Monday, December 31, 2018

Where the Despair Lives

“Where does the despair live?”

I looked up from my computer at Ashley. Failing to come up with a witty response, I let my eyes linger on her figure instead, then raised my face to meet hers. “What?”

“Where does the despair live?” she asked again, still looking down at her keyboard. Her lips spread into an excited grin. Her pupils were wide, dilated. Something was thrilling her.

“I’m not asking, dummy, the test is. You’re going to love this, Dan.”

Ashley assumed a lot on the part of my taste, but I was lovesick enough to forgive this. Blood-red lipstick and blue eyeliner accented her expression of titillation. One ear was riddled with three silver rings, and her red skirt clashed with black boots. I’d never seen her plain, but I knew at her plainest that she had to be a beautiful woman. I loved all of her, even if I was too craven to say so.

What I loved the most, though, was the purple tattoo of a crescent moon on the inside of her right forearm. She could change her hair color, outfit, and makeup each day as her mood struck her. But that tattoo showed a commitment to her spontaneity that would never be discarded. Tattoos were forever.

I wanted to run my finger up and down the edge of that moon.

“What exactly am I going to love?” I asked, spring the trap she’d set; she wouldn’t share her find with me until I asked her.

She got out of her side of the booth, slid into mine, and shoved my half-eaten bagel against the café’s wall. She turned her laptop around to face us, and sidled close to me. These invasions of personal space were not signals of attraction with Ashley. They were claims of territory. We were not intimate, despite my intentions, but she’d staked her claim on me. I belonged to her and she knew it.

“This test is a trip,” she said. “Look.” She pointed at the screen.

The page was titled, ‘The Gray Trial.’ Below this was a phrase in what I could only assume was Latin: ‘Voir Dire’. I glanced at the site’s address, saw a meaningless jumble of letters and numbers, realized she was viewing the page with her Tor browser.

“You’re on the dark web? I’m not going to see some illegal shit am I?” I fought back an involuntary gag, and could taste bile. I’d let myself spend one weekend traipsing through the anonymous horrors of the dark web. The experiment culminated in an agonizing five minutes of what I’m fairly certain was a snuff film. I’d logged out of Tor and reformatted my hard drive. I’d felt spiritually filthy for weeks.

“Nothing like you’re imagining,” Ashley said. “I like an edge but I keep it classy. Jesus, Dan, its Halloween. We’re supposed to do spooky shit. Just look.”

The browser displayed what appeared to be a colorful geometric puzzle. A series of shapes filled a hazy field. On one side was a large circle, with the letter ‘A’ beneath it. On the distant end of the field, near the edge of the screen, was a small, five-pointed star. The letter ‘B’ was inscribed next to it.

At the bottom of the screen was the question, which was even more confusing: Where does the despair live? I could click one of two radio buttons, ‘A’, or ‘B’.

“What do you think?” Ashley said, her eyes still enchanted by the screen.

“I just see shapes. Colors,” I said. This kind of interactive media was beyond me. Chutes and Ladders is about as wild as I can get on my own power.

Ashley, however, was in her wheelhouse.

“Ease up and give this a real chance,” she said, putting one hand on my arm. “Just look at the picture, think on the question, and listen to your gut.” She knew how to get what she wanted out of me. I was her marionette, and she liked to pull the strings.

“Okay,” I said, looking at the screen again. I tried to let the shapes, the pulsing haze, sink into me, and to assess how I was reacting to each. Relaxed but engaged, I found myself starting to humanize the shapes, to ascribe feelings to them.

“The star,” I said. “The star is where the despair lives. It’s more alone, somehow. Click ‘B’.”

Ashley smiled, gave my arm one encouraging, exquisite squeeze, then clicked ‘B’.

Another image with a matching question popped up.

“There’s more?” I said.

Ashley shook her head. “There are lots more. And it gets weirder. That was your first one, you should do the whole thing with me. I already did it and got my results.”

“Results?”

“Well, the site called it a ‘summons,’ but it’s something like an analysis of your character,” Ashley said. “I think it’s a personality test. I haven’t done one of these since the Briggs Myers in psych when I was an undergrad.”

“So this thing is going to tell me if I’m an introvert or an extrovert but do it while teaching me to have fun with shapes and colors?”

“This is better, trust me. It’s much more than a personality test. Keep going.”

I kept going.

The next screen was a sea of colors, splashed across a digital canvas. Every few seconds, one of the bits of color would move, inching along like a worm, then stop. The question: Where is the danger? ‘A’ was in a morass of red curls, which I likened to blood and flame. ‘B’ marked a jagged arch of bone-white, reminding me of teeth. I chose ‘B’.

“I got that question too, but went with ‘A’,” Ashley said. “Red is dead. Don’t you know anything?” She elbowed me in the ribs, and I smiled, savoring the touch.

“I’m still not impressed. This… trial… is pretty tame for you. I don’t see what you got so excited about in the first place.”

She winked. “Just keep going.”

The next screen was a photo of a child’s bedroom. The figure of a boy, his back turned to the viewer, hid under bed covers. The question was: Which one is plotting? ‘A’ indicated a small, tattered clown doll, lying in one corner, its dead eyes oriented toward the bed. ‘B’ marked the closet door, slightly ajar.

“Okay,” I said. “You’re getting to me.”

As I clicked ‘B’, the photo faded from the screen, and I heard a faint snuffling, a child’s gasp, a faint whine, and then silence.

“Christ,” I said. The noises startled me, and my heart skipped a beat.

“It gets more immersive the further you get,” Ashley said.

It did, and as the test progressed, I was gnawed at by a sense of growing anxiety and gloom. The command, Find the treachery, accompanied the painting of a toddler stumbling toward the edge of a cliff. A masked troll held out a morsel, tempting the child. The child’s mother, exhausted and unkempt, watched on, failing to intervene. The chimes from a child’s music box played in the background. I selected the mother. The troll, suddenly animated, grasped the child’s foot. The child turned to its negligent mother for help as the picture faded to black.

The next screen showed a photo, which must have been staged. It portrayed a weeping, enraged man plunging a dagger into the chest of a naked woman. Both of these figures wore wedding rings. A second man, naked in the bed next to the woman, did not. I heard the slow creaking of a noose. The test asked, Who is the victim? My options were the adulteress or her lover. I chose the paramour, and was rewarded with the sound of a breaking bone.

The test consumed my attention. I felt like some perverse voyeur, and I absolutely had to see the next dark inquiry the test would conjure. My eyes darted from question to image, reading one, devouring the other.

Where is the redemption? A bleeding old hag, or a voluptuous, naked woman with a crow’s beak and webbed feet.

Why is it crying? The slit wrist of a man or the flames of the burning house that surrounded him.

Find the gloom. A crushed spider or popped balloon, strangely oozing with blood.

One of these is breathing. A tree-house with a crying child trapped inside, or the statue of an angel in the graveyard below, its face chipped away to nothing.

Faster and faster I scrolled through the questions. My palms were sweating. I was, embarrassingly, becoming aroused.

Let me see you. Yes or no, framed beneath a dusty, chipped mirror. I clicked ‘no’ without hesitation.

Where will you hold my hand? A photo of the interior of Ashley’s cluttered apartment, next to an image of a desolate field in the middle of winter.

“What the hell?” I said, sliding back in the booth like I’d been punched in the gut. A shot of panic burned down my spine.

“Just pick one,” Ashley whispered. She pressed tightly against me. I could feel her taught body against mine. Both our hearts were hammering. Her eyes were fixed to the screen. She licked her lips.

Slowly, I dragged the cursor over to the select ‘A’, Ashley’s room.

The screen faded to white.

Ashley leaned back away from me, laying her head on the back of the booth, and breathed deeply. “Oh, Danny boy, what a ride you gave me.” She turned to look at me, and drew her hair, somehow tousled, away from her eyes. “You threw me for some curves on a few of your answers. Wasn’t that a rush?”

Disoriented, I shook my head. The test had taken me from nauseous to aroused and back again, and those are two feelings I don’t like to mix.

“How did it get a picture of your apartment?” I wiped my sweaty palms on my pant legs.

Her eyes brightened. “Oh, that! That’s one of my pictures, it’s saved on my laptop. The site’s code probably snagged the file and loaded it to freak out the user. It’s a pretty sweet trick.”

“Don’t you have to upload that manually? Or download something for the site to work that way?”

She shook her head. “Not if the site’s code is elegant enough. I’m sure it did something malicious to my machine if it could pull one of my photos like that, but I’m not even mad, I’m impressed. This is why I back up my files up every week, so I can play with toys like this.” She pointed at the screen. “Your reading’s up.”

The images and questions posed by the trial had so engrossed me that I’d forgotten about its end-state; to read me, analyze me.

I faced her laptop and read.

The Gray Trial weighs you, and your nature is revealed.

You will be a victim and the pain you suffer will define your life. Only the Dark Star can adjust your fetters. Lose yourself in its light, its light, its blind-gash light and you might find a shred of Truth.

You may die young, and if so, by your own hand. If you survive this agony, a brief fortune will be afforded to you, but it will be hollow. You will recognize it as such but you will seize upon it anyway. The light of the old faiths may protect you for a time but you will fail the test that will save you.

You submit to manipulation until you die, even though you are left empty handed. You are a coward at heart. Counter this with the consumption of raw meat in the light of Orion’s belt.

“This is… insane,” I said.

My eyes were wide. I wanted to discount these maddening paragraphs as gibberish, but parts of them left me breathless.

Ashley gripped my arm as she read. “Twisted, right? Not another hackneyed exercise in self-affirmation. This stuff… penetrates. I didn’t feel good about what it said about me, but it was damn precise. Yours too, right?”

“No,” I said, too quickly. “This is an elaborate fortune-cookie. It’s trying to tell me my future.” I didn’t want to address the parts that were readings, discuss my tendency to be manipulated, to look at the strings that tied me to Ashely’s hands. “And what’s the Dark Star? And this… ritual, I guess? To eat raw meat in the light of Orion’s belt?”

Ashley curled a strand of her hair on her finger as she deliberated, reading the screen again. “It’s not all fortune-telling,” she said. Mercifully, she didn’t point out the parts that weren’t. “There’s more, if you want,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You can take the next step.” She put her hands on top of mine over the keyboard, moved the cursor to a button at the bottom of the page marked ‘proceed’, and clicked it.

Weep the gray tears, Seeker, the next page began. You, too, might be shriven. We may be summoned, and the Doctors will tally the blood of the veil. Open the gate, and we shall enter.

Below this invitation were boxes for inputting personal information: name, address, phone number.

And beneath this was a photo of a doctor in a white lab coat, his back to me. A string was tied around the back of his head, as though he wore a surgical mask. He had one comforting hand, wearing a medical glove, on the head of a child. The boy’s back was hunched, clutching his elbows, as though warming himself.

“Absolutely not,” I said. I shoved the laptop over to Ashley.

“You’re not the slightest bit curious?” she said.

“Yeah, but my spider-sense is sounding all five alarms. I wouldn’t give my info to anyone via the dark web. This is how you end up as a victim on ‘Faces of Death’. This has bad vibes written all over it, Ash.”

Her eyes flicked to me at my use of her pet name. “Then maybe I want bad vibes.”

My eyes widened. “You filled this out? You gave them your address?

She was enjoying the grinder she was putting me through. “Yeah,” she said, moving back to her booth. “Trick or treat!”

I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it. The damage was done. She couldn’t take it back.

“I know what I’m getting into,” she said. I doubted that, but her face told me I’d never convince her otherwise. “I get it. Whoever made this is off his rocker. But I want to know what the next step is, if there’s even a next step at all. What are they going to do with my information? Try to convert me to their crackpot philosophy?”

She was talking more to herself now than to me. I couldn’t shake her from her line of inquiry. “And who’s to say this guy, or these people, are nuts at all. Christians were cultists until Constantine blessed off on them. Maybe this guy’s selling something I want to buy.” She was all defiance then, flashing her characteristic commitment to dip into the discomfiting. But whereas I’d be content with a look, Ashley needed a taste.

“Ease up, Dan. They won’t come and find me,” she said. I hadn’t even considered that, and the fact that she had, and dismissed it, made me even more concerned. “The dark web is for anonymity.”

“It is until you tell someone your name,” I said.

Ashley pressed on. “He doesn’t want to be found, and he doesn’t want to find me. He just wants to give me the next test. And I want to take it.”

Earlier in my failed, clumsy courtship I might’ve continued pleading with her. I knew now that this would only make her dig her feet in deeper.

“Yeah,” I said, giving what amounted to a blessing. “The next test.”

“Besides,” she said, collecting her laptop and standing up, “If anything goes wrong, I’ve got you around to protect me.” She looked at me, clasped her hands together and tilted slightly to one side, the perfect damsel in distress.

I sighed internally, resigned to my own weakness, and the pleasure I felt from even this most transparent appeal to my chivalry. “Yeah. You do.”

“Gotta go,” she said. “Happy Halloween!”

The next test arrived the following day, an overnight delivery. This frightened me.

“Overnight’s expensive. And it shows an intense interest,” I said, all caution.

“I know!” Ashley said, all delight.

She’d shown up at my loft unannounced, in a red and blue flannel shirt over a purple skirt and fishnet stockings. A chill autumn wind and a few dried leaves followed behind her like a bridal train, or a corpse’s dress. I closed the door behind her and reached out for the package.

The manila envelope clashed against her fingernails, painted blood red. Written on the front of the packet, in ominous, bold script, was one word: REVELATIO.

No return address, just a title: ECCLESIA.

She dumped the contents, a card and a few photos, on my table, inviting me to look. Written by hand on a small card, in a twitching scrawl, was an invitation:

Your insight has been reviewed by the Doctors. You might soon bask in the vacuum and the resplendence. The light. The light! Your fetters are aligned. All can be shriven. Grasp the chains and revel in your slavery. Answer truly and Truth in turn is revealed.

Stamped at the bottom was a meaningless garble of letters. I pointed at it.

“The dark web address I used to submit my response,” she said.

“Response to what?”

“These,” she said, setting the card aside and laying three photos side by side.

Glancing at them, I grew ill.

The first showed a man, his face wide in a mournful wail, lifting the cold, white corpse of a woman in a bride’s dress out of pond. The man was marked ‘A’, the corpse, ‘B.’ The question: Who is happier?

The second displayed a paramilitary squad from some South American fascist regime, their rifles raised, eyes wide and anxious, sighting in on a group of blind-folded priests and nuns, some with mouths open in protest, pressed against a wall. The gunmen were ‘A’, the religious were ‘B’. The question: Where does the revenant grow?

The third demonstrated tragic precision. A comely young woman stepped into a street, her smartphone raised just below her face, her long, smooth leg about to be clipped by the car speeding through the cross-walk. The driver was in view as well, one hand on the wheel, the other on his own smart-phone. It was inevitable that the woman would be crushed beneath the car. Neither driver nor pedestrian had registered this yet. The driver was ‘A’, the woman was ‘B’. The task: Find the regret.

I shoved the photos away walked over to my sink. “God. I think those are real.”

“I think everything’s been real,” Ashley said, her voice a whisper. She slid the photos together, kept her hands pressed upon them, rubbing them with a reverent touch, as though they were jewels, or prized heirlooms.

The next morning, Ashley received another envelope. She invited me over this time, and I gladly accepted. A garish, purple shawl hung from her shoulders, and a dark blue bowler cap rested on her head. Her apartment, as always, was a mess. Half-finished paintings were leaned against one wall, and unfolded laundry was strewn over the couch. Incense burners and mostly used candle-sticks sat on shelves. Her small black cat slept beneath a dust-covered acoustic guitar propped up in a corner.

She tapped a wooden crate sitting on the counter she used as a dinner table. “They cranked this shit up to eleven.” She was stone-faced. I’d been expecting her to be watching me with her usual anticipation, waiting to thrive on my discomfort. Something, finally, had bothered her.

One word was splashed across the side of the crate in that same wild scrawl, like some kind of charm, or warning: TRANSCENDENTIAM.

Inside the crate, resting on top of packing hay, was another greeting card:

The Wardens see glimmers in your path. A supplicant was castigated and the entrails revealed the greatest pleasures. The Haruspex wants his hands on you. Yield, yield, place your neck beneath the blade and be saved. Drink the marrow in the light of the new moon. Answer truly and Truth in turn is revealed.

At the bottom of the card, another garbled dark web address.

With dread, I set the card down.

“What’s inside?” I asked.

She shook her head at me and gestured at the box. “Seek and ye shall find.”

I slowly moved toward the box, my arms heavy and reluctant. I picked away at the packing hay, half-convinced that some horror-movie monster would leap out and grab me.

Instead, I found a jar of murky formaldehyde, with a crude letter ‘A’ inscribed on the lid. I set it on the table and stared. I could make out the twisting, corkscrew form of some dark shape. “What freak-show biology experiment is this? A pickled eel?”

“Try anatomy experiment,” Ashley said.

I looked closer, and recognized the organ’s curves. “Christ! Intestines?”

She said nothing, could only nod and turn away.

I threw up my hands. “I draw the line at human organs. Ashley, you’ve got to step away from this right now.”

“If that was where you draw the line, then exhibit ‘B’ is beyond the pale.”

“What is it?” I imagined lifting up another jar to see a severed head staring back at me.

“Nothing so macabre as that,” she said, nodding at the intestines.

Glaring at her, I swore again, and turned my attention back to the crate. Inside was a small, foot-long box with a jagged ‘B’ written on it. The box was heavy for its size. Whatever was inside had to be dense, perhaps something metal.

I opened it.

A small, black handgun, oiled and clean, slid into my free hand. I’d seen it in dozens of war movies and recognized it instantly.

It was a luger. Inscribed on the pistol grip was a swastika.

“Jesus!” I shouted. “A goddamn Nazi gun?” Images of SS Stormtroopers flashed across my mind. Alarmed, as if the luger would go off on its own, I set it on table, its barrel pointed away from us. “Is it loaded?”

Ashley swallowed and took a small black rectangle out of her pocket. “I already took the magazine out.” She handed it to me.

It contained a single round.

“No question?” I asked, steadying myself and clearing my throat.

“There’s always a question,” she said, and with one swipe of her hand, she tore the rest of the packing hay out of the box. Painted on the bottom in large, threatening letters, was the question: Which offers freedom?

There was a pounding at my door.

“Open the door, goddammit!” Ashley’s voice was shrill. I’d never heard her so shaken. I jumped off my couch, rushed to the door, and opened it.

Ashley leapt inside, shut the door, and bolted it.

“Jesus Christ, Dan, don’t you answer your phone anymore?” she asked, nearly shouting.

Even through her anger, I knew her voice shook mostly from terror. I’d only seen Ashley this livid when a drunk driver crashed into her parked car outside her apartment.

But I was completely taken aback by Ashley’s appearance. For the first time since I’d known her, she looked plain. No wildly clashing colors, no extreme bracelets or hooked jewelry, no purple eye shadow or blue lipstick. Nothing to hint at her rotating styles of noir, goth, or avant-garde. Ashley came as she was. Blue jeans, white t-shirt, and tennis shoes. Her hair hung loose and wild, unkempt. This was Ashley as she’d look first thing in the morning, forced to throw her clothes on in a rush. Ashley in the raw. Resplendent. Wholesome. Her makeup and roguish- accoutrements, I realized, served only to hide how gorgeous she truly was.

I’d never seen her this way before. Something was terribly wrong.

“I’ve been calling you for the last hour, what the hell?!” she said again, shoving me.

“My phone died, it’s charging now,” I said. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

She pushed past me, muttering a litany of swears under her breath. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were wide. She bit on her thumb-nail, and looked around my loft, rapidly surveying it. She strode over to the windows and threw the curtains shut. She shook her head, sighed, and thrust herself onto my couch. She clutched her body with her arms and bent over, staring at the tops of her shoes.

“Daniel,” she said, not looking up at me. “I think I messed up.”

She’d never called me by my formal, given name. I sat next to her. I was hesitant to touch her, thought she might spook. She shook again. Ignoring my trepidation, I took her hand.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I wasn’t going to answer the last question,” she said. She still wasn’t looking at me, still staring at her shoes, but her hand clutched at mine. “I was going to throw that shit away. Maybe sell the gun, I don’t know. Put the card in the trash. But I was stupid. I wanted to know. I needed to know what would happen next.”

“What the hell, Ashley?” I said. “You said you were going to take that shit to the cops!”

She looked up at me, biting her lip. Her eyes were full of remorse. I said nothing. She continued.

“So I went to the website and answered. I picked the jar. The jar had the ‘freedom’, whatever the hell they meant by it. I don’t think it would’ve mattered what I picked, just that I did pick.”

“Oh, God, Ash,” I said.

I would’ve picked the gun. I could guess at what kind of freedom the mad designers of this sick battery of questions meant. The gun felt clean, one trigger pull and it was off to the big sleep. The intestines had implications that made me ill.

“Get me a drink,” she said. “That’s not all.”

I poured myself some whiskey and mixed her a gin and tonic. I brought the drinks over, handed her the cocktail, and she threw it back in one pull. Then she took my whiskey, took a sip, wiped at her mouth, and continued.

“I woke up this morning. Stepped outside to feel the weather on my skin. Gauge how to dress, what to wear. Turned around to go back inside. There was something on my door. On the walls.” She took another drink.

I could feel blood rushing into my ears as anxiety gripped me. “What was it?”

“The next question,” she whispered. “Written on the door. It looked like blood. Maybe something worse. The choices… ‘A’ was on my door, and ‘B’ was on my window. The question…”. Her voice trailed off to silence.

I felt the cold shot of fear dribble down my back like ice cold water. “What did it say?

Her hands shook. The glass of whiskey fell to the ground. She looked me in the eye.

“’Which is the right way in?’.”

Everything Ashley assumed had been wrong. Someone was close, knew where she lived, walked right onto her porch. The only thing between her and this raving lunatic she had summoned over the dark web was the glass of her transparent window, and the thin plywood of her rickety door.

She broke down crying. I felt myself panicking, but had to keep my head in the game, get hers back in it, and figure out the next step.

“Okay. We’re calling the police. We’ll get them to sweep your house, maybe keep a patrol car around. You can’t go back there. You can stay here, you can-.”

“I looked it up,” she said, interrupting me. “I pretended to know then so you didn’t think I was stupid, but I didn’t know so I looked it up.”

I didn’t understand, just stared at her, let her talk. She clearly hadn’t been listening to me before anyway.

“Haruspex,” she said. “From the card. ‘The Haruspex wants his hands on you’. Those were the priests, from ancient Rome, the ones who told fortunes by… They cut open animals. Live animals. Took out the guts and took a good, hard look at them. Learned the future.” She took both my hands in hers, gripped them until her knuckles were white.

“I don’t want to be shriven!” she said. “I don’t want to grasp the chains! I don’t want any of it!”

She was raving now. I seized her, hugged her tight, and made as many soothing noises as I could, like I was calming a panicked animal. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” I said, like a prayer, a mantra.

She broke away from me, wiped at her face, and looked at me.

“No it’s not,” she whispered. “Nothing’s okay.” She grabbed me by the hair and kissed me. I kissed her back.

Later, she fell asleep. I held her, tracing my finger along her crescent moon tattoo. I could lose myself in the curving ink. I refused to wonder if the moment had been as significant to her as it had been for me. I didn’t want to think about the probable disparity in how we valued one another. I did want to think about holding her, in my arms, like a lover. Because I loved her.

I bent my head to her arm, placed one last tender kiss on her tattoo, and slept.

An hour later, I awoke. Ashley still slept, clutching me. I was starving, knew she would be too when she woke up. Her appetites were haphazard through the day but she was always ravenous after sleeping. My bachelor’s rations consisted mostly of cereal and liquor.

I decided to run to the corner market. I could pick up some bagels, orange juice, maybe some eggs and butter. Splurge on some fresh coffee. When Ashley awoke I wanted her to feel cared for. All I’d been able to offer her before was an open door and a spare place to crash at the end of one of her long nights of mysterious escapades with people far more exciting than me. Now I could feed her proper, help her feel safe. I imagined her giving up her exoticism, and living the same boring routine that I’d been carved for myself. I imagined Ashley coming home to me every day.

I eased myself out of Ashley’s grasp, and watched her breathe as I put on my shoes. She jerked slightly at some ominous dream, trembled briefly, muttered something indecipherable, and then was still. It reminded of the small, sickly rabbit I’d briefly owned as a child, whimpering in its cage the first night in my home after I’d bought it.

I slipped out my front door. Despite the chill, it was a beautiful fall morning. The wind whipped at me, the changing leaves lit the trees like a sunrise, and I could still smell Ashley on my shirt. I breathed in deeply and, for the first time in a long time, felt the warmth of real contentment.

When I got back from the store, the bed was empty. Ashley was gone.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that she’d jet after being intimate. She wouldn’t want to deal with what had happened, or talk about any change in our relationship. If she’d stuck around, she might’ve tried to joke it off, and pretend it was a lark.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. I wanted her. She’d wanted me. I wasn’t going to let this slip away. I picked up my phone and dialed her.

It went straight to voicemail. Perhaps she’d turned her phone off on purpose, to prevent me trying to talk it out until time had passed and things had cooled.

But the more I thought about it, the more wrong it felt. As scared as she’d been last night, after seeing that message on her door, why would she leave? She wouldn’t go back to her place. I tried to call again, and once more, her phone went straight to voicemail.

There were dozens of places Ashley could’ve run off to, other haunts, other friends and flings I’d never met, or seen only in passing as Ashley dragged me along to some grim art-house cinema or used occult book store. She could’ve crashed with any of them as easily as she’d crashed with me.

But the memory of her panic and tears flashed through my mind. I remembered again the scared rabbit I used to own. Forced myself to recall how I’d lost it, and what its body looked like after a fox had gotten to it.

I drove to her apartment, ran up the steps to her porch, knocked on the door, and then stopped, taken aback: The marking, or message, that had so terrified Ashley wasn’t there. Wiped away, or never written, I wouldn’t know. I knocked again, and when there was still no response I tried the handle. It was open. I went inside.

“Ashley?” I called out, entering cautiously. I looked around, was met with the typical mess. Her cat climbed out from the bottom of a pile of laundry, sat down in front of me, and meowed. I reached down, scratched it behind the ears, and surveyed the rest of the apartment.

Empty.

I refilled her cat’s food and water, went outside, and sat on her porch. I stared out at the gray skies, felt the bite of the wind on my face and hands. My eyes threatened to fill with tears, and I fought them back.

The police, when I called them, asked their typical boilerplate questions, filed a report, and did little else. They figured Ashley for another of a thousand free spirits who dip out of town every year to start life again somewhere else. They told me grown adults were free to disappear if they wanted, that she’d show up again when the road wore her out.

I told them about the cards and their mad ravings, the morbid photos, the intestines and the gun, told them about the website and the Gray Trial. They asked me to produce these articles. But every card, every photo, every physical object attesting to the trial had disappeared from Ashley’s apartment. The officers asked me if I was currently receiving psychiatric treatment, on any medication, and if they could help me find my doctor.

They left, and I realized how insane I must have sounded. I’m a logical person. I applied the cut of Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation was that Ashley had gone to ground, spooked by our unexpected intimacy. She’d turn up in a day or so.

After two weeks I was certain that she’d bailed on her whole life. I tracked down everyone I thought she knew, but knew where she could be. I was the last person to see her. She didn’t even come back for her cat. Instead of making the depressing pilgrimage to feed the animal each day, I adopted him, brought him to my loft to live with me.

I skipped work and spent days online trying to get a lead on where Ashley went. I trawled through every form of social media, searching every alias I figured she might cook up, hunting for any clue. I put every picture of her I could find through reverse image searches, hoping to turn up some hint as to where she could be. All to naught. I followed up with the police, and they were as flummoxed as I was.

She had vanished without a trace, and everything leading up to her departure went back to the unsettling events surrounding that damnable trial.

The only lead I had was buried in the anonymity of the dark web. So I followed it.

I went back to Ashley’s apartment, now with a bright eviction notice pasted on the front door. I stole her laptop and brought it home.

I fired up her computer. The Tor browser was still open. It was on the home page for the Gray Trial. I could play this game again with a single click.

My fingers trembled.

Click.

The first images were innocuous enough. It began like last time, with shapes, colors, and paradoxical inquiries. I answered with instinct, and completed these questions instantly. Click.* Next, as before, the drawings, animations, and disturbing sounds. I felt bile rising in my throat, but moved through each horror. My heart was racing, pounding in my chest. Click. Click. Click. Then came the photographs. As real in appearance and as unsettling as those that were mailed to Ashley. I was gasping, sweating, wiping at my brow. Each submitted answer was like a shot to my gut. Click. Click.

Click.

The last photo broke me.

Tied to a chair was a woman with a plastic bag over part of her head, bound tightly just above her nose, concealing her eyes and hair. A ball was stuffed in her mouth, strapped to her head like some bondage prop. Her lips, even confined by the ball gag, were stretched back in a scream. She was dressed in a sack-cloth, like an Old Testament penitent. Her wrists were strapped to the arms of the chair.

Behind her was a masked man. The mask had the contours of a human face. Where eyes should have been, there were wild, black, cutting scribbles, as though the eyes had been spitefully gashed out from the photo. The man wore a white doctor’s coat. Over that was a black butcher’s apron.

One gloved hand wielded a filet knife. The edge of the blade was placed against the woman’s arm.

Just below the blade was a purple tattoo of a crescent moon.

I nearly seized. I gripped the edge of my table, tried not to get sick, found myself hyperventilating. I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo. Even through this veil of disorienting shock I was able to find the markings, read the question. The blade was marked ‘A’. The woman’s head was marked ‘B’. The question: Where does the despair live?

Weeping, I answered.

And when the test ended, and the prompt rose in front of me, inviting, just as it had before, Open the gate and we shall enter, I could do nothing else but submit. I gave them my name. I gave them my address. I invited them in; summoned them.

I wanted them to show me the way to Ashley. At the worst, I’d know where they took her before the end, and show some of them what it means to be shriven, if that’s what they wanted.

But they have yet to come. I am still waiting. I trace a crescent moon on the inside of my right forearm with one finger. The chill autumn wind blows dry leaves across the street, like a bridal train, or a corpse’s dress, and as I watch it, I realize where the despair lives.

It lives in me.



Submitted January 01, 2019 at 08:57AM by BAKreiger http://bit.ly/2Rp7bED

As a CCG the game is fantastic but the cards themselves are weak

TLDR make the cards themselves more memorable. Magic did this right

I’m a new player to hearthstone and it’s safe to say I’m addicted (got a mage to rank 25 in one long binge session). I haven’t purchased any cards yet, but I’m sure I will as I dive into the meta. The gameplay is so much fun - I love the fast pace and the escalation of strategy and backloaded depth.

I stayed away from hearthstone because of its reputation as a cash grab play to win, but I’m honestly pleased by the balance and the in game methods to expand your collection.

I do have an issue with the cards themselves, at least in contrast with Magic, which I played as a kid. While granted, some nostalgia is at play here, I remember being captivated by the cards themselves. The artwork, the scenarios, and the clever text descriptions/quotes. Part of the fun of magic was the collecting aspect - just looking at my binder of cards and studying them.

Hearthstone is lacking in this, imo. The art is relatively simple, and rarely does it evoke a scene, and nothing is as interesting as the interesting Magic cards. The descriptions are also sort of threadbare or obvious. I guess it’s ties to Warcraft lore might be limiting, and I realize I’m playing with a deck of mostly classic cards which has its assets taken from the Warcraft trading game, so idk if this gets better. You can’t resize your cards when examining them in the UI, and it seems obvious that the purpose of the cards only extends to their function in the game.

The thing is that Hearthstone has a disproportionate amount of backlash compared to other games of its nature. RNG and pay-to-win elements obviously come with CCGs. I think HS’s model would be a lot more palpable to people if the cards had more value as a collectible. If their only value is tied to gameplay, they’ll just be viewed as paywalled gameplay elements (because that’s what they then are).

I realize that HS might seem at a disadvantage as a collectible card game given its digital nature, but I used to play this passive game called MouseHunt that has a small but rabid following, wherein you largely collected digital mice just for the sheer joy of collecting. The artwork was so impressive and the designs were so imaginative. They had that quality wherein the art suggested a deeper narrative that sparked the imagination. You could organize your collection, and people would take pride in rounding out there collections.

I think if Hearthstone were to put more focus into the collectible aspect of the game, they could prolong the phenomenon of its success indefinitely (or be eventually overtaken by a game that clones the gameplay but nails the collectible aspects).

PS while I’m bitching, the tech is too janky for multi billion dollar grossing game. This is sorta par for the course with the gaming industry but thought I’d throw it in.



Submitted January 01, 2019 at 02:57AM by lonelinessmademecave http://bit.ly/2SBIjXu

As a CCG the game is fantastic but the cards themselves are weak

I’m a new player to Hearthsone and it’s safe to say I’m addicted (got a mage to rank 25 in one long binge session). I haven’t purchased any cards yet, but I’m sure I will as I dive into the meta. The gameplay is so much fun - I love the fast pace and the escalation of strategy and backloaded depth.

I stayed away from Hearthsone because of its reputation as a cash grab play to win, but I’m honestly pleased by the balance and the in game methods to expand your collection.

I do have an issue with the cards themselves, at least in contrast with Magic, which I played as a kid. While granted, some nostalgia is at play here, I remember being captivated by the cards themselves. The artwork, the scenarios, and the clever text descriptions/quotes. Part of the fun of magic was the collecting aspect - just looking at my binder of cards and studying them.

Hearthsone is lacking in this, imo. The art is relatively simple, and rarely does it evoke a scene, and nothing is as interesting as the interesting Magic cards. The descriptions are also sort of threadbare or obvious. I guess it’s ties to Warcraft lore might be limiting, and I realize I’m playing with a deck of mostly classic cards which has its assets taken from the Warcraft trading game, so idk if this gets better. You can’t resize your cards when examining them in the UI, and it seems obvious that the purpose of the cards only extends to their function in the game.

The thing is that Hearthsone has a disproportionate amount of backlash compared to other games of its nature. RNG and pay-to-win elements obviously come with CCGs. I think HS’s model would be a lot more palpable to people if the cards had more value as a collectible. If their only value is tied to gameplay, they’ll just be viewed as paywalled gameplay elements (because that’s what they then are).

I realize that HS might seem at a disadvantage as a collectible card game given its digital nature, but I used to play this passive game called MouseHunt that has a small but rabid following, wherein you largely collected digital mice just for the sheer joy of collecting. The artwork was so impressive and the designs were so imaginative. They had that quality wherein the art suggested a deeper narrative that sparked the imagination. You could organize your collection, and people would take pride in rounding out there collections.

I think if Hearthsone were to put more focus into the collectible aspect of the game, they could prolong the phenomenon of its success indefinitely (or be eventually overtaken by a game that clones the gameplay but nails the collectible aspects).

PS while I’m bitching, the tech is too janky for multi billion dollar grossing game. This is sorta par for the course with the gaming industry but thought I’d throw it in.



Submitted January 01, 2019 at 02:57AM by hearthsan-bot http://bit.ly/2ArrSpN

2018 - Your Top Ten Games

𝐌𝐘 𝐓𝐎𝐏 𝐓𝐄𝐍 𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟖

𝐇𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐌𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐑𝐞𝐝 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝟐 (𝐗𝐛𝐨𝐱 𝐎𝐧𝐞 & 𝐏𝐒𝟒)

RDR 2 seems like great story trapped inside a schizophrenic (and sometimes down right bad) videogame. It is a game that simultaneously wants you to explore a world, but demands that you do only exactly what it wants you to do during missions. It's a game bogged down by arbitrary fail states, a cumbersome fast travel system, and laborious animation priorities that make it feel at times very unresponsive. It is a beautifully crafted experience in desperate need of a director to reign it in better. And yet it is still a game I continued to think and talk about, a messy but ambitious game, which is highly uncommon for a big budget game, which is why it makes this list as an honorable mention, and why I will likely return to it even though I already stopped playing it twice.

𝟏𝟎. 𝐃𝐨𝐧𝐮𝐭 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐲 (𝐈𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞, 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐝, 𝐏𝐂, 𝐏𝐒𝟒, 𝐗𝐛𝐨𝐱 𝐎𝐧𝐞)

Stop me if you heard this one: a game about raccoon who uses a Donut Shop as a cover to suck an entire town into a black hole. Also it is a metaphor for gentrification. The mechanics of Donut County are simple - you control the black hole and move it around the screen in various scenarios to hoover up objects. The more you hoover, the bigger your hole. Donut County is a charming little experience that takes influence from the cult classic Katamary Damacy. It is a cheap $5 game that lasts about 2 hours and doesn't outstay it's welcome, but one that will stick with you. It's a game that toys with larger cultural themes, but is not so heavy handed in it's delivery as to turn them into a soapbox. It's also literally a game anybody can play and enjoy regardless of skill level or their level of familiarity with videogames.

𝟗. 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐲𝐫𝐢𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝟒

VC4 is an interesting hybrid of a turn based strategy game and a real time game where you take control of your characters for a set amount of time and move them around the map and actually aim and shoot at enemies. Imagine chess where you take direct control of the characters and attack the enemy for their "turn." The narrative is silly high school teen anime antics set in the backdrop of a pseudo World War 2 setting, but has enough heart to make the characters likable. However, what kept me playing this game for 40+ hours is the unique combat system. This is the fourth incarnation but because only a handful of the entries made it to the U.S. and because no other game series has adopted this formula, it makes for a really unique and fun strategy game experience.

𝟖. 𝐀𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧'𝐬 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐎𝐝𝐲𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐲 (𝐗𝐛𝐨𝐱 𝐎𝐧𝐞, 𝐏𝐒𝟒, 𝐏𝐂)

The buffet of videogame mechanics all bundled up in a pretty package. If you have a favorite big budget game in the last 5 years, Odyssey probably borrowed something from it: the enemy tagging system from Far Cry, stealth combat of Batman or Hitman, the quest design of Witcher 3. I could go on. But Odyssey does a good job of taking all these elements and bundling them up in a satisfying wrapper with some fantastic set pieces of the world of Greek History and mythology. It is the "most" videogame you will find in a single package this year, and offers both quality and quantity in abundance, even if it offers little in the way of design ambition. It is almost the definition of videogame comfort food, and it's pretty good at what it does.

𝟕. 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐖𝐚𝐫 (𝐏𝐒𝟒)

In contrast to Odyssey, God of War's series reboot is a tightly edited package, taking the less is more approach when it comes to open world design. The combat has been completely overhauled and they even found a way to make Kratos a more interesting character through exploring a father / son dynamic. It's more than a bit heavy handed and hamfisted in it's main narrative, but it gets points for trying. And a lot of the side characters banter make up for a main narrative that thinks it's smarter or more ambitious than it actually is.

𝟔. 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 (𝐏𝐂, 𝐗𝐛𝐨𝐱 𝐎𝐧𝐞, 𝐏𝐒𝟒)

My favorite multiplayer game of the year. If you want to get together with some friends and beat up on some giant creatures, this is the game for you. Some inelegant user interface and multiplayer match up decisions get in the way a bit, but they are minor inconveniences once you work your way around them. I put in a collective 30+ hours on this game, a pittance compared to my group of friends who left me in the dust as work and other obligations got in the way, but I look forward to revisiting it during the coming year.

𝟓. 𝐀𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐭 - 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 (𝐏𝐒𝟒 𝐕𝐑)

if this list were only about charm and clever design, Astrobot would be at the top of it. It is one of most clever VR games I have ever played using the mechanics of a 3D Mario game as it's basis, but building from there. Every level offers a new game play mechanic, a new way to interact with the world. Surprise and delight are the two most common emotions it elicits, and it's a joyous videogame playground.

𝟒. 𝐌𝐮𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐙𝐞𝐫𝐨 - 𝐑𝐨𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐄𝐝𝐞𝐧 (𝐏𝐂, 𝐗𝐛𝐨𝐱 𝐎𝐧𝐞, 𝐏𝐒𝟒)

MYZ is a strategy RPG that is part Xcom and part Metal Gear stealth. It is set in a post-apocalyptic world with mutant animals that talk dismissively about the stupidity of the human race that came before it (that would be us). This game took me by surprise and ate up almost a solid week of my winter break. I had never even heard of it until the week it came out but immediately fell in love with it. At 20 hours, it didn't overstay it's welcome, but it did leave me hoping for a sequel.

𝟑. 𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧 (𝐏𝐒𝟒)

I should note upfront I don't care much about the Marvel universe nor Spiderman as a character, which made this game even more surprising. Mechanically it just nails the feel and makes traversing the city a ton of fun. And the story hits some surprising understated beats, better written and acted than most of the Marvel films. While Spiderman is not a game I will think about for decades to come, playing through it was probably one of the most enjoyable couple of weeks I had with a videogame all year.

𝟐. 𝐓𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 (𝐏𝐒𝟒 & 𝐏𝐒𝐕𝐑)

I've already raved at length about the magic of Tetris Effect. It is the definition of the whole being more than the sum of its parts. What those parts essentially are is one of the best versions of Tetris combined with beautiful world music and visuals with a theme of universal-ism and togetherness. But what happens when you play it, is you become one with it. As you turn the pieces and clear lines, the sound effects create the music and it escalates and slows in tempo in time with it. Tetris Effect is essentially videogame meditation. I have heard stories of many people who use it to deal with anxiety issues and I can completely see why. It is the purest form of "game" in one of the most beautiful wrappers ever made. It is a game I will no doubt return to for years to revisit, both inside and out of VR.

𝟏. 𝐂𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞 (𝐏𝐂, 𝐒𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡, 𝐗𝐛𝐨𝐱 𝐎𝐧𝐞, 𝐏𝐒𝟒)

Much like Tetris, Celeste is a game that mechanically pulls you in to make you hyper focus on the experience it is offering you. But Celeste does it with two dimensional platforming done in a retro 8 bit art style made to look like a classic NES game. Every level, or screen, in Celeste is a series of jumps and challenges that will only take you 5-10 seconds to execute if you do them right. You can repeat and fail as often as you need without penalty. But the genius of Celeste is that it is as much a puzzle game as it is a platformer. It keeps teaching you new ways of playing it, new ways of seeing the screen in front of you. And each new chapter introduces new mechanics that continue to build upon the lessons it taught you previously.

And if that was all it was, it would still be one of the best platformers I've ever played. But themes of Celeste directly tie into the gameplay. Celeste is a game about a young woman who feels like she must climb a literal mountain. Her life is something of a mess, but she's putting everything on hold because it is just something she feels like she must do. And over the course of the game it deals with themes of anxiety, depression, facing the parts of ourselves we don't want to see, and learning to cope with those inner and external voices around us. And it does so not in a preachy way, but in understated conversations and brief internal thought monologues. And over the course of playing it becomes very clear that the game's themes and the mechanics are perfectly married. We are climbing the mountain with Madeline (the main character), and her struggles are much like our own and the entire game is a metaphor for those emotional and psychological challenges we all face, staring at the mountains, and forcing ourselves to take the jump. To fail. And to immediately try again.



Submitted January 01, 2019 at 02:26AM by EternalGamer2 http://bit.ly/2Ao7YMq

Inspired by Simply Nailogical recreating her subscribers' nail art. My first gradient using a sponge and liquid latex!

http://bit.ly/2AkLfkk

Submitted January 01, 2019 at 02:38AM by ArgentManor http://bit.ly/2SpB5WM

new years unit

An Arc's Beginning
Android 19 & Dr. Gero
Leader Skill: All types Ki +3, ATK & DEF +60%
Passive Skill: Invading the City - ATK +40%, "Androids" category characters DEF +20%
Super Attack: Malevolant Onslaught - Greatly raises ATK for 3 turns and deals supreme damage to the enemy
Categories: Androids, Combination
Links: Shocking Speed, Android Assault, Tough as Nails, Energy Absorbtion, Brutal Beatdown, Scientist, Loyalty
SA Quotes:
"Me and my creation will destroy you!"
"Hahaha! You have no chance of survival!
SA Animation: The opponent fires an energy blast at Android 19, but 19 absorbs it and fires it back at the opponent. Gero teleports to the opponent and kicks them down, then stabs them with his arm and throws them to the ground.
Obtained: Logging in on January 1, 2019 - January 31, 2019(one login only, obtain 5 of the unit)

Card Art

Hope you all have an energetic New Years Eve, and a delightful New Years!



Submitted January 01, 2019 at 12:25AM by UltraDelinquentCat http://bit.ly/2GORC5c

INSTAGRAM IS TOXIC

I hate Instagram.

Instagram is such bullshit. It’s all fake. I mean, there are some profiles on there which I enjoyed following, such as people posting their art and cool photography and stuff. But now it’s all a shallow popularity contest. Who can post the best selfies? Who has the most money? Who can take the most aesthetically pleasing photos? Who travels to the coolest places? Who has the cutest baby? Who has the most romantic relationship? Who’s lifestyle is the COOLEST AND MOST AESTHETICALLY PLEASING??????? And don’t get me started on all those foodie accounts where they be posting 10 pics a day of all their meals with a VSCO Pro filter talking bout how their lifestyle is simple and minimalistic....like YO it literally took you 2 hours to create one fucking post. What are you DOING with your life? What kinda quality of life you got if all your time is spent outing up this fake persona online?!

Instagram seems like it is mostly for insecure people. Why can’t people just wake up and be happy and content with their life and just go on with your day and do their own thing? Why do people have to post on Instagram to feel fulfilled?

I’m so sick of seeing these white girls taking selfies with a filter they probably had to pay 0.99 for, wearing $1000 hair extensions, showing off their fake lips, posing with their 5 inch long nails clutching their vintage Gucci handbag with some mainstream song lyric or some bullshit like “i have crippling depression lol!!!!!!” like WHAT?????? Why is everyone so concerned about being cool? The definition of “cool” seems to change every hour on that damn Instagram site. How do these people keep up with this shit. Who’s to say what’s cool and what’s not? Just wake up and live your damn life.



Submitted December 31, 2018 at 09:27PM by soberyute http://bit.ly/2Rry1Mm

My struggle with OCD and its weirdness: a long story

This is gonna be VERY long, so I apologize in advance. I'll try and condense it to the relevant, but my life is OCD, so a lot is ... relevant.... I felt a kinship with this subreddit, being of the OCD-plagued as I am and wanted to share my story. I'm also apologizing in advance if I ever seem flippant or making light of my issues. I cope through humor a lot, because I'm usually really ashamed and private about my struggles with mental illness. I know I shouldn't be ashamed, but you guys know what it's like, I would think.

To start: my life is OCD.

Not continually or linearly, but always somewhere inside me, as a secret part of myself. I can remember doing OCD rituals as far back as three years old. I was formally diagnosed at 13, around the time I left school. I dropped out before finishing 8th grade, because my rituals were cutting into my school days and I was getting up at 5 a.m. for rituals and --still!-- there wasn't enough time. I was dealing with the beginning of an ED and obsessive, hours-long, exercise was part of the ritual, as was showering for about an hour every day.

By the time I was 15, I developed what would become my more permanent fixations, I guess. I know when they came about but, save for my aversion to bugs, not why. Maybe there isn't a why.

I've been told by therapists that, even for OCD, my rituals/aversion are pretty atypical, which ... I don't know if that's true or not. Maybe it's because of a poverty of language to accurately describe something that's kind of abstract and intrinsic to me. Or maybe because I've never found a cause and it all seems arbitrary beyond the "I just don't like X, so X is a problem" explanation.

My biggest problem is a form of contamination phobia. I'm not afraid of germs or being infected with anything and the only time I'm remotely stringent about that is when doing things that are, in fact, germ-ridden, like handling money or touching grocery carts. But, mainly, it's just I have an aversion to certain things -- things that may feel weird, or cause me to feel disgusted -- and when I come in contact with them I do elaborate rituals to ease the feeling of disgust/anxiety.

My aversions are triggered by sensory input, more than half the time. (The other half is obsessing about aforementioned sensory input and being triggered by thoughts of the thing, instead of thing itself.)

Almost all of my five senses have a trigger. The biggest and most enduring is touch. I cannot touch anything without washing my hands, except for a small set of personal objects. Full stop. This has pretty much been my standard aversion and even in my better OCD times, never really went away.

Next, there are visual triggers. I cannot see real bugs, or see a drawing of a bug or read the word bug/insect without feeling the need to engage in a washing ritual. That goes for specific names of bugs. I use euphemisms IRL when possible. (If you're wondering how I can type this out here and not freak out, I've scheduled a shower after this post.)

There are certain every day household objects I cannot look at without feeling the same. Aerosol cans are one (if it has "-spray" in the name, I cannot see it, whether it's physical, a picture, nor can I discuss it/read the word.) Small metal objects are another, mostly grooming objects. With the latter, I can see them when I use them, but I have to shower after. This includes tweezers, nail clippers and sometimes razors. Next is dust. I cannot look at dust without -- you guessed it -- engaging in the washing ritual. This also is the only thing that will cause me to have an immediate, no-questions asked, breakdown. Like, if a bug touches me, I'll freak out. If dust touches me, I will dissociate in panic.

Another visual trigger which is sort of weird is things blowing in the wind, but like only wind from a fan. Like, really just paper or a plastic bag blowing in the wind from a fan. God, that is really specific, but the OCD wants what it wants. Why does this bother me? I don't know! It's on the same level as tweezers with "freaks me out but not as much as a bug."

Next is audible triggers. I cannot hear anyone passing gas or talking about passing gas -- burping or farting -- without doing my washing ritual. The sound of an aerosol can is another and so is the sound of a bug, like a buzzing.

Long-term exposure to anti-psychotics fucked up my sense of smell, so (thankfully?) I don't have much of a smell issue but I react to smells I find gross (like some chemicals or hand sanitizer) as though it's actually touching me. I don't have any taste triggers either because ... honestly, it'll be a cold day in hell when I let any foreign object near or in my mouth.

There are other things that fall under "don't want it near me" but not so neatly categorized, like animal hair or eraser shavings from a pencil or old/standing water.

Certain parts of my body are more sensitive to being touched by things. My chest/neck/face are my temple. Nothing can violate or touch this area. In terms of aversion severity, my mouth, lips and cheeks are triple.

My OCD is about it "feeling" right, basically. The above stuff makes me "feel" wrong and I have to do rituals until it "feels just right" again. My primary form of rituals consist of doing things until they feel okay, but I have numbers/counting obsessions too. Everything is in odd numbers up until number 7 and then even numbers are okay again. I format all my online posts with paragraphs/lines in groups of odd numbers.

Some of my washing rituals are done to the count of numbers, not linear 1-2-3 counting, but more of a rhythmic numerical pattern (e.g. "1,2,3,2,2") and some of them have elaborate mental visual systems where the numbers are grouped. The numbers in this sense are less "numbers" and more like visual stand-ins for places in my ritual. I have number form/spatial sequence synesthesia, so this is just an involuntary thing that I don't have control over.

There are other, small things that primarily are an issue when I'm trying to relax or sleep. Sometimes I compulsively spit on my fingers and touch my hips, where my waistband is or my ankles or touch the space right above where my pinky/middle toe is on each side. I compulsively straighten my clothing and feel the need to straighten other things. Not so much to make them symmetrical or even all the time, but usually feel right in proximity to other things.

You know those pictures of people taking stuff apart and organizing it neatly? That shit is like crack to me. When I see something I think needs to be straightened, I can "feel" it like a physical itch. I straighten shelves in grocery stores pretty often. I'm an artist and drawing can be a nightmare when I'm bad off because what "feels" right to my OCD doesn't always look good. I'm ridiculously sensitive to tangents, to the point where if my OCD is bad that day, I can't draw.

My compulsions, though, and rituals are what's killing me. After probably age 17/18, my OCD became manageable to the extent that I could live normally. I still did stuff, but stuff didn't rule my life. When I was 20 I got my GED and started comm college and then started going to an art university. (I'm pretty proud of myself for that, even though I haven't finished my bachelor's yet. I did it on a 7th grade education and a screwed-up brain!)

For years, my mental stuff was okay. I focused on school/freelance work, I got diagnosed with other co-morbid disorders, and started medicating/going to therapy for them. Beyond some really bad physical issues I'd been dealing with since I was about 21, I was normal! The kind of normal I'd fought for, been in several mental hospitals for, almost died many times for.

Then in 2015 everything fell apart again. I don't know if it was a conga line of traumatic things happening to me that spring or my physical illness worsening or both. But I slowly began to slip back into my old OCD. Flash-forward the last day of 2018 and I'm at the worst I've been in my life -- the state I was in when I left 8th grade included.

I know life isn't fair but this seems like the most heartbreaking, unfair thing to happen. My adolescence and childhood were robbed by OCD/depression, my 20s by physical illness and now, through my late 20s into being 30, it's taken by both. I can remember a night in July or August of 2013, going for a night walk and catching a firefly in my hands in the dark street and seeing it glow between my fingers before releasing it. I want that sort of mentality again. Right now, if I see a fucking picture of firefly, I'm OCD-triggered.

My glasses broke in July and I never replaced them despite my 20/400 vision because it's easier to not see anything. Even then, I squint a lot and spent a lot of time with my eyes closed. I walk through the house with my eyes closed until I reach one "safe" location. I have only two "safe" rooms in my house, since I share it with a few other folks. (I had to move back in with my family in 2010 and bless their hearts, they are not creatures of OCD like myself.)

I spend a lot of time with my earbuds in or my hands just clasped over my ears when certain members of my family are nearby because they're more likely to burp or something. Sometimes I just sit places with my eyes closed and my hands over my ears. I like being in the dark because the sensory deprivation aspect is calming.

Like I said, my rituals are elaborate hand/face-washing ones. Back before I kind of plunged into this madness, I could condense them into, like, gestures that represented the biggest ritual. Now every time something unique triggers me, a new component gets added like a big crazy katamari. I'm really vulnerable after a shower, so if something touches me after that it becomes another obsession point.

The physical issues I mentioned earlier play a big part, in both my anxiety and my rituals. We're still in the process of formal diagnosis, but my twin sister and myself both have some sort of possible neurological disorder, with weakness, nerve pain and orthostatic hypotension. I'm officially diagnosed with the latter, but there's more to the medical story, obviously. Anyway, what it means is that neither she nor I can stand up for long without getting weak and lightheaded. I have come close to and have passed out on many occasions. I get muscle weakness and nerve pain very easily and sometimes when blood pools in my extremities too much, I can be at risk of tripping/falling. And I have. So it's best I don't ever let it get to that state.

What this means for my OCD is ... in the last six months, my physical issues got worse. It goes through flare-ups but I become obsessed, on the days where I can't stand up long, about not being able to do my washing rituals. Then it becomes a loop: I can't stand up long to do them, but that makes me more anxious and the anxiety means I have to keep doing them and that makes me weak/light-headed.

I also started kind of a form of ... I'm not sure how to put it. Not very long ago, I realized I couldn't find a "wrap-up" point that let me know when my ritual was done. I never "felt" done anymore and numbers didn't work. So I started to deliberately exacerbate my physical issues to ... I guess, put an end to the ritual? Because, if I pass out or am in severe pain, it's over! Whether I want it or not!

And I know that's awful. But I get light-headed in showers anyway a lot and the easier way to make sure I cut my shower time is to induce a very short blackout. God, this sounds awful typing it out but mind you it's super easy to do. If I hold my breath and tense myself and make my heart rate go up, I'm good as down for the count. So, knowing that, I do it. And it's awful. I also will do things too harshly to my skin to make myself stop. My skin is really sensitive and my boobs and chest regularly bleed and I have bruised arms from this. It's not really causing (to my knowledge) long-term issues to my already chronic issues, but causing very acute reactions that might not have come about or not as harshly.

Also, I have an obsession with doing things right the first time. Despite being mostly managed, my ADHD means I get distracted during rituals easy and cannot do them flawlessly. As a result, any distraction -- someone talking, a sudden noise -- will make me start over. The weakness/lightheaded stuff makes me doing this even worse, because the weaker my arms gets, the less "correct" my ritual is and then I end up in so much pain I'm shaking and struggling to breathe. So, even if I don't exacerbate my symptoms deliberately to stop myself, I often do it just by daily existence.

And there's a bunch more but it's just secondary to the rest of it. I feel the need to compulsively spit, which is gross and sometimes (not all the time, but just when I'm Very Bad) I have to read things three times if I don't think I read it properly the first time -- no skimming! My reactions to aversions can sometimes be really physical -- my face will flush and get hot and I'll feel my skin crawling. Anxiety is a real bitch.

I just am kind of at my wit's end with this. Part of me knows that I'll be better when my physical state is better, but also I know I'm out of control. I've beat this beast before ... but I was able-bodied then. I get very strong reactions to anxiety (see the passing out above) so aversion therapy isn't something I can go headfirst into right now. I have only so many spoons.

I'm also, in the midst of all this, trying on and off to go back to school, do art, work on freelance work and just not despair. I feel like I have to spend my energy doing productive, future-minded goals and I try. But I get so exhausted. I don't sleep some nights because the before-bed rituals are daunting. And when I do get comfortable, I spend so much of my time huddled under my blankets or with my eyes half-closed because the world and my life is very dirty and very difficult and very physically and mentally painful.

It's my life right now, but dear God, this isn't a life.



Submitted December 31, 2018 at 08:50PM by faunwood http://bit.ly/2QZf7NJ

Best easy nail art desgin for begnnier

https://youtu.be/gFW6i9eGta4

Submitted December 31, 2018 at 08:10PM by Ameenabutt http://bit.ly/2s4gyLy

What’s a good way to make crisp square shapes in My nail art? Are there square dotting tools?

No text found

Submitted December 31, 2018 at 05:37PM by DoctorWhoAndRiver http://bit.ly/2TfcW54

Album of the Year 2018 #31: Graduating Life - Grad Life

Hello everyone and happy New Year's Eve! It's day 31 of our AOTY 2018 series and today, /u/NMHipsterTrash is here to tackle Graduation Life's latest album Grad Life.


Artist: Graduating Life

Album: Grad Life


Listen:

YouTube

Spotify

Apple Music

Bandcamp


Background by /u/NMHipsterTrash

Graduating Life is a band mainly consisting of former Green Bay Quarterback songwriter/guitarist Bart Starr and drummer Logan Jensen. As their former project Meet Me in Montauk began to die down, Graduating Life dropped three demos and an EP entitled Freakin’ Weekin’. The band began to grow as an active output for Bart Starr, who became busy playing with his friends in Just Friends and Mom Jeans, who also released an album in 2018.

After their debut LP, An Introduction to Rock And Roll, Starr was unsure of where the band was headed. He had talked about in interviews for there to be “one last album” and tour with Just Friends. Expected to be released in mid-August, the untitled second LP became one of the most anticipated of the year. Two days before Labor Day, Starr announced Grad Life on his instagram. According to a post by Ryan Ellery, the duo had spent “eighty hours a week demoing, rewriting, and reworking the album” immediately after they finished AItRAR. The cover, a reference to wearing black on Labor Day, established what to expect from this new project.

And on September 2nd, Grad Life was dropped on Bandcamp.


Review by /u/NMHipsterTrash

It’s been a shitty year.

Well, okay, by all means it has been a fantastic year for emo music. Awakebutstillinbed and Charmer came out with blistering debut LPs. California Cousins and Stars Hollow showed their technical efficiency in writing catchy, hard hitting tunes, and emo giants Oliver Houston and Donavan Wolfington casted solid goodbyes. In the /r/Indieheads sphere, Foxing caught a lot of attention for (somehow) creating a perfect mix of emo and stadium rock. Likewise, the boom in popularity for Mom Jeans. and their newest release, Puppy Love, signaled a possible shift to a new wave of emo music--tentatively titled “weed emo”.

But, still, it’s been a shitty year. Whether it’d be for personal or political reasons, for a lot of people the past twelve months can best be described as a mess. Coping mechanisms for handling difficult times varies person to person, with some being healthy habits and others not so much. It’s fair to say a lot of us do look to music and other forms of art as a solace for our emotions. Emo music exists as a genre because of this as lyrics are commonly self-indulgent and navelgazing, creating a sense of vulnerability in the music. Nothing is better than knowing you aren’t alone in how you feel, because someone somewhere is going through the exact same thing. There are a lot of musicians out there finding different ways to express their gripes with life, and they have made some great, relatable art.

That’s what makes Grad Life special. Not because it is one of many emo albums in a similar vein, but because of how well it manages its’ emotions. Grad Life is unprecedented in its honesty and musicianship, and once the opening acoustic guitar and backing ambience on “There’s Only One Way” hits, it’s clear the album’s going to be heavy. The almost-theatrical buildup, backing “I know you”’s, and wailing guitar transition into a pop punk breakdown makes the Welcome to the Black Parade influence incredibly evident, but the grand scope of the song adds to the charm. The lyrics contrast the upbeat instrumentation, with the final lines “I bleed American piece of shit muddy blood from impatient men” being only a piece of what Bart Starr has to offer, a set-up to what he has to offer in the following songs.

Bart’s lyrics are at the forefront of almost every song on Grad Life. Take “Family Reunion”, the second song on the album, for the example. Even though there is an incredibly catchy synth line and extra vocals from Brianda Goyos (who frequently collaborates with the Just Friends-Graduating Life-Mom Jeans camp), it’s hard to ignore a chorus with “There’s nothing complex about my traits, history projects I’ll die alone and overweight not a mistake”. Likewise, headbanging to the bridge/outro can’t overlook what feels like a diary entry put to pop punk.

The lyrics are bleak. There’s no creative metaphor to try to hit deep in the heartstrings; they are blunt articulations of his feelings. Sure, emo music often doesn’t delve into that style of songwriting, but there is a clear difference from “you left me and i can’t sleep” and “i am heartbroken, i want to die”. “Carry A White Flag” straight out states that if he has to take antidepressants, then he’s meant to be depressed. It’s heartbreaking, like a scream into the void. However, it’s done in true pvnk fashion with a wavy guitar solo and soaring synths.

A soft piano opens up “It’s Second Year”, which suggests a change of pace. That doesn’t last long, as aggressive guitar and brass section kicks in while Bart directs anger towards himself. He has a desire to self-destruct, change himself to better live his life (“Starved myself until my family doesn’t know me/I wanna be set free and gone for good”). “Don’t Have Kids” serves as an excellent contrast, expressing his anger out towards how he was raised. It has one hell of a pre-chorus, a catchy rhythm and an example of great musicianship. The vocal melody in this specific section is oddly beautiful, but it transitions into one hell of an instrumental break with punchy bass and loud drums, reflective of the subject matter. Bart builds up against being disrespected by a presumed family member, only to fade the song out with “All the things you hate are all the things you can’t change” and the sound of a hospital monitor.

Now, “Watch You Die!!!” is a weird song. Not bad by any means (in fact it’s my favorite), but it’s a rather straightforward description of seeing a friend on their deathbed. There is guilt, there is sadness, there is regret. “But now you’re stuck in wires suspended in time” paints a beautiful image of slowly approaching death.

Then...it’s incredibly upbeat? It is so hard to do it justice over a review. The catchiest, poppiest part of the entire album discusses watching someone die. Like, holy fuck.

Anyways, the album picks back up with “Stinky Man”, which blatantly expresses Bart’s want to kill himself (And if I get 1 chance/to end my life for real/I won’t wince), but it’s still a fun song. As someone whose a lot of mental problems are rooted in being too hard on their self, lines like “and the way that I work is just like everyone else/but I don’t wanna think that so I destroy my health” articulate self-doubt than I ever could.

“Victory Song” & “Your Town Is A Time Capsule” are easily the most uplifting tracks out of the bunch, promoting the messages of “don’t give up when life is shit” and “please grow up outside of your hometown”, respectively. It actually seems hypocritical of Bart to say these things as he often talks about wanting to give up, but there’s no way he will. Throughout all of Grad Life, death, suicide, and self-hatred is discussed in great detail, but not once does it seem like those options are viable.

What makes Grad Life stand out is its honesty. Depression sucks. Waking up sucks, hating yourself sucks, everything sucks. And it’s difficult to feel like no matter what you do, nothing will make it better. There will always be a cloud of doubt over your head, one that distorts what reality is. Yeah, sure, you’ll always be aware people do care, and it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to harm yourself, but that desire will always be there to some extent. “Finale”, which is part-grand send off part-2000’s commercial rock song, caps the end of the thematic adventure. There is no hope to live, but there is an obligation. All selfish wants are made clear (“Can you feel me? I feel like I’m barely here”, “I’ll try but what’s the point if I’m gone tomorrow”, “Hopefully I can choke and pass in my sleep/I don’t wanna have kids cause I don’t wanna see their face/When they realize they’re stuck and have to live inside this place”), and Bart leaves us feel broken down, but not dead. Same old kid, same old story. The cathartic phrase Graduating Life shouts as the aggressive synths, drums, bass, and guitars back a goodbye.

Not the goodbye expected at the start of this album. Grad Life is a coping mechanism. For Bart, for the listener, for anyone ever feeling hopeless. It’s hard to explain why this is such a great album without trying to forge a personal experience similar to mine, but I’ll put it frank.

Grad Life does not spend a second sulking. Even in the music videos for two of the more depressing songs, everyone is seen with a smile. There is a sense of enjoyment throughout the whole album, and when handling serious topics, this is important. At the end of the tunnel is a light, and on the trip there you’ll probably crush a few tallboys of PBR and be fistbumping the entire way. If life wasn’t worth living, then you wouldn’t be alive.

Grad Life makes me thankful to be alive. Grad Life makes me thankful I didn’t give up. Grad Life makes me thankful I made it to the end of the year. And hopefully it does for other people. It means a lot.


Favorite Lyrics by /u/NMHipsterTrash

Pull out my hair for fun and run my nails right down my face
Wake up disoriented almost every single day
Wishing each dream I had was real finding out they're not and that I'm trapped in here
With myself in my room alone
You may think life is fun
But sometimes I don't see it that way
I started medication weaned myself off
That happiness was artificial and fake
Don't you agree? If my happiness has to be forced then it wasn't meant to be

  • "Carry A White Flag"

Hey you yell at me
Tell me all the things you want me to be
You came down the stairs asked me if I was tough
and pushed me against the wall
is this family love
I hit as hard as I could grabbed my shit and then left
Why did I ever think you could love me enough to give me respect now
I'm just the kid who didn't find his place
and found out all the things you hate are all the things you can't change

  • "Don’t Have Kids"

We came here to watch you die
We came to watch you pass in front of me
And I never saw you cry
I bet you don't even know what is happening
They turned out the lights
To make it more comforting
A dark end to life
No way will you ever stay out of my mind

  • "Watch You Die!!!"

Talking Points

  • With the supposed death of emo revival and an introduction of a “fifth wave”, where do you see the emo scene heading in 2019 and onwards?

  • What other albums/musicians do you think handle depression in similar or better ways?

  • Should My Chemical Romance be that stigmatized, even with apparent influence on contemporary emo/pop punk?

  • Thoughts on the other Ryan Ellery-produced albums to be dropped this year?

  • Where does Bart Starr rank all-time as a quarterback? Above or below Aaron Rodgers?


Special thanks to /u/NMHipsterTrash for this great write-up! We're back tomorrow with /u/blueboredom_'s take on Vundabar's Smell Smoke. Thank you for reading and have a happy, or at least tolerable, new year!



Submitted December 31, 2018 at 07:13PM by gymnol7412 http://bit.ly/2EY2Stp

To any lurkers considering joining us for New Year's: Come on over! Life is great on the sober side. We have a chocolate fountain.

Even if you just want to join us for Dry January, we'll be happy to have you aboard! This article shows that people report more money saved, a better outlook on life, weight loss and clear skin after attempting Dry January...and even when asked again in August, participants reported drinking less!

Welcome to any newcomers. Whether you're an alcoholic in recovery or just wanna drop that beer belly, there's always room on the Sober Train.

And if you find yourself thinking, "What do I do with all my free time?" Start a hobby! r/SoberArt is a gallery for visual arts. Drawing, painting, sculpting, woodworking, photography, nail art, and any other visual arts are welcome! The art you post must have been created while you were 100% sober.



Submitted December 31, 2018 at 07:16PM by Rachie__Lion http://bit.ly/2CJtcGh

26 [M4F] Delaware/Philly - She thinks she missed the train to Mars, she's out back counting stars

Me:
1) Self-checkout enthusiast. I sometimes am daring and take 7 items into the "5 or less" self-checkout locations.
2) Big time gamer, I currently play on Xbox One. It'd be great if you did, too, but no biggie if not. I appreciate gamers of any system (even PC).
3) I am fascinated by geopolitics and world events.
4) I'm very much a homebody, and prefer a night in rather than a night out (but I'm not opposed to nights out).
5) Living near Wilmington, Delaware with my parents. Not opposed to LDR as long as it's not over 6 hours or so away. Willing to make it work with someone if we hit it off really well and connect on a deep level.
6) Long story short I'm struggling with two disabilities right now, and have been running my own (relatively unsuccessful) graphic design business. I'm hoping to develop it into a full-time job in the near future.
7) In reference to 6, I'm looking to build with someone long-term. I don't have a lot to offer financially, but I do have a lot to offer in a potential relationship. I'd treat you right with no doubt.
7) Graduated from La Salle with a degree in Digital Arts, near the top of my class. Fun fact that they neglected to include my name in the class yearbook, though.
8) Extremely kind soul with a big heart. I try to look for the good in every situation.
9) I'm a music collector, and am building a massive Plex server for both movie and music (I will share it with you, no questions asked). I love movies and music a lot, not gonna lie.
10) Family is very important to me and always will be. I'm lookin for someone to eventually introduce to my parents and extended family.

You:
1) Appearance isn't a deal breaker as long as you take care of yourself decently (shower/bathe, trim nails, etc)... no one likes a slob. I'm not supermodel and I don't expect you to be, either.
2) I'm interested in someone who I can connect with on a deep level and have heart-to-hearts with. I also want someone who knows how to be fun when the situation calls for it... serious is good, but life is too short not to have fun.
3) I'm a tiny bit religious, and my parents are very religious... but truth be told I don't have a preference about a potential date... I accept all (reasonable) world views. As long as you aren't a white nationalist or some bullshit, I'm fine with it.
4) Ideally a gamer, but as long as you don't mind me playing daily. I'd absolutely invite you to play with me.
5) I don't expect you to fully have your life together, but at the same time I like people who are driven. As long as you have future plans you're working towards, that's good enough for me.



Submitted December 31, 2018 at 12:59PM by shoelessjp http://bit.ly/2s13FSB

Recap!! (budget & rsvp breakdown, schedule, photos, after thoughts)

Date: Sunday, 12/2/2018

Location: Seattle area

Total cost: $25k

I love a good brain dump after the end of a long-planned event, so I spent this evening going over all the little details before they start to fade. I'm mostly writing it all down to help myself remember and help friends and family plan in the future, but hopefully some of you will find this enormous wall of text useful as well :)

PICS: https://imgur.com/a/7cRjN19

RSVP breakdown:

Invited 154
In-state 113
Out-of-state 41
Yes 117
In-state 101
Out-of-state 16
No-show with notice 4
No-show no notice 4
No 37
In-state 12
Out-of-state 25

Budget Breakdown:

Venue (incl. coordinator, cocktail hour, dinner, drinks): $14,445.77

  • Room rental: $1,500
  • Food: $4,959
  • Drinks: $3,275
  • Staff/gratuity/tax/other: $4,711.77

Photographer: $3,379 (8hrs of photography, high-res photos)

Flowers: $403.30

Cake: $554.53

Nails: $75? (Spa pedicure, Shellac french manicure with accent nail art)

Hair: $45? (We switched from full updo at the trial to half-up/half-down the day of, and she gave me a friend discount so I don't remember the final total, sorry!)

Makeup: $140 (Included trial run, false lashes, touch-up kit, friend discount)

My Outfit: $1600?

  • Dress: $700
  • Alterations: $400? (replaced zipper with corset back, hem, 12-point bustle)
  • Shoes: $120
  • Accessories: $ 40?
  • Tiara: $150?
  • Veil: $90
  • Cape: $59.30
  • Muff: $29.99 (probably could have made two muffs with that much fur, but wanted to leave room for error)

Bridesmaids x5: $157.59 each (They bought their own dresses and shoes, and added on hair and full face makeup if they wanted)

  • Makeup: $50
  • Muff: $9.67
  • Capelet and pin: $15.92
  • Gift box: $90? (decorative box, dice bag with their gamer handle embroidered, assorted dice, tin of tea, peppermint chapstick, old fashioned ornament, wine or cocoa mix (for those that don't drink), pajamas)

Stationery: $580.19 (basicinvite.com, used 20% off codes on all orders)

  • Save the Dates x75: $106.59
  • Invitation suite x80: $357.76 (invite, details card, rsvp card and pre-stamped envelope, belly band)
  • Thank you cards x80: $115.84

Wedding rings: $1,200? (both white gold bands with extended warranty, free repair/resizing/redipping for life)

Miscellaneous: $1,200?

  • Guestbook ornaments: $130?
  • Name cards: $90 (bought a template on Etsy, had them cut and printed at FedEx)
  • Signs: $13.96 (Welcome table, cocoa bar, 2x bar menu. Printed on cardstock, put in cheap standing frame)
  • Favors x150: $689.70 (Customized Adagio tea tin and 2 Dilettante chocolates in a silver box with a bow)
  • Centerpieces x17: $170.94 (Greens, ornaments, and twinkle lights in a glass bowl)
  • Sand ceremony supplies: $46.83
  • DIY Photobooth: $90? (already owned the iPad. Bought a tripod, iPad attachment, some props, and a photobooth app)
  • Bubbles for grand departure: $50.94

Not included:

  • My engagement ring
  • Beach house for bridesmaids the night before
  • Hotel rooms for groomsmen and family the night before
  • All honeymoon/travel costs
  • Rehearsal dinner (covered by groom's parents)

Schedule

Day Before:

12-12:45pm - rehearsal at venue

2-4pm - rehearsal “dunch”

4pm onward

  • Groomsmen hung out at the casino (where they were staying)
  • My parents met and had dinner with the late-arriving out of town guests
  • Me and the bridesmaids hung out at the house we rented next to the venue. Harry Potter marathon in matching pajamas ensued.

Day of:

8:30am - Hair and Make-up artists arrived at the house.

  • Harry Potter marathon continued while everyone took turns getting hair and make-up done

10:00am - My mom arrived with donuts, joined the line for hair and make-up

11:00am - My dad arrived with sandwiches for lunch

12:30ish - Photographer arrives for getting ready photos as hair and make-up is wrapping up.

1:00pm -

  • Everyone at the bridesmaid house is driven over to the main venue building (the Atrium) to get dresses on and prepare for first look.
  • Groomsmen arrive at the venue, get ready in a separate building (the Lodge).

2:00pm - First look photos, photos with wedding party

2:45pm - Photos with family

3:30pm - Bridesmaids hide in dressing room in the Atrium while guests arrive

4:00pm - Ceremony in the Atrium

4:30pm -

  • Move guests to the Lodge for cocktail hour
  • Bride, Groom, Maid of Honor, Best Man, Officiant sign marriage license in a separate room
  • More bride and groom photos

5:00pm - Bride and groom join cocktail hour

5:30pm - Move everyone back to the Atrium for dinner, bride and groom introduced

5:45pm - Dinner service begins

6:30pm - Toasts (best man, maid of honor, father of the bride)

7:00pm -

  • Cake cutting
  • Couple’s first dance
  • Father daughter dance
  • Mother son dance

8:30 - Grand departure

What went well:

Bridesmaid dresses: The girls used Azazie and were extremely happy with them! Each picked a different chiffon dress in the same color (dark green) and they turned out exactly how we hoped!

The vendors: 10/10 stars for every single one of my vendors. All of them went above and beyond my expectations and were absolutely fantastic to work with. All of them were on my venue’s preferred vendors list, except hair and makeup who are friends of mine from high school that started a HMU business together.

Going to the venue’s open house: One of the venues we were considering has an annual wedding open house. We made last-minute plans to go, and it was the best planning decision we made. We were so thrilled with the venue we put our deposit down on the spot. We got a chance to try all of their entrees and appetizers, and some drink samples. We got to meet lots of vendors who were already preferred by the venue, and we found our photographer, baker, and florist there that day!

First look: I had always wanted my husband to first see me in my dress as I was walking down the aisle. But having been at weddings where guests had to wait 2-3 hours for photos to be taken between the ceremony and reception, I opted to get photos out of the way beforehand with a first look. It was still every bit as wonderful as I had imagined, and it just made the timing work out so smoothly. And, I had the added bonus of a partial outfit change between the first look and the ceremony - he never actually saw my full dress (or my veil at all) until I walked down the aisle, thanks to:

The Cape!: I knew that I was signing up for a couple hours of (hopefully) outdoor photos, in a strapless dress, in December, in Seattle. Even in the best weather scenario, it was going to be cooooldddd. So I got a navy blue cape and (faux) fur muff to keep warm during the outdoor bits. I was very comfortably warm the whole time, it looks awesome in the photos, and it mostly kept my dress a surprise until the actual ceremony (where I took the cape off and put on my veil).

The Bridal Buddy: OMG. One of my bridesmaids got me this as a shower gift. I cannot sing its praises highly enough. I was able to put this delightful contraption over my form-fitting slip and under the actual dress. It took 2 bridesmaids to help lift my dress and find the arm holes, but once the dress was skooshed in and the neck hole cinched up I was free to go to the bathroom ALL BY MYSELF. As an extremely shy person this was a priceless freedom to me. It felt extremely secure when “in use”, I never worried about my dress falling into the toilet. It didn’t show under my dress at all, I completely forgot it was there the rest of the time. I swear they’re not paying me anything, I just really loved this product!!

Shellac manicure: Totally worth the cost. Got them done 3 days before the wedding, and they held up beautifully for over 2 weeks! Zero worries about scratching or breaking them!!

Early rehearsal dinner: I was a little disappointed that my MIL had scheduled the rehearsal dinner so early, but I’m SO glad she did. I was able to enjoy it without worrying about how late it was getting, and then I had plenty of time afterwards to spend with my bridesmaids at the house while still getting to sleep at a sane-ish hour. I figured we would get hungry later in the evening after eating so early, but we just ordered pizza at around 8pm and it was PERFECT. Guestbook ornaments: I made another post about this earlier. I was SO HAPPY with how this turned out. I expected people would just sign their names, but most people got super creative with decorating them!!! I got a spray polyurethane to seal the wood and protect the writing (thank you so much /u/streetbirds for the advice!), and the ornaments signed by the band made it onto the wedding tree and back home unscathed!

Hot Cocoa Bar: I was disproportionately excited about this. It was one of the first wedding ideas I had, and I was worried about the venue doing it justice (I wasn’t allowed to bring any outside food or drinks, besides a cake by an approved bakery) but it was PERFECT!! It wasn’t just powder packets and hot water, they had real melted chocolate in milk, and all sorts of fun toppings!! I got SO many comments on it!!!

No kids: There were a LOT of guests, mostly extended family, with young children. I had a very particular vision for the ambiance of the event, and the unpredictability of two dozen young kids was just not what I wanted. I communicated this as early as possible to everyone with children, and only 2 couples (both with ~2 month old newborns) were unable to make it due to this decision. My MIL shielded me from most of those conversations, but everyone was very understanding.

No DJ, no dancing: I’ve never been into dancing. I’m that person who tries to find another non-dancer to talk to while desperately trying to not get peer-pressured into awkwardly bobbing around on the dance floor to music that triggers awkward memories of Jr. High school. I had a first dance with my husband, a dance with my father, and he danced with his mother. Otherwise all of the music was a Spotify playlist of relaxing holiday music. I pay for Spotify premium so I was able to download the playlist onto my laptop (and a couple of old phones as backups), and that worked perfectly! I was worried that people would get bored without the dance floor, but people were perfectly happy to chat, play with the photo booth, play with the coco bar, explore the venue, and enjoy the liquid entertainment we provided ;)

What I’d do differently:

Read the ceremony script beforehand: I can’t believe this never actually occurred to me beforehand, but it legitimately didn’t! My husband’s grandfather has officiated all of the grandkids' weddings so far, and having been to most of those weddings I always thought the ceremony was beautiful and exactly what I would want. Which it was for the most part... the only real problem I had were a couple of very hetero-normative/cis-normative comments (“God made us male and female”, stuff like that). Fortunately my LGBTQ+ friends in attendance confirmed that they brushed it off as “religious grandpa doing his thing” and not something I'd asked for or approved beforehand, so it wasn’t really a problem. Just something I would have liked to tweak in advance if I had thought to ask!

Schedule our grand departure earlier: We had initially planned on having our departure at 9pm, but I was noticing a lot of people starting to trickle out around 8:15. A lot of people had work the next morning (it was a Sunday night), others had a ferry to catch (which was leaving at 8:45), and I was worried that there would only be like 10 people left to blow bubbles at us!! So we ended up leaving at around 8:30. There were plenty of people still there, this allowed more time for cleanup before our time at the venue ended, and we ended up making the 8:45 ferry with a bunch of our guests!

Bridesmaid robes: I never understood why it was so popular to get matching robes for getting ready together. Particularly the lightweight satiny robes I always see in pictures. I’d never wear it again, and I doubted any of my bridesmaids would, so I got us matching pajamas instead since we were staying together the night before. Until I realized...you wear a robe so you don’t have to pull a shirt over your head and mess up your hair and makeup!! DURR. I ended up having to ask everyone to make sure they brought a robe or button-down shirt for getting ready (and ironically one bridesmaid got to re-use her robe from another wedding). It worked out fine anyway, though the robe I brought was a heavier bath robe which did get uncomfortably toasty after a while.



Submitted December 31, 2018 at 10:46AM by MyDarlingEvagria http://bit.ly/2LFI8b1

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