#basically a summarized reference document

[lnane]

anyways after tomorrow ill hopefully be finished with this project so in case anyone ever decides they want Maztica to be a location their players can travel to in dnd then just hmu i got the resource for that

[boatem-probler]

I Watched Tokyo Soul So You Don't Have To!

…And it only took like Nine Months.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / Wrap-Up - You Are Here!

I’ve ended up with 12 posts summarizing all 50-odd episodes of Tokyo Soul, plus the specials and the finale, which aren’t numbered. And, like @paranoidpug before me, I kept track of all the particularly traumatic events that befell Grian, the injuries he sustained, and the deaths that he witnessed, for the purpose of making sort of a Grian Angst Index.

The Google Document containing the text of all my summaries, a shorter YHS summary for my own reference, and this wrap-up post, currently sits at 68 pages. Absolute Insanity. Thank you for coming with me on this journey.

Content Warnings: Tokyo Soul as a whole contains violence, guns, police and military brutality, animal death, stalking and sexual harassment of characters who are minors (by both other minor characters and adult characters), racist humor, homophobic humor, transphobic humor, ableist humor, basically any kind of purposefully offensive humor you can think of. And also the Minions from Despicable Me.

Tokyo Soul Wrap-Up Table of Contents:

Explanation of what Tokyo Soul is and why I even did this

Bare-bones summary of all of Tokyo Soul

Potential Time Gaps

The final Grian Trauma Count

Rambling about various things I think are interesting

Vague notes about the Yandere prequel because I skimmed it

What do I even plan to do with all of this?

Explanations

In 2015-2016, Grian was in this dumb “edgy” Minecraft RP series called Yandere High School and its fever dream of a sequel, Tokyo Soul. Many people in MCYT fandom spaces either watched this series when they were young and remember it with at least some degree of nostalgia, or stumbled onto it later and are simply morbidly fascinated by the fact that Grian of all people was in this thing.

And some of these people like to add little bits of lore from this series into Grian’s backstory in their fics, mainly for angst purposes, thus adding more people to the “morbidly fascinated” count.

However, Yandere High School is a difficult show to actually watch, because it is not a good show. The pacing is horribly slow, the humor had already aged like milk before the first video was even posted, and the whole thing is kind of a weeaboo nightmare.

So, in 2022, to assist everyone who encountered something from the show in a fic and was confused, and so that these people wouldn’t have to actually go and watch the series themselves, @/paranoidpug watched the entirety of Yandere High School and wrote summaries of it. They’re very entertaining summaries.

But what of Tokyo Soul? Popular wisdom has it that Tokyo Soul is much worse than Yandere High School, as well as a lot weirder, and none had yet accomplished the feat of summarizing it. I have the impression that most people largely ignore it when writing their fics, as is, of course, their right.

I, however, am a Sweat.

The thing you have to understand about me is that I am incredibly incredibly autistic about Stories and Storytelling, that stuff is like my greatest passion in life. So I like to go a lot harder than I strictly need to when it comes to my own writing, and I don’t really like to write a fanfiction unless I have all the pieces of the canon at my disposal.

And another thing you have to understand about me is that I’m obsessed with metafiction. And the MCYT fandom is great for metafiction, because the fiction itself is so malleable, and different creators stitch their fictions together in different ways, and different fans stitch these fictions together in different ways. And Minecraft gets a bit meta itself with the End Poem.

So I ended up becoming kind of fascinated by playing around with what could happen if you grafted YHS onto the rest of Grian’s oeuvre, particularly Evolution and the Life Series, because Taurtis is in Evo, and the Watchers can be really meta as well, and then I found out Lizzie was in Tokyo Soul……

To put it another way, basically what I’m trying to do here is take all the bricks from a bunch of different Lego sets and use them to make something that isn’t in any of those sets. And in order to do that properly, I need to have all the bricks from all the Lego sets, and I need to know what they were intended to be so I can figure out the best way to reinterpret them.

Which means I needed to watch all of Tokyo Soul. So I figured I might as well summarize it too.

Was it worth it? Yes, to Me Specifically, because of the way that I am.

Was it an overall enjoyable experience? No. I mean, there were individual things I found enjoyment in, but overall? No.

And like, it’s not even because the show is bad, I like plenty of things that are bad! There are things I like that have terrible pacing, there are things I like where shit just Happens, there are things I like that make insensitive jokes (I mean, I made a somewhat niche Homestuck reference just in the last summary I wrote).

I think it’s like, because your entire experience of the show is so strongly filtered through Sam Gladiator’s perspective, like he is literally the camera, and he is not a good cameraman. And he’s constantly herding everyone around really unsubtly, like every two seconds he’s like “okay well we have to go HERE now and do THIS thing”. And he’s the one who reads everyone’s lines when they type in the chat and he’s sooooo bad at it. And of course the most egregious examples of the show’s offensive sense of humor are his sense of humor.

Like, he’s just a really fucking annoying guy to be around and because of the format of the show he is inescapable. If he just wasn’t there I would be eating that shit up. I like trash! Just… not this trash. What I really like is what I can make using this trash.

But what IS this trash, you may ask. You may also ask me to stop blabbering and get to what you’re really here for. So here it is:

Summary

After the events of Yandere High School, Sam, Taurtis, Grian, and Domrao are put into “witness protection” in “Tokyo”, although Grian is briefly sent to Tokyo, Canada instead. At school, one of their teachers is Literally Toriel Undertale. Another teacher is Geode, who is very obviously an alien and has a strange fixation on Taurtis.

Their guidance counselor, Señor Loro, makes everyone wrestle him to get their class schedules. He has several pet goats, which are being preyed upon by The Chupacabra. Señor Loro gives the boys guns and enlists their help in hunting down the chupacabra, but they’re unsuccessful. Grian is pissed the fuck off that none of their teachers are actually teaching them anything.

Taurtis goes missing (the original Taurtis actually dies during this time, but we don’t find that out yet), so Sam and Grian get jobs at a superstore, where they form an enmity with another employee, Jason, before quitting.

When Taurtis wanders back to their house, Sam informs him they’re going to kill Jason. In the process of attempting to do this, they chase him into the school building at night, where they get distracted because Geode is in the pool creating a whole bunch of Taurtis Clones. They break the machine Geode is using to do this, and manage to escape with a handful of the clones.

Sam then locks Grian in the basement, as we find out later.

While Grian is in the basement, the chupacabra kills Toriel and is hired as her replacement, “Mr. Chupa”. Sam and Taurtis find a note in Taurtis’s gym locker informing them that the original Taurtis was killed by Geode before he made all those clones. Then the clones start exploding one by one, because they have an “expiration date”. They find out there’s an antidote in Geode’s house, so they break in and steal it so that Main Clone Taurtis doesn’t explode.

Grian is let out of the basement just in time for the Star Wars Special, in which a lot happens and none of it is of any consequence. Grian does learn that Taurtis is dead and a clone, and that one of their teachers was killed and replaced by the chupacabra, but he doesn’t react strongly to either of these pieces of information.

Lizzie LDShadowlady comes to visit, and gets to witness the madness that is Grian’s everyday life. While she’s there, Geode gets the class to help him summon his alien contacts.

They show one of Sam’s friends around the city while Geode shows some other aliens around the city. Sam’s friend is doubtful about whether they’re actually in Japan. Then they get in trouble with both the mafia and the police, again.

Taurtis goes missing again (he was kidnapped by aliens). Sam and Grian are taken to the police station, but not to be arrested – instead, the SWAT team wants them to take care of their alien problem for them. “Taking care of it” mostly involves Sam shooting up a hospital.

The mafia inform Sam and Grian that they have “your friend”, who they assume to be Taurtis, and they try to rob the superstore to get ransom money. It doesn’t go well, and they end up in a shootout with the cops. This time, they do get arrested, and the police coerce them into helping them take out the mafia. The mafia don’t actually have Taurtis, by the way, they have one of the other clones.

Taurtis returns! At school, Mr. Chupa gets the class to summon Cthulhu so he can ask for the winning lottery numbers. Aliens bring their old teacher Rowan back as a Terminator robot in order to kill them (I think? This kind of never gets resolved), leading into the One Punch Man Special, in which Taurtis shaves his hair off to become One Punch Man.

They kill a bunch of incredibly weird aliens on a big spaceship parked above the town, and then Taurtis duels the alien leader to the death. Sam explodes the ship. After this, more weird aliens continue to show up to duel Taurtis to the death. These ones bring Minions with them.

Mr. Chupa summons Cthulhu again, and Cthulhu tells everyone that Sam is going to destroy the world. Grian drinks a Sleeping Chaos Potion he swiped from Cthulhu. The boys take a joyride in the spaceship of one of the aliens Taurtis killed, and accidentally leave Grian in Canada again. While he’s gone, Sam and Taurtis roleplay as superheroes for a couple episodes, until Grian shows up again in a different spaceship that he stole somehow.

Another of Sam’s friends turns up, and she and the gang end up having to stay behind after school to help Mr. Chupa with another ritual. She messes up the words somehow, and summons a portal to the demon realm. Mr. Chupa demands the kids go in and figure out how to close it. Inside the portal, Cthulhu tells them the only way to close it is to sacrifice the person who opened it to a Pit Monster, so Grian does.

Mr. Chupa needs some people to go down to the school basement (which didn’t exist until just then) to get him more ritual books, and the boys volunteer themselves. They find The Necronomicon, and get transported to an alternate timeline. Grian and the Necronomicon initially hate each other, but then the Necronomicon starts manipulating him and within an afternoon he becomes concerningly attached to it. Sam takes it from him by force, and then an Evil Alternate Universe Dom shows up and takes it from Sam.

They decide to wait until tomorrow to get the Necronomicon back from Evil Dom. This is a mistake, because overnight, Evil Dom uses the book to summon a bunch of Minions that eat people and turn them into more Minions. This happens to Taurtis. Sam and Grian get an antidote, but it just kills him instead of curing him. They go kill Evil Dom and get the Necronomicon back from him, and it tells them they can just go to another alternate timeline and steal their Taurtis.

Once they get there, they follow Alternate Taurtis, Alternate Sam, and Alternate Grian around for most of a school day, then kill Alternate Sam and Alternate Grian. Taurtis is upset with them, because he went through a lot to find those versions of Sam and Grian, kill their Taurtis and replace him, and fend off all the other Sam-and-Grians trying to kidnap him. But then the universe they’re in starts imploding, so he ends up going with Sam and Grian anyway.

When they arrive back in their original universe, though, there’s nothing there except their completely empty house floating in a void. Cthulhu and the Necronomicon thank them for connecting all the universes, allowing Minions to devour all of reality. Cthulhu preserved their house for them and made them immortal as a reward. He promptly fucks off, leaving the boys to sit with this for the rest of eternity.

Time Gaps

Some of the arcs/recording sessions very clearly lead into one another, but some leave room for there to be some amount of time between them that could be used for fanfiction purposes.

Episode 5-6: No time gap. Sam falls asleep in Taurtis’s room with Taurtis outside the door, and wakes up in Taurtis’s room with Taurtis asleep outside the door.

Episode 10-11: No time gap. They go to stay the night in a hotel and wake up in the same hotel.

Episode 13-14: Probably no time gap. It’s stated to be the weekend in episodes 11-13, and it appears to still be the weekend in episodes 14-15.

Episode 15-16: Probably no time gap. Sam puts some of the Taurtis clones in an abandoned house and falls asleep with one Taurtis clone at the foot of his bed, when he wakes up the same clone is still there and the rest are still in the abandoned house. This would mean that the gang attempted murder, then witnessed a bunch of Taurtis clones dying, and then That Actual Same Night, Sam locked Grian in the basement. Wild.

Episode 18-19: Unclear. We don’t see Sam fall asleep in episode 18. There’s probably not much of a gap if there is one, since it’s implied that the Taurtis clones aren’t meant to last very long before they explode, but you could probably still stretch out Grian’s basement imprisonment for a bit if you wanted, for the extra angst.

Episode 21-Special: Unclear again, for the same reason. Again not much of a gap if there is one, Grian says Sam put him in the basement “a few nights ago”. Actually, Grian says later that Sam left him there for “like a week”, so it probably could be longer.

Special-Episode 22: Probably a time gap. Sam is in his bedroom instead of the Clone Basement Cave, and all the Stormtrooper Taurtis Clones from the special are gone.

Episode 24-25: Minimal to no time gap. Sam mentions taking Lizzie to the train station, and it makes sense for Geode to put beacons up to contact his superiors one day and then the next day his superiors show up.

Episode 27-28: Probably a time gap. It’s been at least a day, because the Lizzie episodes are on a school day, the next episodes are likely the next day, which isn’t a school day, and in episode 28 Sam mentions needing to go to school, leaving one weekend day unaccounted for. It’s also been enough time since the Star Wars special for Taurtis to have had “clone episodes” often enough for Grian to get used to them, so it could be a longer gap. Geode’s beacons are still up though.

Episode 30-31: Probably a time gap. Grian mentions that it’s been “a few days” since Taurtis went missing, and it’s also now the weekend.

Episode 32-33: Most likely a time gap. There’s probably been at least one school day that we didn’t see, since Grian says he went to bed in his uniform so he wouldn’t have to get changed in the morning. Although he could have put on his uniform on Sunday night. But there’s been enough time for Jerry to acquire both a fake TV and a Demon Sword since being rescued from the mafia, so I’m gonna say it’s been at least one full day.

Special-Episode 36: Unclear, but probably minimal time gap. Taurtis’s haircut is still “new”.

Episode 40: An on-screen caption says “the next day”, so no time gap.

Episode 43: Unclear, probably no time gap, Sam says he had a stressful day yesterday.

Episode 47-48: Probably a time gap, enough time for Grian and Taurtis to have daily arguments about who gets to be the little spoon.

Episode 51-52: Dude I have no fucking clue. Episode 51 ends with everyone going off to spend the night in different houses, but in episode 52 they had all spent the previous night in the same house until Taurtis wandered off, but there’s also no reason why there would have been more than one night in between the two episodes so who knows.

That all being said though, I’m sure you could find a way to fit extra time in pretty much anywhere.

And now... the moment you've all been waiting for...

The Final Grian Trauma Count!

Deaths Witnessed:

A large number of Taurtis Clones

A large number of SWAT Team members

A large number of mobsters

A large number of aliens

A large number of Minions

1 Student Eaten by the Chupacabra

2 Old People

1 Transphobe

Tronald Drump

1 Hostage

2 Cops

1 Student Devoured by Cthulhu

2 Car Crash Victims

1 Dog

3 or 4 Demons

Aphmau

3 People Eaten by Minions

Taurtis

Evil Alternate Universe Domrao

Alternate Universe Geode

Alternate Universe Sam

2 Alternate Universe Witnesses

Alternate Universe Grian

Alternate Universe Jerry

The Whole Of Reality

Total: 28 that I actually bothered counting, but definitely a lot more than that even if you don’t count All Of Reality.

Of these, Grian was indirectly or directly responsible for:

Some of the Taurtis Clones (albeit in the Star Wars special, which kind of doesn’t matter)

The aliens

Most of the Minions

The Hostage

The Demons

Aphmau

Evil Alternate Universe Domrao

Alternate Universe Sam

2 Alternate Universe Witnesses

Alternate Universe Grian

The Whole Of Reality

Total: 11 that I counted, more that I didn’t, and All Of Reality

Injuries Sustained:

Jokingly implied that he got his face caught in a blender at some point in the past

Likely some bruises from wrestling Señor Loro

Per Pug: Beaten (by stormtroopers). Would have left bruises.

1 stab wound

I’m not sure if MD Nurse stabbed him or punched him but he was definitely injured in some way

Locked in an oven and set on fire by Sam (burns)

So many gunshot wounds I just stopped counting, seemed to be mostly in the legs, none of which were properly treated, one of which he bandaged with a piece of paper

Other Traumatic Events:

Left in Canada twice and had to make his own way back.

Consumes some very concerning things, and also frequently goes without food/enough food.

Stalked and sexually harassed by a creepy old man, who his friends repeatedly insist is Their Friend and Perfectly Fine Actually.

Repeatedly put in physical danger and made to do unsafe and illegal things in his high school classes, repeatedly belittled and punished for calling this out.

In general, none of his very reasonable concerns about the things going on around him are ever really validated by anyone, and Sam and Taurtis straight up tell him they never listen to him.

Repeatedly handed a gun and forced to do dirty work for various adults in positions of power.

Forced to participate in multiple eldritch rituals by a teacher, usually resulting in someone’s death.

Per Pug: Woke in the middle of the night to Sam forcing him into a Princess Leia cosplay, was dragged out of bed and locked in the basement, imprisoned for 3 days straight. Sam showed no intention of letting him out any time soon, was only released once Taurtis heard him screaming. Implied that he was also sexually harassed (verbally) at school by both students and staff while dressed in feminine cosplay. Al’s Note: He would have had untreated bullet wounds while he was locked in the basement.

Everything That Goes On With Taurtis, namely: he goes missing multiple times, is killed and replaced by a clone and Grian is unaware of this for a while and subsequently informed very unceremoniously by Sam, said clone is turned into a Zombie Minion and what Grian and Sam were told was an antidote actually just kills him.

Literal Cthulhu tells him that Sam is going to destroy the world, there’s no way out of this town for him, and he can’t even kill Sam about it.

Emotionally manipulated, probably both mundanely and supernaturally, by an evil sentient book.

Tricked into destroying All Of Reality and then just left to sit in that, while being trapped with Sam Gladiator and an alternate version of Taurtis he doesn’t even really know, forever, with absolutely nothing to even pass the time.

So, that’s kind of a lot. A lot has happened to our boy. And over the course of the series, he gradually just… stops fighting it. Resigns himself to getting used to it. To the point that even Sam calls him out for barely reacting to killing Aphmau, even if it was to save his own life. He has SO much venom in the beginning of the series, towards Sam and towards the authority figures around him who are failing to be properly responsible, and over time that venom just gets weaker and weaker.

Rambling

Friend Group Roles

In the first few episodes, when Grian isn’t there, Sam and Taurtis are constantly expressing how unsafe they feel. But as soon as Grian arrives and starts worrying about the same exact things, suddenly Sam and Taurtis just completely flip their stance, constantly invalidating and belittling Grian for his concerns about things like the old man stalking them and their teachers not teaching them anything.

It’s like… if they can offload all their worry onto the person whose role in their friend group is “the one who’s always wrong/the one we never listen to”, then they can stop being worried about it themselves. Like, they’re using their belittlement of Grian as a way to make themselves feel safe. Alex, I’ll take “Horrendously Bad Coping Mechanisms” for 500.

(Actually, sidebar: I feel like all three of them kind of have these roles that the other two use in kind of the same way, like – Grian is “The Worrywart”, Taurtis is “The Dumb/Gullible One”, Sam is “The Unlikeable/Crazy One”. I mean, there’s degrees of correctness with these, where Grian’s role is the least correct and Sam’s is the most correct. But the point is they ALL feel unsafe in the situations they’re in, they ALL make dumb decisions and go along with things even against their best judgement, and they ALL act like jerks to people and do violent things, but they ascribe each of those things to just ONE person in their group.

Coming back to this the next day: I’m a little more unsure about this now, and I also want to point out that I don’t mean to conflate the way Sam and Taurtis treat Grian’s concerns with the way Taurtis and Grian get on Sam’s case for being unlikable. I still think there’s something interesting here? But hey, that’s why this is a sidebar.)

(Sidebar to the sidebar I feel like the trio and particularly Sam and Grian might have a slightly more even-seeming/feeling dynamic in this series compared to YHS just because like, a lot of the fucked-up stuff that happens really has nothing to do with Sam. Like, he does still do a lot of fucked-up stuff but all the teachers sucking has nothing to do with him, Cthulhu being summoned has nothing to do with him, the multiple alien invasions have nothing to do with him, and it’s mostly the various adults around getting them involved with these things rather than Sam. Idk I am really just spaghetti-ing.)

Taurtis and Grian

Anyway, this is something Sam does a lot, where he’ll push the other two into doing something, and then when it turns out badly he’ll go “why did you guys make me do that”. But I’m not letting Taurtis off the hook for this, either, just because he’s generally more pleasant and less gaslight-y than Sam is. I mean, he’s the one who actually told Grian, “We never listen to you”.

Taurtis is interesting to me because he can be sort of… innocently callous in this way. Like, it’s not really intentional malice, he just doesn’t think. But even that’s kind of complicated because of the, like, one time he mentions offhandedly that he uses his headphones to pretend to participate in conversations with his friends while he just listens to music instead. It kind of gives me the impression that his dopey ignorance is purposeful, like at some point he just went “Aha! If I never understand what’s going on, I never have to worry about it!” and just tuned the fuck out.

But the fact that he has this dynamic with Grian is also interesting to me because like, they’re kind of implied to be in some kind of romantic relationship in this series?

Timeline of the Taurian Rollercoaster:

Star Wars Special: Grian learns Taurtis is dead and a clone.

Episode 23: Taurtis wants some of Grian’s ramen, and Grian suggests they could eat it Lady-and-the-Tramp-style (aka kiss).

Episode 26: Taurtis shoots Grian on purpose, for what appears to Grian to be absolutely no reason, although he gets an explanation later.

Episode 28: Taurtis goes missing again and Grian is extremely concerned.

Episode 33: Taurtis returns and he and Grian share an umbrella on the way to school. Also, Grian objects to Mr. Chupa’s plans for a ritual and Taurtis tells him, “We never listen to you”.

One Punch Man Special: When Taurtis and the alien leader are preparing to fight to the death, Grian declares he will be “the prize” and will give Taurtis “a good splurging” if he wins. He also tells Taurtis he’s going to “splarg him real good tonight” when he does win. Then they bring an alien home with them and Sam and Taurtis give the alien Grian’s room and both insist that Grian should sleep in the same basement dungeon Sam previously locked him up in, which distresses Grian a lot.

Episode 36: Grian and Sam convince Taurtis to do several very stupid and somewhat dangerous things on the premise that they can cure hair loss.

Episode 40: Sam and Taurtis leave Grian in Canada.

Episode 43: Grian returns from Canada.

Episode 47: Grian and Taurtis tell a demon that they glarg all the time only on Tuesdays.

Episode 48: Sam wakes up to Taurtis and Grian arguing about how Grian never lets Taurtis be the little spoon. Also, Sam and Grian decide to set Taurtis up with Jamberite so he can acquire her hair?

Episode 51: Grian calls the Necronomicon his (implicitly romantic) “partner”.

Episode 52: Taurtis gets turned into a Minion and then dies. Grian doesn’t appear to react particularly strongly to this, although that’s most likely because he still thought the Necronomicon could bring him back. But he ends up agreeing to the Necronomicon’s suggestion to steal another timeline’s Taurtis, because “the real one’s dead, let’s face it”.

Look, that must have been a really interesting relationship is all I’m saying.

And then Grian gets stuck in a house in the void with an alternate version of Taurtis who he has no real history with but is also one of the only other people in existence.

Evo and Beyond

But anyway, I think all this, plus the amount of times Taurtis disappears or dies, could add a really interesting color to things like, for instance, how clingy Grian is with Taurtis in Evo. And is the Taurtis he summons into Evo even the same Taurtis he stole from that other world? Does he even know? Things to think about.

(I was gonna make a joke that was like, “I’m Normal, Grian says as he attempts to cover up the Taurtis Summoning Platform he made and then attempts to kill Taurtis for leaving the Empire and then gets Taurtis elected mayor when he wasn’t even running”.

But I was watching Grian’s Hermitcraft Season 6 while writing some of this and he literally just says, “I thought when I put my video out about the Mumbo’s moustache removal, I thought that every Hermit in the world wanted to remove his moustache, but now I’m faced with the very real possibility that it’s just me. It can’t be just me, right? Everyone wants to rip the moustache away. Am I weird? Am I weird for wanting to strip away the moustache of my fellow Hermit? That’s normal, right? I’m normal.”

So it wouldn’t even be a joke, really, because he just. Said it himself. But I just think it’s really funny when Grian tries to convince himself he’s the Normal Reasonable One while doing a bunch of unhinged stuff and I think it could have relevance here.)

And speaking of Evo – I think Pug already mentioned that there just so happens to be a conflict between a “mafia” group and a “police” group in that series – I would like to additionally point out that Grian’s response to this conflict is to build a network of secret railway tunnels under everyone’s bases, and his response to Taurtis pointing out that this is very sketchy is to insist that the other people on the server are worse than he is. Food for thought.

He’s also very adamant about enforcing Consequences for messing with him in Evo, and just in general he can really hold a grudge. I’m thinking also of him taking Jimmy and Mumbo out of the series in Last Life for trying to trap him, and taking Jimmy out of the series in Wild Life for killing him Once like four episodes before that. Smells Like Trauma Response? Perchance.

It’s like, after everything he was pushed into in YHS and TS he is now ADAMANT about not taking any shit from anybody. And making sure people KNOW that. And subsequently can end up overreacting to things. Or something.

I’m also super interested in exploring like, how Grian might navigate the transition between a world where people can and do die permanently, and a world/worlds where people can just respawn and so they frequently just kill each other for fun. Would be a pretty extreme culture shock I think.

(Also this is really only tangentially related to TS but I just really want to talk about the Evo mayoral election which goes like this: Mini, one of the Mafia, and Martyn, one of the Property Police, are running against each other for mayor. Grian enters Taurtis, because he thinks it would be funny if Taurtis won without even knowing he was running.

When the votes are all counted, there are more than there should be. The Property Police goes looking around the Mafia’s subway and finds their secret base, which has a chest in it with extra wool in Mini’s color (they were using wool to vote).

They call everyone currently on the server down there to look at it too, which includes Grian. Grian decides TNT Is The Solution and makes a very impassioned speech (in the text chat because no one is on voice with each other) to convince everyone else that TNT Is The Solution, and then blows up one block of TNT and leaves. Martyn, who had previously been anti-TNT, says well he already did it so there’s no point in me abstaining, gimme the TNT, and blows up the Mafia’s logo.

Then later on during the trial for all this, Grian disqualifies Mini for fraud and Martyn for blowing up people’s bases, leaving Taurtis as the only eligible candidate and automatic mayor, even though the only vote he got was Grian’s.

Again, pretty much entirely unrelated to anything this document is supposed to be about I just think it’s a piece of Grian Characterization that I am obsessed with now and only the trial was in Grian’s POV of Evo. Thank you.)

Alternate Taurtis

I also really want to talk about Alternate Taurtis too, because like, let’s just go over the information we get from him:

He says his original world was destroyed by an army of velociraptors (and presumably his original Grian and Sam died because of this), so he came to the one we see him in, killed the Taurtis who was there, and took over his life.

Alternate versions of Grian and Sam frequently show up to try to abduct him; this happens often enough that everyone in town is aware of it and plays along in order to bamboozle them in various ways. “And then you guys battle each other and stuff, it’s so funny.” I’m not certain exactly who he’s referring to here, but presumably his Sam and Grian and/or the townspeople do battle with the invading Sams and Grians, possibly to the death? I’m guessing to the death is at least a possibility just because that’s the kind of series this is. And Alternate Taurtis finds this funny.

He says he’s known the Alternate Sam we see in the series for “like five years”, but he also says he can “get more” Sams, and when Alternate Grian is killed, he says, “Do you know how many I had to go through to get that one?” So what is the truth??? It feels like he decided to engineer the Perfect Life with the Perfect Sam And Grian or something like that. If a Grian and Sam come to kidnap him and he decides he likes them better than his current ones does he just… keep them?? And throw away the previous ones?

He also says his friend Geode made a bunch of Taurtis clones “so we have backups”. Presumably in case he dies which seems INSANE to me, but also maybe to give to invading Sams and Grians?

And he says he killed another universe’s Geode?? When?? And why??

He makes fun of the boys for having an outdated teleporter.

And like, he really could be bullshitting any amount of this stuff, cause seriously, Taurtis and Sam particularly will just fucking Say Things that obviously aren’t true and never happened, but you can tell because you’ve been watching them the whole time. But you can’t call this Taurtis on anything! It could all be true!

Then there’s like… he seems more savvy than our original Taurtis, but original Taurtis could talk a pretty big game sometimes. And you can be savvy and gullible. Or be savvy and drastically misinterpret a situation because you’re a traumatized kid. You know? So like, literally anything could be true. I’m drowning in possibilities.

Anyway he makes me insane.

And him and Grian and Sam being stuck in an empty house together for what they think is eternity with nothing to do except interact with each other ALSO makes me insane, because I love when some characters with fucked up dynamics are stuck in A Space Or Situation together. So really it was always going to end up this way, with me watching all of Tokyo Soul.

Lizzie

There’s also Lizzie!! What did she think seeing a “normal day” in Grian’s life? Did she try to talk to him about it afterwards? How would that have possibly gone? Or maybe something about the town made it so she only vaguely remembered what happened to her there? That could be something maybe?

And how did she escape the destruction of the Tokyo Soul reality into the Minecraft Multiverse? The idea I have currently is that being in whatever weird spacetime bubble “Tokyo” is situated in did something weird to her phone and connected it to like, the Minecraft Multiverse Internet instead of the Normal Internet? And she gets to talking to Oli Orionsound and like, pretends she doesn’t have absolutely no clue what the fuck any of this is, and is just like “uhhh yeah sure I’ll meet up with you on… uh… Hype Pixel”. And then she gets there and is like WHAT THE FUCK.

And she continues having fun Isekai adventures until one time she tries to go home and just ends up tumbling through the void because the world was destroyed while she was Out. And so she has to make a new life in Block Land and the fic I’m imagining in my head also has one of those really long light novel titles because she’s an Isekai Protagonist basically.

Yandere Prequel

Also: I said I wouldn’t be watching any more of this stuff, but I did briefly skim through the weird prequel series “Yandere”, just to get a sense of it. One thing I noted: I think the house Sam and his father are living in is the same one that Sam and Taurtis start out living in in Yandere High School. So that could explain why they’re just living by themselves in YHS – it was Sam’s dad’s house and then he just fuckin’ left.

In terms of Grian: there are 17 episodes, Grian is kind of in the background a lot of the time from what I could see, and then he completely disappears after episode 12, and there’s no in-character acknowledgement or explanation of his absence, and then the story doesn’t get finished. Apparently this was around when Grian and Taurtis stopped being friends with Sam in real life.

So you really could just ignore it and I think most people do. But I kind of like the idea of Grian having this hazy memory or like vague sense of having known Sam and Taurtis when he was really young, and him not knowing if it’s something that actually happened, or something he dreamed after he drank the Sleeping Chaos Potion, or just something that Sam said enough times that it stuck in his head. I feel like I could have fun playing around with that. I would definitely be ignoring Grian’s canon age though, although I guess it wouldn’t really need to come up.

What Will I Do Next?

Well, write a lot of fanfiction hopefully, since I have a theory that what I need to get my writing mojo back is to put a genuine and disproportionate amount of effort into a writing project that is fundamentally quite stupid. And I already have SO many ideas.

Next Time... Who Knows?

[dreambones]

(Reposting over here)

I fully forgot to share this here when I finished it oups.

Happy 10 year anniversary of being made Sulker (a month or so late), which means a much needed updated reference.

Not much has changed, I feel I just polished some details and made it clearer to read, plus half the images are more of a drawing guide to myself so I can stop jumping between past drawings whenever I draw him and have some sort of consistency.

Biggest changes must be his clothes being a more blue gray color instead of brown, the black goo having a teal/green shine instead of white, the multiple pupils when mad/hungry, and glowing teeth of the same color as pupils.

I am currently writing a big document with everything explained, hoping the Slenderverse and Creepypasta fandoms still love reading long, detailed explanations. Meanwhile have a summarized version with the most important parts.

Sulker is a very old slender creature, it is unknown how he came to be and when, only that he has been around the earth for a very long time but not as long as the better known Slenderman. 

A monster that prays on humans mental vulnerability, exploiting their weaknesses in his favor, lures them into surrendering themselves to him. 

An insatiable hunger, enjoyment for others suffering, a voice you will only realize it’s not your own too late. 

This is The Sulker.

Name: Sulker

Also known as: The Sulker, The Sulkerman.

Age: Unknown. First known written documents that mention his existence date back to 1346 during the beginning of the Black Plague.

Personality: Short tempered, volatile, irritable, sarcastic, smug, witty, cynical, has a dark sense of humor and enjoys the failures of others. A sadist, aggressive, with a short patience unless it involves “playing with his food”. 

Easily frustrated and has an almost nonexistent fuse, but he can still tell when someone is just trying to get a reaction out of him.

He is in an almost constant state of hunger that drives him to be often looking to feed himself. Strong hunger puts him on edge, making it harder to deal with him. 

Slender species related abilities: Sulker shares most of Slender's basic abilities, assuming these are common to the “species” with personal variations between individuals.

Slender walking

A form of teletransportation, he can move long distances in the blink of an eye.

Space distortion

Much like Slenderman, he can modify the space around a limited number of humans for a limited amount of time.

Video and picture distortion

Electronic devices can’t capture him correctly, his image will come out blurry, smudged, or similar to burnt film. This occurs with digital cameras and video, however, for unknown reasons film photos and film videos seem to capture his image better.  

Change height and body shape

He can modify his height a couple of feet to make himself taller or shorter (while still out of the ordinary tall for human standards). 

Proxys:

Like many other slenders, he can bestow supernatural traits to normal humans, which in return, ties them to him and his command. This can be voluntarily or against the person's will. 

Abilities specific to Sulker:

Intrusive thoughts:

Sulker has the power to tune into a person's negative thoughts and emotions, and amplify these to unbearable levels. He however can not create negative thoughts, he can only get into their frequency, like a radio signal. 

Just as Slenderman has his dreaded static, upon approaching Sulkerman, voices or whispers can be heard, the intensity fluctuating with Sulker's mood. 

The Black Poison (Black goo):

He produces a thick, black substance that resembles a mix of oil and tar, with teal reflections. It is extremely sticky and frigid to the touch, and when it makes contact with the skin it will leave black stains that take days to remove fully, while it is almost impossible to successfully remove from clothes. 

Sulker is immune to the stickiness, allowing him to manipulate the substance with no issues, and his clothes, although stained, seemed to not stick as one would expect.

The main source of the black poison is Sulker’s tentacles, but it can also be produced from his mouth and eye cavities. 

Stickiness / Sticky webs

Directly tied to the Black Poison, Sulker can manipulate the substance to make traps and occasionally, resting points for himself. 

The black goo is extremely sticky, able to hold an adult human stuck to a wall for an extended period of time. 

Relationships: Sulker is not sociable at all, his meetings with other slenders are purely for “professional” and territory reasons, other than that, he is not one to seek the company of others. 

Despite his temper, he has managed to keep a “polite” relationship with Slenderman, not because he likes him, but because he acknowledges his power and influence, plus the absurd amount of proxies and allies he has. 

However, if the opportunity to overthrow the slender ever presents itself, he won’t hesitate to get rid of him. 

It’s very easy to get on his bad side however, it’s possible, extremely hard but possible, to get on his good side.

Sulker sees humans as cattle and at best, pets, inferior creatures that now and then can be useful or at the very least, amusing. 

Radio: 

Sulker’s proxy and in charge of keeping other proxies updated on tasks and the slenderbeing whereabouts when instructed by Sulker. You can say he is Sulker's spokesperson since the slender being has no interest in communicating with his proxies unless really necessary.

[makersruin]

I hope this doesn’t come across as weird but do you have lore about mori I can read??? I absolutely love your wol …. he looks so wet and pathetic and i would love to read about him

this is not weird at all i love any excuse to talk abt my loser conman necromancer catboy!! i should consolidate all the lore/facts/history about him at some point since theyre scattered across like 4 different platforms + documents but you can find a rundown of his deal on his carrd!

im gonna put a quick bullet list for his timeline pre-arr under a read more. it's basically summarized in the carrd if you dont wanna read all that but i'll go into slight more detail here. ty for letting me rambleee <33

-mori (not his real name) was born as the 13th child and first son of a doman hyuran priest (japanese) and keeper miqote shaman (korean). theres a lot of cultural baggage in how his dad courted his mother but he married her for her spiritual powers (echo). they lived in a really remote town in othard that was basically built around their family shrine.

-his echo is so oversensitive that it's basically on all the time. his mom, who was severely mentally and physically ill, couldn't deal with him as an extremely difficult infant and so often drugged him into sleep out of fear of his father. he found out anyway when mori was taken from her care for training.

-since religion is outlawed in garlean territories, his dad took on a lot of debt to bribe officials into allowing them to keep the shrine. there was a lot of politics behind this but eventually the pressure mounted. this included sending some of his sisters away for the war effort, making a public spectacle of their family, and eventually, a public execution of his parents.

-he became head of the house despite being way too young for that sort of role and inherited his dad's debts. he plotted his revenge by offering to sell their shrine and all the artifacts within to the various illicit organizations that lent his dad the money in the first place (which was of great interest to them for either cultural reasons or its aetheric properties). once he had them all in the shrine, he evacuated his family and burnt it down, killing a number of major players in those groups. the incident devastated the trees in the area and the town eventually was abandoned.

-sidebar, this is why he's called 'memento mori'. the garlean government censored talks of what actually happened, resulting in the native residents referring to the incident as 'the forest' aka 'mori' and so garleans who remembered it would remind each other of who he was by asking each other 'memento (remember) mori (the forest)?'

-with the money he stole from those groups he evacuated what little remained of his family to eorzea and they landed in the black shroud. before the fall of dalamud, some surviving members of said various illicit organizations managed to find him, but he managed to escape by falling into a gelmorran ruin. unfortunately that happened to be the palace of the dead and he ended up trapped there until the end of arr/heavensward

-while he's in the potd he basically becomes the jesse to nybeth's walter white LOL the reason nybeth looks like a freaky floaty monster when you reach floor 100 in potd is because mori messed with his necromancy experiments in his last (and successful) escape attempt.

-also while he's there he entered like a 5-6 year period of survival mode which means he didnt eat/sleep well and was constantly paranoid + in the dark, something that he just pretends didnt happen at all once he gets out. combination of stress, poor eating, and aetheric fuckery in potd results in him 'losing color' in his hair and eyes (which were blue-tinted before). he never gets these back even when he makes it out (and he unfortunately had to leave edda behind. which sucked because she was basically a little sister to him)

-when he gets out of potd, he finds out that most of his family scattered to the winds. some remain in eorzea but under the protection of various groups with the muscle for it (eg. lotti, who is a hearer in the conjurer's guild and beni, who is a minor scion). kan-e-senna and minfilia manage to find a way to suppress his echo through a seal so he can actually live among people for the first time in his life. unfortunately, his sisters have since figured out that the reason they're being persecuted by various scary guys is because of him so they're really upset with him, especially because they assumed he ran away from the responsibility five/six years ago

from here on he figures out how to apply his time with nybeth in the overworld to scam the bereaved by botching resurrections order to pay off that debt he incurred. he does still return back to potd because part of his necromancy requires herbs from the bottommost floors but overall he avoids his family while hes doing illegal shit. he's not an actual warrior of light despite the echo because he simply does not have the moral principles for it. and also god would sooner turn her gaze from him than choose him as a champion LMFAO

[thyrinea]

Radio Check

If ya there, coming to ya as the "Outis Document" person

So, sweepers happened. Stuff dropped, funny worms mentioned in Outis Uptie.

And Hong Lu canto on the horizon.

What are your views on the situation?

I'll add that the reason I'm here is Welvader's video of him summarizing the mammoth of a book Dream of the Red Chamber is and dropping his own theories after reading it, and I'm just... seeing things

Notably, near the end of the books a certain forced marriage is arranged. With Hong Lu being the one being tricked.

Aligning that with the Oddysey, it could imply Calypso's island part will be referenced

But where does the Sun Cattle Island stuff fit into this if at all. Like I can kinda see it, somewhere midway in the books The Family overspends on celebrations and stuff, shit goes down, desperation to amend things. Align that with Oddysey and the crew being stranded and running out of food, being coerced into hurting the cattle.

Will we just... Do 2 in one, early canto being one thing later canto being another? A skip or diversion of some kind? Hell what would it leave for Ryoshu, as the whole "trial of the gods - Meursault" line up would be next?

Well that's why I even come here, I imagine you could make better heads and tails of this.

Hi! I'm still here! o/ Thank you so much for the questions and inputs. I've been thinking a lot after reading the Nocturnal Sweeping intervallo, so don't mind me rambling a bit about my personal theories about what could go on for the next cantos. First I will start by saying that my take on Hong lu's Canto hasn't changed much from the document and that we'll see Scylla's part of the Odyssey play out in some way. But my interpretation changed a bit on how it can play out.

When you say marriage and trickery, it reminds me a bit on Scylla's story in Greek mythology. She wasn't always a 6-headed beast, and used to be a beautiful naiad, who caught the eyes of poseidon himself and because of Amphitrite jealousy, was transformed into a monster by poisoning the water she would bathe. The man couldn't be with the lover because of her original state and sanity basically "dying". Note that Poseidon and Amphitrite have a known relationship in mythology, her being known as the consort with the queen of the seas title, and Poseidon is famously known to be courting plenty of people, just like Zeus. You can find other versions of her origin where it changes Poseidon and Amphitrite to Glaucus and Circe, but the narrative stays the same. Now, with that said. Next in line would be the Sun Cattle Island, and I'm pretty sure we'll get it as an intervallo that will reference it, if my theory is correct, opening doors to lay down a base for future Cantos, being the most obvious one Meursault. Then, Calipso's island would become part of Ryoshu's Canto. We can get some parallels with "Hell screen" when we realize how Yoshihide's daughter, his sole family whom he loves and spoils, is basically being held in captivity by the Lord of Horikawa as he works on the commission. Using the Odyssey we can also try to predict another intervallo here related to Charybdis. Maybe we'll get something about the Anamnaworm mentioned in Outis' uptie? This is a stretch but By the end, we'll get Meursault with the last god trial that would help Odysseus go back home to Ithaca, so we can get Outis arriving at her destination on her canto.

[go-go-devil]

✨💎 The Domhnall & Eidas Theory 💎✨

Aye, Shwmae!

Here I would like to present to you all a theory I have that revolves around Domhnall of Zena and Eidas the Weapon Craftsman, and the connection these two seemingly unrelated characters may have.

I haven’t found anyone else who shares this theory with me yet, so I’d say it’s about time I provide an explanation so maybe, just maybe, some of you can understand where I’m coming from with this.

Let’s start this off with a simple question: Who the hell is Eidas?

I won’t blame many of you for forgetting this character exists, so let me quickly summarize!

Eidas is a very minor npc whom we only know the name of due to the item description of the Avelyn, which states that it was “cherished by the weapon craftsman Eidas.” Although this remains the only reference to this person in the game, it is highly likely that we do actually meet Eidas in the flesh. Or should I say, crystalized flesh.

Look at the intricate design and gold plating on the Avelyn’s stock.

Now compare it to the design of the crystal knight’s armor.

Considering we fight the crystal knight AND find this crossbow in the Duke’s Archives it is almost certain that this knight is indeed the same Eidas mentioned in the weapon’s description, having since gone hollow and guarding the chamber of Seath the Scaleless.

I’m certainly not the first person to see this connection, but I should state that, as far as I know of, there are no design documents that outright confirm that the knight is Eidas. However I’m 99.99% certain my observation was intended by the devs so I’m going to treat it as “basically canon” for this analysis.

I’m also going to refer to Eidas with he/him pronouns since it seems the general Souls community agrees that he is a man, though it should be noted that there are no pronouns associated with Eidas in-game and his armor set does not change cosmetically if worn by a female character.

Anyway, now let’s move on to Domhnall!

What’s there to say about him? He’s a friendly adventurer/merchant who sells us helpful items and acts as an unexpected bright spot after slogging through the disgusting depths. The only thing more unusual than his optimism in this accursed land is his absolutely outlandish outfit, which he even made a copy of to sell to us!

He’s also quite a cheeky fellow. The design of his armor looks more like something he stitched together himself from various fabrics and trinkets he found in his travels than any proper set of armor. Even the descriptions of each piece simply describe the concepts they’re “believed” to represent, as if he’s banking on the Chosen Undead not knowing enough about his culture and taking his word for it to help sell his meticulous craftsmanship.

(Though then again he is also the only Zenian rep we get in-game, so his culture could very well revolve around clothing like this. Even still I do think the symbolism is something he’s exaggerating for the sale, but that’s just me.)

Some may see him as very greedy, particularly in how he refuses to give helpful advice unless we buy something from him. This is all true, but I don't think greed defines his personality nearly as much as some people think. All of the practical items he sells are all reasonably priced while the truly pricey gear are his armor sets, which to me says more about what kinds of items Domhnall sees more value in than anything else.

I also always assumed his adventuring lifestyle was the narrative excuse for how he gets copies of boss armor to sell you; he’s either traveled enough to have found replicas or had heard enough about these figures to make them himself. The fact that they, much like his own armor, can’t be upgraded supports my theory that they’re not the real armor sets (the one exception being Artorias’s set which could’ve been a VERY lucky find on his part, but I won’t get too far off topic here).

Domhnall is a self-proclaimed man of peace who avoids conflict and always keeps a positive attitude despite the danger around him. This makes it a little odd that some of the items he’s selling are weapons, but only crystal weapons.

It’s also bizarre that a merchant would station himself in two very hard to reach areas. If he had insatiable greed, then why would he set up shop in such spots where he’s likely to get the fewest, if any, customers to trade with? He could easily go to Firelink Shrine where there’s more sane undead, but chooses not to. This sort of behavior doesn’t seem to make sense for such a jovial man such as Domhnall.

However, it does make sense for someone who wishes to be avoided.

Let’s look at the context clues here: Domhnall has crystal weapons on him, is first found in the lowest area of the Depths, and relocates under the aqueduct where he remains for the rest of the game.

The only other place in the game where you can find crystal weapons is in the Duke’s Archives. It’s also where you can find the majority of the Channeler enemies; mages infamous for kidnapping the undead to be used in Seath’s experiments. The first Channeler you meet is in the Undead Parish, while the second one is in the Depths.

You may already see where I’m going with this, so I won’t stall any longer…

Domhnall was a prisoner of Seath the Scaleless who escaped with pillaged weapons in-tow, went on the run and is currently still in hiding.

That second Channeler was pursuing him and only stopped its chase after becoming distracted by something far more important in the center of the Depths, that being the Gaping Dragon.

Domhnall only moves out of the Depths once the boss (and thus the Channeler) is defeated, and relocates to the most out-of-reach safe spot he can find to avoid being caught again.

The reason he only asks for souls despite implying he normally trades for other items is because he’s now far more focused on gaining enough souls to strengthen himself than wasting time with whatever trinkets you have in your pockets. He knows how fragile of a man he is, and thus will need a glut of souls to increase his health/endurance/etc. to prevent another near-disaster of that scale before risking his next adventure.

So that’s all well and good, but how does Eidas fit into this?

Simple. I firmly believe that Domhnall and Eidas were together when they were captured.

Look, Domhnall is not a fighter. There’s no way someone like him would’ve been able to get through Sen’s Fortress and Anor Londo without the help of one much more adept at combat, and Eidas certainly fits the bill in that regard.

I also like to entertain the idea that Eidas may have been traveling with Domhnall even before they got close to the Duke’s Archives. His armor set is certainly more beautiful than it is practical, just like Domhnall’s, and it too also cannot be upgraded. Eidas, like Domhnall, strikes me as someone more concerned with artistry than raw power or defense, so I could see him appreciating the company of another eccentric who put so much care into the intricate design of their armor as he did.

Not to mention that Eidas doesn't seem to have been trapped in the Archives for that long of a time. His armor still looks pristine and is only partially crystalized, unlike the other hollows whose bodies and clothing are entirely coated with crystals. This tells me that his transformation only happened recently.

Eidas’s armor is most certainly as unique as his Avelyn too. No other hollow in the Archives wears it, and it only becomes available near the Crystal Cave which itself can only be accessed after killing him right before the fog gate leading to the first encounter with Seath. One can assume after his defeat his hollowed body couldn’t take it anymore, expiring in the grass before he could even reach the true dwelling of his master to defend him once again.

Or maybe Sieglinde landed the true killing blow and got captured while being distracted in her fight with him?

Anyhow, unfortunately this is where all the canon information I can gather about these two ends. While I feel confident in theorizing that they were together when they were captured, there is nothing that could tell me what their relationship was, or how they got to the Archives, or why only Domhnall was able to escape. Everything else after this is pure blind speculation.

But that’s the beauty of Dark Souls! There are so many vague bits of intrigue with no definitive answers that entice the player to fill in the gaps however they wish!

Maybe Domhnall and Eidas were jolly traveling companions, or maybe Domhnall merely stuck by Eidas solely for his own safety in this treacherous land. Perhaps he was the one who convinced Eidas that they could sneak into the Duke’s Archives to access its incredible knowledge and treasures, and maybe save a few fair maidens too (as any good knight would surely strive to do!) which led to their capture.

Eidas could have selflessly taken on a swarm of crystallized hollows buffed-up by the spell of a Channeler to allow Domhnall to escape at the cost of his own freedom, or Domhnall could have tricked Eidas in order to lead more foes after him and save his own hide.

Or maybe it was already too late for Eidas. Domhnall's armor is special in that it is highly curse resistant, but the crystalline armor set is not. If Seath was able to strike them with his crystal breath attack, only Domhnall would have had the chance to wake up in that cell without any crystals beginning to grow out of his body.

Whatever happened, it certainly ended with the weapon craftsman having his beloved Avelyn fall onto the top of a bookshelf below and him being converted into a near-mindless hollow.

Considering Domhnall’s cheerful attitude toward us, it does paint a picture of one who isn’t all that bothered by the loss he suffered in that ordeal. With an attitude like that one can assume he never really cared that much for Eidas to begin with.

Yet even still, what if instead the reason he’s always so happy to see us is because our Chosen Undead is now the only sane undead left who goes out of their way to spend any time with him? Just because a character in Dark Souls is an optimist doesn't mean they aren't hiding an intense depression or dread, and Domhnall could simply be VERY good at hiding his true feelings for our sake.

In conclusion, sometimes an intricate Dark Souls 1 theory doesn’t have to lead into Godly conspiracies or massive metanarrative machinations being unveiled. I merely saw a connection between two of the oddest characters in the game and wanted to share it with you all.

Hope you enjoyed my ramblings! ✨

[humanperryfic]

i'm coming here from perryverse and just like. how do I get as good at writing as you are? what's your secret?

Awww thank you! Crazy that you're saying that since I think I've actually improved a lot since writing that fic.

Obviously the number one answer I have is going to be to just write, a lot. I got good as fast as I did because I bingewatched Phineas and Ferb in the first three days of the original Covid lockdown in March 2020, and then wrote a ton of fic because I was lucky to just be insanely bored.

So write. Write a lot. Write when you can. Slap it all out there on the internet. See what sticks.

Answer number two is going to be read, a lot. But not just passively. Read great fanfiction. Ask yourself why it's great. Read terrible fanfiction. Ask yourself why you hate it. Read real books. Ask yourself about what's going on that you like or don't like, especially between the two mediums of print and fic (because they are different! Also, "real" books tend to use a broader variety of vocabulary, which is always good). Read fic written by people who write English as a second, third, fourth+ language (assuming you're a native english speaker). Ask yourself why you would write/rewrite things to flow a certain way.

Read with an eye for things you want to do yourself.

Answer number three? Always have a little bit of outside perspectives and advice coming into your mind. The best way I've found to keep learning at this point is following people that give advice on writing particular characters or things. @cripplecharacters, @writingwithcolor, and @howtofightwrite are some of my favorite blogs to read whenever they post, and they have invaluable advice.

You're never too good of a writer to not learn new things or unlearn biases/misconceptions.

Answer number four is to keep things rotating in your mind. Not always at the front. But somewhere back there. Keep a running list of ideas on your phone or whatever somewhere I have a Discord server that's literally just me, where I keep my ideas for various things sorted, as well as a Noteful notebook for just...random ideas and plotting things out.

You never know what kind of random idea could be your most interesting fic idea.

Answer number five: Don't throw out any of your writing. Keep things around in whatever form you write in. Microsoft Word, Google Drive, whatever. Keep things around, even if they suck and all you wrote is a sentence and a half. You never know what you might come back to...and hey, keeping the old stuff is a great way to look back and see how far you've come.

Every scrap of writing tells a story. Keep it.

Answer number six: With that in mind, do try out writing an entire fic, plot bunny to published, in the AO3 editor at least once. You have to finish it in the month timespan. You have to publish it. It's a challenge, best suited for a shorter oneshot (though I've done it with fics up to 16.5k words lol), but it'll tell you something about how you write.

(If you fall short, copy/paste it all into a separate document and finish it. Don't waste your work.)

Answer seven: Plot brackets. Plot your fic out by writing the very very basics of what you want to happen in square brackets (ex. [perry goes home] [candace teases him about having a crush on someone]). Fill it in in whatever order you want. Make the brackets short and sweet. Use meme references. Or whatever. Make them stupid. Whatever gets the plot and vibes out onto the page.

[insert summarizing quip here]

Answer eight (the random stuff that I can't do a whole paragraph on each): Onelook Reverse Thesaurus. Lifechanger. When you can, write with your internet/cell service turned all the way off so you don't fall into a research/distraction rabbit hole. Try to write ten words every single day. Take a look at TVTropes every so often- Tropes are Tools, and you should know what's in your toolbox. Write about things you're obsessed with. Write the bad stuff. Write the dumb ideas. Write for the fandom with ten fics.

It doesn't matter. Just write it.

[dissertationwritinghelpforstds]

Getting your article published? Check out these.

Writing and successfully publishing a manuscript is a culmination of unique preparation, structured organization, and clear communication. This discussion indulges into key aspects outlined and explores best practices for publication a reputable journal.

Importance of Good Manuscripts

Good manuscripts are essential for the advancement of knowledge and the enhancement of quality published article. They communicate clear and useful messages to readers, contributing to the reputation and credibility of the journals in which they are published. For authors, publication marks the successful 

Organizing Your Material

Effective manuscript preparation begins with organizing the material into a structured format. Emphasize the importance of presenting novel, innovative, and interesting material. Manuscripts can typically be categorized into various types, each serving distinct purposes and judged by different criteria:

Original Articles: Present new research findings.

Review Papers: Summarize existing research on a particular topic.

Case Reports: Describe unique or rare clinical cases.

Technical Notes: Detail specific techniques or technologies.

Pictorial Essays: Use images to illustrate concepts.

Commentaries and Editorials: Provide opinions or insights on topics.

Letters to the Editor: Offer brief observations or comments on previously published articles.

IMRAD Structure

The basic structure of an original scientific paper follows the IMRAD format:

Introduction: Defines the research question.

Methods: Describes how the study was conducted.

Results: Presents the findings.

Discussion: Interprets the findings and their implications.

This structure facilitates communication by providing a clear, logical flow of information.

Achieving Clarity in Writing

Clarity is crucial in article writing. A well-written manuscript reflects the author’s clear understanding of the problem and the ability to present conclusions logically. Key elements contributing to clarity include:

Title: Should be attractive and informative.

Abstract: Needs to be concise yet comprehensive.

Introduction: Should be brief and to the point.

Methods: Must be detailed and reproducible.

Results: Should be accurate, possibly supplemented with tables and figures.

Discussion: Needs to be thorough, interpreting results and their significance.

Writing Style

Authors should strive to write in a clear, concise, and straightforward manner. General principles for good writing style include:

Keeping the manuscript short.

Writing short, simple sentences.

Using short words instead of long ones.

Avoiding redundancy, idioms, and jargon.

Minimizing passive sentences.

Being careful with abbreviations and modifying words.

Authors not proficient in English are advised to seek professional help and have their manuscripts reviewed by experienced colleagues.

Selecting the Right Journal

Choosing the right journal is crucial for successful publication. Authors should aim to publish in reputable journals that reach the intended audience. Factors to consider include:

Target Audience: Determine who will benefit most from the research findings.

Journal’s Scope and Style: Familiarize with the journal’s mission, types of articles published, and overall style.

Impact Factor: Consider the journal’s reputation and impact factor, if relevant to the author’s institution.

Acceptance Rates: Be aware of the journal’s acceptance rates and manuscript processing times.

Submission Process

Authors must follow the specific “Instructions to Authors” provided by the journal. This includes adhering to guidelines for manuscript layout, references, and illustrations. Attention to detail is vital to avoid unnecessary delays or rejections.

Preparing for Submission

Final Review: Have the manuscript reviewed by a colleague with fresh eyes.

Complete Documentation: Retain copies of all data and records, including images.

Submission Method: Use reliable methods for submission, such as registered post or online systems, and track the manuscript’s progress.

Summary

Successful writing requires a systematic approach, vigorous preparation, and clarity in communication. Matching the manuscript type to the appropriate journal and audience is essential. Having an experienced mentor can significantly enhance the likelihood of publication, providing guidance on where and how to submit the manuscript.

Investing in your academic future with Dissertation Writing Help For Students means choosing a dedicated professional who understands the complexities of dissertation writing and is committed to your success. With a comprehensive range of services, personalized attention, and a proven track record of helping students achieve their academic goals, I am here to support you at every stage of your dissertation journey.

Feel free to reach out to me at helpmyassignment51@gmail.com to commence a collaborative endeavor towards scholarly excellence. Whether you seek guidance in crafting a compelling research proposal, require comprehensive editing to refine your dissertation, or need support in conducting a thorough literature review, I am here to facilitate your journey towards academic success. and discuss how I can assist you in realizing your academic aspirations.

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

Hello, Eligibility worker here! What the person likely got was Medicaid/Medi-Cal services. Medicaid is the federal name, Medi-Cal is the special California name for it, and it may have different state specific names in other states. I'll be referring to it as Medi-Cal in this post, as I'm a Californian worker and I'm just more used to saying that, but know that it is the same as Medicaid that I am referring to.

So, what is Medi-Cal? Medi-Cal is health insurance for low income people that, provided your provider accepts Medi-Cal/Partnership billing, can cover up to 100% of your medical bills. (Please note, the provider has to accept Medi-Cal's rates, there is currently some stuff going down between Partnership (the actual billing side of Medi-Cal) and Dignity Health here in CA. Ask providers if they accept Medi-Cal/Partnership coverage.)

Before I say anything else, if you have questions, I highly recommend calling your local Health and Human Services agency (there should be one in every county) and asking them. Some of what I'm about to cover may be subject to local regulations, I know my county sometimes gets waivers so we can make services more accessible to low income people in our rural area. I think all the basics should be federally regulated and accurate across California/America, but you gotta remember this is health insurance we're talking about.

The current Federal Poverty Level income cap in 2024 for MAGI Medi-Cal is $1732.00/mo gross (138% FPL) for an 1 person household able-bodied age 19-64. Higher number of people per household limits here. If you are married, your spouse must be on your Medi-Cal and their income will count in your budget. If you have children, they must be included in your household. If you are under the age of 19, or still claimed as a dependent by your parents, you must be on their case. Kids under the age of 19 have higher income limits. Kids qualify up to 266% of the FPL for your household size. Parents can be ineligible, while their kids still qualify.

For the purposes of this post, there are two types of Medi-Cal. MAGI and Non MAGI. MAGI is what you'll get between that 19-64 yrs, or a child included in your parent's MAGI household. MAGI income and deductions go by IRS income and deductions. If you are self employed, any deductions the IRS allows on your taxes are deductions we can allow. I have seen people with 300k gross income from self employment businesses qualify because they have 270k in expenses allowed on their taxes. MAGI stands for Modified Adjusted Gross Income, the IRS uses this too. If you have MAGI Medi-Cal, you get full scope coverage.

Non MAGI is for people aged 65+, disabled, blind, pregnant, without citizenship or legal documentation, or one of the other 400 incredibly specific scenarios outlined in my work binder of cheat sheets because some senator somewhere at some time thought one person had a really unfair situation. Non MAGI is both really simple and really complicated at the same time from a worker perspective. The income limits are different, the expenses allowed are different, and honestly as a worker I put the numbers in and let the system spit out what kind a person gets because there are hierarchies and sometimes they qualify under one Non MAGI program but not another and it's just a lot to summarize in one Tumblr post. Property used to be applicable for Non MAGI Medi-Cal but is not anymore as of 01/01/2024. You can have full scope Medi-Cal, or Share of Cost Medi-Cal (SOC) under Non MAGI. If you have an SOC, you do not owe anything to the Medi-Cal agency, however, you must pay your SOC in medical bills in one month before Medi-Cal will kick in and cover the rest.

Scenario I use to explain SOC: You qualify for Medi-Cal with a SOC and your SOC is 5000 dollars. It is the month of May. You pay $30 for a prescription on May 2nd. You pay $100 at your dentists on May 5th for your yearly check-up. On May 7th, you get into a car accident. You break a leg, an arm, injure your neck, and are life flighted to a hospital an hour away. The life flight costs $67,000 dollars and the total expenses for your arm, leg, and time in the hospital end up being $150,000. On May 13th, you pay $4870 dollars towards these bills. Congratulations, you have met your SOC. Medi-Cal covers the rest of those bills for May. On June 3rd, you pay $30 for your monthly prescription.

Most of the time, people end up with a SOC because they are aged or disabled and their Social Security income is a tiny bit too high for the income limits. There are some things that can be done to lower a SOC, like having other health insurance premiums, so if you do have a SOC, talk to your case worker about your expenses.

Now, that's just a brief overview of Medi-Cal/Medicaid, how you can qualify, and what you can qualify as. All of this information is publicly available to find, either through the DHCS, google, or your local office. If you have questions, you are welcome to send me an ask and I will do my best to direct you appropriately. I will urge you though, again, to reach out to your local Eligibility department or whatever it's called in your county, and they'll also be able to help you.

I feel like I should make a post about this because it’s not something that’s very well-known, and that Americans in particular may need to know about given the uncertain state of our healthcare system at the moment. I’ve wanted to write this out for a while, It’s kind of a long post, so sorry about that!

If you have an emergency and have to go to the hospital, you’ll owe the hospital a lot of money. (I got into a car wreck and broke my ankle and my arm. My hospital bill was around $20,000)

You’ll also owe the ambulance provider, if you need one. (My ambulance bill was about $800)

You may get separate bills from the anesthesiologist or surgeon. (My anesthesiologist bill was $1,700)

You may need follow-up appointments. (My orthopedic surgeon billed me for the appointments and his surgery together and it was about $1,000)

You’ve also got to pay for medical equipment you need afterward, like crutches or a walking boot. (Mine cost about $75)

Altogether, I ended up with almost $24,000 in medical debt from one car accident. That’s a really scary number for someone like me who makes $10/hr at a 12 hour a week job.

I got my debt down to $1075 by making some phone calls and submitting some paperwork.

The first thing I did was contact the hospital. They don’t make it easy to find, but many hospitals (perhaps most hospitals?) have financial assistance programs for people who can’t afford medical bills. I don’t make a lot of money, and I have bills to pay, so they were able to help me. I called the billing department and asked if they had any assistance programs for low income people who can’t pay their bills. I had to call multiple times, and I got transferred in circles by people who didn’t know what I was talking about. Finally, I got an appointment with someone in “Eligibility Services” (I don’t know what other hospitals call it, if it’s something different). I had to bring my pay stubs and copies of all of my bills. When I got to the hospital for the appointment, nobody knew what I was talking about so I had to wander a little to find where I needed to go. I spoke with the guy in Eligibility Services, and I waited for a decision on how much of the bill they would forgive. A month later, I got a call telling me it was totally forgiven.

I did the same thing for my ambulance bill and my anesthesiologist, but the process was a LOT easier. I just had to mail some paperwork and it was totally forgiven.

I didn’t bother with the medical equipment suppliers, since the bills came from separate companies and I didn’t feel like going through the process twice for $75. I was assured at the hospital that they had similar programs for debt forgiveness, so I could have probably avoided paying that too.

The only thing I couldn’t get taken care of was the surgeon/follow-up appointment cost, but they were able to put me on a no-interest payment plan.

Medical debt is scary because it’s something that can come from stuff that’s already really scary. I didn’t need the burden of $24,000 in debt on top of trying to get around on a crutch with a broken arm (it’s not easy, believe me!).. but I can’t imagine what it would be like with a bigger debt or a more severe medical emergency. I see lots of people in even worse trouble than I was in, both financially and medically. Please know that there are options for you when that GoFundMe doesn’t do enough. Even if your income is higher than mine, it’s worth a shot even for partial debt forgiveness.

[chocolatedetectivehottub]

Accounting

Accounting

Accounting is often referred to as the "language of business," and for good reason. It is the systematic process of recording, analyzing, summarizing, and reporting financial transactions of a business or individual. Whether you're managing a multinational corporation or your personal finances, accounting provides the tools and information necessary to make informed financial decisions.

What is Accounting?

At its core, accounting is about keeping track of money — where it comes from, where it goes, and how it’s being used. It involves documenting every financial transaction in a structured and standardized way so that stakeholders, such as business owners, investors, tax authorities, and managers, can understand a company’s financial health.

There are two main types of accounting:

Financial Accounting – This focuses on the creation of financial statements (like income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements) that summarize a business’s operations and are used by external parties.

Managerial Accounting – This deals with internal analysis to help management make strategic decisions. It includes budgeting, forecasting, and various forms of financial analysis.

Key Principles of Accounting

Accounting is guided by several principles and standards to ensure consistency, transparency, and reliability. These include:

Accrual Principle: Revenues and expenses are recorded when they are earned or incurred, not when the cash is exchanged.

Consistency Principle: Accounting methods should be applied consistently across periods.

Going Concern Principle: Assumes the business will continue operating in the foreseeable future.

Matching Principle: Expenses should be matched with the revenues they help to generate.

Objectivity Principle: Financial data should be based on objective and verifiable evidence.

Importance of Accounting

Accounting plays a critical role in various aspects of business and finance:

Decision Making: Accurate accounting helps business leaders make informed strategic decisions.

Compliance: Companies must maintain proper financial records to comply with tax laws and regulations.

Performance Evaluation: It allows businesses to evaluate profitability, identify cost-saving opportunities, and assess efficiency.

Investment: Investors and lenders rely on financial reports to assess the risk and return of investing in or lending to a company.

Modern Accounting Tools

Technology has revolutionized accounting through software and automation. Modern accounting systems such as QuickBooks, Xero, and FreshBooks allow businesses to track expenses, generate invoices, manage payroll, and produce financial reports with ease.

Artificial intelligence and data analytics are also increasingly being used to detect fraud, predict financial trends, and streamline auditing processes.

Conclusion

Accounting is much more than just numbers on a spreadsheet — it’s the foundation of smart business management and financial stability. Whether you're running a startup or planning your household budget, understanding the basics of accounting can empower you to make better decisions and achieve financial success.

[orthodoxadventure]

The Church has summarized the Scriptural message in creeds, and in many other ways and methods. Christian faith has developed or grown into a system of beliefs and convictions. In any such system the inner structure of the basic message is shown forth, all particular articles of faith are presented in their mutual interdependence. Obviously, we need a system, as we need a map in our travels. But maps refer to a real land. And any doctrinal system too must be related to the revelation. It is of utter importance that the Church has never thought of her dogmatic system as a kind of substitute for the Scriptures. Both are to be kept side by side: a somewhat abstract or generalized presentation of the main message in a creed or in a system, and all particular documents referring to the concrete instances of revelation. One might say a system and the history itself.

Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View by Georges Florovsky.

[blogchaindeveloper]

AI Sales Agents

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s a present-day force reshaping how professionals work, communicate, and innovate. One of the most transformative developments in this field is the rise of AI agents—intelligent systems designed to operate autonomously, collaborate with humans, and complete complex tasks across industries. These agents are becoming indispensable tools for professionals, offering efficiency, accuracy, and innovation at scale.

For those looking to leverage this emerging technology in their careers, educational credentials such as the Certified Agentic AI Expert™, Certified Agentic AI Developer™, AI Course, Gen AI Course, ChatGPT Course, and Blockchain Certification are paving the way for deep understanding and practical application.

What Are AI Agents?

AI agents are software programs equipped with the ability to perceive their environment, interpret goals, plan actions, execute tasks, and learn from outcomes—all with minimal human supervision. Unlike traditional AI systems that rely on specific commands or narrow tasks, AI agents can operate in dynamic environments, solve problems proactively, and make decisions in real time.

Whether it's managing emails, summarizing documents, scheduling meetings, analyzing financial reports, or writing code, AI agents can serve as digital assistants that not only perform routine tasks but also adapt and improve over time.

Why Professionals Are Turning to AI Agents

Professionals across industries—whether in finance, marketing, law, healthcare, or tech—are increasingly embracing AI agents for several reasons:

Time-Saving Automation: AI agents handle repetitive and administrative tasks, freeing up time for strategic thinking.

Data-Driven Decision Making: Agents can analyze massive datasets, extract insights, and present actionable recommendations in seconds.

Scalability: Unlike human teams that scale with headcount, AI agents scale with code—enabling one individual to do the work of many.

24/7 Availability: AI agents don’t sleep, take breaks, or need vacation—making them ideal for global businesses that operate across time zones.

Core Capabilities of AI Agents

Natural Language Understanding:

Many agents are powered by large language models (LLMs), like OpenAI’s GPT or Google’s Gemini, allowing them to understand and generate human language fluently. This makes them ideal for tasks like drafting emails, responding to queries, and summarizing long-form content.

Multi-Step Reasoning:

Unlike basic chatbots, modern AI agents can reason through multi-step problems. For example, a legal assistant agent could review a contract, identify risk clauses, cross-reference regulatory guidelines, and draft revisions.

Tool Integration:

AI agents can be programmed to use tools like web browsers, spreadsheets, APIs, and databases. This allows them to go beyond static responses and perform actions—booking appointments, sending reports, or pulling data from external systems.

Memory and Personalization:

Some agents are equipped with memory modules that allow them to remember user preferences, prior interactions, and contextual details. This enables more personalized and efficient workflows over time.

Self-Improvement:

Through feedback and training loops, AI agents can refine their behavior, improve accuracy, and adapt to changing environments—similar to how humans learn from experience.

Real-World Applications by Role

Marketers use AI agents to generate social media content, analyze campaign performance, and automate customer segmentation.

Lawyers deploy agents to review case files, extract legal precedents, and draft initial versions of legal documents.

Doctors and medical researchers benefit from AI agents that summarize medical journals, flag anomalies in patient records, or suggest treatment options.

Financial analysts rely on AI agents to monitor markets, forecast trends, and create dynamic reports for clients.

Software developers can delegate bug tracking, documentation, and even code writing to intelligent agents.

Building and Managing AI Agents: Training & Credentials

To work effectively with AI agents—or build your own—it’s essential to acquire the right training. Here are some key credentials that provide the necessary skills:

Certified Agentic AI Expert™:

Ideal for business leaders, strategists, and consultants, this certification focuses on understanding agentic systems, ethical frameworks, AI governance, and implementation strategies across sectors.

Certified Agentic AI Developer™:

Geared toward developers and technical professionals, this program offers hands-on training in building autonomous AI systems. It includes working with Python, LLMs, APIs, and frameworks like LangChain to develop production-ready agents.

AI Course (Fundamentals to Advanced):

A general-purpose course for beginners or professionals, covering everything from machine learning basics to advanced neural networks and deployment strategies.

Gen AI Course (Generative AI):

Specializes in using AI to create content, images, text, and code. Professionals in creative, marketing, and media fields benefit enormously from these skills.

ChatGPT Course:

Focused on prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and deploying GPT-based systems for customer support, knowledge management, and task automation.

Blockchain Certification:

As AI agents increasingly interact with decentralized platforms, a blockchain certification helps professionals understand how to integrate agents with smart contracts, decentralized identity systems, and secure data layers.

Challenges and Considerations

While AI agents offer substantial benefits, they also come with challenges:

Ethical Use: It’s vital to ensure that AI agents act within legal and ethical boundaries—especially in sensitive industries like healthcare or finance.

Security: Since agents often access sensitive data, robust cybersecurity and access controls are a must.

Bias and Fairness: Developers must be vigilant about bias in training data and ensure fairness in decision-making processes.

Oversight: Professionals should treat AI agents as collaborators, not replacements. Human oversight is crucial for quality control and strategic alignment.

Final Thoughts

AI agents are transforming the professional world—not by replacing humans, but by augmenting their capabilities. As organizations look for faster, smarter, and more adaptive ways to operate, the demand for intelligent agents—and those who can build and manage them—is surging.

Whether you're a beginner exploring an AI course, enhancing your creative edge through a Gen AI course, diving deep with a ChatGPT course, or specializing through a Certified Agentic AI Expert™, Certified Agentic AI Developer™, or Blockchain Certification, there’s never been a better time to integrate AI agents into your professional journey.

The workplace of the future will be built not just by humans, but by teams of humans and AI agents working side by side. And the professionals who master this collaboration will lead the way.

[zzyriphian]

Everyone who has so far tagged this "Christofascist" is basically correct. I went and actually read the first chapter of their manifesto and almost everything is framed and interpreted through Christianity. They want to shut down everything that has ever touched porn (So, the entire internet?) and eradicate any conversations about gender, race, and sexuality- which is probably about as close as they're going to come to saying "Eradicate queer people from public life."

Most telling, I think, is this segment on "the pursuit of happiness".

(I would normally add alt text for those who can't see images, but I'm on mobile sorry. The broad context is it is in reference to the "Pursuit of Happiness" line in the declaration of Independence.)

To summarize those two paragraphs: The last line is literally "Religious devotion and spirituality are the greatest source of happiness...". Between that and "Our constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we ought, but what we must." Their view of the founding of America is inextricably linked to Faith. The belief of the people who wrote this document are that America is a Christian nation from its very inception.

Reading this for just a few minutes, it becomes pretty clear that their goals are to impose (their idea of) a Christian lifestyle on all Americans. I can't find a more charitable interpretation. In an earlier paragraph they conflate the percent of children born out of wedlock with the percent of children without fathers, clearly indicating that they view the two concepts as synonymous.

Anyone who is a political activist (in the US at least) should read it. Everyone else, if you can tolerate the large amount of thinly veiled bigotry it's worth a read only for the fact that it gives you an incontrovertible source for the claim "The Republican party wants to Eradicate queer people."

The 2025 project isn't just fringe far right folks. It's the allies and cohorts of Donald Trump, and also includes important people in DeSantis' team. I'd advise checking up on any other potential Republican presidential candidates and their relationship to the 2025 project as well.

This thread is incredibly important to read.

It is also extremely difficult to read. I don't know if I need to point this out, but the document itself is obviously full of bigotry so please take care of yourself if you choose to read it. Antisemitic phrases like "cultural marxism" and "global elites" appear before the document even really gets rolling, and are mixed in with transphobia, racism, and more.

If you want a taste of how this document starts in the first main section about "The Family", here is a taste:

"This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists."

It is all bad. ALL of this document is bad, and dangerous, and threatens the lives and the safety of everyone living in this country.

[souhaillaghchimdev]

Text Processing Software Development

Text processing is one of the oldest and most essential domains in software development. From simple word counting to complex natural language processing (NLP), developers can build powerful tools that manipulate, analyze, and transform text data in countless ways.

What is Text Processing?

Text processing refers to the manipulation or analysis of text using software. It includes operations such as searching, editing, formatting, summarizing, converting, or interpreting text.

Common Use Cases

Spell checking and grammar correction

Search engines and keyword extraction

Text-to-speech and speech-to-text conversion

Chatbots and virtual assistants

Document formatting or generation

Sentiment analysis and opinion mining

Popular Programming Languages for Text Processing

Python: With libraries like NLTK, spaCy, and TextBlob

Java: Common in enterprise-level NLP solutions (Apache OpenNLP)

JavaScript: Useful for browser-based or real-time text manipulation

C++: High-performance processing for large datasets

Basic Python Example: Word Count

def word_count(text): words = text.split() return len(words) sample_text = "Text processing is powerful!" print("Word count:", word_count(sample_text))

Essential Libraries and Tools

NLTK: Natural Language Toolkit for tokenizing, parsing, and tagging text.

spaCy: Industrial-strength NLP for fast processing.

Regex (Regular Expressions): For pattern matching and text cleaning.

BeautifulSoup: For parsing HTML and extracting text.

Pandas: Great for handling structured text like CSV or tabular data.

Best Practices

Always clean and normalize text data before processing.

Use tokenization to split text into manageable units (words, sentences).

Handle encoding carefully, especially when dealing with multilingual data.

Structure your code modularly to support text pipelines.

Profile your code if working with large-scale datasets.

Advanced Topics

Named Entity Recognition (NER)

Topic Modeling (e.g., using LDA)

Machine Learning for Text Classification

Text Summarization and Translation

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Conclusion

Text processing is at the core of many modern software solutions. From basic parsing to complex machine learning, mastering this domain opens doors to a wide range of applications. Start simple, explore available tools, and take your first step toward developing intelligent text-driven software.

[nursingwriter]

Organizing Medical Records: One of the most important factors for proper billing and coding starts with the development of a well-documented and organized medical record. This is largely because patients and health care providers are normally faced with the need of keeping and providing medical records. These individuals are usually responsible for providing copies of their medical records to health care specialists and consultants. In most cases, medical records are typically organized in various ways including: Source-oriented Records: This is a traditional patient record model that maintains reports depending on the source of documentation with each source of data containing a labeled section known as sectionalized record. In this format, all documents created by the nursing staff are located in record's nursing section, medical section for physician-generated documents, and radiology section for radiology reports (Green & Bowie, 2010, p. 89). Problem-oriented Records: This is a more systematic method of documentation that contains four components i.e. database, problem list, initial plan, and progress notes. The database contains of the least set of data to be gathered on each patient as the problem list contains a list of the patient's problems. While the initial plan outlines the actions to be taken on the patient's condition, the progress note summarizes the patient's treatment, reaction to care, and discharge condition. Integrated Records: This patient record format basically involves the strict arrangement of reports in chronological date order. This model facilitates the observation of the patient's progress based on test results and how he/she responds to treatment according to the test results. Unit Medical Record System: A unit medical record system is a model that allows for a more comprehensive documentation of medical records since it contains information regarding patient's care such as previous and current medical history and the undergone procedures. In this system, a patient's records are stored in a single file which resides in a central repository and travels with the patient. The unit medical record system is organized either in the traditional way or in the clinical record or patient's chart method. Some of the major advantages of a unit medical record system include easy retrieval of previous medical information since a patient's entire medical records are stored in a single file (Rajakumar, n.d.). The other advantage of this system is it provides an effective way of organizing a patient's medical records since all the information is stored in a single and central place. Thirdly, a unit medical record system facilitates future healthcare delivery to a patient through the analysis of previous hospitalization details that are recorded in the file. Some of the disadvantages of the unit medical record system include difficulties in determining whether the emphasis is on single or multiple patient indexes (Weber, n.d.). Secondly, it's very easy for medical records to be documented and stored in a cumbersome manner through this system. Since all information about a patient's medical details including previous hospitalizations are stored in a central place, this system is an effective way of organizing medical information. In conclusion, organizing medical information is an important aspect for both patients and caregivers because of its impact on healthcare delivery. This process can be done through various ways including the source-oriented, problem-oriented, and integrated records. Notably, a unit medical record system provides an effective way of organizing medical information. References: Green, M.A. & Bowie, M.J. (2010). Essentials of health information management: principles and practices (2nd ed.). New York: Cengage Learning. Rajakumar, M. (n.d.). Numbering and Filing System. Retrieved November 19, 2011, from http://laico.org/v2020resource/files/NumberandFilingsystem.html Weber, G.I. (n.d.). Achieving a Patient Unit Record Within Electronic Record Systems. Retrieved from University of Missouri -- Kansas City website: http://sce.umkc.edu/~leeyu/Mahi/medical-data9.pdf Read the full article

[literaturereviewhelp]

Betty Neuman was a theorist from Ohio who had a Ph.D. in the clinical psychology field and was born in 1924. Neuman is renowned for the establishment of a supple system based on the nursing perspective. The nursing based approach displayed the client as the center energy resources representing a new level of concentric circles. The concentric circles were later evaluated to exist with variables represented in five sectors. The sectors include physical, the psychological parameters and environmental features with regards to the effect on an individual. Neuman’s model was presented through an interrelated concept, with logic consistency and a reasonable order. The model is embraced in the nursing practice due to the simplicity nature, direct approach and an identifiable dimension. The relevance of the model is widely used as a nursing education application with applicable practice. The relevance of the model has a provision of the guidelines which document nursing education and are a supplementary to the application practice in the same field. Betty Neuman’s theories are successful due to the varied field discussed. The theories have tackled all nursing dimensions and specialties with maximum flexibility. The presentation of the client perspective is summarized based on the equality factor of application for all involved parties. The model is a consistent regulator in the nursing practice and can be used over time to generate professionals. The specific case studies of the model have reflected an emphasis to basic prevention with an inclusive promotion. The simple nursing content is widely accepted with specific definitions to structures (Masters, 2012). Basic concepts Neuman’s model is relation of the variables with personal interactions dispensed by the combination of the physical and internal settings to generate the entire client structure. A survival of the client survival trend is invented as a unique individual pattern as the basic energy resources structures. A reference of the basic structure is represented as a central core with extreme survival factors. The detailed survival factors include genetic configuration, temperature changes and response patterns. The summary of the points that stability is achieved when a rise of the energy level occurs exceeding the used amounts in the system. The homeostatic organ is always in a dynamic state depending on the response leading to an imbalanced state. The nursing prototype in a structure includes the particular individual, the environment and health status. In many cases, the type of treatment and patient care is also highly considered. The human body is defined as the client system with a complex functionality. The complex approaches are established through the physiological analysis, the psychological evaluation and the interrelationship settings. In other occasions, the spiritual parameters can be studied with relations to the development cover (Masters, 2012). Application of Neuman’s system The application of Neuman’s system replica is used to identify the interpersonal levels of a given individuals. The relevance of the application is represented by the healthcare provider through a comprehensive setting. Read the full article