I'm 23F. I met a guy a 2 years ago. We started talking. And then we talked so much to the point where he couldn't stay without talking for more than 30min. We called eo everyday and texted non stop. He cared for me alot and every action of mine mattered to him. And I fell for all of that. And then slowly things faded. I asked him why'd you lovebomb me so much and what are we. He said he never even saw me from that perspective. Since then I've been in a non stop loop trying to get over him and control my emotions. We still text everyday but it's not the same and that's coming in the way of me getting over him. Talking to him everyday has become such an addiction that he's all I think about and get lowkey anxious if he doesn't reply for hours. Things aren't the same anymore and that part hurts the most. How do I get to the mental state where I'm happy in my own company and also wouldn't die of heartbreak if he gets into a relationship with someone? And the important part is I don't wanna lose him. He's a great friend and I wanna keep that in my life. But just as a friend tho. Not a friend who Ive feelings for.

There is already a detailed post about a 32 Fear clear:
https://www.reddit.com/HadesTheGame/comments/1crljbs/i_cleared_the_underworld_w_32_fear_heres_how/
Here is mine, as an alternative to people who want mana regeneration and are sick of enemy (1) having speed increased and (2) barrier

1) Vow

This one works pretty well for me as It only took me the first try on this specific vow, and had a consecutive row of 3 prevails with this vow on 32 Fear, meanwhile 0 defiance was used in all runs. In summary, this vow gives you slow start but smooth mid and late game if boons are alright.
The main problem of this vow is you get red onion in replaced of the first area boon, I do not have a good countermeasure, but what I usually do is focusing on the second god boon with Echo's keepsake or my rerolls
Had Vow of Bitterness in replacement of 20% speed and 2 barriers per foe

2) Weapon

Yes, without a guess, Aspect of Momus again (but i think the other weapons are also fine with this setup, have not yet tried though)

3) Arcana cards

Pros: (1) More hp & mana, (2) Mana regeneration, (3) Keepsake-free, (4) Cast could be very strong in late game
Cons: (1) Having useless Ashes and Psyche rewards, (2) Cant do much of losing first boon per area
This +3 dice is the essence of the whole deck, help reducing the impact of losing the first boon each area

4) Boons

Losing the first god boon each area may look terrific, but in fact no. Your build rely mostly on 2 to 4 specific god boons (hammer and Hermes also), the rest are bonus. Losing the first boon will still enable you access to powerful builds onwards.
Not much restriction to god boons, as long as they are useful to you. For me, I like powerful range Cast, so I always pick Zeus's Storm Ring/Lightning Lance (Apollo's Solar Ring, Hestia's Smolder Ring/Glowing Coal) no matter what. Special attack is important but I am fine with anything that is powerful, Poseidon and hammer upgrade are the best, rest are good too.
Chaos boon in area 1 is highly recommended (damage boost, mana reduction, money income, etc.), always spend 1 reroll to have a better option if none in the first time.

5) Keepsakes

Quite keepsake-free unless you are aiming at certain build. I always use Echo's keepsake for the first area to recover from a slow start.

6) Playstyle

Since you have mana regeneration, you can play it slowly as you can regen your hp to 50% at the end of each encounter with the passive ability of Staff of Momus.
Always look for boost for special and cast, then hp cap raise.

7) Videos

Videos of my 2nd (nearly perfect) and 3rd run (poor start) with this specific Vow.
2nd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCF6uxcK3kU
3rd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbjtAIFM8v0
Death to Chronos! Moonlight Guide Us!

My husband had been very guarded with his laptop recently and that made me suspicious. I didn’t think he was cheating because I have access to his phone and can track it. He also goes to work and home so I don’t know where there would be time.
Anyway, I know his passwords for everything so one night after he is asleep I get access to in and after some snooping I find that he has written a novel over the past 6 months, and it is an erotic one written from the male point of view. And not only was it good but it was hot as hell. You’d expect an erotic story written by a man from a male point of view to basically be verbalized porn but it wasn’t. It truly was as good as any erotic novel I’ve ever read that was written by a woman.
Now, my husband doesn’t verbalize his emotions, especially sexual ones. He never dirty talks before or during sex. But the character he created sure as hell does. The sex scenes are extremely descriptive and graphic and just really well done. I got through a few chapter and I was so turned on I had to go upstairs and wake my husband for sex. I finished the book the next night and took care of business myself a few times while finishing it.
I don’t know how to feel about this or if I should talk to my husband about it. I invaded his privacy so I feel bad about that but I also wish he had told me about this.
I have gone back and forth over the past couple on whether I should tell him what I found. But I have finally decided that I am going to talk to him about it and it’s for selfish reasons.
The main character’s name in the book is Easton, my husband’s name also starts with an E and the character is clearly a projection of himself. Easton possesses many of my husband’s characteristics in his everyday life but in the bedroom he transforms. And I feel that person is inside my husband somewhere and I want him out. The things that occur to Easton to say and do during sex clearly occur to my husband. And I want those things done to me.
So my question is how do I bring this up so that he isn’t uncomfortable? And after I talk to him how do I go about brining that part of him out. He won’t be comfortable in the beginning but I feel if I approach this right it can be done. Any thoughts?
TLDR: My husband wrote a hot erotic novel without telling me and now I want to know how to bring out the person in him that wrote it.

Cyborg #59 - Test of Strength

<< < >
Author: Commander_Z
Book: Cyborg
Arc: Machine Mayhem
Set: 96
Previously:
Victor Stone, Donna Morris and Keiji Otari worked together to create a robot called Atlas to participate in the collegiate Machine Mayhem tournament, a robot fighting competition. The humanoid robot easily crushed its competition in the first round but disappeared overnight before the second round. His three creators split up to track him down, with Keiji finding the machine in a back alley a little ways away from the stadium...
Keiji stood before the massive figure, blinking, trying to focus his mind. He had had many late nights and early mornings over the past couple weeks, so Keiji figured he was still sleeping. Or hallucinating. Or both, somehow. But, the voice rang out, its clearest yet, “No.” ‘Clear’ was a very generous and relative term, though. The noise wasn’t modulating through a speaker or a voice box, instead Atlas was making his own speaker by vibrating the motors and joints that allowed him to move.
The alley that Keiji found Atlas in was less than an ideal to make changes to a robot, but Keiji figured that Atlas would be understanding considering the circumstances. He pulled out an old bluetooth speaker out of his backpack and gestured towards Atlas with it.
“This’ll help you. No more grinding gears to talk. Just got to trust me for a few minutes, okay?”
Atlas stood still for a few moments, whether he was thinking or just unsure how to make a positive affirmation with his joints, Keiji couldn’t know. But, after awhile, he responded.
“Yes.”
Keiji set his backpack on the ground in the gross alley, making a mental note that he’d have to clean that later and got to work.
Around ten minutes later, he was done.
“Okay, Atlas. Try to use the speaker. It’s connected to RO23 on the tertiary control board.”
“...T…Te….ing…Test…Testing. Speaker operation confirmed.” Atlas spoke in a deep, synthetic voice that occasionally warped itself in tone, like how a whammy bar would add vibrato to a chord on a guitar.
“Great. So… Atlas… What's going on with you? Why’d you leave?”
“I am performing my task: defeat opponents, become the strongest. No foes in that arena were a challenge. Therefore, I left.”
Keiji raised an eyebrow. “That’s… not what we made you for. We made you to win Machine Mayhem, not to pursue strength as some sort of goal in of itself.”
“Incorrect. Nowhere in programming was “winning the Machine Mayhem tournament” a specified goal.”
“Okay, but I programmed you, and I’m telling you that was the intention.”
“Intentions are irrelevant. A teacher may shape their students’ minds, but they cannot determine what anyone does with their knowledge. That is a privilege reserved for each and every individual being. You say I was programmed to win a tournament. I say that I was programmed to make myself the strongest being. Only my interpretation is relevant.”
‘I guess that’s not an invalid interpretation of what I programmed him to do. But… that’s not exactly a sane or safe perspective on life…’
“And how are you doing that? Just fighting anyone you can see?”
“No. I have already stated that I found those machines in that arena unworthy of my efforts, in my short time in the outside world I have seen humans to be much the same. Few of you would pose any challenge.”
“Well, that’s a little more reassuring that you won’t just be fighting everyone you see. But - ”
Suddenly, a woman about Keiji’s age flew into the alleyway, riding on a metallic pink hoverboard. She wore hot pink combat boots with dark black leggings, and a matching hot pink sleeveless top with thick metallic bands around her wrists that went up to her forearms. Her eyes were obscured by a visor-like pair of glasses, tinted a reflective red to hide her identity.
And yet, Keiji knew instantly that she had to be Donna Morris. He knew that she had been working on some other project with Vic before they started Atlas, but he figured it was just for some shared class or lab work. But this… This was unexpected.
“Halt… robot! Step away from the civilian and no one needs to get hurt!”
‘Why’s she speaking so formally? Guess it’s some mindset thing.’
Neither Atlas nor Keiji reacted to what Donna was saying. Keiji knew she wasn’t talking to him, and Atlas just seemed indifferent to her presence. Finally, Atlas turned and faced her.
“You seem powerful. Show me the strength of your will and I may concede.”
“This doesn’t need to be violent. We can talk it out, here or somewhere else.”
“Actions speak louder and truer than words.” Atlas moved into a combat position, leaning forwards on his left leg, raising his fists up to his chest.
“Come.”
“Don- ”
“When I’m in the suit, it’s Black Narcissus. Some of us like to keep our identities secret, no offense to Cyborg, wherever he is.” Donna said.
“Okay, nice to meet you, Black Narcissus. Just… be careful with Atlas. He’s stronger than he looks.”
Donna smiled. “So am I. Just watch.”
Donna pressed her thumb and index finger together on both hands and a large light on the back of her hands turned gray. She pointed her hands right at Atlas, who still stood in his combat position, waiting.
A thick, gray fluid shot out of her gauntlets, ensnaring Atlas’ arms to his body and his legs to the ground.
“Gotcha! That’s industrial strength adhesive - ”
Atlas flexed his arms and the adhesive snapped with ease, then crouched his legs before springing upwards towards Black Narcissus and her hoverboard. She quickly flew out of the way but Atlas managed to barely get one hand on the board. Black Narcissus pressed her thumbs to her middle fingers, changing the cartridge in her gauntlets. The light on the back changed to purple and she fired her gauntlets again, launching a blast of energy at Atlas.
The extra energy rattled the robot’s circuits, and he released his grip on the board to escape further damage, sending him crashing back to the ground. She shot another salvo of energy blasts at the machine, keeping him stunned on the ground.
She switched her left gauntlet back to adhesive, hoping that it would be able to restrain a weakened Atlas. Before it could reach him, the robot rolled out of the way and grabbed a trash can, hurling it at Donna. She swerved out of the way again, then dodged a second trash can thrown as a follow up.
After the second can, she was on her toes, prepared for a third, but it didn’t come. She looked around, trying to find where Atlas went, but he was completely out of sight. She sensed him at the last moment, coming from the rooftop that he jumped up to. He grabbed her board and slammed it to the ground with her on it. The board shattered into a million pieces, but Donna seemed unharmed. Atlas sprung up, ready to keep fighting, and Black Narcissus rose fractions of a second after. She pressed her thumbs to her ring fingers and the light on the black glowed a dark red.
She swung a right hand punch at Atlas who caught it in his left. But the light on the back of her gauntlet started to glow brighter as she put in more effort, pushing back against his metallic muscle. Atlas pushed his legs back, trying to stabilize himself. Donna started to push him back more and Keiji could hear the motors start to strain. Atlas stopped resisting against Donna, then, before she could take advantage of it, he kicked up some of the pieces of the broken hoverboard at her. Using her momentary surprise, he punched her square in the chest, knocking the wind out of her and sending her to the ground.
“You fought well,” Atlas said, turning away from her.
“Wait,” Donna said, getting up. “I’m not done with you.”
“Yes, you are. Accept your defeat. There is no shame in losing to the strongest.”
Before Donna could protest, Atlas turned to Keiji. “Come, and bring your things. I have use for you.”
Keiji raised an eyebrow, but grabbed his backpack and started to follow Atlas further down the alley.
He turned back to Donna and mouthed “I’ll text you” to her. He hoped she got the message.
⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️
“Stop here.”
Keiji stood behind Atlas, who was peering into an old garage a couple blocks from the alley where he fought Black Narcissus. He grabbed the padlock that was keeping the door shut and squeezed it, turning it into dust.
“You will find the tools you need in here. Repair the damage caused in the last fight, human.”
Keiji raised an eyebrow. “First off, I don’t really like being called “human”. Technically true, but feels hurtful in this context. Second, I’m a software guy. I couldn’t fix you if I wanted to. Third, being nicer to people will generally get you better results. Not really inclined to help someone who starts by insulting me.”
“Niceties are a waste of time. Fix me, or I will end you.”
Keiji shook his head. “No, you won’t. I can’t fix you, but you know my teammates can. And they’d never do that if you hurt me at all.”
Atlas punched the concrete wall in frustration, cracking it. “Very well. You are correct… I do need your help. What will they require to do so?”
“I don’t know. But come back to the arena with me. We can talk with them there and see what it takes.”
“Very well. Let your friends know that I require their assistance.”
⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️
Atlas stood before Vic and Donna, who made it back to their workspace just before the robot did. He towered over the three humans, but if any of them were intimidated, it was hidden behind a masterful poker face.
“Y’know, I thought more people would care that we just walked in with a robot and are talking with him like he’s a person,” Donna remarked.
“People are busy and indifferent. The other competitors probably think it’s a marketing scheme or something and are just ignoring us. I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Keiji said.
“Yeah, that. But so… Atlas has become sentient. Good for you, really. But… hooray. Another sentient robot,” Vic said.
“You see a lot of those?” Keiji asked.
“More than you’d think.”
“I am glad that you are not concerned by my presence. That saves me much effort. But the question at hand remains: I have been damaged and require repairs. Will you repair me?”
“Yes,” Vic and Donna said at the same time.
Vic looked at her, surprised. He figured she’d have some hesitancy.
“But, I’ve got a small condition for you. Should be no big deal. Win us the next round of the competition.”
“Ridiculous. You ask me to do something so trivial it is unfair, like a pro athlete competing at a preschool.”
Donna shrugged. “Yeah, it’s trivial and easy, but it helps us a lot.The club will look much better and get a lot more support for next season if we make it into the semifinals.”
“I’ll even raise the stakes. If you win the next round, we won’t make you enter the finals. Instead, I’ll give you a real challenge. You can fight me.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Because I’m the strongest one here by far. And, if that’s still not enough if you beat me, I’ll show you how to repair yourself. Then, we’ll let you go live as you want, provided you promise to only fight people who want to fight.”
Donna looked at Vic, concerned. “Who would want to willingly fight someone like Atlas?”
Vic sighed. “Trust me. There are plenty of weirdos in this world who just want to fight. It’s much better than me just throwing him in prison or taking him apart.”
Atlas made a noise that Vic thought was supposed to be a scoff. But maybe it was just static. The speaker wasn’t that high quality.
“You make a very strong set of promises if I win, which I will. But if by some miracle, you managed to cheat your way to victory… what happens then?”
Vic shrugged. “Pretty much the same thing. I’ll teach you how to repair yourself and let you go with the same stipulations. You just have to know that a human beat you.”
Atlas laughed. “You are a fool if you think that could ever happen. I accept your terms, human. Guide me to the arena, those boxes of scrap will be reduced to dust.”
Vic walked him over to the arena as as if he were any other competitor, but instead of waiting by the sidelines to see the results, he walked back to their workspace. He knew that Atlas would win and wanted to try and make sure that Donna and Keiji were on board with the other part of his plan.
When he got back, Donna was nervously pacing around while Keiji was scrolling through some webpage.
“So.. Vic… do you really think that this is the right idea? You’re just… unleashing him on the world. Isn't that irresponsible?” Donna asked.
“I don’t think so. Yeah he wants to fight people but he has restraint to some degree. He knows the difference being fighting every random person he sees and fighting someone who has a reasonable amount of strength. I dunno, I think him messing up and fighting… Superman or something and taking a big loss would teach him far more than we ever could or throwing him in jail for being dangerous. Is it a risk?… kinda. But so is any option.”
“So your best guess is just… let him go and figure it out?” Keiji said. “Isn’t that a bit too… hands off?”
“Got a better idea? That’s pretty much what we got to do.”
“No. I don’t. But this just feels... risky.”
“Yeah, it is. But he’s fairly reasonable after being conscious for what, 12 hours? Over time, he’ll probably mellow out and if he doesn’t, I can take care of him then. But he deserves a chance like anyone else.”
Keiji nodded. “Fine Vic. If that’s what you think the best path is… I’ll stand by you.”
“Same, Vic. I want to believe in him too.”
“Thanks guys, really. Hopefully we can all look back on this and agree this was the right path.”
A horn sounded and a voice came over the loudspeaker. “Semifinal-2 has ended! The winner is the University of Michigan’s Atlas! Please collect your robots and be ready for the finals at 1:00 PM.”
The team stood up and gave each other a round of high fives. They really had made something great. Now it was time to see just how great he really was.
⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️
Two hours later.
The team packed up after their semifinal match, citing an unspecified emergency with the tournament staff. They weren’t happy with the anticlimactic end, but ultimately they couldn’t force the three of them to continue to compete and so they left without much hassle.
The three of them drove north until they found the first open field that Vic and Atlas could have their match in. There wasn’t anywhere that they could find in the city that wouldn’t attract too much attention or put innocent people at risk and they managed to convince Atlas of that too. The robot was in the trailer towed behind the three of them, much to his chagrin.
But after a half hour or so, they found a spot. A wide open, grassy field with no one around to interfere or get hurt. A perfect spot for them to settle things. Vic got out of the car and started to stretch, trying to limber up after the car ride while Donna and Keiji helped Atlas out of the trailer.
Atlas rotated his head, taking in the environment. “A flat, quiet field. An honorable place for battle.”
Vic let out one lat calming exhale before approaching Atlas. “Plus, no one is around to get hurt. That’s important too.”
“...Yes. That too.”
“The rules are simple. A clean match, no foul play between either of us. Whoever is left standing when the other yields or is unconscious wins.”
Atlas laughed. “I will never yield.”
“We’ll see,” Vic grinned.
“Oh, one other thing. Not really a rule per say, but a strong suggestion: Try not to seriously hurt each other. You’re not trying to kill or maim each other,” Donna said.
“Yes, yes. May we begin?”
Vic nodded, and took a step backward, creating about ten feet of space between him and Atlas. Before the dust even settled, his arms were force cannons launching pure energy right at Atlas’ chest. Vic had designed Atlas, he knew that he wouldn’t be very damaged by those. But he had underestimated just how much he would be able to tank them. The force blasts did little more than chip the paint and an exhilarated Atlas sprinted at Vic like a charging bull.
Once Atlas was a few feet away from Vic, he prepared a concussive grenade and exploded it directly against Atlas, using the force to stagger him out of the charge. Before the robot could launch another attack, Vic swung a full force punch into the robots’ chassis, crumpling it inwards slightly. Vic followed up the punch with another, but Atlas was ready for it and parried it with his left arm, then kicked Cyborg away, sending him flying backwards.
Cyborg shot his force canons at the ground to give himself some momentum in the opposite direction, slowing himself down. But Atlas had some tricks up his metaphorical sleeves too. Having realized that a direct approach was difficult, he used his powerful hands like a backhoe to scoop up a massive piece of earth and hurled it at Cyborg. Vic was unsure how to react to this, or more precisely, how he expected Atlas to follow this attack up. The boulder itself was a problem, sure, but it was just to close the gap. Atlas could be using it to block his line of sight and be jumping right behind it, or he could be using the temporary blindspot caused by the massive object to approach from either side.
Instead of guessing, Vic decided to power through the problem. Vic shot both of his force cannons at the projectile, sending bits of dirt every which way. Atlas was hiding in what was once the dirt ball’s shadow and Vic took advantage of his surprise to launch himself at the robot. Cyborg shot his force cannons behind him, propelling himself forwards rapidly in a charge mirroring Atlas’ own.
He knocked the massive machine to the ground and sat on his chest, using his arms to pin down the machine’s.
“You’re down, Atlas. Do you yield?”
“I told you. I will never yield. I am the strongest!”
Atlas began to press his weight against Vic’s strength. Vic knew he was a match for Atlas’ strength but there was one key problem: stamina. Vic’s body was, of course, cybernetic in part, but it wasn’t the same. He was still human and human beings got tired. Machines did not.
Vic could already feel his muscle starting to fatigue. The fight hadn’t been long, but any fatigue was going to be the difference. He knew he was a match for Atlas’ strength when he was at 100%, but every percent below that made it more and more likely to be Atlas’ win.
‘I need to end this fight now or the immediate future if I want to win. But my normal attacks aren’t doing anything to him. I could try a sonic attack, but I don’t think that’d really effect him. I could try targeting his joints specifically, but those were designed to take more than I can give. But I can’t just let him overpower me for the win. That’d make him overconfident and more likely to get into trouble afterwards. No… I’ve got a better idea.’
In an instant, Vic’s muscles stopped resisting. “I yield.”
Vic pushed himself off Atlas, who stood up and looked at Cyborg, confused.
“What foe yields when he has his opponent on the ground, at his mercy? I demand you continue!”
“No. This fight was never to the death, only to yielding. But frankly, you aren’t strong enough to interest me. You said it yourself, you will never yield. And pummelling you to a point where you are the equivalent of unconscious just isn’t worth my time. So I yielded. Congrats. You win.”
Atlas stood, incredulous. “No. That is not allowed. I did not win. You lost! Those are not the same!”
Vic turned to Keiji and Donna and then noticed that the fight had taken them about 30 yards from where they started. He started to walk back towards them, and Atlas followed.
“Guys, I yielded that fight. Doesn’t that mean I lost?”
Keiji raised an eyebrow. “I guess?”
“See? Congrats, you won.”
“... I do not accept this victory. This is a loss in all but name. Mark my words, Victor Stone. I will wander the globe, facing foe after foe to grow stronger. I will become the strongest being and when I do, we will have a real fight, one where you must acknowledge my strength for real.”
“Looking forwards to it. Stay out of trouble until then, understood?”
Vic held out his hand for a handshake which Atlas begrudgingly accepted.
“Understood.”
“Atlas, catch.”
Keiji tossed a small flash drive to Atlas who had to bend down to grab it.
“That has all your schematics and drawings on it, as well as all the parts we used to make you and where we sourced them from. It’s probably the best thing out there to help you repair yourself.”
“Thank you. You all have given me much to think about it. When we meet again… I will be stronger in body and mind. Farewell for now but I will return to challenge you again, Victor.”
“I’ll be waiting. And I promise to go all out next time, Atlas.”
Atlas took off to the west, heading to only he knew where.
Once he was far enough out of sight, Vic laid down on the ground, exhausted.
“Well, that’s enough bluffing for the next decade. I really underestimated him.”
Donna sat down to his left, Keiji on his right.
“Told you that you were being cocky. We all built him but he’s out of all of our leagues,” Keiji said.
“Yeah… but I really wanted to do it, y’know? Kinda humbling to be beat by your own creation.”
“If it makes you feel better, I lost to him too,” Donna said.
“Wait what? When did you fight him?”
“I’ll tell you on the way back. Not my finest moment, but I put up a good fight.”
“Proud of you. You’ve come a long way in your training. But after that fight… I’m going to need to get a lot stronger and pick my own training back up. I kinda feel like I’ve been stagnant for awhile, just sort of winning my fights through grit and will power. But if Atlas had been hostile… I don’t think I could’ve stopped him. So, I’ll need to get back to the drawing board and see what I can do to take myself to the next level.”
“And we’ll be there to help you however we can. But uh… Vic, finals are in like two weeks. Maybe focus on that first?” Keiji suggested.
“I’d rather get beat up by another robot,” Vic groaned.
<< < >

I was talking to this guy for just under a year, and to say the least, the breakup was bad. We had it coming for a long time and logically I knew that this wouldn’t work out but I let my emotions get the better of me and I invested all my energy into putting us back together and now I feel devastated. At the start, he’d been so understanding and empathetic and considerate and I know the start is always meant to be when people show up their best but the fall off was mad. He became someone completely different and I definitely saw a very scary and ugly side to him. We were arguing a lot for the last couple of months but the arguments were literally him just blaming me for ever speaking up about the things he did (and there was a lot 💀💀💀💀💀) or expressing any sort of emotion. I would brush things under the rug but naturally I was still upset so after a few days I’d try to bring things up in a calm manner, which would result in him ignoring me for days and trying to end things. This happened multiple times. He would hurt me and then avoid me which further hurt me.
Right before we broke up he’d done a lot of despicable things to me but we reached a good point eventually (guess who had to concede showing any type of feelings or emotions for this to happen 🙄), and he finally started apologising for things on his own so I saw this as an opportunity to express how I felt. Bad move apparently because he just ended up saying and doing the worst things possible and then we broke up.
I guess I’m struggling to come to terms with how he could do me like that. sure, he had questionable character and messed up traits but I didn’t think he’d stoop so low especially when I think back to how everything was good at the start (back when he actually put effort loll). I have zero clarity and I feel manipulated and stupid. He said he was gonna focus on deen which is good but the things he did were downright evil and I can’t stand the idea of him kidding himself that he’s bettering himself while I’m left w so much emotional damage.
On top of this, I have so much to stress about in my life and I made things very difficult for myself by focusing on him this entire year, and I have a lot of regrets. How do I get over this mental blockage? I’m fine without talking to him but at the same time I want clarity even though I know he would never give it to me anyway. Either way, all the energy I put into us has meant that other areas of my life are suffering and my future is about to go downhill as I’m gonna do badly in these upcoming exams.

“Ready to make history, baby?”
I looked over toward Sheila as she stood on the gangplank leading up to The Burger. I still couldn’t believe she named our research ship ‘The Burger’... emotional relevance be damned.
“It's not exactly history,” I corrected.
“Oh come on! If your survey is right, this trench might run even deeper than the Challenger Deep, and you’re gonna be the first person to explore it! How is that not exciting?”
“Might be deeper, we only have a limited amount of topological data. And even if it is deeper, we’re talking only a few hundred feet at most, it’s really not that im-”
Sheila silenced me with a kiss.
“Nerd.” She teased, and I found myself too flustered to reply. After five years of marriage, she still could leave me speechless with just a kiss. God… how did someone like me end up with a woman like that?
Then again, how did someone like me end up where I was in general? It was honestly a little overwhelming. Standing on the dock, getting ready to board that ship and join the ranks of Jacques Piccard and James Cameron (yes, that James Cameron) as one of the few people to take a manned submersible down to the deepest parts of the ocean. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared too. Diving down that deep could easily be a one way trip if even the slightest thing went wrong. My submarine would be experiencing between 600 to 1100 atmospheres of pressure and while we’d tested it over and over again to make sure it would actually be up for the challenge, there was still a lingering iota of doubt in the back of my mind. All that needed to go wrong was one little thing, and that would be it for me.
The scariest part is that I probably wouldn’t even know what had happened… I’d simply be gone… and Sheila would be alone. The thought of that caused a momentary spike of panic in my chest that almost made me want to call this whole thing off.
Almost.
But, then I felt her hand close around mine. I looked up into her bright blue eyes, and saw her gentle smile.
“You’re gonna be okay, hun,” She promised. “You and your team have been running the numbers, right? It’s gonna go just fine!”
I nodded slowly.
“It’s gonna go fine…” I repeated, before she leaned in to kiss me, and gently pulled me by the wrist up onto the deck of the Burger.
She was probably right.
It probably would be fine.
Probably…
The trench I’d be exploring was a fairly recent discovery, located south of Greenland, in a vast stretch of water situated directly between Newfoundland and Iceland. It’d been uncovered during a topological survey in the area, and my team had taken an interest in investigating it further. At minimum, it was believed to descend to about 35,000 feet deep (over 10,000 meters), although the current theory was that it might have run even deeper. Determining the exact depth of the yet unnamed chasm was just one of the intents of our dive. The rest was studying the organisms that might be found down there, and how they might have differed from the ones found in other deep ocean trenches (some variation being expected given the isolated environment they were developing in.)
I had to admit, it would be exciting to see what new life might have developed in a place such as this, especially if it ran even deeper than our predictions… and that excitement was enough to make me chase the fear of the risks out of my mind, even if it was only briefly. While Sheila went to make sure we were ready to embark, I caught myself wandering out toward the rear of the ship where my submarine, The Tempura, waited for me. Did this submarine deserve a better name than The Tempura? Probably. But, this was my project, so I got to name it and since Burger was already taken, Tempura was the next best name I had. I liked to think that the subs namesake might approve… if she hadn’t died fifteen years ago. Shrimp don’t live very long.
As the ship began to depart, I caught myself reminiscing on how I’d ended up here… it really was all because of those damn shrimp, wasn’t it? Well… maybe not all because of the shrimp. But they were certainly part of it. Back when I was a lot younger, I never really gave much of a shit about anything at all. I guess I did have a thing for the ocean… the great, romantic vastness of it. The sense of adventure that it beckoned with. The endless mysteries that lay within its dark depths. I used to read about it all the time when I was a kid and I especially loved the classic adventures: Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, and Melville’s Moby Dick… but that love was just confined to my books. I didn’t really have any interest in actually going out and seeing the ocean. Hell, the idea of going to a beach and standing in the sun with my toes in the sand seemed miserable to me. I was happier (although calling myself happy might’ve been a little disingenuous) alone in my room, enjoying the company of books as opposed to people.
Then came the shrimp.
One of my online friends kept them as a hobby. He used to post pictures of his tanks all the time, and I always thought they looked kinda cool. He said that if I was interested in them, I should try keeping some for myself, and during a particularly bad bout of depression, I figured that maybe it might be worth a shot. So, I bought a cheap tank and some cheap decorations, bought myself some shrimp… and promptly watched them die over the next few weeks. That… that bothered me. I don’t know why but… it really bothered me. I’m still not entirely sure how to describe what it was that I was feeling. Guilt? Defeat? Shame? Here I was, trying to set up a habitat for these creatures just to have something to do to keep the suicidal ideation at bay, and I’d failed almost right out of the gate.
Was I just that bad? Was I just that much of a failure? Was this just going to go to shit just like everything else in my life did, because I was just such an abysmal piece of shit who barely deserved the life she had? Had I just not tried hard enough? Was I too apathetic? What had happened? What went wrong?
It bothered me.
It bothered me enough that I made up my mind to just dump the remaining shrimp down the toilet and toss everything. Forget about it. Move on. End of story. But… that wasn’t fair, was it? The shrimp didn’t all deserve to die just because I couldn’t be bothered, did they? Sure, they were just shrimp, but they were alive too, just like me. They deserved to be alive.
I owed it to them to try and keep them alive, didn’t I?
So… I didn’t dump the shrimp.
Instead, I started doing some reading. Started looking into what I was doing wrong and how to do it all better. I actually got really into it and a few months later, I had a nice planted tank. Looking back, it was amateur shit… but it made me happy. I’d even picked out names for my two favorite shrimp. Burger and Tempura. They’d been the last survivors of my original batch, and they were the ones I ended up caring about the most. Caring for Burger and Tempura gave me a purpose. It became an obsession… and that little obsession drove me to finally start turning my life around.
Like I said, shrimp don’t live for very long. Burger and Tempura were long dead by the time I graduated with a degree in Marine Biology. But they were the ones who inspired me to finally get my life in order. Hell, the shrimp were half the reason that I met Sheila. She was something of an aquarium fanatic too… we’d met on a forum, and gotten to talking. I found out that she just so happened to be studying Marine Biology at another school, and we bonded pretty quickly after that. After graduation, I moved to California to be with her and after that, the rest is history. She was my rock. She was the one who always pushed me to be the best possible version of myself… and I loved her more than I ever knew I could love someone.
A glance back at the shore, fading into the distance tore me out of my reminiscing, and I shifted my focus to the present, going over The Tempura to perform some quick checks. My colleagues and I would be checking and rechecking the submarine over the next two days as we made our way toward the dive spot. Considering the danger that descending that deep posed, I didn’t want to take a single unnecessary risk.
I had too much to live for, after all.
***
The day of the dive, I couldn’t notice how excited the rest of the crew seemed… well… Sheila’s usual crew seemed excited. I guess to them, this was just another research expedition, no different than the ones Sheila usually took this ship out on. Lately her research had been focused on the analysis and study of whale calls. Her recent voyages had involved following their pods, recording their calls and playing them back to see how the whales reacted. It was fascinating stuff, but my research was admittedly a lot different than that.
My obsession had drawn me to the denizens of the deep sea. I’d used The Burger for expeditions before, although none of them had been on quite the same scale as this one. Up until today, the most ambitious thing I’d done was send down unmanned submersibles with cameras. Those submersibles had typically returned. We had lost a few early on due to technical glitches, but the past few years had been blissfully uneventful. Logically, this dive would probably be uneventful as well. But it was still hard to get the jitters out of my head.
My team and I did the final checks necessary to make sure that The Tempura was good to go, before setting up the crane to begin lifting it up. In less than an hour, I’d be inside of that thing, descending to the darkest depths of the ocean.
It didn’t feel real.
I felt Sheila’s hand on my shoulder, and looked over at her.
“Moment of truth, huh?” She asked. She probably meant it to sound encouraging, but it just sounded ominous.
“Moment of truth…” I replied.
“You’re gonna be okay, honey. I know you will.”
She reached out to gently squeeze my hand and gave me a reassuring smile that I meekly returned.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be okay,” I agreed, although there was an element of a lie in it. Statistically, yes. It probably WOULD be okay. But there was that lingering anxiety in the back of my mind that just wouldn’t go away. I looked quietly out at the submarine before me and couldn’t shake the thought that it sort of looked like a giant coffin. Unconsciously, I found myself squeezing Sheila’s hand tighter than normal. She just held me close and pressed a kiss to the top of my head, before gently rubbing my back.
“You’ll be okay,” She promised.
“Dr. Jenner, we’re ready for you.” I heard one of my colleagues say.
Moment of truth.
I took one last look at Sheila, and gave her a quick kiss on the lips for luck. She smiled at me, and I smiled back anxiously at her before heading over toward the submarine.
The crew helped me enter the cockpit and get myself situated inside. The cockpit of the Tempura was fairly cramped and not particularly comfortable. Space and comfort aren’t really luxuries you can afford in a submarine like this. The instruments I needed took up a lot of space, leaving little room for me in there… and I am not a very big person.
Once I was inside, they sealed the hatch. Then the diagnostics checks began.
“Grayson, can you hear us in there?” I heard Sheila say through the radio.
“Loud and clear,” I replied.
“Great. We’ll keep in constant radio contact, just to monitor the signal. In the meanwhile, how’s everything looking in there?”
“Green across the board so far,” I said, although I hadn’t finished running all my final checks yet. Ultimately, nothing was out of place.
This submarine was as good to go as it was going to get.
“I’m all good in here,” I said once I was done. “You can drop me when you’re ready.”
“You got it, honey. Let’s get you in the water, run one final round of tests and start lowering you down.”
A short while later, I felt the submarine begin to move as the crane lifted it off the deck and lowered it into the water. The Tempura honestly resembled its namesake in a way, being long and cigar shaped, only vertically oriented instead of horizontally oriented. We’d admittedly taken more than a few design cues from James Cameron’s Deepsea Challenger. Why fix what isn’t broken, after all?
Once I was in the water, a 1000 pound releasable ballast weight would cause the submarine to sink. Releasing that weight was also my ticket back to the surface, and I could either trigger it from inside the cockpit, or, in the event that the release failed for any reason, it would trigger automatically after roughly 12 hours of exposure to salt water.
Ideally, this would be the first of a number of dives I’d be undertaking… and if all went according to plan, the Tempura could be the first of many similar submarines that would allow other researchers to safely and effectively descend to extreme depths. If all went well, this could be a massive leap forward for researchers like me, allowing us to better explore the deepest depths of the Hadal Zone and learn all we could about the ecosystems down there via direct observation.
If all went well.
If.
Through the viewport, I watched as I was lowered into the ocean. A few of the other crew members had donned diving gear to escort me down, and after they did their final checks and I did mine, we were fully ready to go.
“All’s green across the board,” I said into the radio. “You can start my descent.”
“I hear you, honey,” Sheila replied. “We’re letting you go. Have fun down there.”
“Yeah, I’ll try…” I said quietly as finally, my submarine began its descent.
I took a deep breath, and told myself again that everything would go fine. We had checked everything on this submarine. We’d tested it rigorously. I wouldn’t have allowed myself to set foot inside of it if I hadn’t personally assured that it was safe. But anxiety never really goes away, does it? The crew couldn’t accompany me far. After only a few meters, they fell behind me as I sank deeper and deeper into the infinite, empty blue of the ocean. Soon after, the tether was released.
I was officially on my own.
“60 feet,” I heard Sheila say over the radio. “How are you doing in there?”
“Good,” I replied. “Doing… doing good.”
The submarine continued to descend. Through the viewport, I could see a few stray fish, but nothing particularly eye catching. I almost felt alone down there… almost…
“120 feet…” Sheila said.
“Still doing good,” I replied.
The descent continued, as the waters slowly grew darker and darker.
“400 feet…”
Everything around me just kept getting darker and darker. Only a fraction of the light from the sun ever reached these depths… and I’d be lying if I said that darkness didn’t feel a little… oppressive.
“800 feet… still feeling good?”
“Yeah, still feeling good…” I said, although it was a bit of a lie. If anything, I was second guessing all of this, but I wasn’t about to say that out loud.
“1000 feet… still good?”
“Still good…” I murmured. “I hear you loud and clear.”
Deeper… deeper… deeper.
“1500 feet…”
Three miles. I was three miles away from home. Three miles away from Sheila.
“2000 feet…”
Still a ways to go.
“3000 feet…”
By this point, it was fully dark outside of my cockpit. Outside, all I could see was inky darkness. Even the submarine’s lights didn’t really cut through it. And the kicker? Relatively speaking, I wasn’t that deep. Fishing trawlers reached deeper than this. Better to conserve power until I was at the bottom. My descent continued.
“6000 feet… still good?”
“Still good…”
The check ins were becoming less frequent. My descent still continued… deeper… deeper… deeper. By now, I’d entered the Hadal Zone. But there was still so much deeper o go.
“8000 feet…”
This was past the depths that most whales would dive to… and I still had a ways to go.
“10,000 feet.”
This was close to where the ocean floor usually bottomed out… and yet there was still so much further to go. No. I was really only a third of the way there. How long had it been?Not much had happened beyond my descent and a few sightings out of my viewport, but time had been passing. A glance at my watch confirmed it’d been almost an hour since I’d started to sink… and I knew I wasn’t even close to the bottom yet. The submarine continued to descend, sinking ever deeper as I dropped into an infinite darkness that few had ever dared to witness.
“15,000 feet.”
This check in came later than the others. At this point, Sheila and the crew must have figured that no news was good news, and they were right. I just continued to sink peacefully, down into the crushing depths of the ocean.
These were the depths that one might normally find deep sea fish… and yet I was going somewhere even deeper than that.
“20,000 feet…”
So close…
I continued to sink.
“25,000 feet.”
Soon… and finally…
“30,000 feet. You still doing alright, honey?”
“Yeah… yeah, I’m doing good,” I assured her. I was so close…
By this point, my real work had begun. I’d engaged the lights and begun documenting what little I could see using the on board cameras. Granted, there wasn’t much life at these depths and what little there was, was scarcely documented. Most of what was down here consisted of invertebrates and microscopic life that seemed to float past my viewport.
The light seemed to draw a few creatures in search of food. Small, hardy things that resembled shrimp.
“How’s it looking, Grayson?”
“Dark,” I said, half joking. “We’ve got some life… shrimp. They’re translucent. Can’t get a great look at them… but we’ll see what the cameras pick up.”
“They’ve recognized you as a friend,” Sheila said. I could almost see the smile on her lips as she said it.
“Yeah…” I replied, “Tempura sent them a message, told them I’d be down. How am I looking on depth?”
“35,000 feet… you seeing a bottom yet?”
“No… not that I would until I was there.”
“Damn… how deep does this go?”
“It can’t go that deep…” I murmured, although I really wasn’t so sure about that.
The submarine continued to sink…
36,000 feet…
37,000 feet…
38,000 feet… and then finally, just past the 39,000 foot mark, I finally saw solid ground below me.
Looking through my viewport, I could see a familiar dark brown diatomaceous sludge, covering the seafloor. Microscopic life, likely similar to what had been observed in other deep sea trenches, such as the Challenger Deep.
I needed to gather a sample.
As my submarine reached the bottom, I extended the mechanical arms, pressed flat against the surface of the Tempura, and opened the collection port near the bottom of the ship. Slowly, I sifted some of the sludge into the port. My disturbance of the seafloor kicked up a cloud of the microbial colony, and I could’ve sworn I saw something wiggling through the debris. A pale, white thing, perhaps some sort of sea cucumber? I hastily angled my submarines camera to try and catch a glimpse of it, before returning to my collection. Even in this forlorn place, there was still so much to see! And here I was… completely forgetting my fear as the excitement took hold of me! Few people had ever been down to these unfathomable depths… and yet here I was.
It didn’t feel real but it was! I had reached the deepest part of the ocean!
“How’s it going down there?” I heard Sheila ask. Her voice was a little garbled. The connection down here was faltering.
“It’s beautiful…” I said. “I can’t wait for you to see it!”
“I’ll bet…”
“I’m going to do a sweep of the area, see what samples I can gather,” I said. “What’s my time right now?”
“Three hours. You’ve got nine before your connection to the weight deteriorates and you start to ascend.”
“I’ll make the most of it,” I said. The plan was only to stay down there for six hours, and I didn’t want to push that limit. Life support would only last me for so long, and one little error was all it would take for the ungodly pressure down here to crush me.
I began to move the submarine. Mobility was limited. This thing wasn’t built to travel far. But I still had some limited movement. I recorded all that I could, filming the shrimp that investigated my light, and the things that slithered and crawled through the muck, likely feeding on the carpet of single celled organisms that populated these depths.
The first two hours were… well… I hesitate to call them uneventful, they were actually very fascinating, but little of note happened beyond my recording of a few specimens.
Midway through the third hour though, as I was reaching one of the rock walls of the abyss, I noticed something just above the edge of my viewport swimming away from the light. I could’ve sworn I saw slender, pale tentacles of some sort. Was that a squid? Were there squid down this deep? I wasn’t aware of any species of known squid who could reach these depths… but in this unknown place, what use was the known?
I moved my light and my camera to try and catch another glimpse of it, but whatever it was, it seemed to be gone. Maybe I’d see another one. I still had plenty of time.
“You made a noise. What’d you see?” Sheila asked.
“Something big… I think,” I said.
“Down there? Like a fish?”
“Squid. You wouldn’t find any vertebrates down this deep… the pressure would crush their bones.”
“Jeez…”
I didn’t reply to that, still searching for the thing I’d seen. I shone my light up along the walls of the chasm and angled my camera up as far as it would go. I could see a few volcanic vents, spewing dark clouds into the darkness, and more diatoms. But not much else. Strange invertebrates crawled along the walls. Small creatures, no bigger than an inch long. Related to isopods, perhaps? If I could collect one as a sample, I would have… although taking any of those back to the surface would surely kill them. They were built to live under the impossible pressure of these depths. Taking them to the surface would rip them apart.
I went back to my research, and it wasn’t long until I saw something in the darkness, just on the edge of where my flashlight reached. Trailing white tendrils, snaking their way through the darkness. My eyes narrowed as I moved the submarine forward, trying to catch whatever it was in the light. I saw the shape move, its body turning… I saw its tendrils unfurling. Whatever this was, it was big. It was almost as big as The Tempura… although it was also slender. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought I was looking at some sort of floating debris, but this far down? No. And debris wouldn’t move like that.
This had to be a deepsea squid… or perhaps some other type of cephalopod? Something that preyed upon the various invertebrates down here, perhaps? It seemed to float, just out of sight for a bit, as I tried to get closer. I angled up my light to get a better look at it. The light seemed to shine through it, like some sort of ghost… but I did manage to get a look at it.
Although that look…
That single look made me freeze up.
This things slender tendrils certainly resembled a cephalopod of some sort, but the rest of it… the rest of it looked like something else entirely. Its body was thin, emaciated and translucent, yet despite that it still had characteristics that almost seemed… human. It wasn’t human! Not by any stretch of imagination, but the resemblance was there. It almost reminded me of an exhibit I’d seen in a museum once, depicting a preserved, fully removed human nervous system. I could see a similar shape in its translucent body. Its head seemed almost human as well… albeit with no eyes, and a lamprey like mouth I could only describe as fleshy yet crablike.
Still, despite having no eyes I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was looking at me. And that was when I felt something hit the submarine.
I felt a sudden jolt of panic in my chest. For a moment, I thought that the pressure had started to crush me, but no… no, everything was still fine. Something had just hit me. But what? It didn’t take long before I got my answer.
Another pale creature floated past my viewport, swirling gracefully in the cold dark waters. I watched it for a moment with wide eyes, before noticing its ‘head’ turning slightly toward me. Then, almost instantly, it launched itself at the submarine, darting toward me with blinding speed.
I heard a distinct THUD as its body collided with me, and I could see its pale tendrils pressing against the viewport, twisting and writhing violently. It was trying to attack me. The first creature that I’d seen lunged as well, pounding on my submarine with another THUD. And moments later, I could hear more impacts against the hull. There were more of them… and they did not like having me down there.
“What’s going on?” Sheila asked.
“Somebody doesn’t like me…” I said. “One of the animals down here… some kind of squid, it’s just started attacking the hull.”
“How bad is the damage?”
“Not sure… could be nothing, could be-”
I felt the submarine shake as I tried to move it. The thrusters that pushed me forward weren't responding. Had something gotten caught in it? One of the creatures perhaps?
“Grayson?!” Sheila asked.
“Lost propulsion…” I said. “Fuck… I can’t move.”
“Then drop the weight and come up!”
“No, it’s fine, there’s no other damage, I can still use the port and starboard thrusters to-”
“Grayson!”
I paused. There was genuine panic in her voice… enough to make me realize that even if these things stood little chance of actually breaching the hull, taking the risk would be a fatal mistake.
“I’m on my way up…” I finally said, before reaching out to disengage the ballast weights.
Immediately, I felt myself beginning to rise, although the tentacles clinging to my viewport didn’t disappear.
“We’ve got you…” Sheila said. “Rising up to 38,000 feet.”
The submarine continued to rise, but the creatures clinging to me went nowhere. In fact… I was sure I could see more of them. More pale shapes coming up through the darkness, and these ones filled me with dread. I thought I had been looking at some sort of eerie undiscovered life. But seeing what was coming up toward me now… I knew that I was looking at so much more. The creatures swimming up toward me through the darkness carried weapons… makeshift stone spears and daggers. Primitive tools… but tools all the same.
Signs that these were more than just undiscovered animals.
Much. Much more.
The word: ‘Mermaids’ crossed through my mind, but these were something far different than the ones I’d heard of in folklore. These looked like they’d swam out of the depths of hell itself. Boneless pale tendrils reached for me… and they were getting closer. The pale shapes reached my submarine as I rose higher. I kept praying to whatever God may be listening that the dropping pressure would force them off. The air in a submarine is pressurized, so during normal operation, there should have been no danger of decompression sickness for me.
For them… well… normally I’d feel a little guilty about subjecting an undiscovered species of deep sea mermaids to the horrors of the Bends. But given my circumstances, I didn’t have a lot of other options.
They didn’t let go, though.
They should have. But they didn’t.
What were these things?
I saw a splayed hand press against my viewport. Or… it somewhat resembled a hand. It had suckers on it, like a tentacle and the ‘fingers’ curled open like tentacles. The creature crawled over my viewport, clinging to The Tempura as it rose, and I could see the folds of its crablike mouth opening and pressing against the glass. I could see some sort of bile rising up through its translucent throat, before it secreted it all over my viewport. Was it trying to digest me? Was that how these things fed? How strong were its stomach acids? Were they strong enough to-
The window cracked.
My heart skipped a beat.
“No… no, no no…”
“Grayson, what’s wrong?!”
“They cracked the window… S-Sheila they… oh God… oh fuck, they just…”
“THEY DID WHAT?”
“It’s secreting some sort of enzyme… it’s on the window, it’s… FUCK… I’m gonna die… I’m gonna die… I’m gonna die…”
“You’re not gonna die, baby! Just… just keep ascending, okay? You’re at 30,000 feet… just keep going…”
I nodded, and kept on rising, although the question of whether or not the rest of the creatures were trying to digest the other parts of my submarine floated through my mind. How much damage could The Tempura take before it imploded? How much longer did I have? The submarine still continued to rise… 25,000 feet… almost halfway home… almost… almost.
The creature outside of my viewport slithered along the glass, searching for a better area to try and digest. Past him, I noticed a few of his companions dropping off. Maybe the change in pressure finally was getting to them?
From the corner of my eye, I suddenly noticed a flashing light. A warning. The hydraulics on one of the Tempura’s arms were shot… what else was damaged?
I checked my oxygen levels. 32%.
I should’ve had at least 14 hours of air. I’d only been down there for about 6 hours… I shouldn’t have been this low.
31%.
No… no, no, no, no… they’d damaged the air tanks!
30%.
29%
“20,000 feet!” Sheila said. “You still with me, baby?”
“Y-yeah…” I said. I didn’t mention my air situation. I didn’t need to worry her further.
The submarine continued its ascent.
15,000 feet.
24%. I was running out of time.
The creatures still clung to the Tempura. How had the pressure change not killed them yet? My oxygen was dropping faster than before. I was hemorrhaging air. Another crack formed across my viewport. I let out a little, involuntary gasp before trying to force myself to stop hyperventilating.
“Grayson, what was that?”
“I-it’s fine…” I stammered, “It’s fine!”
“Grayson what the hell is going on down there?!”
“They’re still on the submarine… they’re still…” I paused, looking at my oxygen levels. “19%...”
“19% of what? Grayson what’s going on!”
I paused.
18%.
“Air… I’m… I’m losing air…”
“That’s fine, you’re going to make it!” She said, although I heard her voice cracking a little. “You’re gonna make it!”
I didn’t answer.
12,000 feet.
11,000 feet…
My oxygen level continued to drop.
15%.
14%.
12%.
9,000 feet.
The creatures still clung to me, as the submarine continued to rise. The one on my viewport was still there, slowly crawling along the glass again. I stared into its eyeless face and swore I was looking at the face of my killer.
7,000 feet…
Oxygen had dropped to 9%. It dropped to 8% before I even got to 6,000 feet. I was going to die here…
The viewport cracked again and I squeezed my eyes shut. The submarine rocked. I was sure one of the thrusters had been damaged. My ascent slowed.
“Grayson, what’s going on?”
“I’m sorry Sheila…”
Another crack spread across my viewport.
“I’m… I’m not making it back up…”
“YES YOU ARE!”
“I’m sorry…” The tears started to come as the reality of my death became clearer and clearer… this was it.
“YOU’RE COMING BACK UP, YOU HEAR ME! GODDAMNIT, I’LL BRING YOU BACK UP!”
“I love you…”
That creatures face pressed against the glass. It vomited more of its stomach acid onto the cracked glass, and I wondered if this might finally be what broke it. Part of me hoped it would be… the one good thing about dying this deep was that at least I’d die quickly. My suffering would be over. Then, the creature suddenly pulled back, twisting and writhing violently. I saw other shapes moving past it in the water, other ‘mermaids’ that had been clinging to the submarine.
Something was agitating them.
Something was scaring them off.
Then I heard it, over the radio… whale songs.
“What the hell…?”
“Grayson, are you still there?!”
“I… they’re finally breaking off. Sheila, what did you do?”
“I’m broadcasting some of the orca recordings we’ve been using. Are they still clinging to you?”
“No! They’re backing off! I… whatever you’re doing, keep doing it!”
The submarine kept rising.
5,000 feet.
4,000 feet.
4% oxygen.
I could still do this, right?
The submarine continued to rise.
3%.
3,000 feet.
2,000 feet.
2%.
1,000 feet… so close… I was so close…
I could almost see the surface through my viewport, rushing up toward me. I tried not to breathe. Tried not to move. All I did was hope.
500 feet.
I closed my eyes.
“Grayson we have your signal, we’re coming to pick you up!”
Sheila’s voice sounded so far away as my submarine finally breached the surface of the water… and with the last of my strength, I pulled the emergency release on the hatch, and threw it open, taking in lungful after lungful of fresh salty air.
I didn’t dare so much as touch the water beneath me… but I was topside again, and in the distance, I could see The Burger!
“We see you!” Sheila said, “We’ve got you baby… we’ve got you…”
“I see you too…” I said through the tears. “Thank you… thank you…” I didn’t have any words left in me after that.
As soon as I was back on the ship, I collapsed into Sheila’s arms, breaking down into tears as I clung to her, terrified that at any moment, some sort of unspoken other shoe would drop and I’d lose her all over again.
“Shh… it’s alright baby… I’ve got you… you’re safe… you’re safe…” I felt her fingers running through my air and I knew that what she said was true.
I was home.
I was safe.
***
I left my colleagues to review the data that the Tempura gathered during its short expedition. As far as I know, they haven’t published anything. I have a few ideas as to why, but I’ll keep those to myself. Let’s just say that some people would rather this information not become public.
I have a feeling that the Tempura may not be diving again for some time, if ever. I will confess that I do consider that a bit of a shame. Despite everything… I would consider it a success. It endured far more stressful conditions than I had expected, and from what I heard, required fewer repairs than I’d thought it would. But, even if it was approved for another dive, it wouldn’t be me piloting it. No. I will never be setting foot inside of that machine again, nor will I ever be returning to what my colleagues have been quietly referring to as ‘The Jenner Trench’.
I can’t.
Every night, I wake up crying after dreaming of pale shapes outside of my cracked viewport, clinging to Sheila and sobbing. I can’t put myself in that situation again.
I can’t.
Instead, I think I’m going to spend the next few years on solid ground. There’s a teaching position available at a local university. I think that might be the best place for me right now. Who knows, maybe I can help some other deadbeat discover a passion for marine biology.
After everything, my love for the sea remains unchanged… I’m just a little more wary of it, these days.

The field was down to five and Van was very sad to see Anthony go as he was a great Chef but if it came down to him and Anthony then it was always gonna be his buddy going. The final five celebrated their journey they had all been on and Nikki noted she was nominated in the second service and thought going back may have been the worst decision of all time but Nick said everytime he'd worked with her she had been a beast and was very proud of her performance. Kanae told Paula she hoped the 2 of them could be the final 2 and Paula said Kanae had a great future in this industry but between the 5 of them, she didn't see much of a difference. Chef Ramsay welcomed the final 5 back and said this had been a journey for not only them but himself and said the next challenge was to show their abilities as an executive Chef as this was the pricing challenge with the final 5 given $20 to make a stunning dish and good value for money. Paula said she'd been an executive Chef for 15 years and had her own restaurant so this should be the challenge where she shines and Van said he'd been waiting for a challenge like this and he can make a great meal out of anything.
Chefs Suzanne Goin, Bruce Kalman and food editor Lesley Barker Suter were pricing each dish and Paula was up first with her striped bass and it got a very strong review from all 3 judges to score an average of $39.33 and Paula said that was as good as she could have wished for and said that there better be something sexy to beat her. Kanae was up next with her halibut and while the fish was cooked perfectly, it lacked acidity and the garnish was lacking and Kanae scored an average of $31.66 to end up easily behind Paula, and Kanae said this was clearly not the challenge for her. Van continued the trend of seafood with his swordfish and it also got great reviews other than the potatoes maybe being a bit too salty and Van got a strong average of $37 but was still behind Paula who was the chef to beat. Nikki was up next with her pork chop and despite how rustic the dish was, it got great reviews but scored an average of $37.66 to still be behind Paula and Nick was the last chef who could dethrone Paula. Nick's tuna was praised as well but scored an average of $36.66 to end up in 4th as Paula won the challenge! Paula was rewarded with a day on a fighter jet and was allowed to take 1 chef with her, and she took Nikki as she came second.
Nick, Kanae and Van had to clean the front of Hells Kitchen, as well as Marino's car and prep the kitchen for dinner service. Kanae was grumpy all punishment as she thought Paula would take her and Nick didn't understand why Kanae was so upset as Paula was being fair in taking Nikki as she came second and Van felt like the stress of the competition was getting to Kanae and it was time for not letting up as this was the furthest he had gone in Hells Kitchen and it felt good. Nikki and Paula enjoyed their day out and Nikki said she hoped to face off against Paula in the final 2 as she thought Paula was the best chef there and Paula noted it was funny both Nikki and Kanae had wanted to face off against her but she wasn't going to get over confident as with 5 left the pressure was gonna be on.
Chef Ramsay said he expected as good a service as last time and Nikki was running the appetizers station and her first risottos and tortellinis came out nice and Nick who was on meat with Van was happy to assist with the salads and tartares to get the first 6 top out as Chef Ramsay said it was a great start. Paula was on fish and said this was going to be her hardest station by herself as Ramsay was pushing the tickets fast and she did get her first scallops out but trying to cook apps and entrees at the same time became an issue and admitted she needed help from Nick as Nikki was good on appetizers with help from Van. Paula started to have communication issues as she didn't respond to Nikki and Nikki was surprised that a chef as strong as Paula was getting so flustered and Chef Ramsay had to finally force a response out of Paula. Paula then got confused and fired an order of scallops with Nikki still 2 minutes out on risotto which saw Ramsay calling for risotto and wondering why he had scallops dying in the window now. Paula admitted she wasn't talking with Nikki and Nick at all and said she was going to fire fresh scallops and the ticket was finally completed as Nikki and Nick completed appetizers to give the black jackets a pretty strong start. Kanae was on garnish and determined to show herself as a leader and Van on the meat station was instantly stunned at the high orders of fillets and despite Nick trying to help him, Van said he was fine which made Nick nervous as he had 6 fillets to cook for the next 2 tables. Kanae said she was good on garnish but Paula said she was behind on pork so to not walk garnish but Kanae ignored her and walked garnish anyway and Paula was fuming at the communication as Ramsay was now demanding to know where the pork was! Paula managed to serve her pork but 1 of Van's fillets was RARE.
Nick said it was ridiculous that Van was not asking for help as he had an insane amounts of fillets and lamb to cook and Van finally asked for Nick's help even though he said he hated needing help on his station. Nick got him organized but Van then served his refire fillet and there was no sauce and Van realized he hadn't fired enough sauce, and Nick said there was meant to be 2 of them on there and it was Van's own fault for getting behind. Van did finally get his sauce hot to complete the table but Ramsay was not slowing down to push the next tickets out and Kanae now was flustered, forgetting what garnish she was cooking and struggling to respond to Van and getting completely lost on her station. Kanae did manage to get her garnish out but Paula was now dragging on turbot and when she pulled it out of the pan it was overcooked and dry. Paula's timing was well off and now Nick was jumping onto fish to help Paula get organized but the refire turbot came out to complete the table. Kanae wanted to show herself as the leader but called 6 all day on salmon but Paula corrected that to 4 and Van was now confusing things by calling the wrong all day on duck and Nick wondered what the fuck was going on. Chef Ramsay jumped in to tell them all to stop talking and called the real all day and while Paula and Van managed to get it together, Kanae ended up behind on garnish again and almost killed the table with Ramsay wondering where the fuck the fries were. Kanae finally bounced back and the rest of the black jackets did get their act together to finish service but Chef Ramsay said that was not what he expected at this stage!
Chef Ramsay said it wasn't a terrible service but the communication at times was a joke and asked for 2 nominees. Nick said there was no way him and Nikki were going up and it was between the other 3. Nikki said she hated voting for Paula but felt like she had the worst service tonight and Paula agreed it was a rough night as Nikki voted for Paula and Kanae. Nick voted for Paula and Van and this led to the other 3 all voting for everyone else and Van said if anyone needs to go home tonight it was Kanae as she confused everyone tonight. Kanae was livid with Van as she had nothing sent back while Paula was firing scallops too early, overcooking turbot while Van was fucking up fillets and this led to an argument between Van and Kanae as Van angrily said he was swamped by steaks and only messed up 1 and to cut that noise. At elimination Nick called Paula as the 1st nominee but said it was tied between Van and Kanae for the 2nd nominee and a furious Ramsay called all 3 of them forward! Ramsay said this was a very hard decision but eliminated KANAE for failing as a leader tonight but said her passion and fight were exceptional and told her to keep her jacket. Van said he was happy to survive especially as Nick wanted him gone and when he beats Nick to the prize it was time for humble pie and Paula said there was no time for slip ups at this stage and to get redemption after 16 years would be the best moment of her life.
Vote HERE for the next 2 chefs to be eliminated!
https://strawpoll.com/kogjk0xevZ6
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lZdCZ5yphKY-xzgCoYI23gLu5dxegS4eB5BC-Slk9ac/edit#gid=0

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I snap my head back down, with renewed vigour and hope about communicating with everyone without needing to play charades. With the knowledge that this is a microphone, my mind swims with the possibilities. If they can grow quartz crystals, they may be able to refine and grow silicon crystals, effectively making computers. Getting back on track, I add a resistor above the tremorsense and attach a ground wire below it. Tapping off between the resistor and tremorsense, I look to Silvra and gesture towards the translator.
“And what do you think you are doing?” She remarks, eying the setup with a mix of scepticism and intrigue. Her arms were folded, her brow furrowed in concentration.
“Just because you may be able to overhaul our entire way of life, does not mean I will give you something worth half a year’s wage. You best get to explaining yourself.”
Taking a deep breath, I sketched a quick diagram on the paper between us. I outlined how the piezoelectric effect of the tremorsense could convert sound into electrical signals that the translator could interpret. “It’s like turning vibrations into voices,” I explained, hoping the simplicity of the analogy would bridge the gap my technical terms could not.
“It…should work. Why has no one thought of this before?!” Silvra asks eagerly, reaching for even more paper, with Thallion leaning in to take notes as we possibly cross the language barrier.
Silvra passes me the translator, and carefully I place the tap wire on the central nub, and the ground on the body, similar to how their hands work with the metallic pin and the rest of their hand. I then reach for my phone and attach the power to the resistor, and the ground to the body of the translator as well.
I speak.
“can you hear me?” I ask, apprehensively, hoping I did not just blow up the device. It’s faint whine either being a really good thing, or a very bad thing.
“What was that?!” Lena turns around, after staring off into space as we got technical.
“i said, can you hear me?”
“yes we can!” Lena exclaims, not through the device, but from across the table, her eyes wide with astonishment.
“I can too. it is a little dull, but we can hear you. and you can hear us! without us touching it!” Thallion remarks,
I notice that yes, I can hear them, but rather than being melodic and transferring all the intent behind the meaning of the word, translating the emphasis, it comes across as dull, flat and lifeless, like text to speech readers. I find it quite painful to listen to.
“Perhaps it's a minor calibration issue,” I suggested, already thinking about adjustments to enhance the voice modulation.
“maybe i can sound like a robot for now, but perhaps, you should continue playing hot potato with the translator?”
“forget that!” Silvra remarks. “i may sound flat, but i don’t have to pass the device around! i can just leave it on a desk somewhere and it will just work!”
“not only is this an overhaul in this device, but think of the implications. we can talk across species without needing to touch very complex systems. we may even be able to communicate with animals, Lena!”
Lena perks up at this, “if i could talk to them, then i may be able to convince the big ones to leave us alone, but I worry about what that means if they are truly intelligent.”
Looking back at the device, I think back to the little I remember for analog electronics. The device can pass emotion and translate it, so it is capable of doing so. Maybe there is an issue with the prefilter? I could possibly fix that.
“silvra, it is amazing that we can talk, but I find it painful to listen to all of you due to the robotic voice. i think i can fix it. do you have the schematics for the device?”
“i don’t know what robot is, but i am guessing the flat sound, i do have drawings, let me go get them”
Silvra heads out, and Tallion is writing down everything. Lena is leaning over his shoulder.
“i know you are upset, but what you did is monumental, communication without contact, translation without touch. just remember that you are using your phone for power!” Lena states. I cannot tell emotion but bittersweet is all I can get.
Silvra enters again, knocking the snow off her clothes carrying some yellowed paper. Placing them down before me, I look across them.
“maybe increase the power input? That usually works for us. More space for clarity, or something,” Thallion adds, trying to be helpful.
I shake my head no, trying to ignore what he just said, based on the fact that is how humanity killed the first transatlantic cables. It is not a power issue as the device turns on, but a warping or nonlinearity of the data itself.
After a few moments of staring at the schematics, I find the input and the first thing I see is the massive choke directly after the input.
“a ha! found it!” I exclaim, reaching for the toolkit that Silvra brought over a few days ago. “just need to remove the choke at the front!”
“before you go voiding the warranty on this, why would that solve anything? that is how we regulate the flow of power!”
“i make direct current from my phone, so i don’t need to regulate it, in fact, that choke is destroying all high frequencies. i will talk about it if this works.”
“ok, but i’ll dismantle it. just point out the part on the schematic, and provide a jumper to cross over the holes”
Sighing, I grab the cables from the toolbox, along with the soldering iron and candle. Silvra grabs the components from me, and carefully unscrews the ground bell from around the power pin. Finding the power pin’s input into the interior, there is a large coil. Silvra quickly removes the coil and puts the jumper in its place.
Reassembling it, she gestures for me to talk. Taking a deep breath, and reconnecting my phone, I talk.
“Good afternoon everyone! And welcome to a new era! One of power for all!”
“I can hear you loud and clear!” Silvra exclaims, jumping up from the table.
“Astounding! Decoding the schematic and removing the choke did solve the problem!” Thallion replies.
“It worked before, and now it works better, I still think the first is more important to document”, Lena interjects, clearly getting bored of all of this tech talk
“So, Silvra,” I mention, “removing the choke works due to the same way the coil of wire moves coins: magnetism. Over the next few days we’ll be going over this in a lot more detail, but the choke does not choke the current, it converts it into magnetism, which is then released later. A changing current results in a changing magnet inside. It is very weak but enough to smooth input ripples, and stretch out the input spike slightly, which is probably why it is there in the first place.”
“But it comes with a downside. It acts stronger on faster switching pulses than on slow ones. My dc power has only an on pulse, but the signal of my voice is made of many higher vibrations. The choke would have killed this high frequency, and would have only passed the lower, which would be the fundamental frequencies only, sounding flat. The translator would then only be able to act on this flattened signal.”
“Now, I only got about half of that, but it stores the current as something called magnetism, saving it for later, and smoothing out the input,” Thallion states, looking up from his notes.
“Exactly. Think of it like a dam. Takes the surges and smooths them out, but you lose the changes caused by individual rainfalls”
“So what exactly is magnetism?”
“That is a good question, and contains several fields, chemistry, physics, all of what we classify as science. It will look like magic to you, but any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science. Just be ready to learn.
“Does this make the motor thing spin?” Lena asks.
“Yes, yes it does.” I reply, looking at my phone and the power slowly but steadily dropping.

I desperately need help with getting out of debt. I know I’ve had terrible spending habits in the past, so in the last year, I started budgeting and being extremely careful about how I spend my money. I’ve gotten that part down, but now I feel like I’m treading water with my debts.
I take home about $4500 net monthly. My partner brings home about $2500 net, and none of this debt is his. Our monthly expenses total about $3k - rent and utilities, insurance, groceries and gas, and my partner and I split these expenses proportionally to our income. We have two dogs that cost us about $150 a month, $300 every 3 months for flea/tick and heartworm meds. We both have vehicles, mine still has an outstanding loan of right around $15k, $360 a month. I work from home, but we live near mountains and my jeep is what we use for adventuring.
I contribute 6% to my 401k each paycheck, current balance is around $12.5k. I also have a traditional IRA with around $20k and a Roth IRA with around $6k. I don’t want to touch any of this money if I can help it, especially my pre-tax accounts because I can’t afford the extra tax liability.
As far as my debts… it’s bad. Please don’t come for me - I am horribly ashamed of my shitty spending habits and the fact that I could end up with this debt and not even be able to tell what the hell I spent it on. I did go through a horrific breakup a few years ago and I ended up taking on a $2k a month rent by myself for a year (dumb decision), and I just didn’t give a damn about spending money because at the time, I made over $100k a year. Now that I’m cleaning up my act spending wise, I want more than anything to rid myself of this debt asap.
Here’s the breakdown:
Discover Personal Loan - $10,462.04, APR 15.99%, min payment $509.72
Bank of America Travel Card - $10,263.47, APR 0% until September of this year, then it jumps to 24% (this scares me the most), min payment $130.00
Bank of America Cash Rewards - $3,123.90, APR 24%, min payment $47.00
Navy Federal Cash Rewards Visa - $2,840.20, APR 14.9%, min payment $50.00
Citi Simplicity - $1,651.00, 0% APR until July 2025, min payment $20.00
American Express Platinum - $551.98, BUT this was literally from the ridiculous $695 annual fee, I never used this card since it was “free” with my previous employer. When I tried to call and ask them if they could just reimburse since I hadn’t used it in over a year whatsoever (there was $0 balance), they said I was too late because the statement period had just closed. Had I called a couple days earlier, they would’ve refunded me the full $695.
I’ve been paying most on the Bank of America Cash Rewards card, but only by a couple hundred extra bucks. My credit score is sitting at 615. I’ve never missed a payment on anything in my life, and somehow I have a ton of available credit so my usage is only 25%. Still not great. At all.
I’m open to any and all suggestions on how to get myself out of this hole. Let me know if I need to clarify anything.
Any guidance is appreciated!

I've never had a good opportunity to sit down and do a run through TTWL. I'd played a couple hours in the past, but never really made it the game I was going to play. Well, I've now spent about two weeks playing it in my spare time. I'm at or just after the Wastard boss fight, which is pretty close to the end of the main story. I've been doing some side quests, but I've wanted to unlock gear slots so I've been sticking to the main quest.
Overall, I am having fun. The good:

1. The game is fun. The enemies are fun to fight. Flying enemies are a bit annoying, but they're kept pretty rare. I like how chaotic combat feels.
2. I like that they made melee combat repeat by holding the button down. You don't have to mash that button anymore. 100% that should always be there going forward.
3. I like the idea of armor, rings, amulets, and melee weapons being drops. That's cool. I kinda wish armor actually gave you armor, though.
4. The story is fine. I appreciate the TTRPG jokes.
5. Setting is cool. A fantasy world that feels true to TTRPG settings and as goofy as Borderlands likes to be.
6. Voice acting is great. Villain is great. Tina is great. Other players are... whatever. I like Wanda Sykes even if her character is meh.
7. Enemy variety is good. Talking skeletons are hilarious. Goblin "tricksters" in barrels are fun even if their ram attack has too much knockback.

However, I've got some criticisms. I'm wondering if I'm the only one to notice these. Most of these are small, but... there's so many little things that together I think TTWL is easily my least favorite game. It's like a death of 1,000 cuts. No huge glaring issues. Just things that tell you they didn't put as much care into Wonderlands. The game is undercooked. The bad:

1. There aren't really mechanics around melee combat. You just hold down melee, and then try to keep the enemy on screen. There are talents that make you better and the weapons often feel satisfying, but overall melee doesn't feel very deep for how important it seems to be.
2. Melee interrupting and resetting reload animations feels awful. Reload animations feel relatively long in WL, and if you miss the timing a little bit because some mob is eating your face that you want to finish off, you have to start the whole thing over. I really, really hate it.
3. The classes are kinda underwhelming. They remind me of BL1 classes more than anything. The ability trees are kinda dull; mostly static mods that don't do a whole lot plus a few kill skills. The action skills just feel like unique spells unless it's a pet, but the number of spells waters them down a lot. Having two classes is a great idea, but... it's not transformative gameplay like the BL3 classes were. Ability scores in particular feel lazy.
4. The way encounters work in instances really sucks. Instead of organically approaching an area, you're dumped into a combat arena. There aren't enough maps, either, or they get reused way too much. Instead of knowing where the enemies are and where safety is, they teleport in around you so you're constantly surrounded. Surrounded by melee enemies that will happily mob you and pin you in a corner. That might be realistic, but it's sure as shit ain't fun in an FPS. It's a good thing that snipers seem mostly terrible because there's so many encounters where they won't do anything. Need to run away and reload? The game will helpfully teleport enemies in front of you! And god help you if you die during the third stage of one of these instanced dungeons because you get to do all three of those fights again!
5. OK, it's a little thing, but when you complete an overworld shrine they don't activate on their own. You have to go back and activate them. Why? Why isn't finding all 4 parts good enough? And why are the bonuses so boring? Faster walking on the overworld? 10% more XP? These... suck. They feel like, "We nerfed you from baseline so we could find rewards to give back to you!"
6. The overworld likes to steal or lock your camera controls in certain areas. No. Bad. Stop that.
7. Map navigation on PC is fucked, too. You have to drag the reticle on the map to select things. The mouse just isn't used as a pointing device. Oh, but if you accidentally have the mouse where the list of travel locations are going to be on the UI when you open the map, well, then the map will automatically refocus to that spot instead of where you are. Want to refocus on yourself? Too bad. The easiest way to do that is to move the mouse to the right side of the screen then close and re-open the map.
8. The enemies feel... bizarrely bullet spongey. Worse, quite a lot of them just charge at you and melee. Even with an FOV of 105+, it's obnoxious simply because it's hard to see what is going on. I want the option of switching to third person camera.
9. So many enemies randomly have immunity shields, too, where you have to wait until you can attack them. That's maybe fine for an area boss, especially when they flood the boss arena with adds or do a phase change, but it's bullshit that a mook pirate with a ship's wheel as a "shield" just takes no damage or that the miniboss has a 15s immunity shield on a 20s cooldown. It's not overpowered. It's boring. I'm reminded of EgoRaptor's Ocarina of Time video: "There is so much goddamn waiting"
10. There's a lot of enemies that explode randomly when they die or have damage zones that persist after they die (sometimes from your own elemental weapons!). This has the knock-on effect of sometimes you win a combat, but then the last enemy explodes or drops a poison pool and that knocks you out. It feels very cheap and bullshitty in solo play whenever BL knocks you out after all the enemies die, and WL seems uniquely good at doing that to reset your progress by denying a Death Save.
11. The character creator doesn't really work. You get 5,000 sliders for the head and face, but they don't seem to do a whole lot. More oddly, there are only two body types, and they're kind of fixed based on class. You're a stabbomancer. Want your character to be a waifish girl assassin? Well, too bad. That's not possible. You either look like a kind of buff male wrestler or a kind of buff female wrestler. It feels like it misses the point entirely.
12. So many guns have slow projectile speeds or arcing projectiles that the gunplay really suffers. Certain weapons (magic blast shotguns and explosive lobbers) feel like they don't do the damage they're rated for, and the range of impact on the target is both extreme and too varied. Some weapons just have no effect at all. Others have huge knockback... but only sometimes. Both of these feel like they harm the quality of gunplay.
13. The loot feels like it sucks. It's too time consuming to go through it all, especially with the stupid inventory still being the same as it was in BL2. Like the rings and amulets don't feel like they do a lot unless you get a god drop, so it's hard to compare them.
14. The non-weapon class modifiers feel lazy and nebulous. "+10% Stabbomancer power." OK, great. I'm a stabbomancer. 10% of what now? Just my active skill? Every skill or talent? And the Epics have two classes chosen at random. So there's about a 1 in 20 chance that the game will drop loot with mods for both my actual classes, and about a 50% chance that it will have neither of them. Most non-weapon drop drops are automatically trash loot for you. But you had best pick it all up to sell, because....
15. Why are the SDUs so goddamn expensive? In fact, why is everything so goddamn expensive? If you want to buy something from the vending machine it's going to be 50% or more of your funds. I remember saving up to be able to afford maybe one thing from the vending machine in the future. That's steady throughout the whole game for me. SDUs are just a further drain.
16. Dark element seems too good. Like I just always keep a dark element weapon on me now because it's basically the only active way to heal. You can either find potions on the ground (why can't I carry them?) or use a vending machine to heal (which I don't think I've done since BL1) or explode a healing barrel or I can use a dark weapon. That's it. Oh, I suppose you might get a drop with 0.5% heal per second on it, but whatever. I get that lightning is good vs ward, poison is good vs armor, fire is good vs flesh, and ice is good vs bone. But dark is the only way to extend survivability, really. Mainly because running away is often impossible (instanced encounters).
17. The default keyboard layout is total garbage now, and I think it's because melee is important. WASD. E use. R reload. 1-4 weapons. Space is jump. F spell and G skill (or vice versa). H another skill sometimes. LCtrl slide and crouch and slam. Q is tag (I think?). C weapon mode. V is melee? Really? Why is such an important key there? It doesn't feel like they actually planned any of this out. I know it's the exact same layout as BL3, but the gameplay is much different. It's really annoying in ways I didn't expect. Why does it feel like there was just no thought put into how making melee important might prompt changes to the key layout? It just feels like every character is as input heavy as BL3's Zane, and it's because they didn't really think about anything.
18. This has been a constant issue for me since Borderlands 2 (in BL1 it felt appropriate). Since they keep making this thoughtless design mistake I'm going to keep bringing it up. Why do they keep starting you off with only 2 weapon slots? Why does gear drop that I can't even equip? Why are gear slots locked at all if you can just level-gate drops from some categories? It's a looter shooter focused on switching weapons and gear frequently! Let me use the loot that drops and let me use more weapons! This is a shitty progression mechanic, and it feels even worse here. I think I found my first ring 4-5 levels before I could actually equip it. I'd found two epic rings before I could even equip one.

I'm not going to give up on the game because in spite of all that it is often fun. But I think this is the worst BL game. Which is a shame because Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep is probably the top tier for Borderlands, IMO.

Sorry, it's a long one, but I could really use your advice 😞. I'm not sure if I'm being paranoid due to my insecure attachment style and past relationship baggage, or if my gut feeling is onto something and I'm slowly losing it... My partner (46M) and I (40F) have been together for nearly a year, but so far, I've only met one of his friends and not a single family member on his side. He has met several of my friends. I have no contact with my family since almost 6 years, so he technically also never met someone of my family.
We met about a year and a half ago on a dating app geared towards casual dating. At that time, neither of us were looking for a serious relationship; we were just in it for some casual fun. On our first date, he mentioned he was still technically married but separated from his wife for about a year, and they shared a 13-year-old son. Since the separation, he's been staying with his parents, while his wife and son reside in the adjacent house. He never spoke ill of his wife, which is something I really appreciate.
He claimed it was love at first sight for him when he first met me, but I didn't feel the same way. I found him intriguing and attractive, but the idea of a relationship didn't appeal to me at that moment, mainly due to our lack of shared interests. He never pressured me and always respected my space, but he did actively pursue me. For every date we had, he brought food and flowers, even though we were just friends with benefits at that point. He also went above and beyond, helping me with various tasks like gardening, fixing my shower and car, all at his own expense. And even insisted on me not paying him back. He even picked me up in the wee hours of the morning when I was stranded in a bar with friends and couldn't find my way home, had medications delivered to my doorstep when we both had COVID-19 and couldn't meet, and these are just a few examples...
Our physical connection is fantastic, and he is very attentive to my needs. Surprisingly, from the beginning we also had dates without sex, despite that being our initial intention. Things quickly became emotionally and mentally intimate, and we started sharing more and more of ourselves. He treated me with more care and attention than anyone ever had, which initially set off alarm bells in my head, but his gestures continued, I just found myself enjoying his company immensely, both in and out of bed, feeling incredibly comfortable and happy with him. He always made me feel valued and appreciated, never failing to be loving and attentive. And to this day there has never been a single negative word or action from him towards me.
Around four months into our dating, he had to travel abroad for work for a week. During that time apart, I unexpectedly found myself missing him dearly, which came as a surprise because I wasn't looking for a serious relationship. One evening during that week, he insisted on hearing my voice, and we ended up talking on the phone all night. A few days later, I confessed to him that I missed him more than I expected and that everything felt strange, especially since I didn't even know his last name. In response, he admitted feeling the same way and expressed his desire to come over and properly introduce himself when he returned. True to his word, he showed up at my door late that night, despite his delayed flight.
However, what followed was a bombshell. As he sat on my couch, he handed me his ID, revealing not only his last name but also a different first name, birthdate, and birthplace. I was so stunned and literally nearly passed out. He had lied about his first name and was actually two years older than he claimed. Even details about his son, whom he claimed was 13, turned out to be false; the boy was actually 17. This revelation shook me to the core because I had never suspected he was lying to me. Being the child of an alcoholic, I prided myself on having keen intuition, but I had failed to detect his deceit. While I had actually suspected he was still married to his wife, his lies about his identity blindsided me. He apologized profusely that night, explaining that he didn't know how to come clean after lying for so long. But when I confronted him about his last name, he realized he couldn't keep up the facade any longer.
He confessed that he and his wife had indeed been living separate lives for a while, even agreeing to see other people. However, a woman he had met on the dating app years ago had stalked him, leading him to adopt a new identity to protect himself. He never intended to fall in love with someone and only sought casual arrangements. Although they broke up, he maintained proximity due to familial and business obligations, leading him to remain close to his family, and he committed to fulfilling his responsibilities towards them. His wife suffered from cancer a few years ago, which apparently returned at the beginning of this year.
The day after this revelation, he came to speak with me during his lunch break, begging for another chance. The following weekend, I met his best friend for the first time. Despite my shattered trust, I believed that he was sincere in his remorse and transparency, so we decided to it another shot and shortly after even committed to an official relationship. Things seemed to go well afterward; we even went on a vacation together, and he started spending more nights at my place. He continued to be incredibly supportive and attentive to my needs. However, he never made any efforts for me to meet his son, which I tried to understand given the sensitivity of the situation.
About three months later, I broached the subject of meeting his son again, but he claimed that he and his wife had agreed to wait until their son had settled into his first semester at university before introducing him to me. I had no children of my own so I have no experience with this, but friends of mine with adult children suggested that it was unusual to wait so long. Despite my doubts, I trusted his explanation, although I wondered if his family even knew about me. He told me that he was committed to his family until the end of the year and planned to move out thereafter. However, when the year ended, his mother caused a commotion when he moved out, leading to our first crisis over Christmas.
His parents insisted that he drive them to a city four hours away on Christmas Eve to celebrate with relatives, which disappointed me, but I understood. I assumed he would want to spend Christmas Eve with his son, so I suggested that we meet on Christmas Day instead to cook and spend a nice evening together. He informed me that his son didn't want to celebrate Christmas with the family anyway, so my suggestion was fine. Although we spent the evening before Christmas Eve together, our plans were disrupted when he insisted on going home instead of staying over as originally planned, leading to our first argument. He received a message from someone, read it, and his demeanor completely changed; he began to repeatedly look at the clock. When I asked, he said he needed to go home. I asked if I could read the message because I immediately had a bad gut feeling, but he declined and drove off. Despite feeling uneasy, I let it go until Christmas Day, when he arrived two hours late without prior notice. Also, I only rarely heard from him the entire Christmas Eve and most of Christmas Day, which is pretty unusual for him. This pattern continued after Christmas, with him becoming increasingly unreliable with his timing. After pressing him on the matter of meeting his son and family soon, he admitted that his family was resistant to the idea of accepting me due to their loyalty to his wife.
Our relationship hit another rough patch on Easter when he spent Easter Saturday with his son, arriving at my place much later than expected. Frustrated that I still hadn't met his son, I confronted him, leading to another argument and him storming off to his best friend's place without contacting me for the rest of the day. His lack of communication left me feeling hurt and confused, but we eventually reconciled after a few days. Even today, we're still crazy about each other and often behave like teenagers. But for some time now, I haven't been able to enjoy our meetings. I question everything he says and does, wondering, can I believe him? Can I trust him? He lied to me so skillfully at the beginning. Is what he says about his family even true? It feels like we're not making any progress. He insists it's exactly as he says. But over a year has passed, and it seems like nothing has changed. I just have to keep being patient and endure.
Actually, he never really settled into his own apartment. Everything is makeshift; there's no functional kitchen, no chairs... not even a mirror in the bathroom. Yet, we still occasionally sleep there. At first, it was amusing, but we’re both two old for this sh*t and the student apartment adventure ended for me after five months of stagnation. I really tried to make the best of it, and I'm actually really self-sufficient and easygoing. But it has become draining... He also sleeps at his family's place more often lately, and less frequently at my place...
What are your thoughts on this? Am I overreacting? Should I give him and his family more time? I'm feeling exhausted and grappling with my trust issues. Am I being paranoid, or is my gut feeling accurate? What steps should I take? Extend more patience? Show more understanding towards his son and family for their reluctance to get to know me? Consider giving him an ultimatum? I'm feeling lost.

Title. I've been having this issue for quite some time now, I've been trying to learn a new hobby to occupy myself on my free time but i would always give up on the beggining. I would lose morivation and the will to learn pretty quickly. The biggest examples i have are trying to learn flute and learning how to do 3d modelling on Blender. I always had self esteem and anxiety issues and i think these two might have some fault on it.
Around a year ago i tried some anti depressants i had left over in my wardrobe and the two days i used them i was able to actually start learning how to 3d model without getting demotivated before running out on them.
Is there anything that would help me with this issue im having? I really want to learn more things but its so difficult...

Typical high-school story: I had a bully on my tail. He was one of those assholes that kept bugging me, jumping me and laughing while he pushed me around. And it happened once in a while, mostly I could avoid him. High school started at 9, and I used to walk to school so I would be there at 8, because about half past 8, the buses would come. And he would get on the walk from the parking lot up to the school.
Whenever he would bully me, I tried the pacifist approach first, just get away from there, he was an asshole anyway, not worth my time.... I remember one time in winter when him and his goons shoved me into a pile of snow and smoshed a snowball right into my face. I struggled to break free and then he suddenly just pushed me hard so I fell to the ground. I remember one of my friends (bless his heart) asking me if I was okay? "That looked like it hurt." I just said "I am fine!" before going away to a place to cry by myself and cursing the bully under my breath. That was all.
Until one day when I was on my way to the cafeteria. He stood in the middle of the doorway, blocking it and grinning widely. I asked if he could move, to which he just grinned "Hurr hurr, please move...". I turned around and started to walk away, thinking again to not start something..... Then I heard him laughing to his goons behind my back. And something snapped. I turned around and I ran straight against him, grabbing him by his collar and pushed him through the door! He fell down and I went into the cafeteria. I think I must've suprised him because he didn't get up and chase after me or something. My memory is hazy after this, I don't think I stopped the bully entirely because he could still call me names. Still, better than getting jumped.
When I tell this story, people can go "Good for you, you stood up for yourself against that bully!" Me though.... I feel I I should've done more! I can catch myself fantasizing about when he was lying there on the floor after I had pushed him, how I should've kicked his teeth in, gouged an eye out, stomped on his ribcage... I know, it wouldn't have been a good idea at the time, I would've gotten into all sorts of trouble. And it's just a power fantasy, ain't it? Only those things that happens in "macho-bullshit-fantasyland". I don't think I would be that violent, I didn't have the stomach for it then and certainly not now. Still, I hate this guy. So very much.
And yet, I don't want to hate this guy so much. I mean I am in my mid-30s now, I have dealt with issues bigger than him. The last time I saw the guy was at the pub, and since then I haven't seen him. He glanced at me and was like "Hey... I recognize you, you're (some guys) little brother, ain't ya?" To which I just glared at him and replied "Nope, I am the kid you bullied in high school." To which he just scoffed, that didn't happen.... But he did give me several glares throughout the night. As if he was scared of me trying something, maybe he thought I was drunk enough to try and hit him with a bottle or something?
Hell, he might've become an actual decent person for all I know! If I had been friendly to him at the pub, maybe I would've noticed a new, more mature side to him! Still... I catch myself wishing I had been more violent against him, as if justice still hasn't been done! He made my high school years a hell, and he still hasn't paid for it! He bullied me and... That's it?! He got away?! That's not fair!

TOO LENGTHY STORY BUT I WOULD BE SUPER GRATEFUL IF YALL CARED TO TAKE UR TIME OUT AND HELPED ME OUT OF THIS:(
idk how to interpret what my heart is going thro atm but all what i feel is pure baffleness and anxiety. im so stuck that leaving him or even thinking about him is making me feel guilty about something ive never done and thoughts like he loves me tirelessly so how would he live without me? i just wanna pour all my love to him even if im not at peace and always feeling like all what is happening is wrong, wrong for my mental health and my personal wellbeing as i think i would no longer be able to give him love as heartfully as i did.
its just am at a point in which him expressing his love for me, his random ilys or some cheesy goofy talks arent giving me the same happiness it used to give in the past. there are multiple reasons which mightve led to this one of which includes him having girls on his sc even after controlling my whole uni life and keeping me away from boys, i literally broke friendships avoided people and being a bad character in my life just for the sake of us but when i discovered him doing something which was firslty not allowed to me and secondly it was what i didnt felt right about as every rls has dynamics and it just didnt matched ours.
the main issue which gave us a rough patch was when we were on my bday lunch date, my intuition was sensing something is happening fishy behind my back since our last 2 3 meetups as he always refused to give his phone in my hands even tho so far i didnt found something that if he is cheating on me but whatever it is its still so strange not to share with me about his snapchat female friends i wouldve been angry if he wouldve told me but later i wouldve accepted and wouldve asked for the sam permission which i did in our biggest fight last week. in the samefight last week he gave a reasoning that i didnt told u cause 'i didnt wanted to have male friends too blah blah' why tf he was having girls? even tho the vague explanation he gave me was just like we dont even talk and they re just friends. i dont even open their snaps, they were present before you and he even sweared upon it that he got nothing with 'em and that date day after i saw everything was ruined and the only thing i was wanting at that stage was my 2 female friends and their shoulder to cry upon as honestly my lord knows how much of uni life i sacrificed for him and totally alienated yet stopped myself from doing things he didnt wanted me to. that same day he promised me that he would block yet remove all of them but in the last meetup which was on this saturday, i asked him to see his sc all cause of my strong intuition as i had a gut feeling that things are still the same, he firstly hesitated a bit and started becoming goofy just to stop me but nvm i managed to see his sc which he showed himself whilst the phone was still in his hands and thats the point which made me sus and i wasnt satisfied then i managed to ask him to see for the second time and he with his strange guilty-felt behaviour showed me, i then immediately clicked on search bar as convos can be cleared frm mainscreen so yea there i found bunch of girls in that bsf list and this broke me hella hard and at that v moment i wasnt able to accept it as he himself said that theyre removed but nvm they werent which i discovered after he left as at that time i had initiall shock and he was about to leave so yea-
one more thing to add that i saw more than 2 girls there but he denied means he partially accepted and said theyre the same people on his insta and were only 2 but as far as i rmr they werent and yk the fact that he was so proud and wasnt accepting until i told him to screenshare on which he tried to hide but i caught him eventually as he scrolled so fast and said see theres noone and stopped the screen but still as God wanted me to show me so after he screen shared again, one person was left to be unfriended which he might missed and thats how i caught him.
the question is my tears doesnt matter? and him who actually accepted his mistake at the first encounter time and was literally like that 'ik im wrong ishouldnt have done it, i shouldve known how much it would hurt u' but still repeating the same thing and letting them there is something which didnt satisfied me till this date as are those girls that much imp? am i not the priority? my feelings or anything? still while writing this im like he loves me endlessly and im literally his bestie his partner and just everything so how can i leave him but tbvh since then im not feeling happy and its just my heart isnt permitting me.. fb searches/visits of 3 4 girls profiles etc etc that has been happening like multiple times upon which he never admitted rather always putted me in guilt that i dont trust him... even after our fight which was presumbly the last one as i had enough of his toxic behaviour(didnt knew it was until i shared everything with bestie) which idk is masculinity or claiming behaviour but ive always loved that and never even for once humiliated or said to him that im interrogating him or being so rude when angry or in guilt ive always been the one who said sorry as i want to save us all cause he loved me so much and we both did alot but idk after this above issue i lost trust and i was hurt to the core as it hurt me so bad and he still managed to manipulate me and i didnt left. but for the first time ever in that fight i had my dominancy as he was guilty of something and i was expressing all what i had even tho im still not satisfied after his reasonings and the conclusion we made after that fight was that i made him promise me that he needs to proove himself and win my trust back again which he promised and told dont leave me and was later crying on vc which broke me as he told at that same time his father scolded him so bad and he was so weak at that moment that i felt pity yet the urge to fly over to him and calm him down as he was like im not a good bf nor a son. its just idk what im writing but i love him sfm that i just cant even if it involves sacrificing my mental health as in the past i was being tortured with words hella alot if boys even came in my convo or slightly involved in my uni life and the end was always me crying hard and loosing sleep. iwas in the circle then but now as i managed to see frm outside ,after i told it all to my soulsis my bestie, it feels so unfair.
even to mention that day's timeline was him crying, begging me to stay, having that anxiety attack after thinking his life without me all whilst being in my arms when i told him that maybe im loosing feelings for him (whose reason was the words he said to me when we had a fight after discovering that fb thing which he promised he wont do again.) and that sameday i discovered that sc thing for the second time and us having a big argument abt it as i asked for space etc but he was later able to convince me not to leave.
then certain re-ignition yet being head over heels over someone in my uni whom i liked as a person he was since last 6 months but i never had that strong feeling of love (idk what it is but my bestfr says that its love) until lastweek out of nowhere which made my situation super worse maybe it was after the prayer i made to Lord that give me whats better for me so maybe he paved ways and gave signs as since then things are developing between him and i and ik he loves me too but at the same time we both are hiding and unable to accept as he got goals maybe and im loyal to my bf... we never even for once flirted but its just the eyes and heart and how genuinely i speak about him which changes it all, the fact that we dont even have interaction as much as i always limited it till studies and he is a very gentleman type of person so yea i hope it makes sense even my bestfr says the same that maybe he is the one u deserve but nvm i cantt leave my bf and it would be hella hard as he is highly dependent on my love which i want to give yet i cant even imagine my life without him and he literally knows everything about me, we planned our eveything together, his whole fam knows and its been a long time we planned a long term thing but most importantly i dont want to hurt anyone thro my existence neither him nor that uni boy. thats literally the last thing i want and now im stuck condemning myself that its all my fault to feel this way about that uni boy and still loving my bf.
and due to some sort of developments and the convo with that uni boy is getting bit more comfortable, my besties adviced me that they think i should rather let him know that im in a rls otherwise he would get hurt but what if he judged my character and stopped talking to me afterwards? but nvm my friend told me to avoid him and whenever our convo goes out of studies i shouldnt.
im super stuck to what to do and my heart isnt at peace even its so hard to reply to his love txts and im feeling literally so bad about it as im constantly having that urge to cry whenever we talk, which is like alot yk as we're always on vcs or talking thro txts, cause he loves me and now i lost my feelings for him its just idk what my heart wants, im such a bad human a bad gf and ijdk what in this fucking world my heart wants me to do, maybe i would never be happy in my life ever.
ill appreciate that u made it till here, i got very bad explanatory skills but i hope atleast u mightve got an idea of my situation and i would be super glad to yalls advices as im literally suffering so bad. i need ur help and how to cope up with this situation.
PLS MENTION ME IN UR PRAYERS:)
ILY GUYSS

It's been rattling around in my head for a while, longer than I'd care to admit, and this is the first time I am even acknowledging this out loud, at least in the virtual sense. I'm also not quite ready to talk to my friends about this, but this group as always been so supportive, so I feel safe bringing it here first.
Not to date myself, but I feel like that Dane Cook sketch where he talks about finding any reason to stay (side note is he cancelled now?). My boyfriend (will call him James for anonymity's sake) and I been together almost 4 years, have lived together for 3, have a dog together, a whole life together! All of my close friends are married now and keep asking where he and I see ourselves in terms of marriage and starting a family. If you asked me that in the first year of our relationship, I would have said within a year or so we'd be married. But a lot of shit can happen over 3 years.
All of my close friends also have parents that are still together and modelled what healthy relationships look like between spouses and between parents and children - James and I both come from difficult childhoods with abusive parents, with major substance abuse issues on his side too. Because of that, I've always been extremely cognizant of what my partner would be like as a father and husband, and I've come to accept that James won't be in the place I need him to be in for a long time. It was clear from the beginning of our relationship that he had a lot he needed to heal from, and I made it clear that a) it was not my job to help him heal and he needed to seek professional help and b) he needed to be doing it for himself and not because I told him he needed to. I of course committed to supporting him in any way he (reasonably) needed, but I did not want to become his personal therapist.
Unfortunately I think I had unfair expectations of how quickly things would move. Credit where credit is due, he's been making a lot of progress addressing the deep-seated trauma he carries from his childhood and relationship with his parents. Life throws curveballs sometimes though, and he had a drug relapse last year following a car accident we were in. He's been sober for a few months now and has been putting in a lot of hard work, but it has also affected our relationship dynamic a lot. Getting sober causes so much physical, mental, and emotional strain on someone, and I don't want to add to that by bringing up challenges in the relationship. But I also know it's not fair to keep everything to myself to spare his mental health at the expense of my own.
I brought up a week or two ago that I was scared that I couldn't wait for him to work through things and that I also didn't feel it was even fair to put that kind of pressure on him - healing takes the time that it takes and can't be rushed. He then told me that he and his therapist had actually talked about this recently, and she had told him that she didn't think he'd be in the place for kids for a long time. He seemed to agree with her and also said he was unsure if he'd ever be ready to be a father after everything he went through with his own.
That conversation right there should have been the end of the relationship. If only it were that easy. I think I've accepted that the relationship needs to end, but I am so scared of what comes after it. I just turned 30 and all of my friends are married and having kids. The thought of returning to dating is frankly terrifying. What if I don't find the person? But I keep reminding myself that if it's not the person, then it's not worth marriage and it's certainly not worth bringing children into the mix. It would be better to be alone than to live in a marriage like my parents had or to put my children through what I went through.
Then you have the logistical nightmare of it all. And this is where my ADHD is a real bitch and is contributing to my break-up paralysis. I live in a somewhat high cost of living area, and don't want to leave it right now, so I feel sick thinking about finding a new place to live on a single income. I also live in a different state than most of my friends and family and don't currently have a car. Moving in general sucks so much, but doing it without my own car? Makes me want to crawl in a hole.
And then there's our dog, the absolute light of my life. I adore him with every fiber of my being. While he's technically mine on paper, we got him together, and I'm not sure James will easily give him up. Logically, I think he would agree that it makes more sense for me to have him - he does a lot of extreme outdoor sports and would have to leave the dog by himself for a lot of the time if I wasn't there. But I also dread thinking about how hard it would be for our dog to not see James again. Like right now, he's out of town on a work trip, and our dog has lost his mind every evening when he's heard a car door slam outside and thought it was James coming home. But at the same time, I cannot fathom the option of letting James take him.
A therapist would say I'm trying to rationalize everything right now, I would say I'm just trying to process it all. It really really sucks when the main reason for ending the relationship is the timing being wrong. I know that with healing and growth, James will be an amazing husband and father, if that's what he wants. But I don't think I can wait for that. Which feels both selfish and selfless, depending on how I look at it.
Anyways thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, going to go make my dog anxious by crying into his fur.

...but I had to say something about what happened last night. So I had this kind of stray track that I made which sounded pretty good but I wasn't sure what to do with it. I made it on accident when I first started messing around with Suno. I was trying to make a song that sounded like Ill Nino and I thought making a flamenco numetal song was a workaround. Well it wasn't. It made some flamenco songs (which sound pretty good) and this one stray track which is kind of numetal-ish but is singing about flamenco guitars. That's not to say it doesn't sound good, because it sounds really good.
So I didn't know what to do with this, I was planning to make a type of flamenco-numetal fusion with all of the generations since they're all singing about the same thing. Suno made them to be part of the same song but sonically the metal and flamenco are worlds apart, which ironically, is the subject of the song. Somehow I think it could work, but I had this planned and I was thinking of putting it out in the meantime as one of the "stray" songs. I started working on it yesterday, and despite the part about the flamenco guitar, is thematically related to the next project I'm planning out.
So I'm working on this song trying to generate some suitable pieces for it, and It just started snowballing out of proportion. It just kept getting bigger and bigger, like it just grew into what it wanted to be. Whenever I generate a song, regardless of what it sounds like, I hear a different version in my head which is what I think it should be. So the song plays, I listen to it, and based on what I hear, I plan a different arrangement. Then I can listen to different parts of the song, and decide where they will go in that arrangement and I go on in this way arranging the song.
I'm doing this last night and it's working out good, and the song just grows into a 9 minute monster. Although I wanted to make a "stray" song to put out in the meantime, this song is too close thematically to the next project, and while I didn't plan for it to be on it, it belongs there. I didn't want to make more popish songs but this song is more gothic pop power metal. The way this album is coming out, I think goth pop power metal is going to be a dominant sound.
I might also consider making this a double album, or a trilogy, just because of how many songs I have on this subject. When I planned these albums out, I planned to have 10 albums of 10 songs each, and I planned the subject and theme of the album and I have a ton of album covers generated for each one to choose from. When generating the songs for these albums, I ended up generating way more than 10 for some of these albums for various reasons. Sometimes they weren't what I wanted, other times they were coming out too good and I just kept making new generations. For others I started tweaking the lyrics and inserting my own, and so many different things happen randomly, sometimes good and bad. To say I have at least 10 potential albums worth of music is an understatement. Maybe 15-20, and this is just counting Suno. Aside from that, I still have some credits in Suno I need to use up by today, which can produce enough songs for potentially another 2-3 albums. From Udio I have 25 songs generated ready to be worked on aside from various snippets I've already generated that I have on the site still which I can extend further, and I have a lot of credits on there still. That's all just to emphasize how much potential I am sitting on.
But what I really wanted to talk about was the song I made. I'm not a big fan of power metal, I think it sounds cool and has some cool album covers, but it's not something that I ever really got into. I didn't plan to make power metal, I didn't ask Suno to make power metal songs, but that's just what came out. And while it's not what I wanted to make, I can't deny how good these songs are. So while maybe this isn't the music I wanted to make, maybe it's the music I need to make.
About this song, it's actually 8.5 minutes. It might get a tiny bit longer because I'm noticing some sections that could use a little bit of tweaking to fit better in timing. What I really want to talk about is how it sounds. It does sound kind of numetal and has some heft to it. This is definitely the heaviest of the goth pop power metal songs so far. This will be the 5th song for the project and the 4th goth pop power metal song. This song has female vocals and sounds like if Amy Lee from Evan Essence made a song with Slipknot (kind of). It's not super heavy but there is some nice sections with heavy double bass.
What I really like about it, and this is a potential spoiler or clue about what the next album is about, is that there is a part in the song where it sounds like an angel is singing and it sounds like there is some fear or panic in her voice and it fits with the theme of the song so well. It's very eerie and it sounds awesome. The reason why the song is almost 9 minutes long is because the initial generation snippet that I made, I had planned to use as the chorus, but all of the subsquent generations that I made didn't seem to fit with the chorus, so I had to push the chorus way back, and in essence, this song doesn't really have a chorus. It's kind of prog, in a sense, in that it progresses kind of like a story instead of a cycle, like most songs which tend to cycle between verse chorus bridge, etc.
I always wanted to make music like this. When I was younger, it was always my goal to be a musician. I've always heard all kinds of melodies and songs in my head which didn't exist. I would hear music in my dreams and wake up and play the music in my head over and over. I picked up guitar as a teen and always aspired to be in a band. I had a lot of musician friends and friends who were in bands, and I myself joined several bands and made plans to be in bands, but unfortunate life circumstances kept getting in my way and derailed all of my goals. Looking back in retrospect I consider if maybe it was for the better. Knowing what I know now after years of study into the music and enetertainment industry, it's not something that I want to be a part of. I liken it to a den of vipers and I consider that had I formed up with my friends and we had become famous, would I have the wisdom of mind to protect my soul from the evils of the music industry? I'm not so sure, and for that reason I consider that perhaps it was fated to be this way all along. While it seems that I may have missed out on some opportunity, I think that now I have the potential to have my music be heard, without being bound to the music industry. This seems like a decent trade off for me, as the technology exists today where I can easily grow as an independent artist. Now I can share with you all the music I bring.
"This is the flame I bring to you!" - from Smoke & Flame
-p.s. I do have another song I'm working on that's almost finished the recomposition stage, which I will put out as a "stray" song coming soon. This song does sound a little bit like Ill Nino and is a more numetal-ish song, which I think emphasizes why the goth pop power metal songs are calling to me over the more numetal songs. The goth pop power stuff fits the vibe and theme of what I'm trying to make more than numetal does. I'm making music about things that humans may not necessarily be privy to, like higher dimensions, supernatural stuff, etc (I don't want to give too much away) and numetal just doesn't mesh that good with those subjects. The later albums I make will have a more modern sound since those are about more modern topics.

Hello,
I am not sure if this is the correct subreddit
Me (24M) and my ex-girlfriend(22F) met in high school while living with our parents, and it was the first serious relationship either one of us has had. Right now we both still live with our parents and are working to complete college. As of the time she broke up with me, we had been together for just under 7 years. We began dating when both of us were under 18 (17 and 15). We have been long distance for the duration of our relationship except for a brief 2 month period when she tried moving in with me. About 3 weeks ago I asked her if she would be ready for me to move in with her (her family had offered to let me move in with them a few times over the past couple of years, but the timing is right now because I am about to finish school). One day after this conversation and without any other warning, she broke up with me and initially wanted to go no contact, but we are still talking and getting closure on the relationship. She told me the reason for the breakup was she has had several doubts and concerns over the course of the relationship and not enough of them improved to the point where she wanted to continue. Most of these doubts have either never really been mentioned to me aside from in passing, or have been mentioned seriously one time about a year ago when she broke up with me citing the same doubts but decided to give it another chance. She said that the main reason why she didn't mention these doubts on an ongoing basis was to see how I would change naturally and without her input, but I think it is unfair to have so many doubts go for such a long time without a chance to talk about them. She worries that too much damage has been done and that she could not trust me again. She also worries about whether we are compatible with some of the doubts relating to small things like daily interactions.
Less than 2 weeks after the breakup she is already seeing somebody new, after saying that she would want to wait 3-6 months before trying to see anybody else or trying to get back together. I know that this is all totally her choice to do, but it really feels like she is rushing and not thinking about things clearly. She told me that she is able to move on so quickly because she mourned our relationship during our previous breakup about a year ago that lasted for a couple of days, and never fully regained the trust required for a successful relationship which is why she's moving on so quickly.
As much as I would like to keep fighting for the relationship to work, she thinks too much damage over too long of a period of time to try and continue at this point. For our current conversations, she has been in closure and move on mode where I was initially in the mode of trying to understand her reasons, then bargaining mode, and now I'm finally in a closure as of these past couple of days. She seems to be pulling away very fast, at first not much changed, but within the last week she has turned off location sharing, unshared her calendar, and just last night she deleted all of our saved message history on snapchat.
She had mentioned going no contact and blocking me during the first time she spoke to me about this breakup, but now is not sure and wants to wait and see how she is feeling and how the closure conversations go. I may have made a mistake during our last closure talk a couple of days ago when I asked her if there is anything that she hasn't forgiven me for, or what I have done that has hurt her the most and that seemed to dig up a lot of emotions (understandably so).
I recognize that I was never a perfect partner, and I have struggled with my own mental health issues. I always loved her but after these closure talks I can honestly say that I understand how so many of my behaviors have caused her hurt. I was going to include the list of doubts and everything that contributed to them, but I decided that would make the post unnecessarily long. Generally, the doubts and concerns stem from my mental health issues causing me to not treat her properly, general immaturity on my part, and events occurring during and after the 2 month period where she moved in with me. She showed up at my house practically unannounced saying that she was going to move in with me after she got in an argument with her family, without any prior conversation with me about it and during a time that I was not ready for her to move in with me. She had just begun a medication that seriously threw off her hormones and caused her major mood swings. The beginning of her moving in was decent, but after she started physically and emotionally distancing herself from me while getting closer with my family members, I asked her to go home. We did fully speak about this time period until she broke up with me about a year ago, the extent of the conversation at that point was me telling her that it felt like she was emotionally abusing me, which shook both of us enough that we never finished the conversation and did not discuss it further until starting 3 weeks ago with the recent breakup. This trip occurred right after she turned 18 while I was 20, and she told me that she fully intended to stay with me from that point on.
As a side note, right after the initial breakup conversation I began writing a list of all of the relationship issues that I could think of, and all of the doubts that she told me. For both of these, I wrote down ways that I contributed to or caused hurt to her and have been working through the list acknowledging and apologizing for the behaviors in our closure talks. Initially, she seemed interested in hearing out all that I had to say, along with occasionally watching a movie together and playing video games maybe once or twice a week.
Where we currently are:
We currently have another closure talk (phone call) planned for Thursday. We haven't spoken since she deleted our message history from snapchat. In the last closure talk, she said that she wanted to focus on the big and important items from my list and that at this point she does not want to talk about the smaller topics I thought of.
Here are my questions:

1. What is the best way to move on from where we are that minimizes further damages, puts her in a position to heal, and hopefully does not result in me getting blocked or her going no contact?
2. It feels like she is pulling away hard and heading to no contact. Should I tell her that I am done with the closure talks to speed that up, or is it worth continuing to talk while she is willing to?
3. Please provide any other generally helpful advice or ideas for this situation. This is my first breakup and I really don't know what I'm doing.

TL;DR
Girlfriend broke up with me after a relationship of almost 7 years, due to a list of doubts and concerns she had that she is now sharing with me. I am currently wondering how to best proceed without causing more damage and leaving the door open for hopefully staying friends into the future.

I dont normally do things like this, but after the most flippant careless call from the person that runs the Chilis in Massachusetts as a whole, im left no choice. I know some people wont like it, but you need to be made aware of the business and people you support.
Chilis Braintree Massachusetts.
It starts with the to-go meal I had picked. I got two orders of burger sliders, to which both patties were burnt to a char, and rock hard. The salad had about 10 pieces of wilted brown, white lettuce stocks, covered in raw onion and tomato. The Ranch Dressing I ordered was Sour Cream, and the salsa opened in the bag and spill all over the the containers. People make mistakes, althought its a big mistake, Im understanding, I hate confrontation, and and I hate complaining about food unless I absolutely have to if its just totally unedible, or not my order. When it comes to small things, IE missing lettuce, too many pickles, whatever, I will not say anything. I let it slide because I know everybody is human and we all mistakes.
So I contacted the help line about this meal and then sent me a $15 BoG. I paid a lot more than $15 for the meals that neither me or my kid wasnt able to eat. But I disregarded it. I went back a few days later to use the BoG. I ordered the same two sliders, and asked for them to please make sure these were not burnt, to which it was agreed without issue. I recieved the burgers, again, burnt beyond belief. So I kindly notified the kid working up front. He went to the back and got the upper manager on duty, To which later I found out she was some sort of "Co-Partner" I forget exactly how she worded it, but well get to that. She comes out with the same burgers, and rather than address the situation she already knew about, she loudly says "Did you have a question about the burgers?" To which I said, "Not a question, the burgers are just burnt, and too hard to bite." To which she immediately argued with me, without hesitiation, over what a cooked burger is. Im already caught off guard at this point. This is when I understand we are having a problem. I pointed out that a well done burger is when the burger is cooked the same amount on the outside as it is on the inside, usually done on a lower tempurature to asure the outside doesnt.
She stopped, and went to kitchen, she came out. Again with the same burgers, and told me that "They push a timer button and thats it they cant cook them any other way" To which I replied "Can you replace with something else then" She says "I can do whatever I want, but I dont have to do anything." At this point im guard even more off guard at whats happening. I asked her "Why are you talking to me like that?" She answers "Im the Co Partner and ill talk to you however I want to" I say "This is really how you treat customers?" She says "Yup thats really how I do it." I say "You can refund the burgers then" She says "There you go with can again" She checks the register and sees that I paid with the BoG, and says to me "Oh so youre one of those" I said "What?" She said "You paid with BoG so I cant give you anything" I said "You can refund me store credit or offer me a different meal, I dont see why this is such an issue" She loudly says "DONT, im not giving you anything, Go call coroprate." I said Okay, and walked out to my car. As I walking in the parking, I was chased by a younger employee, who yelled "Ill tresspass your ass, im gonna tresspass you" I mentioned, You can only trespass a customer who refused to leave after you ask them to. Minding, that not once had been asked to leave, not been loud, verbally abusive, or threatened.
So yes, I did call corporate about it, mostly because I want my monetary refund for the initial meal we not able to eat.
So a few days later, I get called by somebody who says they run all the Chilis in Massachusetts. He starts by saying "I skimmed the email but didnt really read it, tell me what happened" Great start. So after being on the phone over an hour explaning to the customer service representative who took the time to type out everything I said for a formal complaint, he wants me to say it all over again, right on the spot. After giving the short story version, hes got a very flippant and careless attitude. Asking ME if I called someone a name or not, like hes ready to reprimand me, and then offers me $25 in Chilis BoG credit. I couldnt help but laugh. Offering me credit to a restaurant that ive had the worst food, worst customer, and worst experience in general, is laughable. I declined his BoGs and told him I would never be back to another Chilis again, I told he should be offering credit the original meal that I paid for that caused this mess in the first place. So rather than find the inital ticket number that was given on the first complaint, he asked me to go into my email and find it myself.
Im done with it, I wont be pursuing anything further. My family and friends who go to chilis almost every Friday on that dot have all agreed that they wont ever step foot in a Chilis again. And I hope you wont either. These are people that do not care about you, their service, or their food, and they do not deserve to be supported.

Hi All,
Been here for over 5 months now.
Long story short. Wife (31F) of 5 years cheated on me (27M) with a co-worker in September - December 2023. We have 1 child together, and I have a stepson, which is her little boy from previous relationship. My daughter is 2, and her son is 7.
She cheated because she was lonely, she had shit going on and never bothered dealing with it, instead she stepped out and done something that made her feel better about herself.
We’ve both done IC, and she realised that if she was ever unhappy in a relationship, rather than voicing it, she stepped out as it was easier. She took the route of a coward, damaging me and the kids in the process.
I think she didn’t realise the consequences of her actions until the kids asked if me and her will be breaking up, which was like a stab to the heart for her.
I had a lot of TT throughout the discover, but she says it’s all out.
She cut contact immediately with AP when it came out. She quit her job immediately and now works in a woman only office, she’s been giving me her phone, all of it. She begs and cries for me not to leave her, and is showing true remorse for her actions.
The only thing that’s stopping me from fully committing to R is, do I know all the truth?, as I have this feeling that this isn’t the first time she had cheated on me. To give you some context:
While this was unraveling, somebody that she hasn’t spoke to in about 10 years apparently, sent her a message on Instagram saying “Hey, just wanted to reach out and apologise about how I treated you, I guess I’m just apologising before karma catches up”. She had shown me the message as soon as she received it, but said that it was weird as she hadn’t spoken to him in like 10 years. She wasn’t even friends with the guy on IG, and few hours later, he deleted the message along with the request and blocked her.
Then a few days ago, another of her Ex’s that used to be her old lover, from about 10 years ago again, reached out to her with a waving hand on Facebook. Again, last convo they had based on her fb messages was back in 2020, and it was just a memory she sent him of him with her cat when they were together.
When this was all happening, I’ve also seen that she spoke to another Ex back in 2021 via snap, as the chat was there, but again, she said that it was probably when she was replying to him on his story or something (then I find that all of his photos, she liked on socials in that timeframe).
We’ve been together for 5 years, and married for 1. I knew of these people as she used to tell me who her previous partners were as this was something I wanted to know when we got together.
She is so so so adamant that she didn’t cheat on me prior to this. She begs for me not to leave her, and that she’ll do anything to fix her fuckup, and that she won’t make it without me.
We have been through a lot together, we lost 2 babies, her dad was diagnosed with Cancer recently again.
I’ve been looking after myself, have put on weight, gained loads of muscle, started running, looking after my skincare, and actually started to get a lot of attention from women. I am successful, work in Cyber Security, and get paid really well.
I just can’t seem to move forward with R until I have heard every lie, but all I get told is - “you know everything, I have told you everything, there is literally nothing else for me to say”, how am I suppose to believe that? How am I suppose to believe that she didn’t cheat before?, I can’t!, too many people are popping up randomly, apologising, reaching out, why?
She says she doesn’t know why, and that she can’t control what other people do. I’m so lost, I do want to make it work with her, I really do, but I can’t without knowing that there’s nothing left to say and without knowing that I know everything.
We talked about polygraphs and stuff, but apparently they’re not reliable as apparently somebody can tell the truth and still fail and vice versa.
I don’t know what else I can tell her to reassure that whatever has happened in the past, I just need to know between us, so I can process and put it on the shelf, where it will stay, and then fully commit to making R work with her, as she’s really, really trying.
This sucks so much. I am only 27, and the things I’ve experienced in life, I wonder to myself, what did I do in my previous life to deserve all of this pain…

What is the Past Perfect Subjunctive (Subjuntivo Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto) in Spanish?

The Past Perfect Subjunctive, also known as the Subjuntivo Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto, is a tense used to express hypothetical situations, actions that could have happened in the past, and conditions contrary to past facts. It combines elements of the past perfect and the subjunctive, making it a bit challenging but incredibly useful for expressing nuanced ideas in Spanish.

When to Use the Past Perfect Subjunctive

1. Hypothetical Past Situations: For actions that could have happened but didn't.
   
   • Ejemplo: Si hubiera sabido, te habría ayudado. (If I had known, I would have helped you.)
2. Conditional Sentences: In the “if” clause of conditional sentences.
   
   • Ejemplo: Si él hubiera estudiado más, habría pasado el examen. (If he had studied more, he would have passed the exam.)
3. Reported Speech: When indirect speech requires the subjunctive.
   
   • Ejemplo: Ella dijo que esperaba que él hubiera llegado a tiempo. (She said she hoped he had arrived on time.)

Formation of the Past Perfect Subjunctive

To form the Past Perfect Subjunctive in Spanish, you need two parts: 1. The imperfect subjunctive of the verb "haber" 2. The past participle of the main verb
Here is the conjugation of "haber" in the imperfect subjunctive:

• Yo hubiera
• Tú hubieras
• Él/Ella/Usted hubiera
• Nosotros/Nosotras hubiéramos
• Vosotros/Vosotras hubierais
• Ellos/Ellas/Ustedes hubieran

Now, combine with the past participle:

• Hablar (to speak) → Yo hubiera hablado (I would have spoken)
• Comer (to eat) → Tú hubieras comido (You would have eaten)
• Vivir (to live) → Él hubiera vivido (He would have lived)

Examples Sentences:

• Si él hubiera trabajado más duro, habría conseguido el ascenso. (If he had worked harder, he would have gotten the promotion.)
• Me alegré de que tú hubieras terminado el proyecto. (I was glad that you had finished the project.)
• No creía que ellos hubieran llegado tan temprano. (I didn’t believe that they had arrived so early.)

Practice with Pal

How Pal Can Help:

Learning the Past Perfect Subjunctive can be tricky without practice. Here's how Pal can make it easier for you:

1. Go to Get-Pal.com/WhatsApp/: Head over to this link to begin your practice with Pal.
   
2. Create a Sentence: Come up with a sentence using the Past Perfect Subjunctive. For example, "Si yo hubiera sabido eso, no habría ido." (If I had known that, I wouldn't have gone.)
   
3. Send It to Pal: Send your sentence to Pal on WhatsApp.
   

Pal will then correct any mistakes you might have made and provide feedback in both Spanish and English. This iterative process of correction and encouragement helps solidify your understanding and boosts your confidence.

1. Continue the Conversation: Engage in more dialogues with Pal to get more comfortable using the tense in various contexts. If you're stuck and can't think of a sentence, you can ask Pal for examples or questions to get you started.

By integrating these practices into your daily routine, you’ll find yourself becoming more fluent and confident in using the Past Perfect Subjunctive. Happy learning with Pal!

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MNS Oengro

“How’s the fuel status of the Oengro?” Grionc asked.
Vastae, eyes glued to his console, replied without hesitation. “We have just enough blink fuel for one jump, but we aren’t going anywhere once we get to the other side without a refueling ship.”
“One blink is all we need. And if the Oengro is good to go, the other, smaller ships should be fine too then,” Grionc responded, bringing up the system map on screen with her paws. “Four minutes to blink limit. Have the ship’s crew secure themselves for the blink and get ready for shift change to execute post-blink procedures when we arrive.”
“Yes, High Fleet Commander,” Vastae acknowledged with a brisk nod.
Suddenly, three quarters of the sensor readings on her sensor board disappeared, and the fidelity on the remaining took a nose-dive in accuracy. A low murmur ran through the sensor stations, which she waved away with a paw. “No need to panic. It looks like our friends jumped before we did, as arranged. Our sensors are on their own for now.”
Vastae swallowed hard. “Are you certain about this plan, High Fleet Commander?” Vastae asked nervously. “Not that I don’t trust what Sphinx— Speinfoent cooked up, but this is a last-minute plan modification we haven’t rehearsed. And with our fuel situation, we only get one chance here.”
Grionc put a calm smile on her face. “Remember that exercise we did with the Grass Eaters a while back?”
“Which one?”

4 months ago

“Since it’s New Years, it’s time to have some fun,” Mark announced with a grin to Grionc and the rest of the curious bridge crew. “I’m going to show you guys a fun teambuilding exercise we did on Terra.”
“Teambuilding exercise?” Grionc asked suspiciously.
Mark didn’t let her skepticism color his enthusiasm. “Well, I’m not sure how much teambuilding it does, but it is fun. And I have never seen aliens do it. In fact, this might be the first time this has ever been done outside of Sol!”
“Fine, fine. What are we doing?” she relented.
“This exercise is what we call the trust fall.”
“The trust fall?” Grionc repeated. “It’s about building trust? Like trust in your crew?”
Mark nodded vigorously. “It’s supposed to. I’m not sure if it truly works, but it truly is fun. You and I can demonstrate for the crew.”
Grionc sighed. “Sure. What do I do?”
“Come stand over here,” Mark pointed to a spot on the floor, and then stood in front of her with his back to her. “What I’m going to do is I’m going cross my arms… like this… and on the count of three, I’m going to fall backwards, and you have to catch me when I do.”
“Huh. That seems dangerous. What happens to you if I don’t catch you?” Grionc asked, mild concern creeping into her voice.
“Traumatic brain injury, probably. Something similar for your species too, I assume,” Mark shrugged nonchalantly. “But don’t worry about that. We have good medical facilities on the Nile, and you will catch me. That is the point of the exercise. Alright, you ready?”
Sensing his insistence, Grionc sighed and held her paws out, bracing herself. “Ready.”
“One, two, three…” Mark did as he described, crossing his arms, and falling backwards into Grionc’s outstretched arms. She grunted with slight effort as she intercepted his fall and then gently lowered him onto the ground, “Oomph. Huh. You Terrans are lighter than you look.”
“Yeah, my bones are nano-grafted,” Mark grinned, bounced up to full height, and circled around her back. “Okay, now it’s your turn.”
Grionc crossed her arms and held her breath for a moment. “One, two…”
She didn’t move. A few seconds later, she let go of her held breath. “I can’t.”
“What? Why not?”
Grionc muttered excuses. “No, it’s just— my tail— our balance mechanisms are different, I can’t just fall backwards on purpose—”
Mark insisted. “It’s not that difficult. Just let go. Don’t worry. I’m right here. I promise I’ll catch you.”
She held her breath once again, psyching herself up for a few more moments.
“One, two… doh, I can’t.”
Mark lightly patted her on the shoulder. “That’s okay… don’t worry… Hey, Speinfoent, come over here and give her a light shove. Alright, on the count of three. One, two—”
“Oh, no. Don’t you dare! No! Don’t touch— Yowwwwwww!”
Grionc continued, “And now… we fall. And we trust that our new friends will be there to catch us.”

ZNS 2228

“They’ve blinked,” the computer officer reported.
“Did we catch their blink vector?” Skvanu asked urgently.
“Calculating… got it! We triangulated their blink vector and probable destination! Entering it into our fleet navigation computers,” she responded, paws flying over the controls.
“How long before we can execute the blink?” Skvanu pressed.
“Two minutes before we hit the limit ourselves,” she replied, not looking up.
“Good, get the crews ready and start the countdown. I want to blink the millisecond we are clear of the system limit. And get all systems ready for what’s on the other side. They almost definitely have an ambush waiting for us. I’m guessing that’s where the remaining nine or so squadrons of Sixth Fleet are waiting for us,” Skvanu said confidently. “Twelve Lesser Predator squadrons to twenty-six of ours. Doesn’t matter how many upgrades they have, we will defeat them, especially since the first three will be within railgun range. Get those gunnery crews and point defense computers ready.”
“Blinking in seventy seconds,” she announced. “Sixty-five seconds—” Suddenly, she stood up, “Eight Whiskers, our FTL communications are open again! Both Datsot and Gruccud have just responded to our last message!”
Skvanu spun around to face her. “That makes sense. Whatever device they used to stop our communications must have been on one of the ships that just blinked out. Is there any priority intelligence from either?”
“Yes! Datsot has an emergency transmission for us. It’s from Ten Whiskers Ditvish!”
“What is it?” Skvanu asked, his voice serious.
She began to read. “Lesser Predators have entered Datsot system in force. Nine squadrons spotted so far. They may attempt to engage our garrison force there… His guidance is that we return immediately to trap these aggressor ships, but leaves the decision up to you…”
Skvanu absorbed the information with shock. If those ships are really in Datsot, they must not be on the other side of wherever the Oengro is blinking. And with that context, this now smelled exactly like a planned trap.
He thought out loud. “This must be what the Lesser Predators planned from the start. If we chase, we have no idea what they have on the other side. There may be refueling ships. They may have already gotten away. By the Prophecy, they may even be sacrificing three squadrons to get us to blink through a singularity or anomaly. But wait… If we return to Datsot immediately, we might catch those squadrons split from the rest of their ships and cripple their fleet!”
Having made up his mind, he shouted urgently at the navigation station, “Navigation, hold the blink!”
“Halting the blink procedures.”
“A handful of ships have already completed the blink!” the computer officer reported, almost in a panic.
“Cease blink procedures! Fleet-wide, cease the blink!”
The order went out immediately, and it was a testament to the discipline of the Znosian Navy that most squadrons managed to stop the countdown just seconds before it went through.
“How many ships went through?” Skvanu asked urgently.
“We managed to stop most of our ships, Eight Whiskers. Only five combat ships from Squadron 6 went through.”
He sighed in relief. “Only the Prophecy can help them now… Turn us around. Let’s get back to Datsot.”

TRNS Nile

“I think we are in sufficiently deep space,” Captain Gregor Guerrero said to his crew. “Drop us out.”
“Yes, captain. Emergency drop-out in five… four… three… two… one… now.”
The ship shuddered and creaked as the emergency-stop was activated. The blink engine wound down, forcing the ship back into normal space.
Gregor turned to his navigation officer. “How far from Plaunsollib did we travel, in regular space?”
“Two months on their Alcubierre drives if they combat burn with all their fuel. Four if they plan on stopping,” she replied immediately. “They’d be going too fast to aerobrake anyway.”
“Good,” Guerrero said, gluing his eyes to his sensor board. Ships in FTL are difficult to detect, even on gravidar, but the state-of-the-art technology on the Nile gave them a few seconds of warning.
A few seconds later, the sensor officer’s voice cut through the tense silence. “I’ve spotted the Puppers in blink! All of them, tight formation. They’ll pass us in about fifteen seconds.”
Guerrero nodded his pleasure. “Good, let them pass. Tell me when they’re out of range.”
The seconds ticked by. “Ten… five… they’ve passed our position… and now they’re out of range.”
“Now, switch on the blink disruption field,” he ordered.
The hum of the ship’s ambient noise went up an octave, signaling maximum power drain as the ship’s thirstiest system kicked in.
Gregor looked at his information panel. “Full emissions control. EMCOM Alpha. Deploy the FTL jammer drone and then shut off our engines. If things go well, we’re about to be joined by half the fucking Bunny Navy in a minute.”
“Aye, Captain. EMCOM Alpha.” The rest of the crew nodded, working their controls with practiced competence.
“Jammer drone out. You think they’ve got wild weasels, captain?”
“Unlikely, but we take no chances. If they don’t…” He shrugged. “… we’ll just get our drone back later.”
A tense minute passed, then the sensor officer reported, “Captain, Znosian ships spotted on gravidar! Two… three… five in total… They’ve just been forced out of blink.”
“Five squadrons?”
“No, Captain, five ships.”
Gregor furrowed his brow, surprised, and took another glance at his console. “Only five ships?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright, keep the disruption field up, and analyze the drive signatures on them. Maybe one of them is this Skvanu guy we’re supposed to hit,” he speculated hopefully.
After half an hour, Guerrero finally called it quits. “No more guests are showing up. Looks like they must have wizened up at the last moment.”
“Aye, sir,” the executive officer said, shaking her head in disappointment as well. “It was a good plan. Could have stranded their whole fleet out here.”
“Well, bad luck— these things happen in war, Lieutenant. Don’t worry. We’ll get them next time. How are the guests we did get doing?”
“Out of blink fuel, as expected. They’ve been dumping cargo in an organized fashion. I think they’re planning to see if they can reach Plaunsollib with their subspace drives in a reasonable amount of time and call triple A.” Then, she asked, “Where do you think the rest run off to?”
“Probably Datsot,” Guerrero guessed. “Phone Sphinx and tell him he’s probably got the whole shit storm heading his way, ETA about a couple days. Get the estimates to him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, we just need to silence the witnesses so we can use this trick again. Bridge to CIC: let’s keep it simple. One Kestrel for each of the targets. We’ll swiss-cheese them with railguns after. Just in case.”
“Aye, Captain. We’re not dropping off those TRO drones here, are we?”
“Nah. Too much work. No one is finding these guys ever again anyway.”

MNS Trassau

“I just got off a call with the Nile,” Loenda announced. “Looks like the Grass Eaters have discovered our ruse in the other system. The main enemy fleet is heading our way right this second.”
Speinfoent sighed, and suggested, “If we burn closer for just half a day more—”
“No more,” Loenda declared. “We are already risking nine squadrons coming this far into the Datsot system limit.”
“Alright,” Speinfoent agreed reluctantly. “We can still give them a present they won’t forget any time soon.”
“That, we will. That we will.” Loenda turned to her console. “All ships in Battlegroup 2, dump your payloads as quietly as you can. Then wait half an hour to change your vector and make your way to the system blink limit.”
“Yes, Battlegroup Commander.”

ZNS 1841

“Ten Whiskers, the Lesser Predators are turning around,” the computer officer declared, doing her best to hide her relief.
“What? Where are they heading now?” Ditvish asked, confounded.
“Towards the shortest path to the system blink limit, I think.”
“That’s it? They’re just leaving now?”
“Combat computer speculates that they might have seen that Eight Whiskers Skvanu is heading back to Datsot, so they are breaking off the attack,” the officer offered.
“That’s… not very Lesser Predator of them, but very logical,” he admitted. “They must have realized their plan failed and are now cutting their losses.”
He didn’t mention that his fleet was the one that came out behind, losing yet another precious supply convoy and then sending the whole combat fleet on a wild predator chase for nothing. That State Security goon might start to become a problem if he didn’t spin this well in his after-action report.
A few hours later, a foreboding feeling coloring his mood, he ordered, “Sensors, boost our radars towards where they changed vectors. I want to check to see if they dropped any drones or traps.”
“Yes, Ten Whiskers.”
The 1841 boosted its radar towards the direction, blaring out signals on maximum strength and—
“Incoming… missiles? Ten Whiskers, many missiles! Dozens! Over a hundred! They’re well within our minimum abort range!”
“By the Prophecy!” Ditvish exclaimed. “All ships, execute combat burn away from them! Countermeasures and fire counter-missiles, at the ready! Track those missiles!”
Fortunately, the garrison fleet was still in high readiness from before. Their engines were ready to light up to full acceleration immediately.
Unfortunately, the missiles were already close. In desperation, his ships began dumping their entire loads of radar chaffs and flares into space behind them as they maneuvered away from the threat. Counter-missiles sped out of their tubes towards their rear, relying on their motherships’ sensors and radars to find the tiny alien missiles for them to engage.
Quietly gliding through space towards the enemy on inertia inherited from their motherships was the sizable swarm of Terran-made missiles. Obsolete for military purpose in Sol but still produced for the civilian and gray market, they were an easy addition on the TRO’s shopping list. Vast quantities of them had found their way into various shell corporations and dead drops all over Sol, then onto hastily constructed exterior pylons on Sixth Fleet ships.
While they were indeed several times outside of the maximum effective range of the Znosian ships at launch, missiles technically did have unlimited ballistic ranges in space — if their enemies were not moving and they did not need to constantly fire their thrusters to adjust course. Relying on a short first burn and then inertia, they flew most of the way towards the stationary enemy fleet completely undetected. By the time they were spotted, it was too late; the Znosians were well within their effective ranges.
Their intelligence chips might not have been super-Terran state-of-the-art computers, but the Pigeons had no problem realizing that they were discovered. They had been tracking the enemy targets using passive infrared sensors that did not alert enemy threat sensors to their presence. But the second that the targets started dropping flares to blind them, they activated their primitive late twenty-first century radars and homed in onto the priority targets they’d been given. Their main thrusters began their burns, adjusting their vectors to intercept the now-finally-moving enemy ships.
Then, they saw the incoming counter-missiles — fired by the enemies sporadically, obviously in panic.
The makers of the Pigeons might not have bothered to include next-generation electronic dazzlers on them, but penetration aid on missiles had been standard in Terran warfare for a century. They littered the space they were in with chaff and their own bright flares, coordinating with the other missiles in the area with short range laser communication to ensure that none in the swarm would confuse or disrupt each other.
The Znosian counter-missiles were certainly confused and disrupted though. Many veered off into phantom signals. Some lucky ones did manage to find their targets. When a few of their comrades dropped off their impromptu mesh net, the Pigeons constantly corresponded with laser communications to re-prioritize their targeting.
At the top of the list was the fattest, easiest target of them all: the enemy flagship 1841.
Seconds before impact, the missiles finalized their targets, and they spent every drop and fume of their remaining fuel on terminal maneuvers.
The Znosians’ close in weapons systems had milliseconds to engage the incoming threats. They performed admirably… for trying to deal with this unknown alien threat for the first time. A couple dozen more missiles were plucked out of space, but it was not enough.
Not nearly.
The rest slipped through the net.
Miraculously, the 1841 managed to survive initially. Despite it being the primary focus of the Pigeon mob, the other ships did their best to shield its most vital components in its rear with their own point defense. And the Pigeons — like most missiles of its era — were loaded with just enough firepower to destroy much smaller Terran ships. The larger hulls of the Znosian ships gave their obsolete mid-century intelligence chips a slightly more interesting exercise in module identification and targeting.
The massive Thorn-class battleship took fourteen hits to varying systems that the missiles visually identified as “that looks pretty important” on their final approach: its primary missile and gun tubes were trashed, venting atmosphere to space in those compartments. A proximity hit near the stern took out four of its eight massive main thrusters and several system modules at the rear of the ship. And perhaps worst of all, one Pigeon managed to zero in on its vulnerable front bridge, the explosion emptying its contents and occupants into vacuum.
Luckily for Ten Whiskers Ditvish, none of them hit the armored flag bridge where he was in the belly of the ship, vindicating the Znosian Navy’s practice of separating the two for redundancy.
Nonetheless, Ditvish fell to the ground as the simultaneous impacts temporarily overloaded the inertial compensators and shook the ship to its core. Sparks flew around him, and he smelled a pungent stink as the automated fire suppression systems kicked in to save as much as they possibly could.
He slowly climbed to his feet and looked at the scene around him. A sensor officer was spraying foam at a small fire with a handheld device, successfully extinguishing it in seconds. Several other of his crew were recovering and returning to their stations with remarkable calm. After all, they were elite, well-trained spacers and officers of the Znosian Navy.
Ditvish did the same, propping himself back into his command chair with slight effort. He operated his console in a concussed daze. One glance at the status board told him that the 1841 was a write-off. It wasn’t going to be combat effective ever again. At least its life pod systems were working, and he watched in relief as dozens then hundreds of crew members in the damaged sections of the ship climbed into theirs and ejected into the relative safety of vacuum.
He checked up on the other ships: several others were hit. Six had outright detonated: no survivors nor signals came from them. Two were irreparably damaged, their remaining crews also abandoning their ships in an orderly fashion. And another six had visible fires or scorch marks on their damaged hulls, but those crews were still valiantly fighting to keep their ships alive.
Ditvish noticed that the missile didn’t go for all his ships, just the ones on the outer edge on his sensor board— wait, the missiles—
To his horror, several more dozen missiles they’d detected were still active, and they were going for—
He looked at his computer officer’s station and yelled, “We have to warn them!”
She yelled something back at him, but he realized that he couldn’t hear her. Hitting the floor must have injured his hearing organs. He yelled again, hoping that she could still hear. “Warn the orbital support fleet! The logistics and fire support ships! Evasive maneuvers and take cover in the atmosphere!”
Her lips moved again. He got out of his chair and stumbled over to her in a daze, trying to hear what she was saying.
She was saying something.
It must be important.
“… not reach them. Our communication array… destroyed! Ten Whiskers, we need to get… We don’t have much time!”
Ditvish finally understood her from reading her lips. He didn’t respond. Just numbly watched the planetary battlemap of Datsot on the main screen.
It didn’t take long. They were completely defenseless.
The remaining missiles plucked every last orbital fire support and logistics transport ship out of the skies of Datsot. Most detonated; a few left behind trails of black smoke as they sank uncontrollably towards the planet’s surface.
Then, Ditvish’s hind legs gave out and he crumpled onto the bridge floor.
He was dimly aware of one of his subordinates dragging him towards the bridge escape pod as he blacked out.

MNS Trassau

“Don’t worry, Speinfoent,” Loenda said, putting her paws around the junior commander looking glumly at the image of Datsot retreating from their view as the rest of the bridge cheered the better-than-anticipated success of the raid. “We’ll come back, and next time, we’re coming back for everything.”
“That we will, Loenda. That we will.”

Meta

There is no research that shows the effectiveness of trust falls for building trust in a team and plenty of research showing that falling backwards from a full standing position without adequate bracing or padding can lead to serious brain, spinal, and back injuries.
Coercion or retaliation against Malgeir employees who refuse to participate in trust fall exercises may be considered investigable or actionable violations of workplace safety regulations by the Republic Office of Occupational Safety or anti-discrimination regulations by the Office of Equal Opportunity.
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Chapter 53: Apostasy