Hey guys, I'm working on a Mayan-themed video game, and I am in need of someone who will be able to record around 50 very short sentences (usually between 1 and 5 words) in any of the Yucatec branches of Maya languages. It could be just low-quality recording with your phone, so we can try to replicate the pronunciation in our studio, or 4 different voice actors, 2 male, and 2 female.
Anybody here can help?

I know quitting your job as a cook usually simply comes with two weeks notice or a ragequit walkout, but for eleven months I worked at a new franchise that had such potential which was being squandered by the incompetence of upper management. I present the nearly 6000 word thesis I turned in on my last day. Locations and names have been changed to cartoon references. Brackets represent ambiguous information in place of specific details.
Krusty Krab Careers Jobs
Opening in [Month/Year], Krusty Krab (KK) Bikini Bottom is on its 4th kitchen manager in less than a year. Krusty Krab O-Town has recently let go its inaugural kitchen manager and sous chef. Almost no member of the Bikini Bottom opening management team remains employed by KK. There is a pattern developing where one must question both the choice of employee and the directive given to new franchises. These lingering issues I brought concerns about in the first weeks of opening but was disregarded at every turn despite my experience with festival traffic. As a result I decided this was not a place I wanted to advance, but with a good-enough paycheck I’d be a lowly grunt in the kitchen four days a week, at five days a week I would have quit or been fired over a public outburst long ago. If Krusty Krab alters course slightly while being true to the brand this could be a successful chain.
My unique employment history in brick and mortar restaurants, food trucks, pop up culinary concepts, trade shows/conventions, and the film industry make me an ideal candidate to be on the opening team for new KK locations. My outgoing nature and foresight are valuable assets. For example, on training week before opening when I was standing around idly without a task I took it upon myself to organize the disarray that was dry storage. Overhearing Krabs tell another manager where he wanted the cleaning products placed, I had a jumping off point and the organization I created nine months ago is still largely in place. Since returning from my vacation in early February I have made it my mission to keep the storage area organized because it was again starting to resemble a hoarder’s house rather than a commercial kitchen. This is now part of my weekly routines because every time I turn my back there is more product being placed haphazardly just anywhere with little regard. I also recently reorganized the walk-in cooler because of problematic stocking with items being placed on the same shelf or below raw proteins. I also simply put all the like products together such as cheeses or fruits that were scattered amongst several shelves. With recent overordering I cannot keep up with the organization of the walk in cooler. The pattern recognition of food types and even simple shapes appears to be lost on the Bikini Bottom crew. My daily reorganization of containers is proof of this. Most days I’ll take a few minutes to put all cylinders together, all cambros together in descending volume, all deep and shallow pans next to each other rather than intermixed. My decision to be a kitchen manager at age 19 from 2005 thru 2008 and rarely enter restaurant management since is very calculated.
With my prior knowledge of professional kitchens I was becoming Bikini Bottom’s resident nag to coworkers as I made note of health department violations on a daily basis. I stopped after being largely ignored for two weeks. My regular health department nags include; a battle with jackets and hats being placed only in the designated area (a designated area that did not exist until I created a place for personal items a in January by neatly organizing the dry storage area again), waiting until prepped items are cooled before a cover is placed on top, placement of raw seafood, open containers (very often sugar, flour, and pancake mix bags ripped open and left), and dirty dishes/containers placed back in rotation. The dirty dishes and containers in rotation with the clean ones are at an atrociously high number. I have given up on making the 4th fryer seafood allergy safe too. With the low volume of seafood allergy safe items Bikini Bottom should purchase smaller baskets to visually discourage cross contamination with the other fryers and baskets. My skills to organize the kitchen do not end with simply where to store products to meet minimal health department standards.
Half of the space in the Bikini Bottom kitchen is completely wasted on an ill-advised walkway to the dishpit. An intelligent design would place a second doorway directly to the dishpit connected to the bar or where the bathrooms reside. Numerous times during the opening week of KK Bikini Bottom I said, yelled, sang, and muttered that we have too many food items for the amount of space we have. Icus stated that there was more space than Bluffington. Is Bluffington intelligently designed? Because Bikini Bottom most certainly isn’t. So Bikini Bottom actually has less space even if there is more square footage. See the attached diagram for an intelligent design that could potentially house a menu of this size. Bikini Bottom forces a line design on this kitchen when an open concept is needed for this menu. It’s as if this floorplan was created by a person who had only ever seen one commercial kitchen previously and couldn’t think 4th dimensionally to understand the needs of the workers to smoothly serve customers.
There is not enough counter space for pizzas without getting off the line, the microwave is placed completely out of the way, the freezer’s curved design is a waste of potential counter space and a falling hazard for containers stored on top of it, the toaster is an overcomplicated and overexpensive piece of machinery that serves exactly one purpose when a flat top could be used to toast bread and other purposes like a quesadilla special, sautee was designed without an overhang for spices, the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter for seafood allergies, there are no Frialator fryers which I have worked with at every single kitchen job previously instead we got the cheap Vulcan model (is that logical), the cheap low boy in pantry that doesn’t drain excess water anywhere it’s just supposed to evaporate somehow but doesn’t, the grill and fryer should be placed next to each other (with a higher volume of crossover than other stations), the floors are flat instead on having a mild decline towards the drains (just look at the standing water residing behind the oven right now), in the dishpit the spraying area and the filled sinks are backwards of a logical dipshit, the ramp to the back door is on the wrong side, there is no refrigerated place downstairs to stage extra food for busy shifts (the beer cooler is once again used for such food items because of this massive oversight), the prep station is an afterthought and miniscule, the dishes on the line are difficult to grab for anyone under 5’11” and inaccessible for anyone under 5’6” (instead of putting them underneath tables that also give that desperately needed counterspace I spoke of), there is not enough space to store to-go containers or boats behind the line, expo is lacking a low boy for the numerous items that are supposed to be cold but are instead kept at room temperature all day long, no one in management thought about buying shelves until right before Bikini Bottom opened as a result the clean full sheets sat on the floor for days, we had only the exact amount of 1⁄6 pans for an absurd amount of time making it impossible to rotate and clean them when necessary (which is daily), we still struggle with 1/9 pan supply. And just when I thought I documented all the poor design choices possible I stumbled upon a person whose office holiday party was booked at KK Bikini Bottom. The deck space works just fine as a deck. It does not double well as a gathering space. The space is too long and narrow for parties, it promotes little splitoff groups rather than a coming together of a larger gathering. It may be advantageous to contact a social psychologist for help designing a private party space that promotes intermingling rather than enforcing small pockets to form. The reorganization of the physical kitchen isn’t all that screams for an overhaul.
There are six positions on the line at the Krusty Krab; expo, oven, grill, sautee, fryer, and pantry. But the pantry and fryer positions are forced together like a bad remix. Everyone who mainly works pantry deserves a $6 raise immediately because it is a station and a half. Both Icus and Krumm, while kitchen manager, kind of acknowledged the pantry is too big for one station without outright mentioning the lopsided distribution of work. I imagine in the only location where this works, Bluffington, a second person joins the pantry at noon because of the unreasonable amount of items one person is tasked with. Bikini Bottom only has one person in this position at all times, maybe modify it for one person? The excess of items on the pantry position largely resembles a position I would call “set-up” or “build” at a previous job that made sensible choices. This build position should have tostadas, tacos, butcher’s blocks, toast, salads, lettuce wrap set ups, and preparing plating for whichever station is most bogged down. I have absolutely lost my mind yelling about salads at least once a month, ranting that they do not belong on the fryer position because of how illogical it is that five salads are included on the mountain of other items the pantry has. I have always considered working in a kitchen a kind of dance, and the pantry station demands an unnecessarily convoluted dance to keep up with the demand. Without the salads, tostadas, and tacos the station is already the busiest. Do we really need to combine ballet and swing by including these extra awkward dance steps in this single station? For a kitchen designed this poorly I suppose it is. Again, see attached document for an intelligently designed kitchen that might be able to accommodate this menu. Unless Bikini Bottom is going to close for a month to fix the baffling floor plan design the menu is shouting to be reduced to 30-36 items.
The menu is too big. Krusty Krab is the jack of all foods, master of none. In general I believe individual locations should be allowed 18% omissions, and 18% unique items to this wildly unwieldy menu sitting around 50 food items including sides. The insistence on keeping menu items that don’t sell at Bikini Bottom because of Bluffington is mind boggling. Chicken tenders do not sell at Bikini Bottom. fried sushi does not sell at Bikini Bottom, not enough to justify their place on the line. I don’t care how well these items work in Bluffinton. They. Do. Not. Work. At. Bikini. Bottom. If the KK location in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean sells an incredible amount of live krill does that mean Bikini Bottom and O-Town must sell live krill too? Take the fried sushi off the menu. I had a complete meltdown about this during a Dimmadome service and my valid point was met with indifference. Replace the kid’s tenders with a kid’s fish sticks. We already have the tilapia fish sticks on the line for tacos. Or make the kid’s fish sticks cod. We cut cod to order for fish tacos in spite of health code violations because it is too rare of an order to make beforehand. Saffron in mashed potatoes? If you must. Why are green tomatoes only on the menu during lunch? Bikini Bottom throws away a sizable amount of spoiled green tomatoes each week. Have green tomatoes on the menu all day long or don’t have them at all. The smoked salmon could go on salads or a special taco to justify its place on the line. The corn pico’s place on the line is unjustified. It only goes on one item, tostadas, which are not particularly popular. If we had a taco salad we could throw the corn pico on there. We also have unreasonable waste from unusable taco shells, smash up those imperfect taco shells and throw them on said taco salad. But before we add salads, let's get rid of the pear and kale salads. The pears' position on the line are unjustified, if we threw them on a taco variation maybe their place on the Bikini Bottom line could be argued but for now they only go on a salad that isn’t particularly popular. The kale salad is an issue of space for a 4th green for salads is too much. The krusty salad is my most hated house salad of all time. And it comes down to the toast with goat cheese. This ancillary step of spreading goat cheese on a cracker is an unnecessary step for an overly complicated dance and should be part of the expo dance if expo wasn’t a shoddily designed afterthought lacking a low boy.
There are a plethora of squeeze bottles on the pantry station that have no place on the overloaded station. They belong to an expo station with a low boy to keep them cold. Pantry has an overwhelming ten squeeze bottles: chipotle crema, sweet chili vinaigrette, buffalo, korean bbq, ranch, caesar, wine vinaigrette, lemon vinaigrette, honey mustard, and lemon aioli. Only the first four are justified on an intelligently designed fryer section, the second four belong on the build station, the last two have no place anywhere but expo. With this extra space sautee could keep their bottles and two purees cold in the fryer's lowboy instead of leaving them at room temperature all day inviting a pathogen party. This theorized intelligently designed expo would have room to keep these four squeeze bottles and a double of every sauce chilled to pour them into ramekins, a move that is highly common in the expo dance. The fact that expo doesn’t have a double of all squeeze bottles is foolish. Expo has to bother an overloaded station to pour these side sauces instead.
How many gallons of basil aioli has Bikini Bottom thrown away in 11 months? Four aiolis in general is way too many and most go on a single item; basil aioli on the incredibly unpopular veggie burger, lemon aioli for calamari, sweet chili aioli for the BLT that is only served half of the day, and garlic aioli actually goes on two items…I believe. What a colossal waste of precious little space, lose two aiolis and then you can sing the logical song with me. Perhaps we can put garlic aioli and sweet chili vinaigrette on the BLT separately and accomplish the exact same thing the sweet chili aioli does. The wings too have unneeded complications. Having worked at a sports bar specializing in wings for the better part of a decade I find KK’s plating of wings to be overly pretentious. The carrots, celery, and blue cheese have lost function. Heffer Wolf always said no one eats the carrot/celery julienne with blue cheese. It’s a complete waste of all the ingredients because you’ve gone too far with the presentation. Wings aren’t fancy. Wings are supposed to have a small pool of sauce and be sloppy. It’s like a sloppy joe that’s not sloppy, an unsloppy joe is a failure to sloppy joes just as the KK presentation of wings is a disparagement to the dish. Ever since training week back in 2022 I have used a scale to give Bikini Bottom a passing or failing grade.
Chokey Chicken to Chum Bucket is the scale I use to judge efficiency and sanity at Bikini Bottom. Both establishments are upscale casual dining experiences in Capitol City in the same vein as KK. Chokey had high employee retention and relatively smooth openings for new locations. Chum Bucket’s employee turnover was high and every location opening was chaotic. Which one sounds closer to KK? Chokey Chicken was filled with chefs I respect including Chef Ren Hoek who remains a close friend to this day. Ren lost his lifelong passion for kitchen work after working management at Chum Bucket. He’s actually seeking work in Bikini Bottom. Call him up at [phone number], but KK will give him Nam’ flashbacks of why he chose driving for a living rather than cooking for five years. The pair of us together helming Bikini Bottom with the ability to omit and create 18% of the overloaded menu can bring success to this franchise. We have worked well numerous times in the past on various concepts in the past including creating The Attack of the Pickled Tomatoes Burger for [Promotional live performance of a TV show] at the Capitol City Theater. We served 100 people in 60 at the [sitcom filming] lunch. That’s physically impossible but somehow we did it quite a few times.
A fun anecdote about Ren Hoek’s KK experience from the soft launch; on training week numerous times I brought concerns about being seafood allergy safe that were dismissed. As mentioned earlier the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter, one each of which seafood never touches. Before the soft launch Chef Stimpy from Bluffington insisted all customers just kind of know everything is prone to be seafood contaminated. Well, chef Ren was a customer that night and this absolutely was not communicated to customers. He claimed to have a slight seafood allergy and was not informed of what the crab soup was. In reality he does not have a seafood allergy. I didn’t discuss the seafood issue with Ren, separately we noticed egregious violations of food safety standards and we each responded in our own way. The soft launch service was so awful that night Chef Ren walked out of a free meal to pay for some ramen, never to return to Bikini Bottom. I attribute this oversight, and many of Bikini Bottom’s (and probably O-Town’s) problems to hubris over the Bluffington location.
Chef Chokey would also be hesitant to join the KK team. It will cost a finder’s fee just for me to reveal Chef Chokey’s name. Chef Chokey was a lead in the rapid expansion of Chokey Chicken restaurants. He opened numerous restaurants and was big on the philosophy that each restaurant must have its own personality in order to fit the unique local culture and the variety of working spaces. This is in direct conflict with the KK way that everything must be exactly like the Bluffington location no matter what. There was only one Chokey Chicken location that had the full menu, Chokey Springfield. Chokey Springfield had a large space which was intelligently designed to accommodate such a large menu. The KK menu is all over the place, closing in on 50 menu items which comes up as a failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale. This is not the only area KK comes up as a major failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale.
Has anyone in this company ever worked festival traffic before? Does anyone have the experience of working next to a major venue with 8000 seats before this one? The way Bikini Bottom handles Dimmadome services it certainly appears that the decision-makers fall on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Having all 50 items available during such massive traffic is completely asinine. An unwillingness to serve a partial menu is hindering the Bikini Bottom kitchen staff. I have worked festival traffic before, and Dimmadome events bring in festival traffic. I’ve worked inside a festival whose line never ended but every customer got their order in 5 minutes or less because the line kept flowing with only four items on the menu as that’s what was warranted at the B-Sharps Music Festival. I refuse to be set up for failure the way Bikini Bottom sets up Dimmadome services for failure. The entire week of concerts in [summer] 2022 I was set up for failure every day (it was after this I modified my availability to keep my sanity and my paycheck). When I brought my concerns about running efficiently during Dimmadome services I was labeled a B-worker for the first time in my employment history by Icus and Krabs. It is that moment which I was either going to holler at them both for being 2-dimensional thinkers who were obviously unqualified for the positions they accepted in this company, or just put my head down. If Bikini Bottom has a successful concert day service, hail your team because they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They swam with concrete shoes. I often wonder how many customers had bad experiences and never returned after concert days. A Dimmadome service should have no more than 25 items and have one or two specials to divert traffic towards an area the kitchen can keep moving. An Open Cup Open Plate (OCOP) special for foot traffic is absolutely needed. When I suggested OCOP special, Heffer was intrigued by this idea and immediately named burgers as the special to keep foot traffic flowing. Smithers wouldn’t hear this idea, babbling on about what’s advertised instead of hearing out a sound idea. This prattle despite radio commercials having inaccurate hours and social media promoting Bikini Bottom’s steak tacos to this day. I always found Smithers to be a better fit as a middle management office pencil pusher than as a hands-on restaurant manager. Overall I find KK managers are selected to be automatons not to question their orders rather than critical thinkers who could take the restaurant to the next level. During brunch service is another period of time that must be modified to lessen the heft of items. Having a full menu that barely works plus brunch is so deep into Chum Bucket territory, in my opinion we now have to use the Tropic Thunder scale of full retard to describe a 60-plus-item brunch. Chef Ren hired back a Chum Bucket cook who had a mental breakdown and stormed out during brunch (plus full menu) service because Ren knew the employee was justified and upper management was completely unreasonable in their brunch requests. It’s not just questionable decisions that hinder KK staff but improper equipment as well.
This is the first restaurant I have worked at which uses a touch screen on the line rather than tickets. From day one I found this to be technology for technology’s sake inferior to tickets. Chef Ren forced a new Chum Bucket location to rip out touch screens from the line and bring in ticket printers because of the higher efficiency. The touch screen is a great idea for expo, not the entire line. My biggest gripe is that each station does not get all the information. Early on I was regularly yelled at for not staggering my items, well I can’t see the rest of the order; a problem I have never had with a ticket system. Touchscreen software is also much more prone to errors and glitches. When I reported an error during a heavy service Icus and Krabs blamed my skills on the line without looking into the malfunctioning screen further. It was glitchy for weeks before the two finally investigated and corrected the issue I brought to their attention long before. Those two gave me an immense amount of ammunition to dislike them in the opening weeks until I stopped caring. The issue I had with being unable to scroll beyond the bottom of a completely filled screen has returned and is still there as of [my last day]. There are also important details that get buried. A frequent meltdown I have is that sauce on side requests and other important modifications are not capitalized or in red to catch the eye as they have been at jobs with tickets. These details get lost on Bikini Bottom’s touchscreens. A sauce on side salad made by me will be wrong 50% of the time because of the instructions being camouflaged in a word salad. This goes for coleslaw on the side and drizzle on the side too. Drizzle in general I dislike because of the pretentiousness, but whatever, drizzle it on top rather than putting it in a ramekin if you must. There are numerous places where Bikini Bottom overcomplicates matters for reasons I cannot ascertain.
Why is there such a large variety of plates? Why do we have a medium circular plate for salads and a large bowl for salads with protein? This just confuses the simplest of matters. I was told this is done because of the high price hike with protein, a larger presentation was desired. But that price hike is the price of protein in 2023. Bikini Bottom should put all salads in the large bowls and use all the circular salad plates in a skeet shooting promotion. I understand why we have both a circular platter plate and a pizza plate but in my restaurant the circular platter plates must go...or maybe the large platter plate instead. Is the large platter used for anything besides fish and chips? That extra space on fish and chips plates are only used for side sauces which can easily be delivered to customers on small circular plates. What is the medium oval plate doing that the medium rectangular plate isn’t? And vice versa. Why do they both exist when they are approximately the same size? Let me write an internet commercial where we break a lot of plates so we can get some logical use out of the superfluous plates. I don’t care which one is destroyed, the ovals or the rectangles but one of them is an unnecessary redundancy in excess done again. Speaking of commercials, the unimaginative radio advertisements for Bikini Bottom are doing little to lure new customers to the restaurant.
The three radio spots I have heard on KBBL all sound like they were produced by a marketing 101 student who wasn’t a natural in the field. The voiceover actor was so uncharismatic I was certain someone from the office was chosen at random to read the copy. Then I heard that same voiceover actor selling pool supplies on another radio station so I concluded that Bikini Bottom must have hired the cheapest guy in town to produce the most basic of commercials. Perhaps there is someone else you could hire more qualified to voiceover these commercials, an actor with experience on an Emmy award winning cable program whose unique place in the film industry was written about on [website] would be a much wiser choice to be the voice of the KK? (See external link). In the ad there was no catchphrase, no jingle, no music whatsoever. This simple approach to commercials lacks the pizazz to catch the attention of radio listeners. The first two commercials I heard would get a C in marketing 101 as they were nearly the exact same and accomplished the bare minimum to sell wares, the third one would maybe get a B- because there was some sort of attempted gimmick with the voiceover whispering to represent thinking inside his head about what he was going to eat later at KK. Not only does this commercial give no reason for the man to think inside his head, the outside world still and unpopulated. To see what a creative person would do with this concept see the attached script. There is an attempted slogan that could become part of an ad campaign. Commercials aren’t the only lost opportunities in promotions.
There are numerous promotional celebrity tie-ins at Bikini Bottom’s fingertips with Dimmadome performers. The restaurant could have a Phish sandwich as a OCOP special on [Phish performance dates], or a pretentious Jelly Roll on [Jelly Roll performance date]. Has anyone reached out to the Dimmadome theater or talent management for approved special menu items to be promoted inside the dome? Perhaps a special 20% discount to ticket holders? Is Bikini Bottom capable of getting permits to extend Open Container hours beyond [cutoff time] for an afterparty or block party throughout a Dimmadome concert? I see additional marketing opportunities left on the table for all new locations.
I believe new KK locations are missing out on a marketing campaign by opening with the entire cumbersome 50 item menu. This is a staggering amount of menu items which is too much to ask new staffers to perfect all at once. After a few months expanding the menu by approximately ten items is catching to customers who haven’t returned after a single visit or infrequently stop into KK. There are ten new food items that might appeal to them. Just like it appears KK doesn’t know what it’s looking for in a good commercial spot, this company doesn’t appear to recognize a talented from an untalented worker until it’s too late.
It is my understanding that KK had a headhunter to find Icus, the first Bikini Bottom kitchen manager. If it were up to me I’d hire someone to break the legs of that headhunter for bringing in a subpar kitchen lead. We are still attempting to recover from the lousy choices she made in the floor plan. If anybody responsible for Bikini Bottom’s floor plan is still giving input, stop them immediately. Once the doors were open to the public Icus had his head in the clouds to a point where I questioned if he saw the writing on the walls of an imminent demotion and stopped trying as a result. I had a full deck of 3x5 cards in an archaic powerpoint presentation bringing numerous concerns to light that he kept putting off listening to until he was fired. Those same cards were broken out for this essay. The second kitchen manager, Krumm, is a good lesson in honesty. According to Heffer, Krumm was given a bill of goods about how smoothly KK Bikini Bottom was running. Since Krumm stepped into a latrine pit which he was led to believe was a heated pool, he left in short time. Krumm also had plans to modify the menu but when his bosses told him to be a rodeo clown rather than a cowboy Krumm didn’t take too kindly to that. Meanwhile Heffer was the savior of the Bikini Bottom kitchen. I didn’t agree with every single decision he made, but I did with a majority of them. Heffer’s overhaul was such a blessing so I didn’t have to fiddle with the organization of 60% of the equipment anymore, only about 20% now. Too bad Heffer’s crippling depression came back after bashing his head into the wall out of frustration with the shackles KK restrained him with.
The current management team is enthusiastic but inexperienced. I see an accumulation of small infractions that might bring down Bikini Bottom’s health department rating significantly. I see the entire management team being inattentive or unaware about organizational issues. Whatever bureaucratic nonsense corporate tasks everyone with from the original sous chef Skeeter to Patty Mayonnaise that makes them walk away from the line between 11am and 1pm especially is infuriating. I have never been left alone on a multi-person line during peak hours so regularly, and I won’t tolerate it anymore. As much as I believe in his drive, I imagine our current kitchen manager SpongeBob will be let go after a disastrous service during the Dimmadome concert season that someone has to take the fall for. Chef Ren and I could help bring experience in management and dealing with festival traffic...if corporate does not force us to follow a failing strategy.
After working nearly a year at KK you may ask why I’m not proficient on more than one station. Excellent question. First, when I move over to another station the squeeze bottles are never labeled (until Stu Pickles was hired, now they’re sometimes labeled), so I always looked at the glut of unlabeled sauces and I’d go back to my station because the basic information is missing (also a health department violation for having numerous unlabeled, unchilled bottles). In his first week the new general manager Stu Pickles pulled out 90% of the containers under the grill station because they were lacking labels despite an expected health department visit. The second reason for my menu ignorance is the mountain of prep for my own and upcoming shifts I have piled up on my station throughout service. My attention to detail appears to be next level with my ability to anticipate stocking all items for all shifts including the weeknd. The third reason I wouldn’t learn multiple stations is a defense against the afternoon conference calls. In [month] the Bikini Bottom line was unprepared for a busy post lunch because one cook was cut and our expo person was busy with a conference call. The two of us remaining on the line had a miserable slog through an unexpectedly busy afternoon. When I brought this up to Krabs he disregarded me, being a good bean counter he quoted the cost percentage. What he didn’t take into account was the missing expo person who could have jumped on the line and expo to help the understaffed two man team. That person was stuck on a conference call. Just recently I saw the company actively lose money because of this poorly thought-out meeting during business hours. A customer wanted to order a dessert that was 86ed but had been restocked by our prep cook an hour before. The server was unable to sell them their dessert because the only person in the building who could help un-86 an item was on a conference call. This conference call calamity is another bone-headed choice that speaks to a larger decision-making problem within the corporate structure. Finish the conference calls by 10:45 am eastern.
In conclusion, I quit my position as a lowly grunt for this company because of its unwarranted perplexing dance steps and below average management. I don’t care how much varnish and lacquer is supplied, I refuse to polish this Bikini Bottom turd as a manager or full-time employee under the current circumstances. You would have to take a pickaxe to the floor, possibly relocate the bathrooms to add a door to the dishpit, get rid of the cheap low boy that doesn’t properly drain excess water, and Mr Gorbachov knock down that wall in the middle of the kitchen to give the proper amount of space to work. Or simply reduce the menu to 36 items (including sides) because that’s the amount of space this dreadful design can comfortably output. Would Gordon Ramsay compliment KK for all the unnecessary convoluted complications abound, or would Chef Ramsay yell about keeping it simple and demand KK chuck it in the flip? Thanks to the numerous pop up restaurants I have been a part of and the hectic world of trade shows/conventions, I may have more experience than anyone else employed by KK in smoothly opening a new location. I would enjoy being part of the opening team to ensure new locations have an efficiency Bikini Bottom lacks, and to keep upper management away from their worst instincts. Work with me and Chef Ren and we will help you become a well oiled machine like Chokey Chicken instead of the Chum Bucket cesspit Bikini Bottom currently embodies.

Hey guys, I'm working on a Mayan-themed video game, and I am in need of someone who will be able to record around 50 very short sentences (usually between 1 and 5 words) in any of the Yucatec branches of Maya languages. It could be just low-quality recording with your phone, so we can try to replicate the pronunciation in our studio, or 4 different voice actors, 2 male, and 2 female.
Anybody here can help?

I know quitting your job as a cook usually simply comes with two weeks notice or a ragequit walkout, but for eleven months I worked at a new franchise that had such potential which was being squandered by the incompetence of upper management. I present the nearly 6000 word thesis I turned in on my last day. Locations and names have been changed to cartoon references. Brackets represent ambiguous information in place of specific details.
Krusty Krab Careers Jobs
Opening in [Month/Year], Krusty Krab (KK) Bikini Bottom is on its 4th kitchen manager in less than a year. Krusty Krab O-Town has recently let go its inaugural kitchen manager and sous chef. Almost no member of the Bikini Bottom opening management team remains employed by KK. There is a pattern developing where one must question both the choice of employee and the directive given to new franchises. These lingering issues I brought concerns about in the first weeks of opening but was disregarded at every turn despite my experience with festival traffic. As a result I decided this was not a place I wanted to advance, but with a good-enough paycheck I’d be a lowly grunt in the kitchen four days a week, at five days a week I would have quit or been fired over a public outburst long ago. If Krusty Krab alters course slightly while being true to the brand this could be a successful chain.
My unique employment history in brick and mortar restaurants, food trucks, pop up culinary concepts, trade shows/conventions, and the film industry make me an ideal candidate to be on the opening team for new KK locations. My outgoing nature and foresight are valuable assets. For example, on training week before opening when I was standing around idly without a task I took it upon myself to organize the disarray that was dry storage. Overhearing Krabs tell another manager where he wanted the cleaning products placed, I had a jumping off point and the organization I created nine months ago is still largely in place. Since returning from my vacation in early February I have made it my mission to keep the storage area organized because it was again starting to resemble a hoarder’s house rather than a commercial kitchen. This is now part of my weekly routines because every time I turn my back there is more product being placed haphazardly just anywhere with little regard. I also recently reorganized the walk-in cooler because of problematic stocking with items being placed on the same shelf or below raw proteins. I also simply put all the like products together such as cheeses or fruits that were scattered amongst several shelves. With recent overordering I cannot keep up with the organization of the walk in cooler. The pattern recognition of food types and even simple shapes appears to be lost on the Bikini Bottom crew. My daily reorganization of containers is proof of this. Most days I’ll take a few minutes to put all cylinders together, all cambros together in descending volume, all deep and shallow pans next to each other rather than intermixed. My decision to be a kitchen manager at age 19 from 2005 thru 2008 and rarely enter restaurant management since is very calculated.
With my prior knowledge of professional kitchens I was becoming Bikini Bottom’s resident nag to coworkers as I made note of health department violations on a daily basis. I stopped after being largely ignored for two weeks. My regular health department nags include; a battle with jackets and hats being placed only in the designated area (a designated area that did not exist until I created a place for personal items a in January by neatly organizing the dry storage area again), waiting until prepped items are cooled before a cover is placed on top, placement of raw seafood, open containers (very often sugar, flour, and pancake mix bags ripped open and left), and dirty dishes/containers placed back in rotation. The dirty dishes and containers in rotation with the clean ones are at an atrociously high number. I have given up on making the 4th fryer seafood allergy safe too. With the low volume of seafood allergy safe items Bikini Bottom should purchase smaller baskets to visually discourage cross contamination with the other fryers and baskets. My skills to organize the kitchen do not end with simply where to store products to meet minimal health department standards.
Half of the space in the Bikini Bottom kitchen is completely wasted on an ill-advised walkway to the dishpit. An intelligent design would place a second doorway directly to the dishpit connected to the bar or where the bathrooms reside. Numerous times during the opening week of KK Bikini Bottom I said, yelled, sang, and muttered that we have too many food items for the amount of space we have. Icus stated that there was more space than Bluffington. Is Bluffington intelligently designed? Because Bikini Bottom most certainly isn’t. So Bikini Bottom actually has less space even if there is more square footage. See the attached diagram for an intelligent design that could potentially house a menu of this size. Bikini Bottom forces a line design on this kitchen when an open concept is needed for this menu. It’s as if this floorplan was created by a person who had only ever seen one commercial kitchen previously and couldn’t think 4th dimensionally to understand the needs of the workers to smoothly serve customers.
There is not enough counter space for pizzas without getting off the line, the microwave is placed completely out of the way, the freezer’s curved design is a waste of potential counter space and a falling hazard for containers stored on top of it, the toaster is an overcomplicated and overexpensive piece of machinery that serves exactly one purpose when a flat top could be used to toast bread and other purposes like a quesadilla special, sautee was designed without an overhang for spices, the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter for seafood allergies, there are no Frialator fryers which I have worked with at every single kitchen job previously instead we got the cheap Vulcan model (is that logical), the cheap low boy in pantry that doesn’t drain excess water anywhere it’s just supposed to evaporate somehow but doesn’t, the grill and fryer should be placed next to each other (with a higher volume of crossover than other stations), the floors are flat instead on having a mild decline towards the drains (just look at the standing water residing behind the oven right now), in the dishpit the spraying area and the filled sinks are backwards of a logical dipshit, the ramp to the back door is on the wrong side, there is no refrigerated place downstairs to stage extra food for busy shifts (the beer cooler is once again used for such food items because of this massive oversight), the prep station is an afterthought and miniscule, the dishes on the line are difficult to grab for anyone under 5’11” and inaccessible for anyone under 5’6” (instead of putting them underneath tables that also give that desperately needed counterspace I spoke of), there is not enough space to store to-go containers or boats behind the line, expo is lacking a low boy for the numerous items that are supposed to be cold but are instead kept at room temperature all day long, no one in management thought about buying shelves until right before Bikini Bottom opened as a result the clean full sheets sat on the floor for days, we had only the exact amount of 1⁄6 pans for an absurd amount of time making it impossible to rotate and clean them when necessary (which is daily), we still struggle with 1/9 pan supply. And just when I thought I documented all the poor design choices possible I stumbled upon a person whose office holiday party was booked at KK Bikini Bottom. The deck space works just fine as a deck. It does not double well as a gathering space. The space is too long and narrow for parties, it promotes little splitoff groups rather than a coming together of a larger gathering. It may be advantageous to contact a social psychologist for help designing a private party space that promotes intermingling rather than enforcing small pockets to form. The reorganization of the physical kitchen isn’t all that screams for an overhaul.
There are six positions on the line at the Krusty Krab; expo, oven, grill, sautee, fryer, and pantry. But the pantry and fryer positions are forced together like a bad remix. Everyone who mainly works pantry deserves a $6 raise immediately because it is a station and a half. Both Icus and Krumm, while kitchen manager, kind of acknowledged the pantry is too big for one station without outright mentioning the lopsided distribution of work. I imagine in the only location where this works, Bluffington, a second person joins the pantry at noon because of the unreasonable amount of items one person is tasked with. Bikini Bottom only has one person in this position at all times, maybe modify it for one person? The excess of items on the pantry position largely resembles a position I would call “set-up” or “build” at a previous job that made sensible choices. This build position should have tostadas, tacos, butcher’s blocks, toast, salads, lettuce wrap set ups, and preparing plating for whichever station is most bogged down. I have absolutely lost my mind yelling about salads at least once a month, ranting that they do not belong on the fryer position because of how illogical it is that five salads are included on the mountain of other items the pantry has. I have always considered working in a kitchen a kind of dance, and the pantry station demands an unnecessarily convoluted dance to keep up with the demand. Without the salads, tostadas, and tacos the station is already the busiest. Do we really need to combine ballet and swing by including these extra awkward dance steps in this single station? For a kitchen designed this poorly I suppose it is. Again, see attached document for an intelligently designed kitchen that might be able to accommodate this menu. Unless Bikini Bottom is going to close for a month to fix the baffling floor plan design the menu is shouting to be reduced to 30-36 items.
The menu is too big. Krusty Krab is the jack of all foods, master of none. In general I believe individual locations should be allowed 18% omissions, and 18% unique items to this wildly unwieldy menu sitting around 50 food items including sides. The insistence on keeping menu items that don’t sell at Bikini Bottom because of Bluffington is mind boggling. Chicken tenders do not sell at Bikini Bottom. fried sushi does not sell at Bikini Bottom, not enough to justify their place on the line. I don’t care how well these items work in Bluffinton. They. Do. Not. Work. At. Bikini. Bottom. If the KK location in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean sells an incredible amount of live krill does that mean Bikini Bottom and O-Town must sell live krill too? Take the fried sushi off the menu. I had a complete meltdown about this during a Dimmadome service and my valid point was met with indifference. Replace the kid’s tenders with a kid’s fish sticks. We already have the tilapia fish sticks on the line for tacos. Or make the kid’s fish sticks cod. We cut cod to order for fish tacos in spite of health code violations because it is too rare of an order to make beforehand. Saffron in mashed potatoes? If you must. Why are green tomatoes only on the menu during lunch? Bikini Bottom throws away a sizable amount of spoiled green tomatoes each week. Have green tomatoes on the menu all day long or don’t have them at all. The smoked salmon could go on salads or a special taco to justify its place on the line. The corn pico’s place on the line is unjustified. It only goes on one item, tostadas, which are not particularly popular. If we had a taco salad we could throw the corn pico on there. We also have unreasonable waste from unusable taco shells, smash up those imperfect taco shells and throw them on said taco salad. But before we add salads, let's get rid of the pear and kale salads. The pears' position on the line are unjustified, if we threw them on a taco variation maybe their place on the Bikini Bottom line could be argued but for now they only go on a salad that isn’t particularly popular. The kale salad is an issue of space for a 4th green for salads is too much. The krusty salad is my most hated house salad of all time. And it comes down to the toast with goat cheese. This ancillary step of spreading goat cheese on a cracker is an unnecessary step for an overly complicated dance and should be part of the expo dance if expo wasn’t a shoddily designed afterthought lacking a low boy.
There are a plethora of squeeze bottles on the pantry station that have no place on the overloaded station. They belong to an expo station with a low boy to keep them cold. Pantry has an overwhelming ten squeeze bottles: chipotle crema, sweet chili vinaigrette, buffalo, korean bbq, ranch, caesar, wine vinaigrette, lemon vinaigrette, honey mustard, and lemon aioli. Only the first four are justified on an intelligently designed fryer section, the second four belong on the build station, the last two have no place anywhere but expo. With this extra space sautee could keep their bottles and two purees cold in the fryer's lowboy instead of leaving them at room temperature all day inviting a pathogen party. This theorized intelligently designed expo would have room to keep these four squeeze bottles and a double of every sauce chilled to pour them into ramekins, a move that is highly common in the expo dance. The fact that expo doesn’t have a double of all squeeze bottles is foolish. Expo has to bother an overloaded station to pour these side sauces instead.
How many gallons of basil aioli has Bikini Bottom thrown away in 11 months? Four aiolis in general is way too many and most go on a single item; basil aioli on the incredibly unpopular veggie burger, lemon aioli for calamari, sweet chili aioli for the BLT that is only served half of the day, and garlic aioli actually goes on two items…I believe. What a colossal waste of precious little space, lose two aiolis and then you can sing the logical song with me. Perhaps we can put garlic aioli and sweet chili vinaigrette on the BLT separately and accomplish the exact same thing the sweet chili aioli does. The wings too have unneeded complications. Having worked at a sports bar specializing in wings for the better part of a decade I find KK’s plating of wings to be overly pretentious. The carrots, celery, and blue cheese have lost function. Heffer Wolf always said no one eats the carrot/celery julienne with blue cheese. It’s a complete waste of all the ingredients because you’ve gone too far with the presentation. Wings aren’t fancy. Wings are supposed to have a small pool of sauce and be sloppy. It’s like a sloppy joe that’s not sloppy, an unsloppy joe is a failure to sloppy joes just as the KK presentation of wings is a disparagement to the dish. Ever since training week back in 2022 I have used a scale to give Bikini Bottom a passing or failing grade.
Chokey Chicken to Chum Bucket is the scale I use to judge efficiency and sanity at Bikini Bottom. Both establishments are upscale casual dining experiences in Capitol City in the same vein as KK. Chokey had high employee retention and relatively smooth openings for new locations. Chum Bucket’s employee turnover was high and every location opening was chaotic. Which one sounds closer to KK? Chokey Chicken was filled with chefs I respect including Chef Ren Hoek who remains a close friend to this day. Ren lost his lifelong passion for kitchen work after working management at Chum Bucket. He’s actually seeking work in Bikini Bottom. Call him up at [phone number], but KK will give him Nam’ flashbacks of why he chose driving for a living rather than cooking for five years. The pair of us together helming Bikini Bottom with the ability to omit and create 18% of the overloaded menu can bring success to this franchise. We have worked well numerous times in the past on various concepts in the past including creating The Attack of the Pickled Tomatoes Burger for [Promotional live performance of a TV show] at the Capitol City Theater. We served 100 people in 60 at the [sitcom filming] lunch. That’s physically impossible but somehow we did it quite a few times.
A fun anecdote about Ren Hoek’s KK experience from the soft launch; on training week numerous times I brought concerns about being seafood allergy safe that were dismissed. As mentioned earlier the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter, one each of which seafood never touches. Before the soft launch Chef Stimpy from Bluffington insisted all customers just kind of know everything is prone to be seafood contaminated. Well, chef Ren was a customer that night and this absolutely was not communicated to customers. He claimed to have a slight seafood allergy and was not informed of what the crab soup was. In reality he does not have a seafood allergy. I didn’t discuss the seafood issue with Ren, separately we noticed egregious violations of food safety standards and we each responded in our own way. The soft launch service was so awful that night Chef Ren walked out of a free meal to pay for some ramen, never to return to Bikini Bottom. I attribute this oversight, and many of Bikini Bottom’s (and probably O-Town’s) problems to hubris over the Bluffington location.
Chef Chokey would also be hesitant to join the KK team. It will cost a finder’s fee just for me to reveal Chef Chokey’s name. Chef Chokey was a lead in the rapid expansion of Chokey Chicken restaurants. He opened numerous restaurants and was big on the philosophy that each restaurant must have its own personality in order to fit the unique local culture and the variety of working spaces. This is in direct conflict with the KK way that everything must be exactly like the Bluffington location no matter what. There was only one Chokey Chicken location that had the full menu, Chokey Springfield. Chokey Springfield had a large space which was intelligently designed to accommodate such a large menu. The KK menu is all over the place, closing in on 50 menu items which comes up as a failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale. This is not the only area KK comes up as a major failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale.
Has anyone in this company ever worked festival traffic before? Does anyone have the experience of working next to a major venue with 8000 seats before this one? The way Bikini Bottom handles Dimmadome services it certainly appears that the decision-makers fall on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Having all 50 items available during such massive traffic is completely asinine. An unwillingness to serve a partial menu is hindering the Bikini Bottom kitchen staff. I have worked festival traffic before, and Dimmadome events bring in festival traffic. I’ve worked inside a festival whose line never ended but every customer got their order in 5 minutes or less because the line kept flowing with only four items on the menu as that’s what was warranted at the B-Sharps Music Festival. I refuse to be set up for failure the way Bikini Bottom sets up Dimmadome services for failure. The entire week of concerts in [summer] 2022 I was set up for failure every day (it was after this I modified my availability to keep my sanity and my paycheck). When I brought my concerns about running efficiently during Dimmadome services I was labeled a B-worker for the first time in my employment history by Icus and Krabs. It is that moment which I was either going to holler at them both for being 2-dimensional thinkers who were obviously unqualified for the positions they accepted in this company, or just put my head down. If Bikini Bottom has a successful concert day service, hail your team because they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They swam with concrete shoes. I often wonder how many customers had bad experiences and never returned after concert days. A Dimmadome service should have no more than 25 items and have one or two specials to divert traffic towards an area the kitchen can keep moving. An Open Cup Open Plate (OCOP) special for foot traffic is absolutely needed. When I suggested OCOP special, Heffer was intrigued by this idea and immediately named burgers as the special to keep foot traffic flowing. Smithers wouldn’t hear this idea, babbling on about what’s advertised instead of hearing out a sound idea. This prattle despite radio commercials having inaccurate hours and social media promoting Bikini Bottom’s steak tacos to this day. I always found Smithers to be a better fit as a middle management office pencil pusher than as a hands-on restaurant manager. Overall I find KK managers are selected to be automatons not to question their orders rather than critical thinkers who could take the restaurant to the next level. During brunch service is another period of time that must be modified to lessen the heft of items. Having a full menu that barely works plus brunch is so deep into Chum Bucket territory, in my opinion we now have to use the Tropic Thunder scale of full retard to describe a 60-plus-item brunch. Chef Ren hired back a Chum Bucket cook who had a mental breakdown and stormed out during brunch (plus full menu) service because Ren knew the employee was justified and upper management was completely unreasonable in their brunch requests. It’s not just questionable decisions that hinder KK staff but improper equipment as well.
This is the first restaurant I have worked at which uses a touch screen on the line rather than tickets. From day one I found this to be technology for technology’s sake inferior to tickets. Chef Ren forced a new Chum Bucket location to rip out touch screens from the line and bring in ticket printers because of the higher efficiency. The touch screen is a great idea for expo, not the entire line. My biggest gripe is that each station does not get all the information. Early on I was regularly yelled at for not staggering my items, well I can’t see the rest of the order; a problem I have never had with a ticket system. Touchscreen software is also much more prone to errors and glitches. When I reported an error during a heavy service Icus and Krabs blamed my skills on the line without looking into the malfunctioning screen further. It was glitchy for weeks before the two finally investigated and corrected the issue I brought to their attention long before. Those two gave me an immense amount of ammunition to dislike them in the opening weeks until I stopped caring. The issue I had with being unable to scroll beyond the bottom of a completely filled screen has returned and is still there as of [my last day]. There are also important details that get buried. A frequent meltdown I have is that sauce on side requests and other important modifications are not capitalized or in red to catch the eye as they have been at jobs with tickets. These details get lost on Bikini Bottom’s touchscreens. A sauce on side salad made by me will be wrong 50% of the time because of the instructions being camouflaged in a word salad. This goes for coleslaw on the side and drizzle on the side too. Drizzle in general I dislike because of the pretentiousness, but whatever, drizzle it on top rather than putting it in a ramekin if you must. There are numerous places where Bikini Bottom overcomplicates matters for reasons I cannot ascertain.
Why is there such a large variety of plates? Why do we have a medium circular plate for salads and a large bowl for salads with protein? This just confuses the simplest of matters. I was told this is done because of the high price hike with protein, a larger presentation was desired. But that price hike is the price of protein in 2023. Bikini Bottom should put all salads in the large bowls and use all the circular salad plates in a skeet shooting promotion. I understand why we have both a circular platter plate and a pizza plate but in my restaurant the circular platter plates must go...or maybe the large platter plate instead. Is the large platter used for anything besides fish and chips? That extra space on fish and chips plates are only used for side sauces which can easily be delivered to customers on small circular plates. What is the medium oval plate doing that the medium rectangular plate isn’t? And vice versa. Why do they both exist when they are approximately the same size? Let me write an internet commercial where we break a lot of plates so we can get some logical use out of the superfluous plates. I don’t care which one is destroyed, the ovals or the rectangles but one of them is an unnecessary redundancy in excess done again. Speaking of commercials, the unimaginative radio advertisements for Bikini Bottom are doing little to lure new customers to the restaurant.
The three radio spots I have heard on KBBL all sound like they were produced by a marketing 101 student who wasn’t a natural in the field. The voiceover actor was so uncharismatic I was certain someone from the office was chosen at random to read the copy. Then I heard that same voiceover actor selling pool supplies on another radio station so I concluded that Bikini Bottom must have hired the cheapest guy in town to produce the most basic of commercials. Perhaps there is someone else you could hire more qualified to voiceover these commercials, an actor with experience on an Emmy award winning cable program whose unique place in the film industry was written about on [website] would be a much wiser choice to be the voice of the KK? (See external link). In the ad there was no catchphrase, no jingle, no music whatsoever. This simple approach to commercials lacks the pizazz to catch the attention of radio listeners. The first two commercials I heard would get a C in marketing 101 as they were nearly the exact same and accomplished the bare minimum to sell wares, the third one would maybe get a B- because there was some sort of attempted gimmick with the voiceover whispering to represent thinking inside his head about what he was going to eat later at KK. Not only does this commercial give no reason for the man to think inside his head, the outside world still and unpopulated. To see what a creative person would do with this concept see the attached script. There is an attempted slogan that could become part of an ad campaign. Commercials aren’t the only lost opportunities in promotions.
There are numerous promotional celebrity tie-ins at Bikini Bottom’s fingertips with Dimmadome performers. The restaurant could have a Phish sandwich as a OCOP special on [Phish performance dates], or a pretentious Jelly Roll on [Jelly Roll performance date]. Has anyone reached out to the Dimmadome theater or talent management for approved special menu items to be promoted inside the dome? Perhaps a special 20% discount to ticket holders? Is Bikini Bottom capable of getting permits to extend Open Container hours beyond [cutoff time] for an afterparty or block party throughout a Dimmadome concert? I see additional marketing opportunities left on the table for all new locations.
I believe new KK locations are missing out on a marketing campaign by opening with the entire cumbersome 50 item menu. This is a staggering amount of menu items which is too much to ask new staffers to perfect all at once. After a few months expanding the menu by approximately ten items is catching to customers who haven’t returned after a single visit or infrequently stop into KK. There are ten new food items that might appeal to them. Just like it appears KK doesn’t know what it’s looking for in a good commercial spot, this company doesn’t appear to recognize a talented from an untalented worker until it’s too late.
It is my understanding that KK had a headhunter to find Icus, the first Bikini Bottom kitchen manager. If it were up to me I’d hire someone to break the legs of that headhunter for bringing in a subpar kitchen lead. We are still attempting to recover from the lousy choices she made in the floor plan. If anybody responsible for Bikini Bottom’s floor plan is still giving input, stop them immediately. Once the doors were open to the public Icus had his head in the clouds to a point where I questioned if he saw the writing on the walls of an imminent demotion and stopped trying as a result. I had a full deck of 3x5 cards in an archaic powerpoint presentation bringing numerous concerns to light that he kept putting off listening to until he was fired. Those same cards were broken out for this essay. The second kitchen manager, Krumm, is a good lesson in honesty. According to Heffer, Krumm was given a bill of goods about how smoothly KK Bikini Bottom was running. Since Krumm stepped into a latrine pit which he was led to believe was a heated pool, he left in short time. Krumm also had plans to modify the menu but when his bosses told him to be a rodeo clown rather than a cowboy Krumm didn’t take too kindly to that. Meanwhile Heffer was the savior of the Bikini Bottom kitchen. I didn’t agree with every single decision he made, but I did with a majority of them. Heffer’s overhaul was such a blessing so I didn’t have to fiddle with the organization of 60% of the equipment anymore, only about 20% now. Too bad Heffer’s crippling depression came back after bashing his head into the wall out of frustration with the shackles KK restrained him with.
The current management team is enthusiastic but inexperienced. I see an accumulation of small infractions that might bring down Bikini Bottom’s health department rating significantly. I see the entire management team being inattentive or unaware about organizational issues. Whatever bureaucratic nonsense corporate tasks everyone with from the original sous chef Skeeter to Patty Mayonnaise that makes them walk away from the line between 11am and 1pm especially is infuriating. I have never been left alone on a multi-person line during peak hours so regularly, and I won’t tolerate it anymore. As much as I believe in his drive, I imagine our current kitchen manager SpongeBob will be let go after a disastrous service during the Dimmadome concert season that someone has to take the fall for. Chef Ren and I could help bring experience in management and dealing with festival traffic...if corporate does not force us to follow a failing strategy.
After working nearly a year at KK you may ask why I’m not proficient on more than one station. Excellent question. First, when I move over to another station the squeeze bottles are never labeled (until Stu Pickles was hired, now they’re sometimes labeled), so I always looked at the glut of unlabeled sauces and I’d go back to my station because the basic information is missing (also a health department violation for having numerous unlabeled, unchilled bottles). In his first week the new general manager Stu Pickles pulled out 90% of the containers under the grill station because they were lacking labels despite an expected health department visit. The second reason for my menu ignorance is the mountain of prep for my own and upcoming shifts I have piled up on my station throughout service. My attention to detail appears to be next level with my ability to anticipate stocking all items for all shifts including the weeknd. The third reason I wouldn’t learn multiple stations is a defense against the afternoon conference calls. In [month] the Bikini Bottom line was unprepared for a busy post lunch because one cook was cut and our expo person was busy with a conference call. The two of us remaining on the line had a miserable slog through an unexpectedly busy afternoon. When I brought this up to Krabs he disregarded me, being a good bean counter he quoted the cost percentage. What he didn’t take into account was the missing expo person who could have jumped on the line and expo to help the understaffed two man team. That person was stuck on a conference call. Just recently I saw the company actively lose money because of this poorly thought-out meeting during business hours. A customer wanted to order a dessert that was 86ed but had been restocked by our prep cook an hour before. The server was unable to sell them their dessert because the only person in the building who could help un-86 an item was on a conference call. This conference call calamity is another bone-headed choice that speaks to a larger decision-making problem within the corporate structure. Finish the conference calls by 10:45 am eastern.
In conclusion, I quit my position as a lowly grunt for this company because of its unwarranted perplexing dance steps and below average management. I don’t care how much varnish and lacquer is supplied, I refuse to polish this Bikini Bottom turd as a manager or full-time employee under the current circumstances. You would have to take a pickaxe to the floor, possibly relocate the bathrooms to add a door to the dishpit, get rid of the cheap low boy that doesn’t properly drain excess water, and Mr Gorbachov knock down that wall in the middle of the kitchen to give the proper amount of space to work. Or simply reduce the menu to 36 items (including sides) because that’s the amount of space this dreadful design can comfortably output. Would Gordon Ramsay compliment KK for all the unnecessary convoluted complications abound, or would Chef Ramsay yell about keeping it simple and demand KK chuck it in the flip? Thanks to the numerous pop up restaurants I have been a part of and the hectic world of trade shows/conventions, I may have more experience than anyone else employed by KK in smoothly opening a new location. I would enjoy being part of the opening team to ensure new locations have an efficiency Bikini Bottom lacks, and to keep upper management away from their worst instincts. Work with me and Chef Ren and we will help you become a well oiled machine like Chokey Chicken instead of the Chum Bucket cesspit Bikini Bottom currently embodies.

“I’m sorry; we’re going to astral travel to a flea market?” Charlotte asked incredulously as she watched Genevieve and I set up a meditation circle under the shade of a towering old willow tree in my cemetery. “What if we want to buy something? How will we bring it back?”
“We’re not going there to shop, Lottie. Samantha’s finally had a vision about Emrys,” Genevieve explained.
The Veil between the Physical and Astral Planes is exceptionally weak in my cemetery, especially at night and on hallowed days. When I sleep there, my subconscious mind is highly receptive to all manner of revelations from the Spirit World. When I saw a Blood Moon rise on the night of May fifth, the same night as a penumbral eclipse, I knew that my dreams would be prophetic.
“I had a dream about him last Friday,” I expounded. “He’s at some sort of otherworldly marketplace, one that’s not connected to the Crypto Chthonic Cuniculi, so it’s mostly inaccessible to the Ophion Occult Order. In my dream, Emrys invited us to come and speak with him while we were lucid. He drew a sigil for me, the same one I’ve drawn in the middle of the mediation circle. He said that all I’d have to do is toss an Undying Rose – the earthly effigy of the rose Persephone used to steal a drop of his blood – into the sigil and it will become an astral portal to where he is.”
I held up the deep purple rose that I had cut from its bush earlier that day. I don’t know for certain where the roses came from, but my best guess is that they were made by the same Occultist who hallowed my cemetery to Persephone; Artaxerxes Crow. They have some connection to Emrys as well, since the only other time I saw someone else use one was when his avatar was summoned into the Physical Plane on Halloween 2020.
Knowing that Emrys wouldn’t dare to set foot in a place that was sacred to the Goddess who was ultimately responsible for his cosmic defeat, I gently tossed the rose into the middle of the sigil.
“He invited all of us?” Charlotte asked with an incredulous raising of her eyebrow.
“He said me and my coven. If he had just meant me or me and Genevieve he would have said that,” I replied. “You and Elam are coming too. I want as many eyes on this place as possible so that we don’t miss anything. We may not get an opportunity like this again.”
“And this is safe? Visiting some random flea market between worlds?” Charlotte asked.
“Samantha and I have visited the Underworld and come back no problem,” Genevieve reminded her. “So long as we’re bound to our bodies and Elam is bound to Samantha, we can come back anytime. Don’t worry; this is going to be a blast! Adventures like these are the best part of being a Witch.”
“The only reason you were able to go to the Underworld is because Samantha’s cemetery came with an astral portal in the back,” Charlotte countered, gesticulating in the general direction of the archway that was still partially visible behind the light spring foliage. “Other than that, when have any of us ever done anything useful with our astral projection? This is still a physical place, right? We don’t have any of our physical senses available to us when we astral project, and I get extremely disoriented trying to navigate the mortal plane with clairvoyance alone.”
“It is a physical place, but one saturated with astral energy and full of occultists and occult artifacts. It will be extremely illuminated to our clairvoyance,” I assured her. “Elam will also be there to guide us. As a ghost, he’s much more practiced at traversing the mortal plane in an astral form.”
Charlotte folded her arms over her chest and turned to look at Elam, who was leaning up against the willow tree as he waited for us.
“I don’t suppose you could go and scout the place out for us ahead of time?” she asked.
“I can’t go too far from Samantha, and definitely not across planes,” he said with a shake of his head. “But Eve’s right. Your astral bodies will be in no danger, and you can return here in an instant whenever you want.”
“But what about Emrys? Didn’t that book Leon gave you say that he’s some sort of soul-flayer?” Charlotte asked me.
“It did,” I admitted. “Keep in mind though, that book was written by his enemies. I want to hear his side of things before this conflict of theirs spirals out of control.”
“Any update from Chamberlin about that?” Elam asked.
“Yeah, he said that after he failed to purify the Sigil Sand, Ivy’s onboard with negotiating some kind of truce with Emrys,” I replied. “The Grand Adderman’s still reticent, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s running out of options. I need to find out if Emrys will agree to peace talks.”
“Um, I get that, but I’m still kind of hung up on him potentially flaying our souls,” Charlotte reiterated.
“If Emrys and the Ophion Occult Order go to all-out war, there’ll be a lot of collateral damage and innocent souls caught in the crossfire,” Genevieve told her, gently grabbing hold of her and looking her straight in the eye. “Samantha, Elam, and I are doing this because if there’s any chance we can put an end to this before it starts, then it’s our responsibility to try. You don’t have to come with us, Lottie, but you’re still a member of our coven. Samantha and I would both feel a lot better with you there to help us.”
“Arghhh! All right, fine! I’ll come with you,” Charlotte gave in, plopping her butt down on the edge of the meditation circle. “If we’re holding hands, that will help keep our astral bodies together too, right?”
“I believe it should, yes,” I smiled at her, sitting down and reaching out for her hand.
Genevieve lit the incense and her bong filled with the entheogenic Delphi Dream, before sitting down to join us. She took a hit from the bong before passing it to me, and then to Charlotte before setting it aside out of the circle.
“Start with taking a deep breath, completely filling the lungs, and holding it for five heartbeats,” she guided us as she took hold of each of our hands. “Exhale completely, and wait five more heartbeats before breathing in again. Eyes closed, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus on the astral energies flowing through you with each breath, gently aligning each chakra until those energies are enough to lift you up and out of your body.”
In unison with one another, the three of us slowly breathed in and out, ignoring the material world around us and focusing upon the task at hand. Eve was first, as usual, and because we were all holding hands, Charlotte and I felt her eagerly tugging us up to speed us along.
I opened my eyes, and beheld the dull and muted Physical Plane through my clairvoyance, everything outshined by the radiant forms of my coven mates. I noted that Genevieve had eschewed her normal skyclad form when astral projecting and instead wore a cloak like Charlotte and I.
“Are you worried this place might have a no shirt, no shoes, no souls, no service policy?” I teased her.
“I just don’t want to risk a confrontation over it. I realize how important this is,” she answered. “Though I’m not actually wearing shoes, now that you mention it.”
“Christ, look at the sigil Samantha drew!” Charlotte said, pointing down at the meditation circle beneath us. The sigil wasn’t just glowing but flowing as well, churning the Aether around it in a misty, spectral vortex. “It’s an astral portal, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah. It’s not stable, though. Good for one trip only,” Genevieve said with a delighted smile. “And Lottie, since we’re Neopagan Witches, try not to swear by Christ, okay?”
“Jesus!” she swore, both in defiance and in genuine annoyance.
“Elam! Elam, come join the circle! I don’t want to take any chances of severing our bond,” I instructed, letting go of Charlotte’s hand and waving him in between us.
Faithful Familiar that he was, he obeyed without hesitation. Despite my concerns, I think that he probably could have stayed behind if he had wanted. The fact that he was willing to follow me to an unknown otherworld without complaint really made me appreciate how devoted he was to me.
“We step in together on the count of three, got it?” I instructed, each of them nodding clearly in response. “One. Two. Three!”
We all extended our right feet into the vortex together, and the instant we did we were swept away, falling out of our own world and tumbling between the cracks of countless others. They weren’t real, I don’t think. At least, not as real as our world. They were potential realities, or realities that could have been once but now can never be, or fantasies that are so persistent in the minds of real people that in some sense or another, they become real themselves. I only saw glimmers of them, glimmers in nebulas made of primeval chaos and uttermost void.
It was outside of time, that place we travelled through, or at least we had no sense of it there. Our souls were haphazardly spat out upon a surreal landscape of earth, sea, and fire. Hilly plains of volcanic ash, incandescent calderas of lava and bubbling hot springs all intermeshed in a chaotic mosaic that didn’t seem to abide by any laws of geology or geography that I was familiar with. A strong but slow wind pushed fractal formations of dark silver clouds through a pale silver sky, illuminated by a single white orb which could have been either a bright moon or a faint sun.
While our spectral feet left no trace upon the ash we now stood upon, our presence nonetheless elicited a response from some of the local fauna. We were just able to catch a glimpse of some kind of shimmering scarabs burrowing themselves into the ash to escape the four otherworldly ghosts that had invaded their territory.
“Holy shit,” Charlotte murmured as we all gazed out upon the strange world we had found ourselves on. “This really isn’t on the Astral Plane. This is a real planet. This a real, alien planet! This is unbelievable!”
Genevieve glided over to one of the bubbling pools and peered into it, looking for any more signs of life.
“There’s some kind of bluish-grey algae growing on the rocks down there, and I think I can make out some small arthropods too. This planet’s alive!” she announced with glee, smiling and looking up at the alien sky.
Conjuring an astral approximation of my staff, I plunged it into a small mound of ash beside me. I watched curiously as the scarabs shot out in all directions, moving too quickly for me to get a good look at them, before scurrying back into the surrounding ash.
“These bugs can sense our presence,” I remarked. “How and why would clairvoyance evolve in insects on this world, and why would their first instinct be to flee?”
“Samantha!” Elam called out. “I think I found the Flea Market.”
We all gathered around him and looked where he was pointing. On a distant dune, we beheld the moulted carapace of a colossal insect, gleaming a brilliant, lustrous gold in the broken white light.
“That’s impossible!” Charlotte claimed. “That thing must be hundreds of meters long! No insect, no animal period could ever get that big on the Physical Plane!”
“It could be the Incarnation of some kind of Titan,” Genevieve suggested. “But… it’s dead. I can tell that even from here. It’s dead. It’s the corpse of a dead god, and now it’s being used as a swap meet with a punny name. Either whatever killed it just abandoned it, or…”
“Or is running the place,” I finished for her. “Well, we should see if we can find Emrys.”
In an instant, the world moved around us until we were at the entrance to the Flea Market. The colossal carapace was hollow inside, of course, and had been filled with a bustling city that looked like it had been created in the most ad hoc manner possible. There wasn’t a single straight street to be seen, and they converged with one another at random intervals. Stalls and buildings varied wildly in both design and materials, all imported from a plethora of different cultures across the planes.
Enormous shards of luminous glass levitated above the throng like a thousand Swords of Damocles, any or all of them seeming capable of succumbing to gravity at any moment. In the very center of the moulted husk dangled a great spiralling chrysalis or hive woven of iridescent silk, its function not being immediately apparent to me.
There must have been thousands of people there, and hundreds of merchants hawking their wares. Most of those who looked human still seemed a little off, like they were members of ethnicities that didn’t exist in our world. Some of the beings were near-human in appearance, many seemingly some kind of Fey or Seelie folk. There was even a small handful of people that weren’t remotely human at all.
The only thing they all had in common was that none were native to this world.
“Most of these people are here in person, aren’t they?” Charlotte asked.
“It would’ve been quite a feat for them to have built all of this while astral projecting,” Genevieve agreed.
“But if this place isn’t connected to the Cuniculi, then how did they get here?” Charlotte asked. “We’re on another planet, maybe even in another dimension. If getting here is beyond the Ooo’s abilities, then what sort of ungodly reality benders decided to turn it into a Flea Market?”
“Ladies, gentlemen, and any beings either too ancient and alien or too modern and alienated to settle on one or the other, come bear witness to one of the most astounding and atrocious abominations on this or any other world!” a fast-paced male voice rang out over the din of the crowd.
We turned to see a short, skinny, old-timey sort of carnival barker standing on a literal soap box, placed next to a large object draped in a black tarp.
“For the paltry price of a single three-headed coin, you can peer beneath the veil and behold with your own unbelieving eyes the mangled and mutilated monstrosity that lurks beneath!” the carnival barker continued. “But I must warn you, it is not possible to truly understand what dwells underneath without seeing it first! I cannot guarantee that you will still retain your sanity or will to live after witnessing the proverbial Mountains of Madness, for this low creature is truly like no other and serves only as a grim testament to the cruel sadism of the Lord Above! Anyone plagued by even the faintest lingering doubt as to their spiritual fortitude should not dare to even contemplate what might lie before me! But, for those brave, noble few who are truly dauntless of heart and incorrigible of spirit, I am proud to share with you this rare, unfathomable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness sublime –”
The carnival barker was interrupted by a man yanking the sheet off the object beside him, revealing it to be a mirror.
“Whelp, that was a hell of an Im14andthisisdeep post, eh?” Charlotte mused.
Genevieve and I, however, were far too stunned to be amused; not by the mirror, but by the man who had unveiled it.
“It’s him, Lottie. That’s Emrys,” Genevieve whispered.
We had only seen him briefly once before, more than two-and-a-half years ago, but he was far from what anyone would call forgettable. He was tall and gaunt, with literal blue blood flowing beneath translucent skin. His long, receding hair and regal beard were pitch black, and dark miasma wafted from his eyes, nose, and mouth. He was dressed in dark sable robes with three overlapping Ouroboros’s tattooed on his forehead, with a pair of ophidian pupils lying in the spaces between them.
What stood out the most to us were the six silver Ouroboros chains bound around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. These were the chains the Ophion Occult Order had made to limit the power of his physical avatar, and it seemed he had not yet found a way to free himself from them.
“Are you still here?” Emrys asked in exasperation, tossing the veil back at the carnival barker in disdain.
“…Possibly,” the strange man replied evasively. “But not definitively, for purely legalistic reasons.”
“I believe Mathom-meister was quite clear when he said that your rather pitiful chicanery wasn’t welcomed here,” Emrys reminded him.
“And who is he to judge chicanery from cutthroat, capitalistic competition? Should not the Flea Market be a free market?” the charlatan demanded. “And while we’re on the topic of commerce, I don’t suppose you have enough three-headed coins to pay for all the poor souls you have so discourteously exposed to my exhibit against their will? I’d hate to have to start shaking people down to get my due.”
“Hard to believe your own circus threw you out,” Emrys said with a sardonic eye roll as he tossed him a small medallion. “You get one coin. Take it and get out of my sight.”
The charlatan flipped the coin in the air thrice, presumably to confirm it actually had three heads. Satisfied with its impossible dimensions, he shoved it into his pocket.
“It will cover the trolley ride home, at least,” he acquiesced, stepping off his soap box and turning to face his looking glass. “A shame though you can’t see the genius in my little avant-garde performance piece here, Emmy. Even I know that the monster in the mirror is often the hardest to recognize.”
As the man reached to pick up his mirror, his reflection’s arms shot through the glass and grabbed him by the wrists, pulling him in. Emrys immediately tried to chase after him, but bounced off the glass as if there was nothing supernatural about it at all.
“Bastard!” he cursed under his breath, before turning towards us and giving us a small apologetic smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that rather pathetic display. Unfortunately, the few meeting places I know of that are relatively safe from any Ophionic incursion also attract their fair share of other annoying miscreants.”
“If it didn’t attract a little bit of everything, it wouldn’t be a Flea Market, would it?” I asked rhetorically. “Thank you, Emrys, for inviting us. I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”
“And thank you for accepting. Samantha, Genevieve, it’s a pleasure to see you again, and a relief that you have not fallen under the auspices of the Ophion Occult Order,” he said with a gentle bow. “Elam, I remember you as well. Valiant but not reckless, you remained atop Pendragon Hill during my battle with the Darlings until your mistress was well out of harm’s way, and then you got the hell out of dodge yourself. Samantha couldn’t hope for a better Familiar. And Charlotte, any Witch that Samantha deemed worthy to induct into her coven is obviously someone whose acquaintance I am pleased to make. Welcome, all of you, to Mathom-meister’s Flea Market!”
“So this is where you’ve been hiding out the past two years?” Genevieve asked.
“Oh no. Far too Cosmopolitan for my tastes,” Emrys replied. “No, this is just a friendly place to meet those I consider friends – or potential friends, at least. I’d offer to show you around, but I know it’s difficult for you to astral travel for prolonged periods. Come with me to Mathom-meister’s house where we can talk freely, and we’ll discuss the situation with the Order.”
I gave him a small, single nod in response, and gestured with my staff that he should lead the way. He responded by pointing upwards, then vanished into his shadow form. When we looked up, we saw him waving at us from a balcony atop the great silken chrysalis.
We exchanged hesitant glances with one another, but ultimately followed him into the strange structure, moving from the ground to the balcony in an instant by will alone.
“How would an incarnate being get up here if they couldn’t fly or teleport?” Charlotte asked as she peered over the balcony’s teetering edge.
As though answering a summons, a humanoid creature apparated beside her in a flash of dark vapours. The hunched-back entity stood over six-and-a-half feet tall, and was clad in golden-brown erudite robes. Its squid-like skin was of a similar colour, and its entire face was a single gaping orifice that held a wispy, glowing orb in the center of its skull which I immediately recognized as its soul. A pair of long, fanged tentacles lined with pores and tendrils hung down from its head like a long, forked beard, and the seven digits shared by its two hands all bore wicked-looking talons, as did its two-toed, digitigrade feet.
“Not fly or teleport? What sort of pedestrian house guests do you think I entertain here?” the being asked wryly, its voice seeming to come from nowhere in particular.
Charlotte instinctively backed away from the creature and into the protective fold of our coven, but Emrys was quick to hold up his hand to plead for calm.
“Please, there’s no need for alarm. This is our host, Mathom-meister. He’s the only reason any of this is here in the first place,” Emrys informed us. “A year or two ago a companion of his unfortunately became one of the Darling Twin’s victims, and when he heard of my vendetta with them, he tracked me down; which is no small feat, I assure you.”
“It is for us. My people are a race of Planeswalkers. Traversing the many worlds of Creation is second nature to us,” Mathom-meister explained.
“I’ve… I’ve heard of your people, I think,” I said, softly and unsurely. “A friend of mine had an encounter with an artifact that gave her a vision of a race of strange and powerful sorcerers slaying their own god. I take it you’re the ones who slayed this Scarab Titan as well? That’s, that’s…”
“Horrifying, yes. That’s the idea,” he nodded. “You have nothing to worry about, young Witch. My people have no special interest in your world. This is purely personal. My friend is dead, and I want his murderers brought to justice; a goal which Emrys and I happen to have in common.”
“Feel free to share this information with the Ophion Occult Order, Samantha,” Emrys said. “I’d very much like for the Darling Twins to know what’s hunting them. Mathom-meister, please excuse me while I take my guests inside. We do have pressing business to discuss and their time is limited.”
The squid-cyclopes bowed gracefully, and my coven and I quickly scurried after Emrys as he led us inside through a towering hallway and into a large chamber that had been appointed as a living space.
I had thought that Emrys would want to speak with us alone, which was why I was surprised to see a young woman sitting cross-legged on a spongey yet chitinous object that I will for the sake of my sanity call a bean bag chair. Like Emrys, she was pale and blue-blooded, her choppy hair as black as coal. She wore a black robe and heavy black eyeliner, but these could not conceal the fact that she too had thin wisps of miasma emanating from her eyes.
“Is that your… daughter?” Charlotte asked, as baffled by her presence as any of us. The woman smiled warmly at the question.
“In a way. I was dead, and Emrys gave me new life. Now a part of the Outer Primordial Darkness he represents lives in me too,” she said serenely.
Hovering above her left palm were three small bluish-green orbs, lazily going around in a circle. They were translucent and held something inside them that I couldn’t make out, but the orbs themselves appeared to be melting and solidifying by the woman’s will.
“You’re Petra, aren’t you?” I asked as I cautiously approached her. “Chamberlin had mentioned that Emrys had taken an acolyte. I’m Samantha, and this is Genevieve, Elam, and Charlotte.”
“I know. The whole reason we’re here is to speak with you,” she nodded.
“The Ophion Occult Order calls me a soul-flayer, and I’m sure you were all wondering exactly what that meant before you came here,” Emrys said, standing proudly behind his acolyte. “Well, this is it. The Darkness Beyond is now a part of her, and a part of her now lives within the Darkness Beyond. She is not unchanged from what she was before, but neither has what she was been lost.”
“My interpretation of the term ‘soul-flaying’ was the complete removal of a person’s consciousness from their astral and physical bodies to be subsumed by your Darkness,” I countered. “They told me that what you’ve done with Petra here is just the limit of your power while you’re bound in their chains. Are you telling me that if your chains were broken, you wouldn’t be able to do any worse than this?”
“On my physical avatar? No. So long as my astral form remains chained and bound with the World Serpent, I cannot cleave a conscious mind from its astral substrate,” Emrys assured me.
“But that is your ultimate goal, isn’t it? Breaking the chains the Ophion Occult Order put on you is just a stepping stone to breaking the ones the gods bound you with?” Genevieve asked. “You’ve allied yourself with a literal god slayer. Do you expect us to believe that his people’s abilities aren’t something you intend to put to your own ends?”
“I don’t have an ultimate goal so much as I have a fundamental principle of opposing tyranny,” he claimed. “When I was a mere man, thousands of years ago, I was a tyrant. I believed that might made right so unquestionably that when my might began to fail me, the only thing I could think to do was to try everything in my power to restore it. This quest eventually led to me becoming one with the Darkness Beyond, which gave me not only the might I coveted but the wisdom I didn’t know I needed. It gave me perspective. It made me stronger than any human alive at that point but still let me realize how insignificant I was. It was humbling, and enlightening, and filled me both with remorse over my past actions and an impetus to use my newfound gifts to rectify them. I tried to overthrow the gods themselves which, in hindsight, was overly ambitious. I not only failed but had my soul devoured by the World Serpent, where it still resides to this day.
“I am not eager to bring the wrath of the gods down upon me once again. No, for now, I will be content to end the tyranny of the Ophion Occult Order. This is the message I’d like you to relay to them. If the Grand Adderman agrees to unbind my chains and step down from his post, I will spare his life. If he declines, I want the rest of the Order to know that I will show mercy to any who sides with me over him. I am willing to allow the Order to exist so long as it agrees to become more decentralized, democratic, and accountable. They will have to forfeit certain artifacts and individuals in their possession over to me, chief among them the Darling Twins, but I am willing to negotiate. If they aren’t, then I will overthrow the Grand Adderman by whatever means necessary and see the Order scattered to the four winds. It is entirely up to them whether or not the conflict between us escalates to full-on war. Have I made myself clear, Samantha?”
“I think so,” I said as I pensively considered everything he had said. “Why should they trust you to keep your word once your chains are broken? For that matter, why should we?”
He took a moment to consider his response, eyeing me over as though he was trying to divine something that would win over my trust.
“Samantha, you made a pact with Persephone to get your Spirit Familiar there; one where she swore by the River Styx. Is that correct?” he asked.
“It is,” I nodded.
“And in the years since, has Persephone ever broken that pact she swore to?” he asked.
“No, she hasn’t,” I replied.
“I may not be an Old God, but so long as my astral form remains bound by their chains, they have power over me,” he said. “Samantha Sumner, Hedge Witch of Harrowick Woods, I swear on the River Styx that I have spoken no lies to you today. I swear by the River Styx that I will abide by any Covenant that I and the Ophion Occult Order agree to in good faith and fair dealing that they do not break first. I swear by the River Styx that when my chains are broken, I will give you no cause to fear me or regret your trust in me.”
I gave a questioning glance to Genevieve, and then Elam, both of whom nodded in the affirmative.
“All right. An oath sworn on the River Styx is good enough for me. I’ll deliver your terms to Seneca Chamberlin,” I agreed. “I’m very grateful for the trust and respect you’ve shown for me and my coven, Emrys, though I can’t say I quite understand it. Out of all the guests that were there on the Hallow’s Eve you were summoned, why did Evie and I stand out to you?”
“The Ophion Occult Order deemed you worthy of inclusion in their cult, an offer you rejected on principle. You cheated Persephone, but you did it not to gain immortality for yourself but to save your friend from hell. You came here, thinking I could very well tear your souls asunder, but did so because you believed it was your duty to prevent needless suffering,” Emrys answered. “You are extraordinary in your craft, courage, and conscience, the latter of which especially stood out among the degenerates at that party. I do apologize if I frightened you at that event. I was a bit… irritable, given the circumstances. I’m glad we were able to meet again under more pleasant conditions.”
“So am I, Emrys,” I nodded. “I’m not sure exactly what this means or how relevant it is, but Seneca wanted me to tell you that he’s able to offer you the Dream Demon Red Ruck as a sacrifice.”
“Pffft. Tell him it’s hardly a sacrifice if I’m getting rid of a boogie man for him,” he scoffed. “In fact, now that you mention it, Ruck’s one egregore that might be of more use to me alive.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but we were suddenly interrupted by the rapid pounding of a gong somewhere down below. It seemed to be an alarm of some kind, as we could hear the panicked shouting and frantic racing of people either battening down or forsaking the Flea Market altogether.
Mathom-meister apparated into the middle of the room, his facial tentacles reflexively raised in a defensive position.
“Were you outside the market?” he demanded of us.
“The portal we came through deposited us a few miles outside of the market, yes,” I admitted.
“Damn,” Emrys cursed softly, though he sounded more frustrated than angry. “Meister, it’s not their fault. I knew they weren’t experienced Planeswalkers, I could have – ”
“It doesn’t matter!” Mathom-meister interjected. “They need to leave, now!”
“Why, what’s going on?” Genevieve demanded.
“The scarabs are swarming,” Petra explained. “Don’t feel bad; it happens often enough that they’re prepared for it.”
I wanted to press for more details, but I could hear the humming of a vast winged swarm steadily encroaching upon us.
“Don’t worry. Once you leave the swarm will disperse… eventually,” Emrys told us. “We’ve said all that need be said for now. Return home, and I’ll reach out to you again shortly, Samantha.”
Again, I wanted to object, but the swarm outside was growing louder and louder, and it occurred to me that we might not be completely safe from a biblical swarm of insects that could not only sense but evidently sought out souls.
This occurred to Charlotte as well, as she was the first of us to vanish and awaken back in her body. We could all feel the weight of her reembodied soul tugging on us to return with her. Genevieve immediately grabbed hold of my right hand and Elam my left, both of them refusing to leave before I did.
I spared one final glance at Emrys, lamenting that we couldn’t have had more time.
“I’ll relay everything you said to the Order. I’ll make sure they know you’re willing to negotiate a truce,” I vowed.
He gave me a gracious nod, and just as we heard the swarm start to pelt the exterior of the market, I forced my physical eyes open and was back in my body, still safely under a willow tree in my cemetery.
I immediately looked beside me to Genevieve, and saw that she was awake as well, and then around me for Elam, who seemed to be suffering a bit of spectral whiplash from being pulled back with me so suddenly, but was otherwise all right. Sighing with relief, I turned lastly to Charlotte, and saw that she was looking down at the mediation circle in dreaded horror.
Following her gaze, I saw that the Undying Rose was gone – spent, perhaps, in exchange for our passage – and in its place was the inert, and hopefully dead, body of one of the shimmering scarabs.

I tried using Tinder as well other dating apps, but I gave them up because of the reasons I detail below. I am not writing this from a supercilious place--I have friends and family who have found long-lasting love off of the apps--but only as a document of my experience. I hope you enjoy it. (You can also read it here for better formatting.)
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I met Anna atop a toilet seat. You see, I met Anna on Tinder, when I was atop a toilet seat. Anna was the first girl I ever met atop a toilet seat. She was a Swedish girl who stood a self-reported five-foot-five. She had cold crystal blue eyes and blonde hair that fell in waves past her shoulders. Evidently, she had been surfing—though she was still learning—and liked dogs. She also seemed to like tight black dresses that emphasized her dimensions. I was an Indian-American boy who stood a slightly fabricated five-foot-eleven. I had bright green eyes and brown hair that curled above my ears. Evidently, I had several friends and liked poetry. I also liked tight black dresses and attractive Swedish girls, but I only implicitly revealed this information. Likely, it became explicit soon after, although I cannot remember exactly what I said to her because I felt nothing when I said it. However, I do remember that our conversation was both brief and curt: some chatter and then a sporadic series of “where are you?”s. § Two hours later, we were together. I met her by Union Square’s subway steps on a warm October night. She had her phone in her hand and was wearing a tight black dress and black boots that came up to her knees. “I thought you would be taller,” she said. “Thanks,” I replied. We walked five blocks to an apartment party. She had a few drinks and I had more. Ninety minutes later, we took an Uber Pool in the direction of my apartment. To the ire of our driver, she refused to stop fiddling with his music. Three or four times, he scolded her when passion prompted her to turn up Avicii’s latest radio hit. “There are other people in the car,” he said. But Anna really could not help it. Eventually, he gave in and all of us—her up front, me in the back with a couple who did not care for Anna’s fidgety fingers—drove up Tenth Avenue listening to electronic hit after electronic hit. Upstairs, everything proceeded quickly along the expected lines. Once we reached the end of them, I took out a book of TS Eliot poems I had recently purchased. I read her The Waste Land while she checked the quality of her manicure and tried to discern the exact white of my walls (eggshell) and listened to the slight hum of my refrigerator to determine if it was a signal of dilapidation. “I had not thought death,” I continued with ardor growing by the word, “had undone so many—” “Can we go back to bed?” she asked, her lips in a pout, her head cocked to the left. I read the next line to myself—“Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled”—and looked up at her. “Sure,” I said. She left at eight o’clock the next morning in the same dress and heels of the night before. We never saw each other again. We never spoke again. Expected lines. But I do still think of Anna fondly from time-to-time. She was my first and only experience on Tinder. She was the girl who inadvertently showed me that I should never use dating apps, not because the experience was bad, but only because of what constitutes their foundation. § The definition of bravery is the ability to face danger, fear, or difficulty. Before Anna, I had always needed to take a risk with an attractive girl. Anxiety would climb up from my stomach to my throat—sometimes my voice would quaver, sometimes my hands would shake—and I would be full of an atavistic fear that still arises today. I am not alone in that fear. Nearly every man I’ve spoken to is still filled with it—in spite of the eight beers sloshing around his stomach—because of how risky approaching a woman was in tribal times. Not only could rejection lead to a social ostracization that would make it harder to mate in the future, but the very act of talking to a taken woman could lead to a caveman depositing a rock on your head. Despite the irrationality of the fear in today’s context, most men still feel the boulder looming, which was the insight that made Tinder successful. With Anna, there was no nervousness to speak of: technology had finally helped our brains catch up with the abundance of modern society. I could not feel rejection from her because of the application’s design: had Anna not responded, it would have been another. Tinder showed me that there was a sea of Annas, all accessible as long as you were equipped a well-tuned profile and a sinewy thumb up to the challenge. Dating apps are similar to other modern “innovations” from the junk food that plays on our desire for the once-scarce sugar to the social media platforms that play on our craving for social validation and acceptance. Though there are certainly positives to these technologies, the removal of evolutionarily-coded frictions often has adverse consequences. Now, we die of obesity not starvation. Now, we feel alone despite having thousands of followers. Since the advent of the internet, we’ve learned that it is easy to hijack our lizard brains, but it is not easy to do so satisfactorily without insidious effects. When technology makes pleasure more accessible or discomfort less painful, the negatives often flow from one place to another. By removing much of the traditionally-required courage from dating, Tinder has made us weaker because bravery—like any other muscle—atrophies when one does not exercise it regularly. Avoiding opportunities to develop courage is a terrible idea. Bravery is more important than other qualities of body and mind because it is the cornerstone of a well-lived life. Courage enables us to uphold other virtues, and it is the defining factor of potential: much of the difference between what your life is and what it could be comes down to your valor in trying moments. But all forms of modern technology make it easy to live a life that is entirely uncourageous, and it is no coincidence that we’ve reached the nadir of our collective heroism. Societies break down when courage is winnowed out of them—should we be surprised that our world is in pieces? § The definition of romance is a feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life—an explanation so reductive that it is useless. Romance, like many sensitive emotions, can only be understood through experience. Unfortunately, dating apps in tandem with modern culture and technology are making it more and more inaccessible—not only in sexual relationships, but in all aspects of life. In the past, young adults went out to hear live music that played with their heartstrings—now it’s grinding to the Blue Remix. In the past, we stopped strangers to ask directions—now it’s Google Maps. In the past, we stumbled into small alluring restaurants—now it’s DoorDash. Our distaste for immersing ourselves in the intricacies of life does not stop there. Dating—once the nucleus of the romantic experience—has been reduced to one million faceless faces; countless one-night stands under the guise of sexual empowerment; calculated dating decisions based on curated photographs and physical dimensions; the quota of flirtation before the bedroom. As romance can still exist after the first encounter, perhaps it is possible to design a dating app that encourages it as Keeper is attempting to; yet in their current iteration nearly all of them are training us that sex without connection is the expectation, not the exception1. For a platform to successfully regain what we’ve lost, they must not only open us to emotion and train us out of our societal fetish for “body counts” the length of laundry lists, but also curate experiences that send butterflies fluttering with the same passion that used to be found in the Ritz Bar. Until that day—if it ever comes—Hinge, Tinder, Bumble and the like will continue to be partially responsible for the death of romance, a genocide we must take seriously as it is one of the core reasons to live. Without romance there is less love, regret, remorse, happiness—at times exhilarating, at times painful—but always bringing us in deeper connection with the feelings that make us human. Today we are moving towards a world where many of us only have a seed of this spirit inside of them, locked up in a solitary walled garden, nearly impossible to reach. § Bravery and romance are forces that are too strong to be wiped out at once. Instead, they will die the death of one trillion cuts. Every swipe is a cut. Every one-night stand without a trace of connection is a cut. Dating apps are responsible for billions of them.

So, far; I'm at number 32. Number 32 is not finished yet. But, I need help with this one. Since, Brad Hawkins did the voice of Trey in Zeo. Im thinking about giving him one. He deserves it. Then, im going to make one for the actors who played Trey. So, do you think I should keep number at 32 for a total before, I do the next one.
Right now, I can say this. Im working on the Rangers who has two colors on their helmets. Primary color and their visor color. Because im out of grey string. And plus, im nearly out of yellow string.
So far I made bracelets for
Zack,Kimberly,Skull,Bulk/Jack(Hyperforce),Adam,Kat,Tanya,Justin,Carlos,Yihzu(Boom Comics),Blake,Hunter,Boom,Mick,Remi,Kiyaa(OmegaBlue),&SPD A Squad Green.

Animated Film! Here are options for downloading or watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse streaming the full movie online for free on 123movies & Reddit, including where to watch Miles Morales's latest adventure movies at home. Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2023 available to stream? Is watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Netflix, HBO Max, Disney Plus, Peacock, or Amazon Prime? Yes, we have found an authentic streaming option/service. Watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Online Free 720p, 1080p, And 4K.

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Miles Morales returns for the next chapter of the Oscar winning Spider-Verse saga, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. After reuniting with Gwen Stacy, Brooklyn’s full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is catapulted across the Multiverse, where he encounters the Spider Society, a team of Spider-People charged with protecting the Multiverse’s very existence. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must set out on his own to save those he loves most. Anyone can wear the mask – it’s how you wear it that makes you a hero.
After a grueling five-year-long wait, Marvel fans everywhere will finally be able to return to the animated multiverse with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The upcoming sequel's predecessor requires no explanation, as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse not only ensnared audiences and critics alike but also caught a prestigious Oscar win with a Best Animated Feature award. With "New York's one and only Spider-Man," Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), now becoming a household name, fans of the first film eagerly awaited the day they could see young Miles swing into the Spider-Verse again.
Thankfully, the wait is almost finally over, as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will return to screens soon. This time Miles will not only be reunited with Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld) and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson) but he'll also be introduced to an entire multiversal society of Spider-people created and led by a particularly pessimistic variant of Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac). Though some of the other variants in this secretive organization view Miles as a nuisance more than anything else, they'll have to learn to put those apprehensions aside if they hope to save the multiverse from an all-new terrifying threat. As the release date for the sequel to one of the most celebrated Spider-Man films ever made crawls closer and closer, here is precisely where and how you can watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse when it premieres this Summer.
If you’re like just about everyone else on the planet who saw Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018 and loved it, you’ve probably been waiting for the sequel. You won’t be waiting long, as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is finally coming out in 2023, a full five years later. It’s been a long wait but by all indications the film is going to be a blast for fans of comic book movies, Miles Morales’ version of Spider-Man, and this new animated franchise featuring the iconic webslinger.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is one of the most highly anticipated animated superhero films of 2023. Serving as a sequel to the critically acclaimed Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), this upcoming installment promises to continue the exhilarating adventures of the Spider-Verse. Fans from all around the globe are eagerly awaiting its release. In this article, we will provide you with all the essential information on the film's release date and how to watch it online from any country, ensuring you don't miss out on this exciting cinematic experience.
This is especially true for many superhero films, which are often tied directly to specific streaming services. Disney+ and HBO Max - now rebranded as MAX - often house the new streaming releases for the MCU and DCU respectively, usually releasing anywhere between 1–3 months after theatrical release. However, with a film like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the situation is slightly different given Sony's lack of a dedicated streaming service, here's where to watch and stream Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse online.
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When Is the Release Date for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse?
When Is the Release Date for Spider-Man: Across thMiles, Gwen, Peter, and several dozen other Spider-people will be swinging into action when Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse premieres on Friday, June 2nd, 2023. This almost undoubtedly gives Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Flash a run for their money as the biggest superhero movie event of the Summer. Spider-Verse?
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had its world premiere at the Regency Village Theatre on May 30, 2023, and is scheduled for theatrical release in the United States on June 2, delayed from an initial October 2022 date because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Where To Watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Online:
As of now, the only way to watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is to head out to a movie theater when it premieres on June 2, 2023. You can find a local showing on Fandango.
Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait for it to become available to rent or purchase on digital platforms like Amazon, Vudu, YouTube or Apple, or become available to stream on Netflix.
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How to Watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
There's been no official announcement regarding Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse's streaming release date, though we know it will eventually be released on Netflix, rather than Disney+ or HBO Max.
In terms of which of the streaming giants Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will be released on, Netflix will house the film upon its streaming debut. While again, Sony does not have its own dedicated streaming service, a deal was struck in 2021 between the studio and Netflix. The deal, stating that Netflix would stream Sony's films after theatrical release, was penned for 5 years meaning Across the Spider-Verse is part of the arrangement.
While Sony's Spider-Man content is also streaming on Disney+, due to the collaborations between Sony and Marvel Studios in recent years, Across the Spider-Verse will be a Netflix release. While the deal struck between Marvel Studios and Sony may extend to this film, Disney+ is only allowed to begin streaming Sony's Spider-Man releases upon their release on Netflix. As a result, Netflix will be the first streaming service that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will be available on after its theatrical release.
Because it’s airing on FX, you can of course fire up Into the Spider-Verse via FX Now. But in addition, the animated flick is streaming on both fubo (which offers a free trial and has cord-cutting plans starting at $74.99/month; sign up here) and DirecTV (which also offers a free trial and has cord-cutting plans starting at $64.99/month.
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Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in Theaters?
Not only was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse the subject of rave reviews, but it also pulled in some gargantuan levels of cash at the international box office, with a final tally that quadrupled the film's ninety-million dollar budget. With incredible success like that, it's only natural that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse would also be taking advantage of a theatrical release. That is the case, as the upcoming film will be exclusively available in theaters when it premieres on June 2nd, 2023.
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When Will Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Be on Streaming?
The Spider-Man franchise is in a pretty interesting place regarding streaming. The various films of Sony's franchise have typically been scattered across multiple services. That said, following a historic deal between Sony and Disney, the many stories of Peter Parker and beyond are now available on Disney+. This includes the original Sam Raimi trilogy, the first Amazing Spider-Man film, and, starting mid-May, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Venom. Notably absent from the Disney-streaming platform so far are The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Morbius, and most significant of all, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Some of the films are not currently available on the service because Sony has pre-existing partnerships with Starz, as that's where most of the absent films are available to stream. That is except for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which is instead only streaming on Fubo TV and FX Now.
If Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse comes to Disney+ before Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse's theatrical run concludes, that would make the House of Mouse's service a likely contender for a streaming release. However, Sony has also historically partnered with Netflix for streaming releases. Up until recently, that's where Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was available to stream, and Sony still brings their other big releases to the service, like Bullet Train and The Woman King.
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When will Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse be streaming on Netflix?
Sony Animation’s big new Spider-Man movie is about to hit theaters and will be headed to Netflix (at least in the United States) later this year. For a prediction as to when and a bit more about the new movie, here’s what you need to know.
As we covered in 2021, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will be headed to Netflix as the service gets both Sony’s animation and live-action content via a first window deal struck in April 2021.
The deal stipulates that all Sony theatrical movies come to Netflix in the first window, which at a minimum, is 120 days after its theatrical release date. If it arrives exactly 120 days after, it’ll be streaming from September 30th, 2023.
With that said, given how big this movie is, we may see it release a few weeks after the fact. Either way, we expect the movie to be available between late September and November 2023.
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Will Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Be Streaming On Netflix?
Yes, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is coming to Netflix approximately in December 2023.
In 2021, Sony and Netflix signed a five-year deal that gave the latter exclusive first-pay-window U.S. streaming rights for Sony Pictures titles after their theatrical and home entertainment windows. Fans can expect to watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Netflix six months after the film’s theatrical release, thus in December 2023. The date seems reasonable considering that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse dropped on Netflix on June 26, 2019, six months after its U.S. release on December 14, 2018. The pay-one window usually begins about nine months after a film’s theatrical release, but it might start earlier in particular cases.
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Will Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Be On HBO Max?
No, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will not be on HBO Max since it’s not a Universal Pictures movie. Last year, the company released its films in theaters and on the streamer on the same day. However, they now allow a 45-day window between the theatrical release and the streaming release.
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Will Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Be Streaming On Disney+?
Yes, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is also coming to Disney Plus approximately in 2025.
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Once the pay-one window runs its time and Netflix’s exclusive rights expire, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will be available on Disney Plus. The pay-one window might last as long as 18 months, which means it will be a while before Disney Plus subscribers can watch the much-anticipated sequel. Unlike in other countries, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse isn’t yet available on the Disney-owned streamer in the U.S.
American fans will have to wait until 2024 to watch Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and at least until 2025 for its sequel. We will update this post once there is an official Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Disney Plus release date.
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Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Available On Hulu?
Viewers are saying that they want to view the new Marvel's animation movie Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Hulu. Unfortunately, this is not possible since Hulu currently does not offer any of the free episodes of this series streaming at this time. It will be exclusive to the MTV channel, which you get by subscribing to cable or satellite TV services. You will not be able to watch it on Hulu or any other free streaming service.
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How to Watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Online For Free?
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There are a few ways to watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse online in the U.S. You can use a streaming service such as Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video. You can also rent or buy the movie on iTunes or Google Play. You can also watch it on-demand or on a streaming app available on your TV or streaming device if you have cable.
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When Will Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Be on DVD and Blu-ray?
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will likely be coming to DVD and Blu-ray around the same time as the streaming release. With theatrical films, on average, coming to streaming sooner than ever (usually ninety days after theatrical release), we'll likely see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse get a DVD, and Blu-ray release no later than Fall 2023.
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Cast and Characters
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was written by Dave Callaham, Phil Lord and Chris Miller and directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson. It stars the following actors:
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The following cast members are confirmed to provide their voice talents for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
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Shameik Moore as Miles Morales / Spider-Man
Hailee Steinfeld as Gwen Stacy / Spider-Woman
Brian Tyree Henry as Jefferson Davis
Luna Lauren Vélez as Rio Morales
Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker / Spider-Man
Jason Schwartzman as Jonathan Ohnn / the Spot
Issa Rae as Jessica Drew / Spider-Woman
Karan Soni as Pavitr Prabhakar / Spider-Man India
Daniel Kaluuya as Hobart “Hobie” Brown / Spider-Punk
Oscar Isaac as Miguel O’Hara / Spider-Man 2099
Greta Lee as Lyla
Rachel Dratch as the school counsellor
Jorma Taccone as Vulture
Shea Whigham as George Stacy
Andy Samberg as Ben Reilly / Scarlet Spider
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What is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse About?
Returning with many of your favorite characters, including Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman, Peter B. ParkeSpider-Man, and of course Miles Morales as our primary Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is set one year after the events of the previous film. Miles (Shameik Moore) is coming into his own as Spider-Man when he is unexpectedly approached by Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) with an extraordinary opportunity. Does Miles want to help a team of Spider-People, led by Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac) protect the multiverse from the terrifying threat of a man known as The Spot (Jason Schwartzman)?
Obviously, Miles is going to say yes, setting him up for an adventure that will expand this movie’s concept of the multiverse in every possible way. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse promises tons of new characters and worlds, without losing sight of what people have come to love about this particular Spider-franchise.
Miles Morales has become a massively popular Spider-Man, and you can be certain he’ll be at the center of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s chaotic blend of action, comedy, comic book aesthetics, and large-scale science fiction. It seems more likely than not that Across the Spider-Verse will be the biggest animated release of 2023.

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📷이프랜드에서 나만의 공간 이프홈을 만들어보세요!
"ifland - 새로운 메타버스, 이프랜드 꾸미고, 배치하고, 이프랜드의 새로운 서비스인 이프홈에서 나만의 공간을 만들어보세요! 모던하게, 시크하게, 내추럴하게 아니면 아이돌처럼 귀엽게! 나의 이프홈을 꾸밀 수 있어요. 이모티콘을 사용하여 감정표현과 꾸미기가 가능해요. 나를 표현하고 기록을 남겨보세요. 다른 사람이 만든 이프홈도 구경하고 나의 게시물도 친구들에게 자랑해 보세요. 이프홈에서 즐거운 스몰톡도 나눠보세요!
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요즘 10대 친구들은 오프라인 약속 장소가 아닌 메타버스 메신저에서 만나자고 약속한다고 해요.
그 안에서 가상의 나와 나만의 공간을 꾸며 친한 친구들뿐만 아니라 취미나 관심사가 비슷한 전 세계 사람들과 교류한다고 하는데요.
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저 같은 경우도 10대 때 여러 메신저를 통해 실제 친구가 아닌 가상의 친구들을 만들어 소통하는 재미를 느껴봤기 때문에 요즘 아이들의 이러한 관심사를 이해하는 편이기도 합니다.
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무엇보다 저도 직접 메타버스 메신저에 들어가서 일상의 내가 아닌 힙한 나를 꾸며보기도 하고, 좁은 아파트가 아닌 가상의 큰 집을 꾸며보며 대리만족을 느끼기도 하는데요.
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요즘 떠오르는 메타버스 메신저 이프랜드(ifland) 소개해 드릴게요.
ifland는 SKT에서 만든 메타버스 플랫폼인데요.
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이 안에는 가상의 집인 이프홈(if home)과 가상의 캐릭터(if me) 그리고 다양한 나라의 사람들과 소통할 수 있는 if square도 있답니다.
들어가서 보니 편의점, 대학교, 도시 등 다양한 컨셉의 공간이 있어 여러 가지 성격의 모임이 가능해 왜 사람들이 실제 오프라인 장소가 아닌 이프랜드에서 만나는지 이해할 수 있었어요.
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특히 내 감정을 표현하는 데 있어 이모티콘으로는 확실한 표현이 어려울 때도 있었는데요. 이프미가 내 표정을 따라 해서 메타버스 모임 시 더 재밌게 소통할 수 있더라고요 ㅎㅎ
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이렇게 핫한 이프랜드에서 이번에 새로운 기능으로 이프홈을 선보였는데요 :-)
현실 세계에 내 집은 없지만! 메타버스 메신저 내에서는 아주 으리으리한 집을 만들 수 있답니다.
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해변과 우주, 숲, 도시 중 원하는 곳을 고르고 집 모양도 현대식, 유럽풍, 한옥풍 등 취향에 맞게 선택할 수 있었어요.
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모던한 전원주택은 제가 꿈꾸던 모습이라 바로 골랐고 제가 가장 것들로 가득 채웠답니다 :-)
이렇게 꾸미고 나니까 내 공간을 자랑하고 싶은 마음도 막 생기더라고요?ㅎㅎ
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이렇게 ifland의 if home을 통해 내가 표현하고 싶었던 나만의 공간을 꾸며 다른 사람들과 공유할 수 있는데요.
다른 사람의 이프홈에 놀러 가 게시물을 구경하거나 발자국을 남길 수도 있고, 내 이프홈에 초대해 소통할 수도 있어요.
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실제 오프라인에서 알고 지내는 친구들만 놀러 오는 게 아니라 다양한 나라의 사람들과 소통할 수 있어서 더 재밌게 느껴졌는데요.
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저도 다른 사람의 이프홈에 놀러 가 게시물도 구경하고, 발자국을 남기는 등 존재감을 드러내보았답니다 ㅋㅋ
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이렇게 이프홈에선 나의 흔적만 남기는 것이 아니라 실시간 스몰톡도 할 수 있었는데요.
음성 대화도 가능하다는 점!!
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특히 이프홈이나 이프스퀘어에는 노래방 기계도 있어서 코노가 아닌 이프랜드 안에서 노래를 부를 수도 있는데요.
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진짜 반주가 흘러나오고 내 목소리를 녹음할 수 있어요 ㅋㅋ
진짜 노래방에서 노래를 검색하듯 요즘 핫한 아이브의 Kitch를 소심하게 불러보기도 했다져 ㅋㅋ
이렇게 노래를 부르면서 이프미의 이모티콘을 눌러 짧은 춤도 추게 할 수 있어 나 홀로 있는 이프홈에서도 즐거웠다며!!
가상의 내 집에서 노래를 부르는 것도 재밌게 느껴졌는데, 이프홈에 친구들을 초대해서 다 같이 노래 부르고 놀아도 되겠죠?
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이프스퀘어 중에는 아바타 노래방도 볼 수 있었는데요. 관객이 되어 앉아서 다른 이프미의 노래를 들을 수도 있고, 직접 노래를 부를 수도 있었답니다 ㅎㅎ
마치 전국노래자랑 같은 너낌!
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요즘 어딜 가든 돈 없으면 못 하는 세상이라 더욱 이러한 메타버스 메신저가 핫한 것 같은데요!
ifland 안에는 다양한 공간이 있어 지루하지가 않더라구요 :-)
실제 현생의 친구들로만 소통하는 게 아니라 다양한 사람들의 이프홈을 방문해 발자국도 남기고 스몰톡도 하며 다양한 친구를 사귈 수 있어 너무 재밌다며!
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남의 이프홈 놀러 가서 소파에 앉아 쉬는 중 ㅋㅋ
저는 밖에 나가면 좀 쉽게 지치는 사람인데 이렇게 소통하니 더 재밌게 느껴졌답니다 ㅎㅎ
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이렇게 새로운 서비스를 선보인 기념으로 이프랜드에서 If home 챌린지를 진행한다고 해서 소개해 드려요 :-)
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꾸며줘! If home 챌린지 ​ 당첨자 발표 : 2023년 06월 13(화)

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꾸며줘! if home 챌린지는 내 마음대로 꾸밀 수 있는 공간인 if home을 다양한 소품과 가구를 활용해 꾸민 후 제출하는 챌린지예요 :-)
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[ 꾸며 줘! if home 챌린지 참여 방법 ]
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1) ifland에서 회원가입 후 나의 이프홈 꾸미기
2) 완성된 이프홈의 오른쪽 상단 스크린샷 버튼을 눌러 캡쳐하기
3) 오른쪽 하단 공유 버튼 클릭해 이프홈 공유 클릭해 나의 이프홈 URL 복사
4) 이벤트 참여하기 버튼 눌러 스크린샷과 복사된 URL 제출 시 응모!
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당첨자 발표는 6월 13일에 예정되어 있는데요.
if home 챌린지 경품이 정말 대박이랍니다 +_+
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베스트홈 수상자 : 맥북 에어(M2) (1명)
최다 발도장 : 아이패드 Air WIFI(64GB) (1명)
최다 방문자 : 애플워치 시리즈8 (1명)
창작상 : 에어팟 Pro 2세대 (3명)
참여상 : 배달의민족 상품권 1만원 권 (300명)(랜덤 추첨)
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맥북 에어, 아이패드, 애플워치, 에어팟프로라니..!
이 중에 하나만 돼도 얼마나 좋겠냐며 ㅎㅎ
사실 배민 상품권만 받아도 엄청 좋을 것 같아서 바로 응모했답니다!
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이프랜드에서 나만의 이프홈을 꾸미는 것만으로도 진짜 언젠가 이런 집에서 살 수 있을 것 같은 기대감에
기분이 좋아졌는데요. 현생은 갓생이 아니지만ㅎㅎ 메타버스 메신저 내에서라도 갓생 살고 싶어 즐기고 있는데요. 여러분들도 나만의 이프홈 꾸며서 챌린지 참여하시고 경품도 노려보세요 ^^
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http://iryan.kt7ebwxf1a2
📷이프랜드에서 나만의 공간 이프홈을 만들어보세요!
"ifland - 새로운 메타버스, 이프랜드 꾸미고, 배치하고, 이프랜드의 새로운 서비스인 이프홈에서 나만의 공간을 만들어보세요! 모던하게, 시크하게, 내추럴하게 아니면 아이돌처럼 귀엽게! 나의 이프홈을 꾸밀 수 있어요. 이모티콘을 사용하여 감정표현과 꾸미기가 가능해요. 나를 표현하고 기록을 남겨보세요. 다른 사람이 만든 이프홈도 구경하고 나의 게시물도 친구들에게 자랑해 보세요. 이프홈에서 즐거운 스몰톡도 나눠보세요!
iryan.kr
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http://iryan.kt7ebwxf1a2
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Create your own space ifhome in ifland!
"ifland - new metaverse, decorate, deploy ifland, create your own space in ifland's new service, ifhome! Modern, chic, natural, or cute like an idol! I can decorate my if groove. Emotional expression and decoration are possible using emoticons. Express yourself and leave a record. See ifhome made by someone else and show off my posts to friends. Enjoy Small Talk on If Home!
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iryan.kr
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These days, teenagers promise to meet at Metaverse Messenger, not offline.
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It is said that in it, I create a virtual space between me and myself and interact with not only close friends but also people around the world who have similar hobbies and interests.
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In my case, when I was a teenager, I also had fun communicating with virtual friends, not real friends, through various messengers, so I understand these interests of children these days.
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Above all, I also enter the metaverse messenger and decorate my hip self, not my daily self, and I feel vicarious satisfaction by decorating a virtual large house, not a narrow apartment.
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Let me introduce you to the emerging metaverse messenger ifland.
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Ifland is a metaverse platform created by SKT.
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Inside, there is a virtual house, if home, if me, and if square where you can communicate with people from various countries.
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When I went in, there were various concept spaces such as convenience stores, universities, and cities, so I could understand why people meet in Ifland, not in real offline places.
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In particular, there were times when it was difficult to express my feelings with emoticons. Ifmi imitates my expression so I can communicate more fun during the metaverse meeting
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This hot ifland introduced ifhome with a new function. :-)
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I don't have my own house in the real world! Inside the metaverse messenger, you can make a very elegant house.
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I was able to choose the beach, space, forest, and city that I wanted, and I was able to choose the shape of the house to suit my taste, including modern, European, and hanok style of hanok.
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The modern country house is what I dreamt of, so I chose it right away and I filled it with the most things :-)
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After decorating like this, I wanted to show off my space?Haha
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Through ifland's if home, I can decorate my own space that I wanted to express and share it with others.
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You can visit someone else's ifhome and look at the posts or leave footprints, or invite them to my ifhome to communicate.
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It felt more fun because I could communicate with people from various countries, not just friends I know offline.
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I went to someone else's Ifhome, looked at the posts, left footprints, and showed my presence lol
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Like this, I could not only leave my traces on If Home, but also do real-time Small Talk.
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Voice conversation is also possible!!
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Especially, ifhome or ifsquare have karaoke machines, so you can sing in ifland, not in coin karaoke.
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I can record my voice with the real accompaniment lol
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I even timidly sang Kit from Ive, which is hot these days, as if I were searching for a song in a real karaoke room
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You said you had fun even at If Home, where you are alone, because you can make me dance for a short time by pressing If Me's emoticon while singing like this!!
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It felt fun to sing in my virtual house, so can I invite my friends to Ifhome and sing and play together?
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I could see Avatar Karaoke in If Square. I could sit in the audience and listen to other IFME songs, or I could sing myself Haha
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It's like a national singing contest!
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These days, metaverse messengers seem to be all the more popular because it's a world where you can't do without money wherever you go!
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There are various spaces in ifland, so it's not boring. :-)
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You said it was so much fun not only to communicate with real-life friends, but to visit various people's If homes, leave footprints, do small talk, and make various friends!
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Going to someone else's If Home and resting on the sofa lol
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I get tired easily when I go outside, but it's more fun to communicate with you like this Haha
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To commemorate the introduction of this new service, I am introducing the If home challenge in Ifland. :-)
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Decorate it! If home challenge
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Winners announced: June 13, 2023 (Tue)
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Decorate it! The if home challenge is to decorate the if home, a space where you can decorate it as you want, using various props and furniture and submit it :-)
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[Decorate it! How to participate in the if home challenge]
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1) Decorating my if home after signing up for membership in ifland
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2) Tap the screenshot button in the upper right corner of the completed If Home to capture
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3) Click the Share button at the bottom right Click Share If Home Click Copy My If Home URL
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4) If you press the "Participate in the event" button and submit a screenshot and a copied URL, apply!
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The announcement of the winners is scheduled for June 13th.
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The if home challenge prize is amazing +_+
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Best Home Winner: MacBook Air (M2) (1 person)
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Most footprints: iPad Air WIFI (64GB) (1 person)
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Most visitors: Apple Watch Series 8 (1 person)
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Creative Award: AirPods Pro 2nd Generation (3 people)
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Participation Award: 10,000 won gift certificate of Baedal Minjok (300 people) (random lottery)
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MacBook Air, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro!
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How nice would it be to be one of these
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Actually, I thought it would be great to get a Baemin gift certificate, so I applied right away!
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Just decorating my own If Home in Ifland, I thought that I would be able to live in a house like this one day
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I feel better. I'm not a newborn, but I'm enjoying it because I want to live a newborn life even within the metaverse messenger. Make your own if home and participate in the challenge and aim for prizes ^^
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http://iryan.kt7ebwxf1a2
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Create your own space ifhome in ifland!
"ifland - new metaverse, decorate, deploy ifland, create your own space in ifland's new service, ifhome! Modern, chic, natural, or cute like an idol! I can decorate my if groove. Emotional expression and decoration are possible using emoticons. Express yourself and leave a record. See ifhome made by someone else and show off my posts to friends. Enjoy Small Talk on If Home!
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iryan.kr
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I happened to watch a movie called Fat Man and Little Boy, a movie about the development of the Atomic Bombs in WWII and was surprised to see Dwight Schultz in one of the lead roles alongside several A-list actors.
A little research turned up that Schultz actually had a very successful career as an actor including a role as Murdock on the 1980’s A-Team and quite a few dramatic film roles. Following numerous appearances throughout the Star Trek franchise, Schultz went on to have a successful career as a voice artist.
Barclay always gave me hope that even the slightly incompetent had a chance in Starfleet. Not everyone had to be super confident genius over achievers, there was room for the common man.

Actors needed for ongoing series. This series is all urban legends and all characters in the series have one off experiences. Every episode is a new cast and in a new location. This series will touch on unpleasant subject material and more than likely push some actors. Many more openings and details on the discord.
*Amos (1800’s. Male. Train worker. Late 30’s) *Audition Lines -Oh, quit telling thumpers, there is no way he likes it… From what I know about him, he would swim across a river just to get a drink of water. -Herb? Herb? Oh my…how am I going to explain this. Oh Herb.
Herbert (1800s. Male. Train Worker. Late 30s) Audition Lines -When we get to town are we going to see the elephant? -I know he is not the sharpest tool, but I don’t think he would do that.
Leonard (1800s. Male. Late 30s. Not the brightest bulb in the box) Audition Lines -You’re the boss… Let me just undo these brakes for you and we can get going. -I don’t know, I believe a lot of things.
Melissa (1970’s. Female. Teenager) Audition Lines” -Frank, I want to thank you again for taking me to the church retreat. -You weren’t going before? I thought you said you were going… That’s why I asked you for a ride.
Frank (1970s. Male. Young 20s.) Audition Lines -It’s no problem, I was going too, no need for other cars to drive if they don’t have to. -No problem, hop on in… Are you sure that you’re okay? I have some water in the back if you want to get cleaned up. I have a jacket back there too, I think you should put it on
Jessica (1970s. Female. Late teen) Audition Lines -Down the road a little bit and make a left. It’s about 3 miles down..I hope it’s not too much trouble -(Slightly Distressed) I’m okay. I just want to go home please
Mom (1970s. Female. 40s) Audition Lines -I’ll be fine…until next year…At least I don’t need to wait anymore today… -That is because it is her…I know you probably don’t understand what is going on but just know that I thank you and it will be okay.
CONTENT WARNING FOR THE FOLLOWING 4 ROLES! THERE ARE DARK SUBJECTS DISCUSSED WITH THESE CHARACTERS!! IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DO RESEARCH ON HOW DARK THIS STORY GETS PLEASE RESEARCH THE TEXARKANA MURDERS!!
Mary (1940s. Female. Late teens) Audition Lines -Oh Jimmy……I love being held in your arms….I wish we could do this more often…hold me tighter -Jimmy!!! Help!!!! Get off me, you creep!
Jimmy (1940s. Male. Late teens.) Audition Line -Nobody will think that, nobody will find out that we were up here -Oh Mary….I love holding you. We could. I would like that….I want to have you(cut) Hey man, what the(cut)
Paul (1940s. Male. Late teens) Audition Lines -In that case, I’ll go talk to your father tonight! -Come on Betty, jump in the water!
Betty (1940s. Female. Late teens) Audition Lines -Don’t be an eager beaver, Don’t do it tonight silly he would be sauced -I don’t know…why don’t you get out of the water? We could check out the backseat before you take me home.
Kevin (Male. Cave Diver. Mid to late 30s) Audition lines -We’re almost there…You wouldn’t even know what to do with the treasure -We have to climb down to another ledge. It's about 200 feet down.
Greg (Male. Cave Diver. Mid to late 30s) Audition Lines -That would be nice…I like treasure. -Let me tie a lantern and drop it down. See what happens…
Ken (Male. Cave Diver. Mid to late 30s) Audition Lines -I hope it’s buried treasure down there! -You know what? I think I’m done exploring caves for a while now.
Ed (1860s. Male. Age 20-30. Confederate soldier) Audition Lines -Men, when this war began we were only strangers. We’ve grown to be brothers, a family that no one can ever take away. When this war is over I want us to meet back here and claim our prize. If one or none of us make it back here, your share of the gold will always be here.
Auditions due June 18th
https://discord.gg/PCVxB7hNj2
Come join in for this and other productions

“I’m sorry; we’re going to astral travel to a flea market?” Charlotte asked incredulously as she watched Genevieve and I set up a meditation circle under the shade of a towering old willow tree in my cemetery. “What if we want to buy something? How will we bring it back?”
“We’re not going there to shop, Lottie. Samantha’s finally had a vision about Emrys,” Genevieve explained.
The Veil between the Physical and Astral Planes is exceptionally weak in my cemetery, especially at night and on hallowed days. When I sleep there, my subconscious mind is highly receptive to all manner of revelations from the Spirit World. When I saw a Blood Moon rise on the night of May fifth, the same night as a penumbral eclipse, I knew that my dreams would be prophetic.
“I had a dream about him last Friday,” I expounded. “He’s at some sort of otherworldly marketplace, one that’s not connected to the Crypto Chthonic Cuniculi, so it’s mostly inaccessible to the Ophion Occult Order. In my dream, Emrys invited us to come and speak with him while we were lucid. He drew a sigil for me, the same one I’ve drawn in the middle of the mediation circle. He said that all I’d have to do is toss an Undying Rose – the earthly effigy of the rose Persephone used to steal a drop of his blood – into the sigil and it will become an astral portal to where he is.”
I held up the deep purple rose that I had cut from its bush earlier that day. I don’t know for certain where the roses came from, but my best guess is that they were made by the same Occultist who hallowed my cemetery to Persephone; Artaxerxes Crow. They have some connection to Emrys as well, since the only other time I saw someone else use one was when his avatar was summoned into the Physical Plane on Halloween 2020.
Knowing that Emrys wouldn’t dare to set foot in a place that was sacred to the Goddess who was ultimately responsible for his cosmic defeat, I gently tossed the rose into the middle of the sigil.
“He invited all of us?” Charlotte asked with an incredulous raising of her eyebrow.
“He said me and my coven. If he had just meant me or me and Genevieve he would have said that,” I replied. “You and Elam are coming too. I want as many eyes on this place as possible so that we don’t miss anything. We may not get an opportunity like this again.”
“And this is safe? Visiting some random flea market between worlds?” Charlotte asked.
“Samantha and I have visited the Underworld and come back no problem,” Genevieve reminded her. “So long as we’re bound to our bodies and Elam is bound to Samantha, we can come back anytime. Don’t worry; this is going to be a blast! Adventures like these are the best part of being a Witch.”
“The only reason you were able to go to the Underworld is because Samantha’s cemetery came with an astral portal in the back,” Charlotte countered, gesticulating in the general direction of the archway that was still partially visible behind the light spring foliage. “Other than that, when have any of us ever done anything useful with our astral projection? This is still a physical place, right? We don’t have any of our physical senses available to us when we astral project, and I get extremely disoriented trying to navigate the mortal plane with clairvoyance alone.”
“It is a physical place, but one saturated with astral energy and full of occultists and occult artifacts. It will be extremely illuminated to our clairvoyance,” I assured her. “Elam will also be there to guide us. As a ghost, he’s much more practiced at traversing the mortal plane in an astral form.”
Charlotte folded her arms over her chest and turned to look at Elam, who was leaning up against the willow tree as he waited for us.
“I don’t suppose you could go and scout the place out for us ahead of time?” she asked.
“I can’t go too far from Samantha, and definitely not across planes,” he said with a shake of his head. “But Eve’s right. Your astral bodies will be in no danger, and you can return here in an instant whenever you want.”
“But what about Emrys? Didn’t that book Leon gave you say that he’s some sort of soul-flayer?” Charlotte asked me.
“It did,” I admitted. “Keep in mind though, that book was written by his enemies. I want to hear his side of things before this conflict of theirs spirals out of control.”
“Any update from Chamberlin about that?” Elam asked.
“Yeah, he said that after he failed to purify the Sigil Sand, Ivy’s onboard with negotiating some kind of truce with Emrys,” I replied. “The Grand Adderman’s still reticent, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s running out of options. I need to find out if Emrys will agree to peace talks.”
“Um, I get that, but I’m still kind of hung up on him potentially flaying our souls,” Charlotte reiterated.
“If Emrys and the Ophion Occult Order go to all-out war, there’ll be a lot of collateral damage and innocent souls caught in the crossfire,” Genevieve told her, gently grabbing hold of her and looking her straight in the eye. “Samantha, Elam, and I are doing this because if there’s any chance we can put an end to this before it starts, then it’s our responsibility to try. You don’t have to come with us, Lottie, but you’re still a member of our coven. Samantha and I would both feel a lot better with you there to help us.”
“Arghhh! All right, fine! I’ll come with you,” Charlotte gave in, plopping her butt down on the edge of the meditation circle. “If we’re holding hands, that will help keep our astral bodies together too, right?”
“I believe it should, yes,” I smiled at her, sitting down and reaching out for her hand.
Genevieve lit the incense and her bong filled with the entheogenic Delphi Dream, before sitting down to join us. She took a hit from the bong before passing it to me, and then to Charlotte before setting it aside out of the circle.
“Start with taking a deep breath, completely filling the lungs, and holding it for five heartbeats,” she guided us as she took hold of each of our hands. “Exhale completely, and wait five more heartbeats before breathing in again. Eyes closed, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus on the astral energies flowing through you with each breath, gently aligning each chakra until those energies are enough to lift you up and out of your body.”
In unison with one another, the three of us slowly breathed in and out, ignoring the material world around us and focusing upon the task at hand. Eve was first, as usual, and because we were all holding hands, Charlotte and I felt her eagerly tugging us up to speed us along.
I opened my eyes, and beheld the dull and muted Physical Plane through my clairvoyance, everything outshined by the radiant forms of my coven mates. I noted that Genevieve had eschewed her normal skyclad form when astral projecting and instead wore a cloak like Charlotte and I.
“Are you worried this place might have a no shirt, no shoes, no souls, no service policy?” I teased her.
“I just don’t want to risk a confrontation over it. I realize how important this is,” she answered. “Though I’m not actually wearing shoes, now that you mention it.”
“Christ, look at the sigil Samantha drew!” Charlotte said, pointing down at the meditation circle beneath us. The sigil wasn’t just glowing but flowing as well, churning the Aether around it in a misty, spectral vortex. “It’s an astral portal, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah. It’s not stable, though. Good for one trip only,” Genevieve said with a delighted smile. “And Lottie, since we’re Neopagan Witches, try not to swear by Christ, okay?”
“Jesus!” she swore, both in defiance and in genuine annoyance.
“Elam! Elam, come join the circle! I don’t want to take any chances of severing our bond,” I instructed, letting go of Charlotte’s hand and waving him in between us.
Faithful Familiar that he was, he obeyed without hesitation. Despite my concerns, I think that he probably could have stayed behind if he had wanted. The fact that he was willing to follow me to an unknown otherworld without complaint really made me appreciate how devoted he was to me.
“We step in together on the count of three, got it?” I instructed, each of them nodding clearly in response. “One. Two. Three!”
We all extended our right feet into the vortex together, and the instant we did we were swept away, falling out of our own world and tumbling between the cracks of countless others. They weren’t real, I don’t think. At least, not as real as our world. They were potential realities, or realities that could have been once but now can never be, or fantasies that are so persistent in the minds of real people that in some sense or another, they become real themselves. I only saw glimmers of them, glimmers in nebulas made of primeval chaos and uttermost void.
It was outside of time, that place we travelled through, or at least we had no sense of it there. Our souls were haphazardly spat out upon a surreal landscape of earth, sea, and fire. Hilly plains of volcanic ash, incandescent calderas of lava and bubbling hot springs all intermeshed in a chaotic mosaic that didn’t seem to abide by any laws of geology or geography that I was familiar with. A strong but slow wind pushed fractal formations of dark silver clouds through a pale silver sky, illuminated by a single white orb which could have been either a bright moon or a faint sun.
While our spectral feet left no trace upon the ash we now stood upon, our presence nonetheless elicited a response from some of the local fauna. We were just able to catch a glimpse of some kind of shimmering scarabs burrowing themselves into the ash to escape the four otherworldly ghosts that had invaded their territory.
“Holy shit,” Charlotte murmured as we all gazed out upon the strange world we had found ourselves on. “This really isn’t on the Astral Plane. This is a real planet. This a real, alien planet! This is unbelievable!”
Genevieve glided over to one of the bubbling pools and peered into it, looking for any more signs of life.
“There’s some kind of bluish-grey algae growing on the rocks down there, and I think I can make out some small arthropods too. This planet’s alive!” she announced with glee, smiling and looking up at the alien sky.
Conjuring an astral approximation of my staff, I plunged it into a small mound of ash beside me. I watched curiously as the scarabs shot out in all directions, moving too quickly for me to get a good look at them, before scurrying back into the surrounding ash.
“These bugs can sense our presence,” I remarked. “How and why would clairvoyance evolve in insects on this world, and why would their first instinct be to flee?”
“Samantha!” Elam called out. “I think I found the Flea Market.”
We all gathered around him and looked where he was pointing. On a distant dune, we beheld the moulted carapace of a colossal insect, gleaming a brilliant, lustrous gold in the broken white light.
“That’s impossible!” Charlotte claimed. “That thing must be hundreds of meters long! No insect, no animal period could ever get that big on the Physical Plane!”
“It could be the Incarnation of some kind of Titan,” Genevieve suggested. “But… it’s dead. I can tell that even from here. It’s dead. It’s the corpse of a dead god, and now it’s being used as a swap meet with a punny name. Either whatever killed it just abandoned it, or…”
“Or is running the place,” I finished for her. “Well, we should see if we can find Emrys.”
In an instant, the world moved around us until we were at the entrance to the Flea Market. The colossal carapace was hollow inside, of course, and had been filled with a bustling city that looked like it had been created in the most ad hoc manner possible. There wasn’t a single straight street to be seen, and they converged with one another at random intervals. Stalls and buildings varied wildly in both design and materials, all imported from a plethora of different cultures across the planes.
Enormous shards of luminous glass levitated above the throng like a thousand Swords of Damocles, any or all of them seeming capable of succumbing to gravity at any moment. In the very center of the moulted husk dangled a great spiralling chrysalis or hive woven of iridescent silk, its function not being immediately apparent to me.
There must have been thousands of people there, and hundreds of merchants hawking their wares. Most of those who looked human still seemed a little off, like they were members of ethnicities that didn’t exist in our world. Some of the beings were near-human in appearance, many seemingly some kind of Fey or Seelie folk. There was even a small handful of people that weren’t remotely human at all.
The only thing they all had in common was that none were native to this world.
“Most of these people are here in person, aren’t they?” Charlotte asked.
“It would’ve been quite a feat for them to have built all of this while astral projecting,” Genevieve agreed.
“But if this place isn’t connected to the Cuniculi, then how did they get here?” Charlotte asked. “We’re on another planet, maybe even in another dimension. If getting here is beyond the Ooo’s abilities, then what sort of ungodly reality benders decided to turn it into a Flea Market?”
“Ladies, gentlemen, and any beings either too ancient and alien or too modern and alienated to settle on one or the other, come bear witness to one of the most astounding and atrocious abominations on this or any other world!” a fast-paced male voice rang out over the din of the crowd.
We turned to see a short, skinny, old-timey sort of carnival barker standing on a literal soap box, placed next to a large object draped in a black tarp.
“For the paltry price of a single three-headed coin, you can peer beneath the veil and behold with your own unbelieving eyes the mangled and mutilated monstrosity that lurks beneath!” the carnival barker continued. “But I must warn you, it is not possible to truly understand what dwells underneath without seeing it first! I cannot guarantee that you will still retain your sanity or will to live after witnessing the proverbial Mountains of Madness, for this low creature is truly like no other and serves only as a grim testament to the cruel sadism of the Lord Above! Anyone plagued by even the faintest lingering doubt as to their spiritual fortitude should not dare to even contemplate what might lie before me! But, for those brave, noble few who are truly dauntless of heart and incorrigible of spirit, I am proud to share with you this rare, unfathomable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness sublime –”
The carnival barker was interrupted by a man yanking the sheet off the object beside him, revealing it to be a mirror.
“Whelp, that was a hell of an Im14andthisisdeep post, eh?” Charlotte mused.
Genevieve and I, however, were far too stunned to be amused; not by the mirror, but by the man who had unveiled it.
“It’s him, Lottie. That’s Emrys,” Genevieve whispered.
We had only seen him briefly once before, more than two-and-a-half years ago, but he was far from what anyone would call forgettable. He was tall and gaunt, with literal blue blood flowing beneath translucent skin. His long, receding hair and regal beard were pitch black, and dark miasma wafted from his eyes, nose, and mouth. He was dressed in dark sable robes with three overlapping Ouroboros’s tattooed on his forehead, with a pair of ophidian pupils lying in the spaces between them.
What stood out the most to us were the six silver Ouroboros chains bound around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. These were the chains the Ophion Occult Order had made to limit the power of his physical avatar, and it seemed he had not yet found a way to free himself from them.
“Are you still here?” Emrys asked in exasperation, tossing the veil back at the carnival barker in disdain.
“…Possibly,” the strange man replied evasively. “But not definitively, for purely legalistic reasons.”
“I believe Mathom-meister was quite clear when he said that your rather pitiful chicanery wasn’t welcomed here,” Emrys reminded him.
“And who is he to judge chicanery from cutthroat, capitalistic competition? Should not the Flea Market be a free market?” the charlatan demanded. “And while we’re on the topic of commerce, I don’t suppose you have enough three-headed coins to pay for all the poor souls you have so discourteously exposed to my exhibit against their will? I’d hate to have to start shaking people down to get my due.”
“Hard to believe your own circus threw you out,” Emrys said with a sardonic eye roll as he tossed him a small medallion. “You get one coin. Take it and get out of my sight.”
The charlatan flipped the coin in the air thrice, presumably to confirm it actually had three heads. Satisfied with its impossible dimensions, he shoved it into his pocket.
“It will cover the trolley ride home, at least,” he acquiesced, stepping off his soap box and turning to face his looking glass. “A shame though you can’t see the genius in my little avant-garde performance piece here, Emmy. Even I know that the monster in the mirror is often the hardest to recognize.”
As the man reached to pick up his mirror, his reflection’s arms shot through the glass and grabbed him by the wrists, pulling him in. Emrys immediately tried to chase after him, but bounced off the glass as if there was nothing supernatural about it at all.
“Bastard!” he cursed under his breath, before turning towards us and giving us a small apologetic smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that rather pathetic display. Unfortunately, the few meeting places I know of that are relatively safe from any Ophionic incursion also attract their fair share of other annoying miscreants.”
“If it didn’t attract a little bit of everything, it wouldn’t be a Flea Market, would it?” I asked rhetorically. “Thank you, Emrys, for inviting us. I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”
“And thank you for accepting. Samantha, Genevieve, it’s a pleasure to see you again, and a relief that you have not fallen under the auspices of the Ophion Occult Order,” he said with a gentle bow. “Elam, I remember you as well. Valiant but not reckless, you remained atop Pendragon Hill during my battle with the Darlings until your mistress was well out of harm’s way, and then you got the hell out of dodge yourself. Samantha couldn’t hope for a better Familiar. And Charlotte, any Witch that Samantha deemed worthy to induct into her coven is obviously someone whose acquaintance I am pleased to make. Welcome, all of you, to Mathom-meister’s Flea Market!”
“So this is where you’ve been hiding out the past two years?” Genevieve asked.
“Oh no. Far too Cosmopolitan for my tastes,” Emrys replied. “No, this is just a friendly place to meet those I consider friends – or potential friends, at least. I’d offer to show you around, but I know it’s difficult for you to astral travel for prolonged periods. Come with me to Mathom-meister’s house where we can talk freely, and we’ll discuss the situation with the Order.”
I gave him a small, single nod in response, and gestured with my staff that he should lead the way. He responded by pointing upwards, then vanished into his shadow form. When we looked up, we saw him waving at us from a balcony atop the great silken chrysalis.
We exchanged hesitant glances with one another, but ultimately followed him into the strange structure, moving from the ground to the balcony in an instant by will alone.
“How would an incarnate being get up here if they couldn’t fly or teleport?” Charlotte asked as she peered over the balcony’s teetering edge.
As though answering a summons, a humanoid creature apparated beside her in a flash of dark vapours. The hunched-back entity stood over six-and-a-half feet tall, and was clad in golden-brown erudite robes. Its squid-like skin was of a similar colour, and its entire face was a single gaping orifice that held a wispy, glowing orb in the center of its skull which I immediately recognized as its soul. A pair of long, fanged tentacles lined with pores and tendrils hung down from its head like a long, forked beard, and the seven digits shared by its two hands all bore wicked-looking talons, as did its two-toed, digitigrade feet.
“Not fly or teleport? What sort of pedestrian house guests do you think I entertain here?” the being asked wryly, its voice seeming to come from nowhere in particular.
Charlotte instinctively backed away from the creature and into the protective fold of our coven, but Emrys was quick to hold up his hand to plead for calm.
“Please, there’s no need for alarm. This is our host, Mathom-meister. He’s the only reason any of this is here in the first place,” Emrys informed us. “A year or two ago a companion of his unfortunately became one of the Darling Twin’s victims, and when he heard of my vendetta with them, he tracked me down; which is no small feat, I assure you.”
“It is for us. My people are a race of Planeswalkers. Traversing the many worlds of Creation is second nature to us,” Mathom-meister explained.
“I’ve… I’ve heard of your people, I think,” I said, softly and unsurely. “A friend of mine had an encounter with an artifact that gave her a vision of a race of strange and powerful sorcerers slaying their own god. I take it you’re the ones who slayed this Scarab Titan as well? That’s, that’s…”
“Horrifying, yes. That’s the idea,” he nodded. “You have nothing to worry about, young Witch. My people have no special interest in your world. This is purely personal. My friend is dead, and I want his murderers brought to justice; a goal which Emrys and I happen to have in common.”
“Feel free to share this information with the Ophion Occult Order, Samantha,” Emrys said. “I’d very much like for the Darling Twins to know what’s hunting them. Mathom-meister, please excuse me while I take my guests inside. We do have pressing business to discuss and their time is limited.”
The squid-cyclopes bowed gracefully, and my coven and I quickly scurried after Emrys as he led us inside through a towering hallway and into a large chamber that had been appointed as a living space.
I had thought that Emrys would want to speak with us alone, which was why I was surprised to see a young woman sitting cross-legged on a spongey yet chitinous object that I will for the sake of my sanity call a bean bag chair. Like Emrys, she was pale and blue-blooded, her choppy hair as black as coal. She wore a black robe and heavy black eyeliner, but these could not conceal the fact that she too had thin wisps of miasma emanating from her eyes.
“Is that your… daughter?” Charlotte asked, as baffled by her presence as any of us. The woman smiled warmly at the question.
“In a way. I was dead, and Emrys gave me new life. Now a part of the Outer Primordial Darkness he represents lives in me too,” she said serenely.
Hovering above her left palm were three small bluish-green orbs, lazily going around in a circle. They were translucent and held something inside them that I couldn’t make out, but the orbs themselves appeared to be melting and solidifying by the woman’s will.
“You’re Petra, aren’t you?” I asked as I cautiously approached her. “Chamberlin had mentioned that Emrys had taken an acolyte. I’m Samantha, and this is Genevieve, Elam, and Charlotte.”
“I know. The whole reason we’re here is to speak with you,” she nodded.
“The Ophion Occult Order calls me a soul-flayer, and I’m sure you were all wondering exactly what that meant before you came here,” Emrys said, standing proudly behind his acolyte. “Well, this is it. The Darkness Beyond is now a part of her, and a part of her now lives within the Darkness Beyond. She is not unchanged from what she was before, but neither has what she was been lost.”
“My interpretation of the term ‘soul-flaying’ was the complete removal of a person’s consciousness from their astral and physical bodies to be subsumed by your Darkness,” I countered. “They told me that what you’ve done with Petra here is just the limit of your power while you’re bound in their chains. Are you telling me that if your chains were broken, you wouldn’t be able to do any worse than this?”
“On my physical avatar? No. So long as my astral form remains chained and bound with the World Serpent, I cannot cleave a conscious mind from its astral substrate,” Emrys assured me.
“But that is your ultimate goal, isn’t it? Breaking the chains the Ophion Occult Order put on you is just a stepping stone to breaking the ones the gods bound you with?” Genevieve asked. “You’ve allied yourself with a literal god slayer. Do you expect us to believe that his people’s abilities aren’t something you intend to put to your own ends?”
“I don’t have an ultimate goal so much as I have a fundamental principle of opposing tyranny,” he claimed. “When I was a mere man, thousands of years ago, I was a tyrant. I believed that might made right so unquestionably that when my might began to fail me, the only thing I could think to do was to try everything in my power to restore it. This quest eventually led to me becoming one with the Darkness Beyond, which gave me not only the might I coveted but the wisdom I didn’t know I needed. It gave me perspective. It made me stronger than any human alive at that point but still let me realize how insignificant I was. It was humbling, and enlightening, and filled me both with remorse over my past actions and an impetus to use my newfound gifts to rectify them. I tried to overthrow the gods themselves which, in hindsight, was overly ambitious. I not only failed but had my soul devoured by the World Serpent, where it still resides to this day.
“I am not eager to bring the wrath of the gods down upon me once again. No, for now, I will be content to end the tyranny of the Ophion Occult Order. This is the message I’d like you to relay to them. If the Grand Adderman agrees to unbind my chains and step down from his post, I will spare his life. If he declines, I want the rest of the Order to know that I will show mercy to any who sides with me over him. I am willing to allow the Order to exist so long as it agrees to become more decentralized, democratic, and accountable. They will have to forfeit certain artifacts and individuals in their possession over to me, chief among them the Darling Twins, but I am willing to negotiate. If they aren’t, then I will overthrow the Grand Adderman by whatever means necessary and see the Order scattered to the four winds. It is entirely up to them whether or not the conflict between us escalates to full-on war. Have I made myself clear, Samantha?”
“I think so,” I said as I pensively considered everything he had said. “Why should they trust you to keep your word once your chains are broken? For that matter, why should we?”
He took a moment to consider his response, eyeing me over as though he was trying to divine something that would win over my trust.
“Samantha, you made a pact with Persephone to get your Spirit Familiar there; one where she swore by the River Styx. Is that correct?” he asked.
“It is,” I nodded.
“And in the years since, has Persephone ever broken that pact she swore to?” he asked.
“No, she hasn’t,” I replied.
“I may not be an Old God, but so long as my astral form remains bound by their chains, they have power over me,” he said. “Samantha Sumner, Hedge Witch of Harrowick Woods, I swear on the River Styx that I have spoken no lies to you today. I swear by the River Styx that I will abide by any Covenant that I and the Ophion Occult Order agree to in good faith and fair dealing that they do not break first. I swear by the River Styx that when my chains are broken, I will give you no cause to fear me or regret your trust in me.”
I gave a questioning glance to Genevieve, and then Elam, both of whom nodded in the affirmative.
“All right. An oath sworn on the River Styx is good enough for me. I’ll deliver your terms to Seneca Chamberlin,” I agreed. “I’m very grateful for the trust and respect you’ve shown for me and my coven, Emrys, though I can’t say I quite understand it. Out of all the guests that were there on the Hallow’s Eve you were summoned, why did Evie and I stand out to you?”
“The Ophion Occult Order deemed you worthy of inclusion in their cult, an offer you rejected on principle. You cheated Persephone, but you did it not to gain immortality for yourself but to save your friend from hell. You came here, thinking I could very well tear your souls asunder, but did so because you believed it was your duty to prevent needless suffering,” Emrys answered. “You are extraordinary in your craft, courage, and conscience, the latter of which especially stood out among the degenerates at that party. I do apologize if I frightened you at that event. I was a bit… irritable, given the circumstances. I’m glad we were able to meet again under more pleasant conditions.”
“So am I, Emrys,” I nodded. “I’m not sure exactly what this means or how relevant it is, but Seneca wanted me to tell you that he’s able to offer you the Dream Demon Red Ruck as a sacrifice.”
“Pffft. Tell him it’s hardly a sacrifice if I’m getting rid of a boogie man for him,” he scoffed. “In fact, now that you mention it, Ruck’s one egregore that might be of more use to me alive.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but we were suddenly interrupted by the rapid pounding of a gong somewhere down below. It seemed to be an alarm of some kind, as we could hear the panicked shouting and frantic racing of people either battening down or forsaking the Flea Market altogether.
Mathom-meister apparated into the middle of the room, his facial tentacles reflexively raised in a defensive position.
“Were you outside the market?” he demanded of us.
“The portal we came through deposited us a few miles outside of the market, yes,” I admitted.
“Damn,” Emrys cursed softly, though he sounded more frustrated than angry. “Meister, it’s not their fault. I knew they weren’t experienced Planeswalkers, I could have – ”
“It doesn’t matter!” Mathom-meister interjected. “They need to leave, now!”
“Why, what’s going on?” Genevieve demanded.
“The scarabs are swarming,” Petra explained. “Don’t feel bad; it happens often enough that they’re prepared for it.”
I wanted to press for more details, but I could hear the humming of a vast winged swarm steadily encroaching upon us.
“Don’t worry. Once you leave the swarm will disperse… eventually,” Emrys told us. “We’ve said all that need be said for now. Return home, and I’ll reach out to you again shortly, Samantha.”
Again, I wanted to object, but the swarm outside was growing louder and louder, and it occurred to me that we might not be completely safe from a biblical swarm of insects that could not only sense but evidently sought out souls.
This occurred to Charlotte as well, as she was the first of us to vanish and awaken back in her body. We could all feel the weight of her reembodied soul tugging on us to return with her. Genevieve immediately grabbed hold of my right hand and Elam my left, both of them refusing to leave before I did.
I spared one final glance at Emrys, lamenting that we couldn’t have had more time.
“I’ll relay everything you said to the Order. I’ll make sure they know you’re willing to negotiate a truce,” I vowed.
He gave me a gracious nod, and just as we heard the swarm start to pelt the exterior of the market, I forced my physical eyes open and was back in my body, still safely under a willow tree in my cemetery.
I immediately looked beside me to Genevieve, and saw that she was awake as well, and then around me for Elam, who seemed to be suffering a bit of spectral whiplash from being pulled back with me so suddenly, but was otherwise all right. Sighing with relief, I turned lastly to Charlotte, and saw that she was looking down at the mediation circle in dreaded horror.
Following her gaze, I saw that the Undying Rose was gone – spent, perhaps, in exchange for our passage – and in its place was the inert, and hopefully dead, body of one of the shimmering scarabs.

Does anyone know who voices Chioma Esi in destiny 2, specifically the parting the veil mission.
I recognized the voice when I did the mission but can't figure out from where, and a Google search hasn't helped to figure out who it is. It's driving me nuts.

Written by Russell Kirkland
This discussion of "Taoism" in classical China will begin with the observation that there was actually no such thing, at least not in the sense that is commmonly accepted among non-specialists. Both in Asia and in the West, many scholars, and their students, have ignored the many advances in Taoist studies since the 1970s, and have continued to cling to outdated stereotypes of what Taoism was/is. In particular, they often cling to simplistic notions about "philosophical Taoism" that now seem unable to withstand critical analysis, in light of recent advances in textual and historical research. The concept of "philosophical Taoism" is, to a large extent, a modern fiction, which has been developed and embraced by people around the world for specific and identifiable social, intellectual, and historical reasons.
Current research reveals that the so-called "Taoist school" of classical times was actually "a retrospective creation": it began as the reification of a Han-dynasty bibliographic classification, and it took its present form in post-Han times, i.e., in the third century CE.
The importance of these facts is that we need to press non-specialists to re-evaluate their commonly accepted ideas of what "Taoism" is. For most of this century, there has been nearly universal agreement among philosophers, historians, and the general public — in Asia and in the West — that "Taoism" could simply be equated with a set of ideas that are embodied (or are perceived to be embodied) in the Tao te ching and the Chuang-tzu. Current research has begun to demonstrate that that common understanding is far too simplistic.
To begin with, it is now clear to most specialists that those two texts were not, in fact, the expositions of two great philosophers, but rather the product of a prolonged period of accretion. That is, each contains ideas from a variety of minds generations or even centuries apart, not to mention different geographical regions. The Chuang-tzu probably originated in scattered jottings of a man named Chuang Chou ca. 320 BCE, and was developed into its present form over the following 500 years. The earlier layers of the Chuang-tzu were apparently composed by someone who had never seen the Tao te ching. For its part, the Tao te ching dates only to around the beginning of the third century BCE, i.e., to several decades after the Chuang-tzu began to be compiled. But once again, there is no evidence that the Tao te ching's compilers were aware either of the ideas of the fourth-century writer Chuang Chou or of the text that eventually came to bear his name. Though the provenance of the Tao te ching is still the subject of debate, one current line of research suggests that it may have emerged from the re-working of oral traditions of a community in the southern state of Ch'u. So far, research has been unable to shed virtually any light upon the identity of its compiler or redactor. And I certainly do not expect to establish that identity here. But what is, in fact, possible is to examine possible evidence of that redactor's familiarity with another ancient text, a text of which few today — even among scholars of Chinese thought or religion — have ever heard. That text is a brief work, about one-half the length of the Tao te ching, entitled the Nei yeh (or "Inner Cultivation").
There is little doubt that the Nei yeh is several generations older than the Tao te ching. It seems to date to some time in the second half of the fourth century BCE. That is, it may have been compiled by a contemporary of Chuang Chou, though again there is virtually no data as to the compiler's identity. The Nei yeh fell out of general circulation when it became incorporated into a larger collection, the Kuan-tzu, sometime before the middle of the second century BCE. After that, it was seldom noted by Chinese scholars or philosophers until the 20th century, and even today its thought and significance have barely begun to be explored.
For instance, though it has never, to my knowledge, hitherto been noticed, the influence of the Nei yeh on Chinese thought was profound and extensive. For example, it is here that one first encounters comprehensible references to the personal cultivation of such forces as ch'i ("life-energy"), ching ("vital essence"), and shen ("spiritual consciousness"). The cultivation of such forces became a central theme in certain versions of modern Taoism, as well as in Chinese medicine. But there is also evidence that the Nei yeh may have profoundly influenced the Tao te ching. In this essay, I attempt to identify basic thematic differences between the Nei yeh, the Chuang-tzu, and the Tao te ching, and to suggest certain interpretive strategies for understanding the relationship among them.
The primary difference between the Nei Yeh and the Tao te ching is signalled by the title of the former. Nei means "internal," and in ancient times yeh meant in one sense "cultivation/production" and in another sense "what one studies." Thus the work's title refers directly to "Inner Cultivation" or "Inner Development." Its contents provide the reader with instruction and advice for applying oneself to a task involving what is inside oneself. That is, it teaches the reader how and why to practice certain specific forms of biospiritual cultivation. In fact, unlike the Tao te ching, the Nei Yeh is concerned with virtually nothing else besides biospiritual cultivation.
The Teachings of the Nei Yeh
The teachings of the Nei Yeh are quite distinct from the ideas that most non-specialists associate with "philosophical Taoism." Its teachings will sound more familiar to people acquainted with the traditions of modern Taoism that focus on the cultivation of ch'i. The Nei Yeh indeed begins with the assumption of a powerful salubrious reality called ch'i, "life-energy." In the Nei Yeh, ch'i is present both within all things and all around them. Within each being, ch'i is centered in the "essence," ching — which Roth describes as "the source of the vital energy in human beings [and] the basis of our health, vitality, and psychological well-being." But the central focus of the Nei Yeh's teachings have to do more with how the individual manages his/her hsin, the "heart/mind." The "heart/mind" is the ruling agency in the individual's biospiritual nexus, i.e., in the entire personal complex of body/mind/heart/spirit). The Nei Yeh's principal teaching is that one should make sure that one's "heart/mind" is balanced and tranquil, without excessive cogitation or emotion. If one can maintain a tranquil "heart/mind," then one will become a receptor of life's salubrious energies, and will be able to retain them; without tranquility, those healthful energies will leave, and one's health, and very life, will become threatened.
In the Nei Yeh, the specific nature and identity of life's desirable energies are still some-what vague. One key term that it uses is shen, "spirit" or "spiritual consciousness." "Spirit" involves perception and comprehension: it is the basis for all higher forms of awareness. According to the Nei Yeh, the practitioner must align his/her biospiritual nexus with the unseen forces of the world in order to attract "spirit" and receive it into one's quietened "heart/mind." One's ability to succeed in this endeavor is called te. Te has often been dubbed a key concept in "philosophical Taoism," but the meaning of the term in the Nei Yeh hardly resembles any of the common descriptions of the term as it is used in the more familiar Taoist texts. In the Nei Yeh, the term te does retain the generic meaning of "the inner moral power of an individual," and even the archaic (Shang-dynasty) concept of te as "a proper disposition toward the unseen forces." But here, te is clearly not a force that is intrinsic to our natures, as many modern descriptions of Te in "philosophical Taoism" would have us believe. Rather, te, like "spirit," is something that we acquire when all elements of the body/heart/mind are completely peaceful and properly aligned. Here we can discern the full meaning of the traditional Chinese explanation that the word te meaning "inner power" may be understood in terms of the homophone te which is the common verb in both classical and modern Chinese for getting or acquiring. In the Nei Yeh, te may be termed "the acquisitional agency," for it is not just what we attract and receive, but that whereby we attract and receive the higher forces of life (e.g., ch'i and shen). What is more, in the Nei Yeh one is told that one's te is something that one must work on each and every day. (Once again, such teachings vary widely from the concept of what Te means in common notions of "philosophical Taoism.") The practitioner builds up his/her te by practicing daily self-control over his/her thought, emotion, and action. One who succeeds at these practices can become a sheng-jen, a "sage." The "sage" is described as being "full of spirit" and "complete in heart/mind and in body."
One might well ask what role the concept of tao plays in the Nei Yeh. The way the term is used in the Nei Yeh does not always coincide with the way it is used in the more familiar texts. In the Nei Yeh, the term tao is actually quite vague: it is sometimes used rather indiscriminately to refer to the salubrious forces of life that the practitioner is working to cultivate. For instance, one passage reads as follows:
The Way is what infuses the structures [of the mind] yet men are unable to secure it. It goes forth but does not return, it comes back but does not stay. Silent! none can hear its sound. Sudden! so it rests in the mind. Obscure! one cannot see its form. Surging! it arises along with me. We cannot see its form, we cannot hear its sound, yet we can put a sequence to its development. Call it "Way."
One also encounters a line that is virtually identical to passages in the Tao te ching: "What gives life to all things and brings them to perfection is called the Way." But otherwise, the term tao is seldom identified in the terms that are familiar to readers the Tao te ching or the Chuang-tzu. In the Nei Yeh, the term is generally used as an equivalent of its technical terms for the spiritual realities that the practitioner is being instructed to attract and retain by means of tranquillizing the heart/mind.
Thematic Contrasts between the Nei Yeh and the Familiar "Taoist Classics"
Clearly, the Nei Yeh has a specific and identifiable focus, articulated in terms comprehensible to the careful reader. But it is also clear that if we are intellectually honest, the teachings of this text are quite distinguishable from those of the more familiar texts of classical Taoism. For instance, while terms like te and tao appear frequently in all the texts, they are used in different senses in different texts, as well as in different passages of the same text. Neither term is thus a "basic concept" of some general philosophical system: each term carried a variety of meanings among the people who developed "Taoist" ideas across ancient China. We should thus beware the common tendency of assuming that certain teachings of the Tao te ching and Chuang-tzu were in any sense representative of a coherent ancient Chinese school of thought, much less normative for identifying "Taoist" beliefs and values in general.
Secondly, it should be noticed that the portrait of the Taoist life in the Nei Yeh is in some ways quite dissimilar to that which we generally encounter in the Tao te ching and Chuang-tzu. For instance, the key to life in the Nei Yeh is one's diligent effort to attract and retain spiritual forces named ch'i, ching and shen. While each of those terms does occur here and there in both the Tao te ching and the Chuang-tzu, seldom in those texts do we find the specific teachings that are so basic to the Nei Yeh.16 In particular, it is hard to think of passages from either of the more familiar texts that suggest that the thing called tao is a force that can come into or go out of a person, or that one it is necessary to engage in specific practices to get the tao to come or to keep it from going away.17 In the more familiar texts, the term tao generally seems to suggest a universal reality from which one can never really be ontologically separated.
In addition, the practices commended in the Nei Yeh are much more clearly physiological in nature than we are accustomed of thinking of Taoist practice as being. Indeed, one of the reasons that some of the teachings of the Tao te ching have become domesticated in Western culture is that the public believes those teachings to involve no regular, definable practices that involve one's physical existence. According to such beliefs, the Taoist life is essentially stative: it never involves specific practices that carry historical or cultural baggage, and certainly never involves any work.
It should also be noted that the Nei Yeh never presents the spiritual life in terms of "practicing wu-wei." Here, the Taoist life is not a stative life of "just being," or of "being spontaneous," but rather a very active life of specific practices, practices that must be carefully learned and properly performed if one is ever to come into possession of such elusive forces as tao. In this framework, the Taoist life involves personal responsibility, dedication to a life of constant self-discipline, and conscientious daily practice. Moreover, this practice involves the purification and proper ordering of one's body as well as one's "heart/mind." It would be excessive to say that the Nei Yeh teaches a "Taoist yoga," but it clearly does assume that the spiritual life involves practices that also have physical components, even extending to moderation in eating. I thus refer to such activities more broadly as "biospiritual practices."
Neither the Tao te ching nor the Chuang-tzu are so clearly focussed upon biospiritual practices. While they do contain passages that allude to such practices, their writers (or at least the editors) have many other teachings to convey, teachings that are generally absent from the Nei Yeh. For instance, as Rickett observed long ago, the concepts of yin and yang are nowhere seen in the Nei Yeh. Modern beliefs egregiously exaggerate the centrality of those concepts in the Taoist tradition. In reality, the concepts of yin and yang were never specifically Taoist. The terms do appear in the Tao te ching and the Chuang-tzu, though in quite minor roles. But the world of the Nei Yeh is a world quite devoid of yin and yang.
Other differences between the Nei Yeh and the more familiar texts seem not to have been remarked upon by other readers. For instance, there are few teachings in the Nei Yeh involving issues of government. Though modern conceptions commonly associate Taoism with the life of the individual rather than with social or political concerns, such was never really the case. Social and political concerns always played an important role in Taoism, from classical times into the later imperial period. The Tao te ching, for its part, contains dozens of passages discussing the problems involved with ruling a state. Indeed, some respected scholars have long characterized the Tao te ching as "a handbook for rulers." Such a characterization is actually something of an exaggeration, but the point here is that the Nei Yeh displays little interest in issues of government.
In addition, the Nei Yeh differs from both the Tao te ching and the Chuang-tzu in that it never critiques or ridicules the beliefs or practices of Confucians. Once again, there is a common misconception that "Taoism" arose as a reaction against Confucianism, and that Taoists always clearly differentiated their teachings from those of the Confucians. However, there is nothing in the Nei Yeh that criticizes Confucian teachings. In fact, there are clear and unmistakable continuities between the teachings of the Nei Yeh and certain elements of the teachings of the 4th-century Confucian known as Mencius. What is missing from the Nei Yeh is the Confucian emphasis upon saving society by reviving within one's personal life the principles of proper moral/social behavior known as li. The reader of the Nei Yeh is taught how to align him/herself with the forces at work in the world, because doing so is necessary for one's personal well-being. There is little trace of a belief that one is responsible for changing society. On the other hand, those who held such beliefs are neither faulted nor mocked. So while sections of both the Tao te ching and the Chuang-tzu were composed by opponents of Confucianism, such sentiments are not found in the Nei Yeh.
Another theme conspicuously absent is the idea that the ideal society is a small-scale community without civilized technology or complex socio-political institutions. That idea is most familiar to the modern audience from the 80th chapter of the Tao te ching, though there are other examples in the Chuang-tzu. Several scholars have recently begun referring to such ideals as a distinct "phase" or "voice" of early Taoism, to which they refer as "Primitivist." But as some of those scholars have already noted, the Nei Yeh is completely devoid of such ideals. Thus, the Rousseau-esque idea that Taoism consists of a rejection of civilization in favor of simpler ways of living is inaccurate. It would seem that a person could follow the teachings of the Nei Yeh within nearly any social context, and that it never occurred to the text's compilers that any one type of social setting might be preferable to any other. The Nei Yeh does not, therefore, provide the antidote to the Industrial Revolution that Westerns have sometimes claimed to find in "philosophical Taoism."
So if we have here a form of Taoism that is fundamentally disinterested in social issues, would it be correct to say that it is basically more concerned with our place in the universe? Well, in a certain sense, yes, but it is important to note that the Nei Yeh is also unconcerned with many of the cosmological issues with which modern readers are often so fascinated. For example, there is no real discussion of cosmogony in the Nei Yeh. Other Taoist texts sometimes discuss the origin of the world, in terms that sometimes seem to combine poetry with philosophy. But the Nei Yeh contains no such passages. It alludes to no "Non-Being" from which "Being" comes, and it posits no eternal reality ontologically prior to, or separate from, the present world — no "noumenon" to contrast with the "phenomena" of life as we know it. The closest thing to a cosmogonic passage in the Nei Yeh would seem to be its opening lines:
[The vital essence (ching) of all things — This is what makes life come into being: Below, it generates the five grains, Above, it brings about the constellated stars. When it flows in the interstices of Heaven and Earth, It is called "spiritual beings"; When it is stored up inside [a person's] chest, He is called "a sage."]
But here we are clearly dealing with a life-force that operates within the world, a force of generation that is spiritual in nature, and can be localized either within independent spiritual beings or within a person who successfully collects and stores it. But there is no suggestion here of any noumenal reality that has an ontological existence separate from the reality of which we are all a part. "Being" does not come from "Non-Being," and the composers show no interest in constructing any cosmological theories. These facts are brought home most clearly when we encounter the term tao in the text, for as noted earlier, in the Nei Yeh the term tao clearly refers to a transient reality that a person needs to attract and to retain. It is not some universal transcendent that one attains by developing some "mystical gnosis" qualitatively distinct from normal experience.
Nor is there any discussion in the Nei Yeh of the theme of "change." There is little trace, for instance, of the notion that there is un unchanging cosmic force beyond the world of change. Nor is there a poetic image of a sagely person who blissfully flows or drifts along with life's ongoing processes. The latter idea may be present in passages of the Chuang-tzu, but there is nothing like it in the Nei Yeh, any more than there is in the Tao te ching. In the Nei Yeh, one neither transcends change nor adapts to it: there is, in fact, no mention of life as a process of change or flux. Rather, the Nei Yeh teaches that there is a salubrious natural force, or set of forces, that are elusive: they are not ephemeral — they are enduring — but they do not stay in one place unless a person has transformed him/herself into an efficient receiver and receptacle for those forces. A good analogy for them might be radio waves, which are constantly flowing around and through us, but can only be held and put to use by a device that is properly tuned. To extend this metaphor a bit more, the Nei Yeh seems to suggest that we are radios that were all properly designed, and were originally fully functional; but now we experience interference in the form of excessive activity in the heart/mind, and we need to re-tune ourselves to eliminate that interference and begin functioning properly again. For these reasons, it would be correct to say that the Nei Yeh requires self-corrective activity, just as the other Taoist texts do, but that the Nei Yeh's model for understanding and practicing self-correction is fairly unique.
The Nei Yeh also gives the lie to yet other misconceptions of Taoism, including some held by thoughtful philosophers. One such misconception is that Taoist teachings are deeply iconoclastic, antinomian, even revolutionary. According to this view, the basic thrust of Taoism is to jolt the individual into a realization that he/she should reject traditional beliefs and values, condemning them as the artificial constructs of an oppressive society. This interpretation of classical Taoism is not just the conceit of 1960s Hippies who saw it as a condemnation of "establishment culture." Generations of Westerners — Americans in particular, perhaps — have read the Tao te ching, and parts of the Chuang-tzu, as a post-Enlightenment gospel of individual freedom, freedom from the uncomfortable aspects of "Society" in general, and of Western culture in particular.
One version of this modern concept of Taoism can be seen in certain recent analyses by the respected philosopher Chad Hansen. Hansen seems to perpetuate the notion that Taoism is essentially an attempt to undermine acceptance of "convention." He argues that the Tao te ching and Chuang-tzu both begin from a "linguistic skepticism (which) arises against a background assumption that language is a social mechanism for regulating people's behavior." Speaking of the composer of the Tao te ching, Hansen says, "His political and practical advice is almost invariably the reversal of conventional political and moral attitudes. He reverses conventional values, preferences, or desires..." Why? "All learning of distinctions comes with dispositions to prefer one or the other... (But) trained discriminations are not a constantly reliable guide to behavior. Culturally motivated preferences based on those distinctions are, on the whole, unreliable. And they control us in insidious, unnatural ways." While Hansen may be partly or wholly correct in his assessment of the role of culture in forming individuals' dispositions, it is dubious whether that assessment was present in the minds of the Taoists of classical China, particularly in the mind in the compiler of the Tao te ching. Most of Hansen's "Daoist theory of knowledge" is woven from certain themes in Chuang-tzu, where such issues do indeed seem to be addressed. But such intricate treatment of "knowledge," "language," "convention," etc., are not found in the Tao te ching, which addresses concerns that are quite distinguishable from those of the compiler(s) of the Chuang-tzu, especially a variety of moral and political concerns. And in the Nei Yeh, there is no trace of any critique of the relationship between culture and knowledge or desire. The Nei Yeh does not critique "conventional society" and urge us to reject it, nor does it critique language, nor does it urge us to beware socially-inculcated valuations.
There are yet other distinctive features to the teachings of the Nei Yeh. For instance, unlike the Tao te ching, it has nothing to say about issues of gender. There are several passages in the Tao te ching that commend a "feminine" attitude or behavior, such as humility or yielding. Such passages appear to imply that what is wrong with our normal attitudes and behavior is that they are excessively "masculine." Such ideas, however, are seldom seen in texts like the Chuang-tzu, and they are likewise absent from the Nei Yeh. The compilers of the Nei Yeh do teach that there are attitudes and behaviors that we should forego, but there is no gender imagery associated with them.
In this connection, one might ask whether the three texts share the same intended audience. Were any or all of them intended specifically for men? Well, one may infer that when the reader is given advice presumed useful for achieving political goals, the reader was presumed to be male, since, in ancient China, political participation by women was not an option (except for a spouse or immediate family member of a man who held a position of authority). As mentioned earlier, the Nei Yeh is comparable to most sections of the Chuang-tzu in that the reader is seldom assumed to be someone attempting to engage in political rule. It is also true that in ancient China women seldom achieved literacy, so one could argue that any written text was intended only for men. But such reasoning ignores other possibilities, such as that of a family or group that included both men and women, all interested in learning how to live from a text that few of them could actually read themselves. One should also note that the Nei Yeh (like much of the Tao te ching) is composed largely in verse, and that some scholars believe that certain sections "may have been borrowed from some early Taoist hymn."28 We must bear in mind that though ancient China did produce some written texts, it was still largely an oral society, in which most people of either gender acquired and dispensed information and advice primarily, if not exclusively, by word of mouth. The Nei Yeh is almost certainly a text containing teachings that originated in an oral tradition. And there is little in the content of those teachings that would seem to be either more or less practiceable by members of either gender.
Another distinctive feature of the Nei Yeh is that it seems to lack the idea of "Heaven" (T'ien) as a benign guiding force in life. Both the Confucians and the Mohists shared some version of that idea, reflecting more generally held beliefs that dated back to at least the end of the second millennium BCE. Today such ideas are not generally associated with Taoism, for Taoists, by modern definition, believe in an impersonal reality called "Tao" that transcends all other realities, including "Heaven." Such is not entirely the case, of course. Several chapters of the Tao te ching speak of "the Way of Heaven" (T'ien-tao or T'ien-chih-tao), a beneficent force that seems to have will as well as agency. But there is little trace of such ideas in the Nei Yeh.
Finally, we should address the issue of morality. Are the teachings of the Nei Yeh concerned solely with internal self-cultivation? Is there any evidence that the practitioner is ever to give any thought to anyone other than him- or herself? This is a key question, because virtually all modern interpreters, Chinese and Western alike, have accused Taoism of being inimical to the idea that a person should be concerned about others:
{Taoism pictures the person as a wanderer in the void, and perceives his happiness to lie in drifting with the stream, unanchored by the network of demands and responsibilities....[In Taoism, the] happiness one is concerned with is one's own, logically independent of the happiness of others....[The] follower of the Way is necessarily a loner....}
Elsewhere I have attempted to demonstrate that such accusations are wholly inaccurate, at least in regard to the Tao te ching. That text enjoins the reader to practice "goodness" (shan), which involves extending oneself toward others impartially so as to benefit them. In the Tao te ching, the Taoist life is one in which one achieves self-fulfillment as one is selflessly benefitting the lives of others.32 Do we find such ideals in the Nei Yeh? I can find little evidence of them. There are a few passages for which one might be able to make an argument that the reader is to think of providing benefits to others, but none that seems clearly to express such ideals. Certainly, as compared to the Tao te ching, the Nei Yeh lacks any clear moral concern, and does in fact give the overall impression that "the happiness one is concerned with is one's own."
Conclusion
It is clear that the Nei Yeh is quite distinct in content from either the Tao te ching or the Chuang-tzu, despite the texts' many similarities. The Nei Yeh, we should recall, was earlier than the Tao te ching, and could even be interpreted as an example of "the earliest Taoist teachings." The Tao te ching shows clear evidence that its compilers were deeply concerned with the social and political issues that concerned members of other schools of thought, particularly the Mohists and Confucians. One could thus reasonably even characterize the teachings of the Nei Yeh as "original Taoism," and the teachings of the Tao te ching as "applied Taoism." Though the Tao te ching may have, in some sense, emerged from the same general tradition that produced the Nei Yeh, its compilers were interested in the issues of living in human society as much as, if not more than, they were interested in the practice of "inner cultivation." Further attention to the differences among the assumptions and concerns of all these texts should provide greater insight into the divergent communities that produced such materials, and of the divergent models of the Taoist life that they envision.