8| |Brigette|$350|(edge whitening) |Caitlin Rainbow|$50| |Poke Maniac full art|$8| |Marnie gym stamp promo|$30| |Bede rainbow rare|$10| |Lt Yoshida full art|sold| |Brawly full art|$7| |Aroma Lady Rainbow rare|$18| |Clefairy doll|$18| |Triple energy acceleration|$20| |Lost mixer|$10| Graded Slabs |JP reshiram and zekrom GX PSA 10|$50| |JP Jungle Jolteon Holo PSA 9|$75| |JP Dedenne GX Secret alt CGC 9.5|unavailable| |Metang shiny CGC 9.5|$30| |JP Lugia neo 3 promo PSA 9|$70| |JP Vileplume GX full art dream league PSA 10|$450| |JP Lugia holo PSA 10|$30| |JP Reshiram and Charizard GX PSA 10|$40| |Charizard Radiant Collections PSA 9|$45| |JP Darkrai holo prism PSA 10|$35| |JP Mewtwo and Mew GX PSA 10|$45J |JP Zacian PSA 10|$40| |JP Dedenne GX alt PSA 10|unavailable| |JP Blastoise Holo PSA 10|$25| |JP Eevee gx alt PSA 10|$400| |JP Solgaleo and Lunala GX|$200| |JP Oranguru Secret rare|$35| |JP Lillie full force full art|$2000| PSA 10 Japanese shiny Gardevoir evolution (3)(I know I mixed up the evolution order, took this picture this morning and was still not fully awake yet) |Set of 3|$350| Japanese booster pack graded |JP Splitting Charisma Boost Pack PSA 9|$80| Japanese Pokemon Movie dvd promo set |Pokemon 2018 Breathe DVD promo set sealed|$250| |Pokemon I choose you movie sealed|$200|(Box on one of the sides is slightly bent) Random English lot(Planning to sell it as a lot, I don't really collect English anymore. they are all in card savers) |Lot|$60| ​ TRADE WISHLIST( For cards I dont really care about the condition, since they will be cards put into my binders) -Wish list(Priority) -Paypal -Sm12a pokemon tag team gx all star cards for my master set -SM8b Pokemon GX Ultra shiny cards for my master set -Any cards from special Japanese sets such as the CP series etc -Sealed Japanese products booster packs, boxes etc -Japanese full art trainers and promos -Japanese Graded slabs submitted by /u/Willy618 to r/pkmntcgtrades [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/pantomime15 to r/imaginedragons [link] [comments]

My mom was the sort of person to look like a wallflower until you got close and then spout out facts about her favourite animal. It was an emperor penguin. She said their journey for love and parenthood was the hardest and most connecting with her. I’m told all the usual things about her; she had a smile that could light up a room, her laugh cut through the malaise of an awkward party, her stride was confident and her form was elegant. From the day I could understand what it was to be remembered, she was painted to me as a true goddess. After all, aren’t all moms supposed to be that to their children growing up? Mom died when I was 4. Aggressive cancer riddled her body with tumours, stole her stride, her smile, her laugh. Everything in just 18 short months. I didn’t see her for much of it. But if I did, I obviously didn’t remember. I heard somewhere we don’t start forming memories until we’re around 2 years old and implicit memories - those unconscious memories that stick with us automatically - aren’t even until we’re 7. So essentially my mother was already dead for 3 years before I could even unconsciously think of the word “Mom” and go to her face. A face that was stolen from me. A face that I’ll never see. I’m giving you this background information now because it’s vital that you understand my mom before we get into the thick of it. I can’t sit here and tell you I loved my mom unconditionally. I didn’t know her. Dad was never in the picture, so Grandparents were where I was shipped off to. Good people, kind people. They raised me on stories of my Mom and made sure to do the one thing she’d requested when her sickness finally got her: ”Show Nick the milestone tapes.” For those unaware; a milestone tape is something where a loved one, usually a parent, records a loving video to congratulate their kin on a moment they’re missing out on. First day of school, marriage… you get the picture. I remember being 5 years old, I’d not long tripped on the stairs after miscalculating my steps and smashed my front tooth on the top step, sending my first baby tooth flying. Thankfully, the pain was short-lived in my mind, I was mere days from my birthday and a surprise trip to Disneyland was coming up. In the middle of packing, I was sat down in front of the TV with my Grandpa Mihail and him putting in these pristine discs, a gaudy logo flashing up on the screen still burned into my retinas to this day: “Gone, but not deleted: A video message from Leanora Stankowski.” The image would flicker for just a moment, always just a moment each time, then she’d appear. A young woman sat in a black leather armchair with a small table to her side and patterned wallpaper behind her. She was in her late 20s with her raven black hair tied in a messy bun, strands curled and dangling down her porcelain face, a beauty mark sitting just beneath her right eye, the pair of them shining like emeralds that caught the first ray of sunshine, black lipstick gave way to shimmering teeth and a smile that made even an oblivious little me feel… lost. “Hi pumpkin, it’s mommy! I hope my little prince is watching the throne while i’m away… how can you be nearly six years old and already losing your baby teeth? You’re growing up too fast, little man!” She puffed out her cheeks as she feigned a frown before giggling. My heart sank in my chest, I knew something wasn’t right even then. Her tone was playful, buoyant and full of joy, like she’d never missed a moment of my life. “Make sure you put your tooth under your pillow tonight, Deda Mihail will make sure the tooth fairy comes and nothing else!” She raised a single finger with a wink, posing for a moment before her face fell, her posture sank and she fell back into the armchair a tad, growing smaller as she coughed. After a moment, she cleared her throat with a quiet dignity and made sure the hand she coughed into went out of shot as she fixated on the camera with a weak smile. “Mommy loves you, my little crown prince. Close your eyes and breathe with me…” I looked at my Grandfather and with tears streaming down his face and a bite on his lip; he put a hand on my shoulder and nodded. I did as I was told and took a long breath in, the air cold and filling my lungs, intoxicating me as I heard her words. The same words i’d come to hear at the end of every video she recorded: “I’ll always be with you.” - And so it went. For every milestone I undertook, there was an accompanying video. When I graduated middle school, when I rode my first bike… even when I broke my first bone, she had a video ready. I was around 11, when biking home from school, I collided with a speeding driver. The bastard didn’t even stop as my small body careened over his windscreen, rolled over the hood and smashed into the concrete, tearing my right arm to pieces. Passers-by said it was a freak accident; that the car just appeared out of nowhere and then vanished. But hell, what do hit & run drivers do? Speed, speed, speed. Medicated up to my eyes and sitting up in hospital, Grandpa handed me a mini-dvd player and the familiar face shot up. I could never tell you in those earlier videos if these were done back to back or months apart, but Mom still looked radiant… albeit with more coughing in each iteration. “Hi pumpkin, it’s mommy! Though, i’m sure by now you’re probably cringing at the mere mention of me referring to myself that way… oh god, do people still say cringe? It’s hard to know what the world you’re in is like anymore, but moms are never supposed to be cool, are they?” She chuckled, a faraway look in her eye as the pit of my stomach expanded. “No…” I thought, tears in my eyes, gripping the sheets with my good hand. “I WANT you to say those things. I WANT you to embarrass me…” “Well, if you’re watching this, then you’ve broken your first bone… I hope it’s a bit later in life and not when you’re so upset you can’t even hear me. But sweetie, this is an important life lesson that I wanted to be there for; pain happens. It’s a part of our world, and everyone in it must experience it. Sometimes it’s physical, like now when your body hurts so much that you wanna yell and cry out. Sometimes it’s emotional, which you get when someone upsets you, hurts your feelings… something you might also feel from seeing my face right now, which I’m sorry for.” She trailed off, that weak smile plastered across her face like the greatest lie ever told. She took a breath, and I heard the quivers in her voice. Both from sadness and from sickness. “BUT, you are my little crown prince, and while you’re watching the throne, I know you’ll do great things and overcome ANYTHING that stands in your way. You know why?” “Why…” I breathed, my body radiating with hot pain but my heart aching. I leaned in as she leaned in, like sharing a secret only we would ever know. “Because you’re my son and my love for you will push you to do anything.” She whispered, my face involuntarily growing into a smile without even realising. “Just don’t look at the wall behind me.” My eyes were fixed on hers, a small sliver of the background visible behind her ear. As my eyes slowly broke from her gaze and travelled over, she spoke again. “DON’T.” A frantic whisper escaped her lips. My eyes snapped back as a pale shade shifted out of sight. Blinking once, I saw she was sitting back in the chair, talking as if nothing had happened. Had I dozed off? I was on high pain medication; it wasn’t impossible… “I’m running out of time, these are only supposed to be short, so i’ll finish up here. “Mommy loves you, my little crown prince! Close your eyes and breathe with me…” Again, I did as instructed and heard a distinct creaking sound from the speakers, undoubtedly her settling into her chair. “I’ll always be with you.” - So the years went, fewer milestone videos popped up. Some of them were simply mundane or not that noteworthy. Not why we’re here. But the usual events; first day as a freshman, last day as a senior, prom night and even an embarrassing one wherein a 17-year-old me had the most uncomfortable 15 minutes of being explained dating etiquette and safe sex by my long-gone mother. By the time I’d reached 21, only four tapes remained. Grandpa Mihail had passed and Grandma Suza was getting on, so they were given to me with the obvious instruction to not watch them until the time was right. And this is the part where things take a turn. A bad breakup, bad life choices, even worse friendship choices with substances readily available, a lifetime of insecurities stemming from no parental figures (all the love in the world to my grandparents, but it’s not the same) and a series of videos from your long-dead mom are enough to fuck anyone up. So, I grabbed a bottle, some pills and put the next video in, planning to binge them before I took my leave. I mean, fuck it, what’s the harm if I’m ending it all, right? The video flickered and cast a long shadow across my dismal apartment before the visage of my mom came into focus. It’d been a couple of years since the last video and in my emotionally unstable, drunken state… I was not prepared for what I saw. Emaciated, sunken eyes and a slack jaw, her tongue hanging out and drooping to the bottom of her chin, thick pungent saliva with her concave chest heaving under the weight of the oxygen machine wrapped around her face. A looming shadow with two bright blue orbs for eyes and jagged pillars for teeth, wrapping its arms around her. It locked eyes with me and cocked its head to the side. “NEW.” It croaked, my skin bubbling with fear and chilling my blood, I had never felt a terror like it. It felt like it knew me and saw into me. I recoiled and in my cocktail of fear and horror, retched up everything I’d downed not 10 minutes earlier. A torrid mixture of bile, acid, pills and booze spread over my carpet as tears ran down my face. My stomach ached and every cell in my body screamed at me in protest. The thoughts swirling in my thick skull were that of disappointment, disgust and repulsiveness. I felt weak, alone and broken as I collapsed onto the floor in the fetal position, sobbing. “Sweetie, it’s Mom.” Through blurred eyes and a haze of pain, I looked at the TV half expecting some emaciated creature to lurch through, but there was my mom. She looked tired, her hair now matted to her head and exhaustion racking her bones, but beauty radiating through her as she held her hands in her lap and leaned forward, smiling. “If you’re watching this… then things are bad. I don’t know how bad, but I can guess. Grandpa wouldn’t have let you watch this if you’d gotten your heart broken or were at that age where emotions are as high as a kite and just as volatile… so I can assume that, much like me, you’re in a bad place…” She coughed and I felt the need to sit up and give her my full attention, this woman no more than 6 years my senior frozen in time still finding ways to command my attention with her every word. It was like I was 5 again. “Sweetie, I know I can’t talk to you like a child anymore, so I won’t. Honestly, I’d been so excited to see you grow up, go through that phase where we bicker and argue over small things before finally settling in the longest and most beautiful phase of our family dynamic…” I watched her lips quiver and eyes glaze over, my own mirroring as she shakily concluded “The one where we’re best friends who always look out for each other.” That broke me. Every emotion I’d trained myself to hide away when kids started asking questions I couldn’t answer, situations I’d wanted my mom in, moments I felt alone… I let it out in one volatile evening of self healing, the words on that tape echoing in my head long after it stopped playing. “The road ahead will be tough without me. It was always going to be. But, you’re the crown prince and you’ll eventually have that throne, survey your kingdom and know you can do ANYTHING and conquer ANYTHING… it’s getting closer now, but we still have some time left. So don’t let whatever is going on beat you, nor the thing after that. The Penguins didn’t, did they? I’m sure Grandpa told you, but they’re my favourite… those little birds share the burden of parenthood, walk over 100 miles and nearly starve to cultivate new life… I’d do all of that and more for you, honey. Because…” She closed her eyes, and I did too, without prompting, we said it together; “I’ll always be with you.” - It took time to get better. All things do. I would spend so many nights in withdrawal with the shakes, vomit, and staring up at a horrific beast looming over my bed. Like the thing on the tv but foggier, it’d imitate my movements and try to get closer. With every step, its eyes would glow just a bit brighter, everything else remaining shrouded in darkness, even if light passed through my curtains. I don’t know how I made it through that time of my life. One night, as it made its way to the foot of my bed, I closed my eyes and breathed on instinct, reciting my mother’s mantra. I suppose in moments of crisis; we turn to our most personal coping mechanisms and I wasn’t about to go back to the bottle. When I finished, it was gone. Over the years, I completed my program, got clean and went through therapy to cope with the grief. When I hit 26, I met the 2nd most important woman in my life; Natalie. She knew what it was like to go through pain, to go through suffering alone. To play with the wrong demons. We fell in love; we got engaged and eventually married. As she had been countless times before, mom was there to congratulate us. Natalie had seen some tapes, but this was her first one that in its own way was directed to her. Mom was nearing the end by this point, her thin frame barely clinging to her always beautiful dresses and her skin beginning to stretch like paper. She took great gulps of air from the oxygen tank before talking, but somehow retained that exuberance she’d always had. “I knew you’d find someone wonderful eventually, Nick. Penguins always find their mate for life and you’d be no exception!” She giggled through strained coughs, turning her head slightly as if she could see Natalie. “I don’t know you, but I bet you’re the most beautiful woman in the world if my crown prince chose you. Well, after me of course!” Another laugh, this time accompanied by tears from the two of us. “There’s just one more to go… So, look after each other. Love well and experience everything you can. And don’t forget…” Natalie gripped my hand with her left, a hand on her bump with the right as we closed our eyes. I could hear the scratching sound more prominently now, but I kept my eyes shut, not wanting to ruin the moment. “I’ll always be with you.” - We were so excited to have a baby. Natalie had come from a big family and was eager to start expanding our own. Even though I was reluctant, I couldn’t help but share in her enthusiasm when so many late nights were spent fawning over baby names, cute outfits and lofty plans for the future on how our kid would even behave around us. Determined to be “cool parents”. But in between all of that, my mind would cast back to those tapes of my mom, the only parent I really knew. I wanted to use them as a guidebook for my own steps. She’d been such an integral part of life, it seemed… odd to not have her in it now. Keeping the last tape separate, I re-watched the entire set one by one, reliving those moments I couldn’t truly appreciate until my own burgeoning journey into parenthood. But when I got to the broken bone tape, I froze. Once again, she leaned into the camera and whispered, eyes full of fright and panic. “Don’t look.” I pushed pause on the video and took a moment. Surely I was just highly medicated at the time, there couldn’t *really* be anything there, right? So why was I so reluctant to move my eyes to the right to find out? Taking a breath, I moved the video frame by frame and watched the corner where her face didn’t cover. That shadow. That same fucking shadow. Looming in the background, eyes burning red with fury. “DON’T LOOK. DON’T LOOK. DON’T LOOK. DON’T LOOK.” I jumped, the video was skipping, stuck on the sounds of my mother’s panic stricken voice begging me not to stare, but I couldn’t help it. I stared and watched this creature take confident, unnatural and twitchy strides from the background, getting ever closer to the camera. I saw the muscles on its face twist and undulate as it pressed its cheeks up into a twisted grin, the sight of rot and earth and unspeakable things in its mouth all displaying themselves in full glory as it intonated one word that sent screams through my home before shutting off. “SOON.” - Natalie was 8 months gone, petite and a history of prior drug abuse. They said her heart just couldn’t take it, her body gave out, and that it was a miracle our daughter survived. I took it all in and yet none of it as I cradled my entire universe in my arms, the second greatest woman I’d ever known now taken from me too. “Phoebe.” I breathed, unable to take my eyes off of her perfect little face as she slept soundly just 12ft from her dead mother. “Her name is Phoebe, and she is the crown princess.” Somewhere in the corner of my eye, a shadow cast itself over Natalie’s bed, right as they put the sheet over her. From that night on, there would always be noises outside our home. Always faint howling. Always a solitary spot in the front of the property where no light could touch it. For a while, I forgot about the videos. Forgot about everything that wasn’t Phoebe. Raising her became priority #1 and I would work any extra hours I needed to, give up any friendship I had to and spite myself in whatever way was necessary to ensure that my perfect girl slept soundly at night. It wasn’t until Phoebe’s 2nd birthday last week that I finally got the courage to dig out the videos and watch the last one. How many times had I sat in a home, emotionally destroyed and at a crossroads in my life, waiting to see this woman’s face and hope she’d somehow have the magic words to guide me? As the picture flickered on, the logo shining up on screen; I cast my head back with a mixture of surprise and sadness as I realised the significance of the year; I was older than her now. “Hi sweetie, I guess we’ve finally reached the end, huh?” Her voice sounded… younger. I looked down and saw her standing up. No chair or wallpaper in sight. It looked like she was recording this in her bedroom, a picture of health, all things considered. Her eyes red from crying but her voice unwavering, like she’d prepared these words carefully. “This is technically the final video for you, but the first for me. Weird how this all works, but this is how it needs to happen… if you’re watching this, you’ve got your own little princess to protect. The crown prince has now become the king, and I couldn’t be prouder!” She beamed, but my stomach tightened at those words. “Your own little princess.” I breathed, my chest tightening. How did she know? “I imagine you’re now wondering how I know. Well, that’s not the important part. What’s important is if you saw what you think you saw. Within the videos, between the frames. There is something lurking here, Nick. Something ancient.” I felt the house shudder, settling into place, no doubt. But I couldn’t separate myself from the fear running through my body. “It feeds on misfortune. It watches from the shadows and waits for small, tiny windows to make itself known. I don’t know where it came from or what it is, but I know what it wants…” A rumbling behind me, the sound of wood splintering and creaking. The unmistakable sound of tapping that i’d heard every time we did the mantra at the end of a video. I was shaking, but I didn’t stop watching. “It wants us, Nick. We seem to be a… source for it. When it finishes using us, it moves on. A long time ago... I was told that if I captured it in film, solidified it in these repeatable tapes, it would slow it down… maybe even stop it. I have no idea if it’ll work, but you deserve to know now that you can almost certainly see it too. Because if it doesn’t stop here, if YOU start to see it… start to experience misfortune…” My heart skipped. Tripping over the stairs and narrowly missing cracking my skull as a child, losing my first tooth. The hit and run that shattered my arm, my first broken bone. Marrying and losing Natalie, my first love… Oh no. Oh god, no. I willed my body to move, to leap out of the seat and rush to Phoebe’s room, but I had to hear the rest through, screaming at my mom to tell me the solution. “When your Deda Mihail told me about our curse… how he took me in after my Father died... about how it passes from father to daughter, mother to son, and so forth… You can try to avoid it, but it always finds a way…" She looked down in shame, clutching at her sleeves. "Truth be told; I didn’t want to get pregnant. But, things have a way of happening and I knew I couldn’t give you up.” She glanced behind her, something off camera scaring her into grabbing at her arms and rubbing them, shame and fear on her face. “I’m so sorry, baby. But I want you to know that there is power in these words. In these videos. I will do EVERYTHING I can to protect you, just like I know you’ll protect your child. No matter who it hurts in the process. Because…” One last time. I just had to close my eyes one last time and it would all be over. I did it on instinct. It didn’t matter that there was a slew of sounds alerting me to an invading presence in my home. That it was rapidly approaching me. All that mattered was the mantra. “I’ll be here for you, always.” But what I heard parroting me back was not my mother. A guttural, inhuman voice barked back the phrase and I swear I felt its breath inches from my face. I felt eyes unrestricted by pupils or sockets spin around, focusing on my weakest point. But I didn’t waver. After a few agonising moments, it darted away and out of view, leaving only the static of the TV to keep me aware that I wasn’t in fact dreaming. As soon as I knew it was safe, I ran to Phoebe’s room and checked on her, convinced that she was next in a long line of losses. Convinced that some otherworldly spectre had taken her from me. Convinced I would be alone again. You can imagine my relief when I opened the door to find her softly sleeping, clutching her teddy bear with his own attached blankie. The same toy my mom had given me. I looked at her with the enormity of the situation overshadowing me. The realisation she was the same age I was when my mom got diagnosed. The realisation that soon, I would be the one making a slew of videos for milestones I’d never get to see her inherit. My crown princesses’ kingdom of nightmares. And I don’t know if this is what my mother intended, but I took those words at the end to heart. “Protect your child. No matter who it hurts in the process.” - I’m sorry, everyone. I don’t know HOW this translates across mediums, but there is power in describing an old and malevolent force. Just like there is seeing it in the corner of your eye or when you experience a lucky break from death. A mis-step here and a wrong turn there. You’ll always see it. My mother gave up everything to buy time, give me the chance to right the wrongs and find a better way, a way that involves my daughter growing up with her father in her life, without the plague of whatever this is hanging over either of us. Maybe you won’t be the one, maybe it will simply look at you and find you not to its liking as it did me that fateful night, inches away from my flesh and determining that I simply wasn’t “ripe enough” yet. But someone will come across this, and it will bite. It will bite and never let go. Be it nightmares, sleep paralysis, a slew of unfortunate mishaps or something flitting in the corner of your eye, it’ll be there. Whatever it is. Waiting. I wish you well, and I hope you don’t judge me too harshly. But to me and to Phoebe, family is everything. So close your eyes and take a deep breath. Because they’ll always be with you. submitted by /u/tjaylea to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

Updated @ 11:28 AM CST 2022/01/29: Sadly Ubisoft have admitted that the low bitrate audio cannot be improved because it is not feasible. It apparently requires an overhaul of their audio system from the ground up, likely induced by engine limitations. It also implies that any future AC game using the same engine will suffer the same consequences. Updated @ 11:55 AM CST 2021/08/06: The official thread has been split into multiple topics, for the benefit of isolating all the individual audio problems people are experiencing. Here is a link to the updated thread covering low quality audio Updated @ 10:00 AM CST 2020/12/01: Thanks to the attention of my support thread on the Ubisoft Forum, Ubisoft have finally acknowledged that there are audio problems. They are urging users to reply with further information Updated @ 11:55 AM CST 2020/11/20: I had no idea this thread would resonate with so many of you, please excuse the pun. You have my sincere thanks for the reactions, comments, recommendations, corrections and affirmations. TL;DR summary The audio quality throughout the AC series has been progressively getting worse. This post analyses Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla, exposing the fact that heavily compressed low bitrate 24,000 Hz audio is utilized across all three titles. Origins and Odyssey was less noticeable because it mixed higher quality 44,100 Hz ambient environment sounds with low resolution 24,000 Hz combat, character and UI sounds. Valhalla was recently discovered to be the worst offender since it uses 24,000 Hz audio across the board. The aim here is to provide a technical explanation, cross-comparison and to raise awareness of this bad trend. Audio is a fundamental immersive component of any AAA video game, and should be presented with the same level of quality that you would expect within the film and TV industry. Introduction This started out as a technical analysis of the in-game audio present in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, but it has since evolved into a topic of a wider scope; if you haven't played the past three AC games, Pandemic notwithstanding, let me be the first to tell you that we are in a predicament. The idea of this thread is to not only educate, but try and prevent a problem before it becomes more of a problem. Since this is a technical subject, there will be references to sample rate, bit rate and codecs, but I feel like it is more common knowledge these days, especially due to the rise of content creators, or anyone who regularly deals with MP3 and video files. Admittedly, there is much to talk about regarding Assassin's Creed, especially if you're of the opinion that the series died after the 2nd/Brotherhood or 3rd game. Set that conversation aside for a moment, grab a squeezy ball, punch a pillow, and let's talk about how Ubisoft are starting to set a horrible trend for in-game audio. So I caved in like many others, gleeing at the prospect of virtually visiting my homeland as an axe-wielding maniac, and decided to pre-order Assassin's Creed Valhalla after thoroughly enjoying my time eliminating the cultists from Odyssey. On launch day during my first playthrough I noticed something that sounded eerily familiar. I game using a pair of Mackie MR624 studio monitors, or if I feel like giving my neighbours a moment's rest, with my Beyerdynamic DT-770 PRO headphones. The audio I was hearing sounded muffled, or in layman's terms, a bit like listening through a pair of tin cans that were accidentally dropped into a cup of earl grey. Analysis Enough was enough, I put my investigative cap on and started by first extracting the audio files using Wwise-unpacker, and proceeding to analyse the files using Adobe Audition. I discovered that the SFX are saved at a 24,000 Hz sample rate, with a variable bitrate that peaks at around 70 kbps. Yes, mystery unravelled, it really is that bad. Those of you who do not fully appreciate this technical blunder, might better appreciate it if I put it this way. Visually, it is the equivalent of removing 50% of the colours in a painting, and leaving smears where the details are. Here is a screenshot of my analysis. Looking at the Frequency Analysis tab, you can very clearly observe a frequency rolloff at around 11000 Hz. The low bitrate issue is also not just limited to the PC release. It is affecting all platforms. This is an unusually strict choice of compression considering that the English audio and SFX only take up 4.5 GB of hard disk space. Standard CD audio is at 44,100 Hz (DVD standard is 48,000 Hz), and those are the two sample rates that nearly every streaming service, sound device and operating system are designed to work with. Now, you may have heard people say "Oh, but your ears cannot hear above 20 kHz, so the missing detail is irrelevant". Unfortunately, there is complexity surrounding this issue that the statement fails to address. Firstly, when you take a 24,000 Hz sound, the highest audible frequency will be 12,000 Hz. This is already 8000 Hz lower than what the human ear can detect. When frequencies are missing from the original sound, it also negatively impacts the entire representation of that sound. The more you remove, the more hollow and less defined it becomes. Are you curious to hear the difference? Side by side audio comparison This morning I recorded a YouTube video to highlight the differences between 24,000 Hz and 48,000 Hz. Technical analysis of the poor quality audio used on Assassin's Creed If you'd rather hear a lossless version of the presentation, you can download the audio file here. Alternatively, you may also download the individual sound files used for the basis of this comparison: ¹sounds_sfx_3369_high_quality & ²sounds_sfx_3369_low_quality To help provide an even more visual description of the issue at hand, here's a comparitive study of sample rates performed by a reputable audio company. The Nyquist theorem It has been over ten years since I last sat in an audio theory class, so I'm likely over-simplifying the technical details of this theorem. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, and in addition, I would highly suggest reading an external official scientific resource. The Nyquist theorem describes this better. Named after a Swedish-born American electronic engineer who worked on the speed of telegraphs in the 1920s, the Nyquist theorem states that a waveform must be sampled twice in order to get a true representation. The sampling frequency must be at least twice the highest signal frequency recorded in order to be effective. Here is a table showing the Sample rate vs. Highest Frequency. Sample rate Highest Frequency 22,050 Hz 11,025 Hz 24,000 Hz 12,000 Hz 30,000 Hz 15,000 Hz 44,100 Hz 22,050 Hz 48,000 Hz 24,000 Hz As a result, if the highest frequency a human can hear is around 20,000 Hz, then 40,000 Hz is the lowest sampling rate you can use to accurately represent any sound that a human can hear. If you are listening to a recording of "bad audio", but to you it sounds acceptable, the issues are probably one of the following: Bad equipment: headphones, speakers or an improper sound configuration. The highest frequency of the sound in question was one half of the sample rate used. Your hearing is damaged or has deteriorated naturally with age. By the time we approach 40 years old, most of us will not able to discern individual tones above 15,000 Hz. If you would like to test your ears, try this Human Hearing Benchmark. As a safety precaution, only perform this test at a medium or low volume. Even though the highest frequency our ears can detect is around 20,000 Hz, the sound frequencies that exists beyond our hearing range (overtones) greatly colour and impact the sound we hear. Therefore when we record digital audio and cut out those frequencies above 22,050 Hz with a high pass filter (we have to use a filter or else they would cause aliasing or noise in the sample), we are actually changing the original sound that we were trying to record. If you raise the sample rate, the recording will be more accurate. The trade-off is that it takes up more storage. Partly sourced from another post. ScienceDirect overview. This theorem is still used today to digitize analog signals, nearly 100 years after Nyquist was an engineer at Bell Laboratories. Oi mate! Don't take me for a mug. This is when I had a revelation, realising that this issue has been slowly getting worse and worse with every new Assassin's Creed title released. The games are getting bigger, and sacrifices are being made as a result. I first noticed it with AC:Origins, but because some sounds are higher quality than others, it masks the issue to an extent. Let me clarify further. Both Origins and Odyssey have high quality stereo ambient background sounds that are bounced to 44,100 Hz with an average variable bitrate of 241 kbps, but then you have all of the mono UI, voice, interaction, footstep and fighting sounds that are bounced to 24,000 Hz, all lacking any convincing spatialization, unceremoniously resulting in a bubbling cauldron that is extremely disconcerting to the trained ear. I say trained, but if you take a minute to search online you will discover that gamers, including some gamers with hearing impairments, picked up on this very quickly and early on. Why? We care about sound. To summarise how Origins and Odyssey attempts to mask the issue: Even though certain frequencies are missing from non-ambient sounds, the detailed ambience and music in the background compensates psychoacoustically for what is missing. Valhalla sounds worse because it sacrificed more, and it does not have any high quality ambient sounds. There are far too many links to post, so here's only a small subset of threads that I hand picked, all complaining about the same thing. First up, Origins. ¹Really poor audio quality for voices ²I can't get into origins because of the bad audio quality ³What's up with Assassins Creed Origins audio? ⁴Audio quality is so bad for AC Origins ⁵Terrible Audio Quality Origins Does it get better with Odyssey? Not exactly. ¹Terrible audio ²Audio quality for Odyssey ³Anyone experience poor audio quality with Odyssey? ⁴Audio quality is so bad ⁵Does the audio sound weird for anyone else? Aaaaannndd Valhalla. ¹Why have no critics mentioned the terrible audio? ²Has anyone notice the weird audio quality in the recent AC games? ³Assassin's Creed Valhalla audio is the worst of any game I've played Audio is terrible in AC valhalla ⁴Bad audio in the game ⁵Assassin's Creed Valhalla audio is still bad and horrid ⁶Terrible sound on PC. It's also worth noting that these games support DTS Digital Surround. This can be confirmed by observing the DTS logo printed on the disc itself. DTS audio bit rate values can be 1.5 Mbps 48/96 kHz, 16/24 bits (or with DTS-HD the bit rate can be 4.5 or 6.144 Mbps for encoded data), but due to the heavily compressed nature of the audio files in-game, it is not fully taking advantage of what this technology has to offer. The Why? My first question was: is the sacrifice of quality an attempt to try and cram as much in to meet a specific distribution criteria? I've spoken to a few people within the gaming industry personally about this, and the general consensus seems to be: Yes. Please pitch in here if you've had any first hand experience dealing with this. Realistically, it should only affect products within the physical realm, such as trying to compress the game in order to fit it onto a 50 GB (dual-layer) Blu-ray disc. Digital media does not suffer from this limitation, can be downloaded at our convenience and is much cheaper to distribute. If they provided the sound at 44,100 Hz (CD Quality) with an average variable bitrate of 128-192 kbps, as an example, similar to the quality you would expect from streaming a song on Spotify, you would see the total size of the in-game audio increase from its heavily compressed 4.5 GB to approximately 9-12 GB. At a minimum it would be 9 GB since we are doubling the sample rate. Still not very large, but it would be a light and day difference for sound quality. If you're curious to experiment with file size estimations, here's a neat audio filesize calculator. Is there a solution? The idealistic solution would be to re-export all sound effects and voice using a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, with the OGG quality parameter set between -q 0.4 and -q 0.6. They could then deliver this as a compulsory patch or a free regional high quality sound pack DLC. Popular games such as Skyrim, Fallout 4, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Call of Duty: Warzone, Monster Hunter: World and even Ubisoft's own Watch Dogs 2 have all received DLC addons that increase the quality of the game experience. Final thoughts Is it acceptable to allow such a fundamental aspect of a game to suffer a significant loss of frequencies in order to meet that distribution criteria? Absolutely not. This sets a neglectful precedent and one that not only severely destroys immersion, but attempts to normalize poor quality sound to the masses. Here's another question for you. If you bought a Blu-ray box set of your favourite show or movie trilogy, would you be satisified knowing that they replaced the lossless DTS-HD 5.1 audio with muddy, tinny, anti-climatic explosions worthy of being peer-traded on KaZaA and Limewire? (I was born in the 80's so please excuse the reference). Consumer expectations within the film and gaming industry aren't that different, VR is evolving and the lines are blurring with every new AAA title. We are starting to expect the same kind of treatment: Detailed facial micro expressions, lip syncing, motion capture, in-game characters based on the likeness of real world actors and actresses, quality voice acting, and dare I say it, high quality sound effects, more commonly referred to as Foley within the film industry. I do not game in one room with a sub-par home media center, and watch films in another where my favourite monolith shaped speakers sit in each corner. If they were sentient and had a mouth and a stomach, I would expect vomit on the floor every time I embark on my journey with Odin. Instead, I have to deal with my audio producer brain punching my cochlea from the inside. Final, final thoughts Oddly many of the official reviews of AC:Valhalla I have read so far completely fail to mention the audio issues, and this is concerning. The issues are so obvious that they must have either purposefully omitted the critique, have sub-par sound systems, or couldn't care less. I remember back in the day when video games magazine reviewers took pride in providing a detailed opinion of sound effects and music. Fond memories of reading Zzap!64, Amiga Power and GamesMaster back in the day. How do you guys feel about it? To me, the $60 price tag is a bit of a kick in the teeth, and I feel that Ubisoft should really have audio technicalities down to a T. Is this what we are meant to expect for a title with a AAA budget? Am I crazy for writing or caring this much? Ubisoft could learn a thing or two from the guys and gals responsible for Middle-earth: Shadow of War. They released 4K cinematics for free, along with higher quality in-game assets. We deserve to optionally download HD quality assets for Assassin's Creed, especially since there are many gamers among us that invest a great deal of time and money into our home cinema set-ups. Here is a current thread following this topic on the Ubisoft Player Support Forum: Audio Issues: Bitrate / Dynamics & Balance / Muffled Sounds / Stuttering / Volume etc. | POST HERE If you read this all the way to the end, thank you. Let's hope that the trend of heavily compressed audio dies hard. On a side note, since I've had a few people ask: I'm a music producer and songwriter on the side. Software dev by trade. Gaming, music and audio means everything to me. Recommended listening and current favourite soundtracks. Links provided where appropriate. Katana ZERO Original Soundtrack by LudoWic and Bill Kiley Castlevania Symphony of the Night by Michiru Yamane Arcanum by Ben Houge Halo 2 Volume 1: Original Soundtrack The Floor is Jelly Original Soundtrack by disasterpeace Anything from the Final Fantasy series, especially if it's by Nobuo Uematsu. The FFVIII Remake is great if you prefer orchestrated works. Mark Morgan's work, especially Fallout since it was the first PC game I ever played Michael Hoenig's Baldur's Gate II theme (wish it was longer) The criminally overlooked Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha Original Soundtrack by Shinji Hosoe, Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara. Sakura Mankai is my ringtone. Assassin's Creed Original Soundtrack of course. Favourites are II, III, Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla. Dark Souls, Demon's Souls and Bloodborne Divinity Original Sin 2 by Borislav Slavov as well as Larian's earlier games with Kirill Pokrovsky The incredible jazz music by Jerry Martin from The Sims 1 Westworld Original Soundtrack submitted by /u/captainstarpaw to r/Games [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/SparklyEyedCosmos to r/Aquariums [link] [comments]

Bunch of stuff for sale. I've done a bunch of transactions here and in other places but I am bad about doing the whole feedback thing. Contact me with your Zip and I can give you a shipping estimate. Item Notes Price SNES Super Everdrive with added DSP Official from Krikzz DSP and Oscillator added- In a Super NES Shell(shell discolored) 75.00 shipped Soft modded Xbox 1.6 Mobo, DVD drive still works. 300GB HDD, console only, has scratches. 55.00 local pickup or shipping extra. Marvel VS Capcom 3 LE PS3 Has wear, with everything pictured. SOLD 10.00 Guncon 3 Namco Untested, no sensors. 9.00 2 NES Official Controllers work great, some wear. 11.00 Converter Adapter box to use Neo Geo controllers on a NES/SNES 25.00 Oriiginal Xbox thick Component cable Custom made 20.00 shipped Famiclone that looks like a PS2 System and 2 pads(no AC-uses Sega Genesis AC 12.00 FDS stick in a Famicom drive Drive only, eject switch switches disk sides, dual color read/write LED. USB port in rear 95.00 shipped Sega Genesis Model 2 System only-Plays US/JP games with region switch 25.00 shipped DS 3 CIB Games lot Shrek Forever After/Ice Age Continental Drift/Frozen Olaf's Quest 13.00 shipped DSI XL Burgundy GB emulator/hiyacfw/etc. 2GB SD card My system, getting rid of it because I found a mint one. Overall great, has some scratches on lower screen 40.00 shipped XBOX 360 Deathsmiles LE Faceplate in box. New in Box SOLD 10.00 Sega Master System 3D Glasses manual OK condition 8.00 Gameboy SP AGS 101 Manual Last page wavy 5.00 Super Famicom Street Fighter 2 Turbo in Shell back of cart yellow/shell has wear 12.00 shipped PS2 Japanese Castlevania Konamistyle Set Missing print and obi is damaged, everything else is like new 65.00 Shipped Sega Genesis official 6 Button Pad Made in Japan Works as new 19.00 shipped Dreamcast VMU 2 available w battery covers working no batteries 5.00 Game System Cart Instr. Box Price Nintendo---------- --- --- Gremlins 2 The New Batch((label poor) NES C 9.00 Robocop NES C 6.00 Mario Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games DS CIB 6.00 Super Mario Kart DS (AUS version. plays the same) DS C 7.00 Bakugan with figure (box poor) DS CIB SOLD 5.00 My Little Pony Pinky Pie's Party DS C 2.00 Hannah Montana DS C 2.00 Bomberman DS IB 4.00 New Super Mario Bros DS IB 6.00 Rayman DS IB SOLD 5.00 Lego Pirates of the Carribean 3DS C 5.00 Super Star Wars Super Famicom C 20.00 Disney Adventures in the Magic Kingdom NES C 6.00 Trojan NES C 7.00 Sega---------- --- --- Hot Hits CD+G Pack-In 2 CDs Sega CD CIB 5.00 Sony---------- --- --- Kingdom Hearts 2 (some marks on disc but plays fine) PS2 CIB 6.00 Shooter Starfighter Sanvein(damage in shrink) Playstation NEW 8.00 Assassins Creed Liberation PS Vita C 8.00 Final Fantasy Anthology(Discs are actually IV and V Discs work have scratches/crack in case-etc. Playstation CIB 5.00 Xbox---------- --- --- Batman Arkham City Xbox 360 CIB 7.00 Dragon Spirit PC Engine IB 5.00 Accesories---------- --- --- Dreamcast Video cable Dreamcast Cable 5.00 Clear Red Official PS2 Memory Card PS2 C SOLD 6.00 Nintendo 64 256K Clear memory card N64 C 3.00 Black Official PS2 Memory Card PS2 C 6.00 Logitech Cordless Precision Wireless Dongle (for the older controller) Playstation 1 C 5.00 Official Sega Genesis 3 button pad Genesis C 6.00 Turbo Duo stereo video cable (3rd party) Turbo Duo Cable 10.00 Other---------- --- --- Capcom 30th E3 Pin New in baggie- 3 available PIN NEW 6.00 Super Mario 30th Square Pin PIN 3.00 DS kids games Lot of 16- 20.00 shipped Mooshlings Theme Park Bolt Monster High Skulltimate roller maze Hannah Montana My Little Pony Build A bear Barbie Groom Glam Pups Bubble Guppies Madagascar 3 Squinkies Lalaloopsy I love Puppies Paws Claws Regal Resort Nickelodeon Team Umizoomi Zhu Zhu Pets Purr Pals submitted by /u/CRTdrone to r/GameSale [link] [comments]