i like Warhammer 40k, but 40k doesnt afford you the abilty to let you play your own custom character or faction if it isnt up to certain specs in tournaments(lore strict rules). and running an army battle in dungeons and dragons is overly complicated unless you ignore a bunch of rolls and rules.
i propose a blend of both. who's cannon takes place in the cosmos of perspective.
(you make your own faction cannon. )
each unit type has user generated has one data sheet, each named character you have would have their own data sheet.
the models can be 3-D printed or kitbashed, but they must be at 1/36 scale. essentially one infantry= one of those cheap plastic army men standing at 5 cm tall.
from here, this was typed up before today, by a few months. there is no campaign.
but i would imagine a new fandom in table top roleplay would be born regardless
___________________________________________________________________________________________
WELCOME TO BATTLEPOSTINGS T.T.R.P.G.
A tabletop rpg for diy, model painting, kit bashing, 3-DPrinting, and plastic army battling enthusiasts.
all parts of this game are user generated, with the exception of the rules. Though u/Khorde__the__Husk sent this to a bunch of redditors for help in balancing the game and setting up basic play structure.
Things to note:
· You must have one “advisor” per two warlords in the session. Advisors, act as the game master to make sure no one is cheating. If there is confusion on what kind of weapon a unit has in their hands or equipped to their armor, the Advisor has final say. The advisor is supposed to keep the game fair.
· In theory you could have as many players as you want, but no more than four is recommended because turns consist of multiple phases that are meant to organize the battle strategy for each player.
· Players are encouraged to kit bash, 3-D print, or purchase traditional plastic army men. For the sake of scaling, follow the scaling of the image below. But you must have your own general. It is recommended that your general be unique, make it yours. Have fun.
· Players can make their own campaigns and lore. Such attempts are encouraged. For the purposes of release, you can follow the campaign I have written.
· For any session, you will need a handwritten or typed general’s reference stats Dossier, 1D20, tape measure, and an army of which you will fight with. (painted)
· When rolling on a check, higher is always better. 20 is always a success
· Your armies stats are fixed and defined in this document. Your general’s stats are dictated by the roll of a 1d20. These stats are:
o morale
o Movement speed
o Accuracy
o Health points
o Punch
· Turns are split into phases.
o bombardment
o Movement
o Attack/counter attack
· The different types of units are:
o Infantry
o Armor
o Airborne
o B.A.M.(BIG ASS MACHINES)

· We play at a 1/36 scale. All models are at that scale.

• TERRAIN AND COVER

make your own terrain and cover. kitbashing, 3-D printing encouraged. terrain is the battleground, the floor the pieces and obstacles stand on. obsticles can be anything. debris, nature, etc. obstacles are cover. if an attacking piece can see the defending piece in its entirety, the defending piece is in the open. if the defending piece is partially seen by the attacking
· Ability checks logic below:
20=crit hit/sucsess
1=jam(gun)/woopsie(melee)/crit fail
To succeed , a unit must roll their combined ability score. This is their base ability +general ability. Debuffs such as kickback only are applied to whatever you rolled when you roll for an ability check.
Regardless, the fundamental rules of this game will apply to your creations. these are an assortment of rules designed to keep the game fair and guard against unfair players(referred to as God-Emperors or God-empresses) and hopefully combat power creep.
Now lets expand upon these ideas so you can have fun kit-bashing and army smashing quicker.
GENERAL’S (named character) STAT DOSSIER
Your army’s stats are based on your general’s stat Dossier. The leader of a nation is oft a good indication of how high of a quality their army’s going to be.
The first thing you should write is your general’s name, then write their bio. Their bio includes their background, their homeland, what politics are involved (if any). It is not recommended that you write a novel, you have a game to play. What are the weapons that your general will have on their person? What are their character traits? How will those traits affect how the game is played?
The next thing to do is to make a picture of your General that resembles the piece you kit-bashed for your general to be. It can be menacing, wholesome, serious or whacky. As long as the design choices resemble what your army has for their design and your general’s character traits. It doesn’t have to be hand drawn. A photo of your piece will suffice. no general may have a skill number higher than 16.
ARMY STAT DOSSIER:
what good is a king without a kingdom?
terrible.
each type of unit gets one ARMY STAT DOSSIER. you can have as many scout infantry you want, but you need a dossier on how they are deployed, what weapons they use, and most importantly, THEIR STATS. make sure your unit type description is comprehensive including what styles of combat they are trained for. this could influence your decisions on how you play. give them lore for shits and giggles. no unit may have a skill number higher than 15.
WEAPON STAT DOSSIER
this is the list of weapon types and their ability modifiers.
when attacking bare handed, you go by your unmodified stats.
STATS EXPLAINED AND BORING SHIT
Now comes the part with the dice. You only need 1d20. This is to reduce the confusion.
· Morale
Rolled by 1d20, checked by 1d20 per unit.
Morale is basically moral law. How far will your troops go to follow your orders? If your morale over a given unit is 1, the unit in question is shell shocked for one whole turn, to be marked with a yellow slip. If your unit is shell shocked, it is traumatized to where it cant follow any orders on the next turn. If for some reason the morale hits 0, that unit defects and must be marked with a red token. Units that defect are now under control of your enemy. If defected units hit 0 authority again, it simply dies. Suicide. Cowards way out.
The Morale that your general has over friendly units is base unit morale +the general’s modifier. Your general’s base Morale is the number you rolled the 1d20 for. If for any reason your general’s morale score goes below 0, the general must rally all nearby troops (within 30cm) to protect the general for one turn on the next turn. If your general’s morale hits zero, you get shell shocked, and your general cannot take action for one turn and if your general was within line of sight of any other allied unit, the observing unit cannot take action either.
· Movement Speed
Rolled by 1d20, measured by cm on a measuring tape or meter stick because inches suck.
Movement speed is how much ground a given unit can cover. Unless your object has a punch score higher than the hp of an obstacle, or can fly, you will have to go around the obstacle. There are exceptions. If the obstacle is below the knee of an infantry unit, the infantry or whatever can climb over at the cost of the individual unit climbing modifier.
The base movement speed of your general influences the movement speed of your troops. To find a troops total movement speed:
Your unit’s base movement speed + your general’s base movement speed = total troop movement speed. See army stat dossier or named character stat dossier.

· Accuracy
Rolled by a 1d20, checked by 1d20 per unit
Accuracy must be rolled every time a unit attacks an enemy unit.
Accuracy is basically the chance of your selected troop hitting their targets. Different weapons and vehicles have different accuracy modifiers(aka kickback or x-range), and different types of troops have different base accuracies. Accuracy can affect enemy/friendly Health points or morale. If a shot hits near enough to a troop, or makes a kill close enough to another troop, the troops affected must undergo a morale check with the exception to nearby friendlies of any troop who gets an enemy kill.
Explosives and artillery have an area of effect. any troop within the inner blast radius (with the exception of troops behind sufficient cover) is dead. Any in sufficient cover, or within the outer blast radius must make a morale check. Sufficient cover is a piece of the environment which has an assigned hp that is higher than the punch of an explosion.

Small arms fire requires line of sight for targeting. The path of bullets is a straight line, keep this in mind when deciding collateral damage. Friendly fire is a thing and it is a war-crime. If you want to play nightmare mode, your general gets summoned to a military court tribunal and executed if three friendly troops or more die as a result of friendly fire that occurred by your command.

Melee combat can only be conducted during movement phases. If its melee vs gun there is the variable of line of sight. If the melee unit is within line of sight, the gun unit has advantage. If the melee unit is outside of line of sight of the gun unit, the melee unit has advantage.
To find your troop’s accuracy:
general’s base accuracy+ troop base accuracy- kickback. The higher the accuracy the better.

· Punch
Punch is how much damage a unit causes to another unit or object should they pass their accuracy check. Different weapons pack a different punch. Remember to add their bonus to the punch check roll.
When attacking an obstacle or object, units must roll against the hp of the object. If the roll lands on a number that meets or beats the hp, the object or obstacle is destroyed.(marked with red sticky note and can be traversed as if the object was destroyed. Bullets pass thru within reasonable trajectories, no ricochet)
When attacking units, whatever is rolled is subtracted from the victim’s hp. The victim can only move at half of their normal movement speed afterward.(treaded, wheeled, and airborne vehicles excluded from the debuff even if they are hit. They are treated as obstacles with the addition of the passed accuracy check requirement.)
· Health points(hp)
Health points are what determines how close your units or general is to kicking the bucket. In any game mode, If your general kicks the bucket, you lose. If you have no units other than your general, you lose and your general must go into hiding. each unit and general may have no more than 10hp. powercreep is bad
UNIT CLASSES
Unit Classes are determined by how big the individual unit is, and how it traverses the battlefield. The smallest and most common all the way to the biggest and most intimidating of units are all fit into several categories by what they look like. To solve disagreements on what class your unit is, the advisor has final say. Disagreements should be easy to avoid if you design your units properly. It would be useful to stick to a theme. Candy punk, steampunk, horror, medieval, sci-fi, and historical designs are all fine, you could even come up with your own. A theme will be better for discerning friendlies from you enemies. At the same time, make your units discernable enough that players and especially advisors can easily determine what classes your units are.
· Your general/warlord, whatchacallit
Your general is the most valuable unit because it is what you have to control your forces. Without a wise and strategic leader, your forces will fall into disarray and you will lose the war. You can only have one general, and you made it yours. Kitbashing and 3D printing would likely be your most common means of gaining a general. They must take resemblance of the general on your general stat dossier they can swim in water terrain for two turns before they drown.
· Infantry
The easiest to acquire and kit bash. This allows for vast hordes of infantry, or small fireteams, or something in between. Find your play style. Your infantry should be as tall as the plastic green army men in the image below. These men and women are the bravest of them all.
they can swim in water terrain for two turns before they drown.
· Armor
Mainly made up of vehicles and smaller mechanical suits, must be land based. Expect tanks, jeeps ,Humvees, calvary mounted animals etc. here is an image I ripped for scale as to the largest example of armor you can have. Not my drawing. Its basically the largest tank ever built replace the man in the image with one infantry and you have your scale. Or 0.283333333 m* 0.283333333 m *0.5m
these machines will break down in water terrain.
· Airborne
Airborne units can only fly. They can drop bombs, airdrop armotroops, and attack up to one target per gun that the aircraft is equipped with(within range) as they move. Their biggest weakness is anti-aircraft weaponry and enemy aircraft weapons. How big can an aircraft be?
2.44 meters. X 2.44 meters by 0.60 meters is your maximum for all airborne units.
any airborne that fly like a plane have a +4 to their movement stat but can only bomb ground units 15 cm in front and attack any unit that is in front of it
anything that flies like a helicopter does not have this buff or debuff, they can shoot at any target, but can only use missiles for up to 15 cm on ground units.
NAVAL VEHICLES
Naval vehicles can be big or small, but they can only operate in the designated water terrain area. they can carry troops, they can fire artillery, depth charges, missiles, torpedoes, and submarines can hide below water for three turns before air runs out. but they can be spotted by sonar. if a submerged vessel is within 10 cm of an enemy surface or submarine vessel, the enemy vessel can act as if they know where the submerged vessel is even if the submerged vessel is still submerged.
· B.A.M. ‘s
Big Ass Machines are basically giant robots and massive land ships. These can be Game breaking depending on how you build them and how big you build them. They can fire upon one target per weapon. how big Can these be? They cannot be more than 1.5 meters tall or take up a ground area larger than 4 meters. Players are not allowed to use functioning motor vehicles including, but not limited to cars, trucks, busses, etc. rule of thumb, if you can ride it, you can’t play it. It might as well be just fan art. The maximum distance these can move at any time is 2000cm. to move these, they must make a special movement check. War machines of that size can get stuck easily, so subtract your general’s movement speed from your final roll on each check. If they are larger than the specified limits, you’ve built a giant immobilized obstacle for one turn.
Mobile terrain essentially is a whole battlefield or obstacle of its own. The biggest difference is that anything other than B.A.M. compatible units that are attached to the B.A.M'S can’t be removed from the B.A.M.'S. Artillery such as main guns can’t move, only rotate. same with S.A.M.S. , C.R.A.M.S., and anti aircraft weaponry.

EQUIPMENT AND ARMAMENT
Guns and RE’S(ranged explosives)Require a reload period(one full turn) every so often. Dual wield is an ability that is only applicable to infantry equipment . dual wield only applies when two identical weapons are in both hands of a single unit. Range is how far a weapon can fire before a debuff is added to your accuracy roll. For every 10 cm beyond the stated range, an x-range debuff of -1 is added.
Overheat can only occur on weapons that are labeled with overheat. Every time a gun with overheat is about to fire , a coin must be tossed. If the coin lands on heads, the gun overheats. Overheating will cause the unit to explode. The explosion will deal 1d20 damage to anyone/anything within a 6 cm radius. You only need to roll once.
Cone is a special debuff. Weapons with cone Can only fire at sequential targets within 25 degrees of original target.
im having trouble with deciding the individual weapon stats. so ive decided that i am going to leave those up to you. (the moment i hear people are getting into fights IRL, i will be putting in an elaboration which will settle all disputes regarding equipment and artillery... and i wont be happy about it.)
players are encouraged to record their battles in battle reports and post it online in their relevant subreddits. if they win/lose, then the player is encouraged to come up with a lore reason for any change in tactics, named characters(generals), or stats.
an army is considered overpowered if they can take out all opponents in as little as 10 turns. they must be nerfed if this happens. dont forget to add a lore reason for this occurrence in the battle report.
unlike overpowered, underpowered armies can be taken out in 10 turns. they must be buffed if this happens. dont forget to add a lore reason for this occurrence in the battle report.
this is sci-fantasy/high fantasy, battles are supposed to be epic and economically exaggerated.
write the name of the weapon, the type of weapon.(melee or gun) and its accuracy and punch modifiers.(bare hands is melee and equal to. magic is gun)
spells must be vetted in good faith by advisors prior to the game to prevent game breakage. spells may not kill units or generals in one blow. spells effects can only last one turn unless its a healing spell. healing spells cannot heal more than 5 health points at a time per unit. write out the spells you have for your units and have them vetted by an advisor, advisor will determine gamebreakability of the spell. if spell is determined to be game breaking, mid game, the advisor will have the offending spell removed and the turn undone. at wich point the offending player effectively must alter their strategy in the spirit of good sportsmanship.) There are three approved arcane focuses, wands, staves, and hand casting, (one must not make them look like the caster is going to punch something, have them hold an orb or something.)
(the moment i hear that people get into IRL fights over spells, i will make a list of approved spells and a LONG LIST of forbidden spells. and no one will be happy. )
THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE
Dont be a dick, be a good sport, and have fun.breaking thegame intentionally is a dick move. advisors are encouraged to post their reports of game breaking spells so it may help me in the event Khorde__the__Husk has to revise the rules.

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This letter has been a long time coming. But, it feels better to put pen to paper than it does to just pray to one I’m not sure I believe in.
I, truthfully, resent you. I’ve no idea what I’ve done to face a battle like this on my own. I’ve no idea what I’ve done to follow in the footsteps in my father and his father; the only difference being one had the good will to die, and the other to get sober before killing himself.
I’d been selfish in little ways— making excuses to skip work to audition or perform a play. An extra break on a slow day for an extra cigarette. Nothing consequential.
And yet, before thirty, I face my mortality. I face it alone. I have but a lover that doesn’t want to see me go, and fragmented friendships with girls I’ve played music with.
Friends, old and new, remain unsure of how to comfort me, if they try at all— I’ve put walls up for so long I’m not ever sure how to let them.
But, I know, will die resenting you. I may smile while I watch a Wes Anderson film or hear a song by whatever band. I may feel moved by the greenery of West Virginia, the robust culture of Pittsburgh, and the beauty of a quiet life in Ohio. But, as I fade, I will remember the loneliness I feel in my last days.
I’d spent my youth falsely devoted to your service. My younger, closeted about my bisexuality, giving you and your cause and sizable amount of my income. I will die regretting this, missing old friends, the Rocky Mountains, and having the strength to strum my guitar at my lowest.
I know have next to nothing. And I resent you for that.
Regrettably faithless,
Matthew

You make pretty regrettable mistakes when you're desperate. Unfortunately, desperation would go on to cost me much more than I ever thought possible.
When I was 19 years old my financial situation wasn't great. In what was left of a crumbling home would be my recovering addict twin sister, and myself. The unfortunate state of our home was all from the even more unfortunate passing of our parents just five years prior. The two hadn't died tragically by any means, thankfully. No.. our parents died of old age, a consequence of having us kids later in life, while not being able to take on the financial burden that would be.. us.
My sister was making the early steps into the college lifestyle, doing her best to stay afloat with my support in funding. Money was tight for the two of us, but as she became more well off on her own, the more content she was with severing the last remaining tie to her childhood.. me.
I didn't hate Xel for her decision, if anything I understood her distancing from this life.. even if it saddened me. So then it was just me! Left to a house with a hole in the ceiling. Believe it or not, life wasn't all to bad even with how considerably down in the dumps it otherwise seemed to be.
However, content as I might have been, it's human nature to want more than you have. Can't say I was to greedy to look for some comfortability in my own home..
And so there it was! The glistening letters of ink outlining my salvation. An advertisement I'd found plastered onto the wall of the small booth I sat at while I waited for the bus to carry me off to work. "$5,000 to those compatible for a recent scientific breakthrough." Under any 'normal' circumstances I would consider this a scam. Hell, I was skeptical as I scanned the letters. Had I been told of this opportunity through spam call or text I would've glossed right over it just as anyone else would have.. but I was desperate.
I think it was the fact that someone, some real person had to have put this paper up on this wall gave me some glimmer of hope for a quick cash grab. Listed bellow the promise of money was details for a number to call regarding interest in the proposition.
I took the bait.. I saw the line, and like some idiot I clamped my teeth down just for that hook to sweep me away.
The corporation I'd come to know as, "The Arsaction," would see me just a week later. There was a brief consultation. They took my weight, age, all things I would've expected. It wasn't until they pulled records regarding my familial situation that I began to find this whole ordeal.. suspicious.
To 'begin' to find things suspicious only at this point is foolish, something I full understand, but I feel the need to reinforce the fact that I, Lex McKarthy, was desperate.
Everything by this point seemed pretty legit. The blood tests, the doctors office, the tests were.. reasonable. What was I to suspect? Everything was so vague, and truth be told I honestly didn't even expect anything to come of this visit. All the doctors, all the consultants seemed so disinterested in my features.. but when they realized I had no one, everything seemed to change.
Suddenly ears perked, suddenly doors closed, suddenly I was.. exactly what they were looking for. Every feature of myself was so painfully average. I was anyman, I was.. nothing. Despite their best efforts to be discreate, I knew it was only the fact that nobody would come looking for me that peaked their interests.
My stomach dropped when I was faced with a pen in my hand, trembling over that NDA. Every fiber of me cursed myself for never considering putting just a minute of research into 'The Arsaction,' however a video briefing would ease my nerves. Nobody knew who The Arsaction was. There was no public record of their existence, and that NDA would make sure that they continued to never exist.
I was stupid, I was irrational, I was in over my head! But I was desperate.. and I had nothing else.
"I have nothing else.. I have nothing else!"
It was a mantra I chanted as I was injected with that substance. The substance that turned my blood orange, made my skin freakishly thin.
And then I went home.
That was it. I was given my sum of money, and I was sent home. They told me I was, "good to go," and no number of questions would get a one of them to speak. I was only met with who I'd assume to be security guiding me out of the building.
Not a word more of what I'd just been injected with, only given instructions to not dwell on mirrors for too long. That was it, just some ominous instructions. So I left, as befuddled as I arrived. Relief washed over me as I made my way home. The anxiety I'd received from such an ominous buildup was all waved by the fact that I was somehow just.. good to go?
Relief quickly turned to panic as the inherent nature of it all being too good to be true set in. I expected to die, I expected some visit from government agents, I expected anything and everything, but as months turned to years.. Nothing ever came of it. No mirror ever caused me any harm, which was its own anxiety I'd have to overcome simply because of the absurd nature or such a request.
I hoped it was.. some prank. Everything was well... for a time. Until my sister called.
I just.. watched the phone ring. My sister, someone who I hadn't spoken to in upwards of 8 years was suddenly ringing me up. When I finally had answered, her question left me speechless.
"Hey Lex. would you happen to remember Mom's recipe for that egg toast? I think I left the cookbook at your place."
I felt my ears ring. The question was so.. casual. She entirely skipped the part where we discussed how she's been, how I'm doing. She spoke to me like we'd hung out only days ago.
At the time I'd thought I was just being dramatic, but looking back on it I can only justify my own hesitation to respond.
"W-..what?"
I stammered like a fool, but I was firm in my disbelief.
"Yeah, it should be in the book on the counter?"
I looked over my shoulder to my kitchen counter, past the toaster I never bought, and over to the book she spoke of. My jaw hung heavy, the whole interaction feeling like a dream.
With one hand I held the phone, and with the other I began to skim the pages of the book letting my eyes linger on mom's cinnamon roll recipe for a bit longer than intended.
"Lex.. are you ok?"
My sister inquired on the other end. I suddenly felt sick.. falling the the ground and laying on my back. This wasn't happening. It never did.
"Lex? Are you alright!?"
My sister repeated back more urgently, followed by her assurance that she would be over soon to check on him. But.. no company ever arrived. After hours the line just dropped, and I fell asleep there on that cold, wooden floor, paralyzed with a feeling I couldn't wrap my head around.
This never happened.
I never left.
I woke up in my bed in a cold sweat. I checked the time, greeted with a humble 4:37 in the morning. What troubled me was the fact that the date had been set back 7 years.
Of course it wasn't all so clear to me. After 7 long years I'd honestly forgotten about this day. This was the day that I'd set out for my graciously provided $5,000
7 years of my fucking life.. I would chalk it all up to that.. STUFF that they injected me with.. what was it? Phantom Drive? I could call it all some terrible drug trip, some construct defined by some insane psychedelic, but if that were the case, how was I here now? BEFORE I'd ever taken the drug?
This is a dream. I convinced myself I hadn't miraculously gone back in time, that 7 years of my life weren't a lie, but if that were the case, why was my blood still that damn orangy hue?
I'm losing sleep over this itch in my brain. It's like some taste of blood in my mouth has soured out the idea that letting my eyelids squeeze shut could further obscure my definite understanding of when I stood.
A day I remember so vividly at the ripe age of 14 years old, now 12 years ago, I awoke to the sweet smell of cinnamon rolls filling the air. All was right with the world, all as I climbed from the messy sheets in my dark room. It was abundantly clear that the bulb of the light beside my bed had burnt out over the course of the night, and the closed blinds didn't aid my vision as I stumbled around my room in search of my door.
An oddity presented itself in the fashion of aimless wondering. Where was the nob? One I'd become so accustomed to.. not needing to open? I'd never closed my door. Not the previous night, not ever. Not to the behest of my mother who'd always taken annoyance to closed doors, some trait of my grandmother's to which my mom had unfortunately inherited.
Breakfast took the form of two strips of bacon, scrambled eggs, and slightly burnt French-Toast. My previous assumption of cinnamon rolls unfortunately missed the mark, however I wouldn't object to this. I wish I could convince myself that I was wrong. Something so mundane, something so insignificant to the events in this story, however the first notable instance of a curse that I couldn't pinpoint
My mother had already seen herself off to work by this point, and so I was faced with the responsibilities of seeing myself out to the bus. Some routine I'd become far too used to; The minutes passed, leaving me with nothing to do but wait by the door for a buss that would never arrive.
If the door being shut and the cinnamon rolls being a different meal entirely had left me with a minor confusion, then suddenly being seated in the passenger seat of my mother's car listening to the nonchalant complaints from my twin sister about the nuances freshmen year math shot me into a disarray I couldn't possibly quantify.
I think one of the scariest things for me is the fact that I thought nothing of it. I hadn't freaked out. No scene was made to express what should have been one of the more disturbing instances of my childhood.
I could chalk up the mistaking breakfast for something else as me just misremembering events.. But something unmistakable is the fact that somehow my mom both never drove me to school, yet the fact that she.. always had.
If you're confused, I understand. I am too, because the contradicting nature of my memory is something that haunts me to no end.
Things were easier as a child. That's often the case, but ever sense I stopped aging, I've begun to notice the oddities presented by life that are.. inexplainable. I'm not even sure where to start with researching my predicament. Hell, this is reddit! If I couldn't find an answer here, I doubt there is an answer to be found at all.
The Mandela Effect is something that I feel needs no introduction. To those who don't know, the Mandela Effect, in brief, is a phenomenon that incurs when you "misremember" something. Think of a card, now imagine you saw that card as a child and it had a single heart drawn on it's center. Now, years later you are discussing this card with someone else just for them to tell you that the heart you swear, the heart you KNOW you saw.. was a diamond. You tell them they are wrong, you shake your head, chuckle nervously.. But then they present you with the card.
Your stomach drops. This can't be the card, there is no way! Only it is the card, and when you come to the realization that it is in fact the card you'd seen as a child, you are filled with a mix of confusion, fascination, and quite possibly denial.
Most often, the Mandela Effect is associated with silly things like books titles, and board game mascots, but my experience is far beyond such things. It's the only phenomenon I've found that seems even within the realm of explaining my predicament. Problem is, the more I think, the more is wrong.
All of me wishes it all ended with that one childhood experience! But it didn't. In fact, the more I consider my childhood, the more contradictions I notice. Part of me believes I could handle this if it was limited to my childhood, but it's not. This.. experience... It effects my every day!
I'm not losing my mind, I'm just picking up crumbs that I never dropped. Not.. losing my mind, just finding more "mind" than the inventory should account for.

Recently my friend group which consist of nine girls and I have been having issues with this one girl who I will call Claire. Claire act's like a pick me non stop and then she gets surprised when people get annoyed with her. Not only that but every day in school during lunch time she's always asking me and my friends for food because she's "too lazy" to pack her own food or get the school lunch. Not only that but shes been hogging one of my best friends who we will call Diana. Ever since 4 months ago its like I can never talk to Diana alone, Claires ALWAYS with her. Sometimes I'll try talk to both of them so that we can have peace but it never works out because Claire is like, "This is a private conversation go away." and then whenever I'm with Diana and I say the same exact thing to her she gets pissy.
So then on Friday me and 2 other girls in my friend group got really fed up with the way Claires been acting so we confronted her and we tried our best to do it in a nice way, however she rubbed it the wrong way and thought we were straight up calling her annoying even though we didn't. Claire got really defensive the whole time. We started by talking about how we just wanted to talk to Diana alone for 5 minutes without Claire getting mad at us but then she pulled "Diana has the right to hangout with whoever she wants" in a really sassy tone. Then after that we proceeded to talk about how sometimes Claire gets sexualized in our class because she wears literal thong like shorts to class and her tank tops don't even cover her boobs. She said it wasn't her fault that her style was like that and she kept rolling her eyes at us and then we completely gave up on even trying. Things got really chaotic after that but I wont go into detail.
Then on Monday (5-13-24), Claire and Diana ignored the WHOLE friend group as if we were their extra side pieces. It hurt really bad to see our friend group fall apart like this but I knew it was bound to happen eventually. So out of my friend group of 10 people, three left. (Diana, Claire, and a girl who sided with them.) That only left 7 of us but then everyone started to feel uncomfortable and didn't want to have to pick sides and now none of us are friends anymore.
Am I the asshole for this? I know I typed it confusingly but that's how it truly is without the specific details.

I've (22M) been a close friend of a guy I'll call T (22M) for some years now. We got together from mutual friends and stuck together for our similar humor and for the fact that we both speak our own minds regarding anything. I'm a huge fan of music and I used to share mostly metal with him, since it's one of his favorite genres, but we also shared a lot of stuff on friendships, religion, friends group and our personal stories of loss and all that stuff. We're both analytical people, but he's more interested in finding faults and developing "the best idea", rather than getting involved in new things.
However, I feel like, as time goes on, we're taking on different paths: I'm no longer interested in the same music as I was (neither is he strictly, but he's not into music as I am, so it's difficult we'll cross paths again regarding our tastes); I've tried developing my understanding of others' point of view while I feel like he hasn't, he mostly cares about being critical of ideas in general; our humor is becoming different, as I'm no longer interested in niche memes or black humor as I was back then.
Our biggest problem, I feel, is in our beliefs on ideas and dialogue: he doesn't mind being harsh if he's saying the truth, and always prioritizes criticizing and bettering ideas and beliefs. In general, as I am growing up, I'm becoming more people oriented, always trying to open up to new ideas, even if they're less logical than what I'm accustomed to. I'm becoming more interested in esoteric and psychological stuff the more time passes, but I can't talk about these to him 'cause "They don't make sense" (also, he's Catholic, so I find it funny). His logic is very sharp, so I find it very difficult to debunk him and get him to see my point of view on most matters, while I find intuitive grasping his ideas, even when I don't agree with them.
I think the main problem is that I just don't feel understood by him. Even with all that I've said, I'd like to salvage the friendship, maybe just dialling down the level of closeness we have. I'm looking for advice on how to handle this discussion with him, without having him rebuke logical bullshit on emotional matters (or, by all means, rational to me).

I've been looking back at much of the media I consumed early on and there's inappropriate age gaps, werid power dynamics, ECT. I think this groomed and primed me to be more vulnerable but also seek out inappropriate relationships.
I was sa'd at 9 by a 14yr old boy who was my brother's friend and seen as a part of the family. I did have a crush on him and spent much of my time around him and my brother but I never started any form of flirting with him. I actually began feeling uncomfortable the more it seemed he was accepting my feelings and normalizing physical contact. I did struggle a long time feeling like it was my fault because I liked him. Sadly I was sa'd multiple times before this incident as well by multiple boys so that certainly also has a part to play.
And tbh I've never dated my same age or younger. I have dated older men mostly because it's just what feels normal and right. I think that taste has many factors but media definitely may be one.
I just think it's crazy looking back at these shows I watched and how their seems to be a normalization of large age gaps, waiting until they turn 18, some incest or borderline it and even some of it doesn't have very clear consent or no consent that is never addressed.

My most recent psychosis occurred due to a number of underlying reasons that I was dealing with over a 6-8 week period and was mostly delusional.
The lead up to it - I had just finished the largest engineering project that I had been working on for two years,. My wife and I were having a very difficult and stressful time, with disagreements all the time.
My body was yelling and screaming for help and I could feel it from deep down inside me. I went to see doctors and psychologists but it didn't do it for me.. A childhood friend then passed away and that tipped me over.. All of a sudden I was placing myself in my friends place and I had all these questions that I had for myself.
I took a few days off work in the hope that it would get better, however, as I returned I just felt exhausted and overcooked. That's when I started to lose it... Note that I wasn't doing any hard drugs at the time, nor was I drinking, but in that upleading week, I was having the occasional nitrous oxide (N20) cannisters.
I went to get my tarot cards read upon returning to work (first time). The lady who conducted the card reading told me to choose the cards when "I feel the energy above the deck".. I actually felt the cards drawing my hand closer to them. I received the following cards, all of which seemed were of major importance to me: (1) Stand your Ground, (2) Hope, (3) Foundation & Achievements, (4) Base Chakra, (5) The Waiting Game, (6) Third Eye Chakra, (7) Love Begins, (8) Spiritual Union, (9) Intuition, (10) Conquer & Defeat.
..That night I went for a walk, I saw a shooting star - it was the first time that I had seen one and was so beautiful. I rushed into tell my wife about the tarot cards and the shooting star.. we both broke down in tears. Later on that evening I would tune into Youtube, and learn more about finance, investing, life, philosophy and music - all of which were major interests in my life.
The next morning I woke up and got ready to go to work. I couldn't help myself but start crying when all of my songs came on. Notorious BIG - Juicy: "Born sinner, the opposite of a winner, remember when I used to eat sardines for dinner".. I had sardines for dinner growing up too, and I could literally taste my mothers sardine dish in my mouth while the song was playing... As I raced onto the highway, it felt as though I was so connected to everything. I rolled the windows down and felt the air around me...The number plates around me "8SAMA" - which I had a feeling that there was going to be a terrorist attack occurring in the not too distant future. "FX Silver" - I was speculating with precious metals back at that time and thought it was a sign that due to the terror attack, silver was going to increase in price. "IDK IDK" - I was listening to the song I don't know by Tion Wayne, Stormzy, etc. the night before my psychosis.. Everything around me was providing me with signs and nothing was a coincidence. It felt like I was enlightened or something?
I called my brother in the morning who lived abroad, he said that he was being overworked and stressed out. He wanted to head to New York for new years eve and I immediately told him not to go as something bad was going to happen. When I went back into the office, I felt as though there would be some kind of market correction before the terror event occured, so I tried to sell all of my crypto, the only problem was, when I entered all of my key seed phrases, one of them somehow disappeared and I could no longer access my crypto wallet. That was when everything cracked further.. I thought the government was onto me as I had put all the pieces of the puzzle together and started to warn people around me.
I grabbed my manager from the office and told him I needed to speak to them. I wanted to come clean with everything that had happened. During this time I felt at peace and in this blissful place. I was seeing visual signs of things from my past which were interacting with my present moment .. it felt like everything around me was staged. I came clean to the manager and told them that I had been struggling at work, and using drugs and alcohol to cope, I said that it also put so much strain on my relationship and my wife was going to leave me. At this time it felt like the police had wire tapped my manager and everything I was saying was going on record. I was trying to outsmart him with every question that they had for me and it was like I was playing 4d chess in my head. We spent close to 2.5 hours talking about my situation -at every stage I was waiting for when the popo were going to pop out and arrest me.
My wife had been contacted and came to pick me up. She took me back home, but while I went home I thought that our house had been bugged and wired. To me our neighbours were acting odd, and so many things were working in my head, I just didn't know how to relax and calm down. The next day I was taken to my parents place, and I initially started by doing a little bit of exercise, I still felt as though the police were after me and I had something to prove to the world. I then had a panic attack, where I legitimately felt as though I couldn't breathe, my wife and family rushed me to the emergency department at the hospital, and I was met with a psychiatrist who put me on a large dose of antipsychotic medication. Don't know where I'd be without my wife to support me through everything.
I then came back and rested. Slowly but surely I started to realise that I had just experienced a psychotic episode that lasted for several days. Following this event, I had a major depressive episode, which took months for me to recover, and approximately one year later I am in a better place mentally, but I am still not 100 %.
It turns out I have a family history of this sort of bullshit that nobody told me about, and being exposed to drugs and alcohol would only increase the risk of any symptoms. I've been off all the drugs and attempting to stop alcohol, and live a more holistic, natural life. Let's see what happens. For anyone dealing newly dealing with it or in the process of recovering, it gets better. Keep your head up.
If anyone else has a psychosis story or would like to open up about their feeling of oneness or connectedness, please do feel free to share below.
<3

My dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about 6 months ago. I am a single mom and had recently moved in with them to save money. My dad has always been a smoker. He has always been a drinker (although not to excess) and is a very closed off person. I don’t remember him being around or being a part really of my childhood. He was working but my mom is, and has always been, the breadwinner. I think many of these things I resent him greatly for.
My parents’ plan was to retire in Italy and I would pay them rent which would cover their mortgage here as well as give them extra to live off of. This is the main reason I moved in. With the cancer, their plans have been ruined. My mom I feel is most affected by this.
When we first got the diagnosis I thought right away we would do research, follow every rule and suggestion, but my dad kept smoking. And drinking.
There was one night my mom and I took a pack of his cigarettes and wrote death on each one in red sharpie (we realize this is very insensitive but we had tried every other healthy way to help him quit). The next day, without my mom’s knowledge, I took all of his liquor and dumped it.
The doctor said wine ONCE IN A WHILE was ok. This was only after she could probably tell he desperately wanted her to say yes to alcohol. He doesn’t follow the vast majority of the food restrictions. He also has diabetes as a side effect of the cancer. My mom and I try so hard to persuade him to eat healthy but he gets angered whenever we say…”maybe not steak tonight as the doctor said no red meat.”
He is an extremely quiet person. He just sits and looks at his phone. He does not open up and barely has a conversation even when we try so hard to do things to make him feel better. He has even blown up at my son.
I want to be here to support him. I think it’s been really really hard on my mom. I do not think I can stay. It’s so toxic. And of course he very very much expects me to drive him to all his chemo appointments and cook meals and go grocery shopping and be there for him hand and foot. But I DO NOT WANT TO. It makes me feel like he doesn’t deserve it at all. He’s never kind or appreciative of anything. He barely speaks to me.
This Mother’s Day the first sentence in my mom’s card was “this day is not usually my responsibility…” SIR SHE IS THE MOTHER OF YOUR CHILD. And of course I did not get a card at all.
His behavior is just really bizarre. I feel so extremely bad for him. More for my mom. I try to talk to him but truly I think he’s still very mad at me for throwing away all his liquor. But I don’t feel bad about it AT ALL.
Not to mention…he works at a wine shop. He says continuing to work makes him feel good, which is good. BUT We’ve just become aware that he’s doing “tastings” (meaning tasting alcohol and liquor) at work still. While having cancer and going through chemo.
I know this is a long confused rant. I love my family and help them daily with absolutely everything I can. I am having a hard time continuing to do so. Thank you for reading. I am at my wits end today. I’m sure tomorrow I will be a sweet cupcake person yet again. Oh the rollercoaster of emotions. Am I an asshole?!

I have had a hard life, but I worked very hard and accomplished something only one percent of women like me in the US have. I thought this would save me. It didn't. I had to leave a terrible relationship and I am so poor now. Things will not be better anytime soon. I remind myself of my life as a poor little girl when I look at my girls. I feel so much fear, I just shut down remembering how I grew up and how I never wanted a taste of that for my kids. I'm so upset and I failed. Even if I do get through this financial time that is so awful, it's like my heart is broken and all hope for myself is shattered. I feel like a shadow of any dream I ever had because I have endured for so long and nothing worked. I am still strong and still doing my best, and loving my best, but I am destroyed and broken inside.
I have a real dad, he is horrible to me. He has left only destruction in his path. He is the reason that things are this way, that no matter how much I've run and how hard I worked I can't get away from what I am or what I come from. I have tried since I was 9 and I cannot. I just need a dad to pray for me, to pray for my own. I have no one to love and cherish me and to make sure in the end I am ok. I used to think a lot about God as God the father but I struggled because I could not imagine what a father that loved me would behave like. Now after decades of resisting I see myself as what my dad always treated me as, a piece of shit to be used and who will never be safe. For my part, I know that God is there, I know anything I have comes from him, but I am only nothing to him but an afterthought he just sees suffer and fail.
Because my efforts have failed to be the professional and middle class woman who gave her children a life she didnt have, I have no more hope for myself. But I still have hope for my young ones, all I want is for them to be free and to get away from these things that have maimed me inside forever and that are on me like a stain. I want my kids to be middle class and educated and loved and protected. Right now, I love and protect them, but I want to know when I am gone they will have a happier and better life than I have, despite everything I tried and worked so hard for my efforts failed me and in the end I am so scared I will fail them. I couldn't live with me failing them. I need them to have so much better than I did and to have it for all their life.

Hey everybody, so I recently followed a recipe I found on TikTok (yeah I know..) but it was really good, but the overall opinion of the people I let it try was that it was just really sweet... also I hope this question fits in here...
so here's the recipe, as short as I can get it (it's also in metric, because I don't know imperial, sry in advance):
175g Creme Cheese 200ml Heavy or Whipping Cream (I used whipping cream) half a can of condensed milk (about 200g)
mix those together for the cream
then you dunk whatever cookies or biscuits you want into a bit of milk and lay them out in a dish
spread half of the cream ontop and repeat
for a chocolate ganache heat 50ml Heavy of Whipping Cream und melt dark chocolate in it spread on top and refrigerate
ok so I know that most of the sugar content comes from the condensed milk, I tried finding some condensed milk with less sugar in it, but to no avail, so now I want to know, does anybody know how to make this recipe taste just a bit less sweet? can I add something to balance the taste? I bought coconut condensed milk, thinking it would be less sweet, but when I looked at the can of my first attempt, it has basically the same amount of sugar, I also tried finding some heavy cream with less sugar, but they all have pretty much the same where I live (Austria) in my first 2 attempts I used Lotus cookies, which are like caramel biscuits you get served with coffee and then I used the Leibniz biscuits which are more bland but still sweet biscuits, thinking it would be less sweet, it was still pretty sweet though haha in the end it tasted really good both times, but it's still really really sweet...

TRIGGER WARNING: MENTION OF ABUSE, CHILD S*XUAL ABUSE, S*ICIDE
tl;dr: I'm trying to figure out if my husband could be a narcissist, or emotionally immature, or some mashup of both. Could someone explain this to me like I'm five?
(If this isn’t the right group, please point me in the right direction)
I tried my best to condense, but it’s a really long one. I’m sorry.
A breakdown of the pertinent info:

Me: F, mid-fifties, just returned to PT work outside of home Husband: M, mid-fifties, always worked a regular job, main wage earner Married: 30+ years w/adult kids (no longer at home)

For a while, I've thought my husband has definitely shown signs of narcissistic behavior. I won't list everything, but a few things are that he is definitely argumentative (over seemingly insignificant issues), jealous, needy for my attention and flies off the handle if he feels ignored, his only "love language" seems to be sex (and any lack of it means I don't love him), he loves the silent treatment which is always followed by a huge blowup and then love-bombing, he always one-ups me (he works harder, he feels worse, he is more tired, etc). There's more, but I'm trying to keep this short. I will say that he has never physically hurt me, but he has spent a lot of energy being emotionally abusive.
I would say that is his main thing; constantly saying how much I don't love him and how much I don't care about him if he feels the least little bit ignored or has to spend any time alone. My going back to work at a PT job has just turned that fire into an inferno because I've gone from a SAHM/SAHW to working PT, and sometimes just by necessity he is by himself (I want to say that, in the thirty years he has worked his job, I have been by myself more times than I can count because he has worked scheduled/unscheduled/spur-of-the-moment overtime, and I just rolled with it because, really, what other choice was there? Unemployment for the main breadwinner?). He absolutely cannot handle being alone, while I find being alone refreshing and rejuvenating. In fact, I'm the opposite; I'm like, "Do you love me? Then go away and leave me alone for a while!"
But here's where I have been doing some thinking. I know that many of you are going to say that there is no way, but I do believe he loves me. I've seen the man behind all that. And I do love him, despite all of the problems and issues, and I believe as much as he understands it, he loves me too. I am determined to work on this marriage. It occurred to me the other day, when he was mad and throwing a fit about something; I thought; "He's acting like a toddler who needs a snack and a nap." And so my mind started wandering along those lines for a bit.
You see, my husband has had a hard life. Both of us grew up in dysfunctional families with abusive parents. His father was definitely a narcissist, and physically abusive to his wife and at least to my husband (the GC sibling seems to have escaped most of it) and I've heard was sexually abusive to family members as well. He put his wife in the hospital more than once because of severe beatings. He threatened to drive off a bridge with the whole family in the car. He threatened all of them with a gun and a family friend had to come over and save them. He regularly beat my husband for the crime of not eating his vegetables at dinner. When my husband was 22, and I was pregnant, his father tried to hit him over the head with a huge wrench. (My husband is a strong man; that was a dumb idea.) There’s apparently a lot more my husband won’t talk about and/or doesn't remember.
But his mother wasn't an angel, either (let's be clear, SHE DID NOT DESERVE SPOUSAL ABUSE OF ANY KIND. NO PERSON DESERVES ABUSE. However, you can not deserve abuse and, at the same time, not be a nice person). She believed the world revolved around her, she was never wrong and the smartest person in the room, and my husband was expected to be at her beck and call whenever she wanted him for whatever reason. She abused him in her own way. Hurting people hurt people. When I came along, he was nineteen, and I treated him like an adult; that went over like a lead balloon because she treated him like a child.
Shortly after we got married and had our first child, she purposefully ceased to live, which threw my husband into a deep, deep depression for a few years. It was rough. I tried to get him to go to therapy, but he flat refused. We worked through it and eventually had another child, and he can finally talk about it now, thirty-some years later. But he rarely visits her grave, and I’ve never forced him to go if he doesn’t want to.
At very significant points in his emotional development, my husband had some major life crises happen:

He had to retake first grade because his mother was put in the hospital by his father's abuse; he shut down to the point he wouldn't do his homework and had to be held back (which is hard enough); he would have been around 7 years old He spent his childhood dealing with an abusive father and wondering if he was going to literally not be alive His parents finally divorced when he was around 14 years old After that, he and his mother and sibling were constantly financially insecure His mother purposefully ceased to live when he was twenty-three, after we had just had our first child He has told me that he doesn’t remember large chunks of his childhood (which I understand is a trauma response)

As he was being 'constructed', there was built a severely flawed frame structure around these emotionally damaged areas; the ability in his ‘frame’ to withstand a structural state of stress is severely defective. He never really learned how to regulate his emotions, how to work through them or deal with them in a healthy way. His mother never got him therapy for the abuse he had endured since birth; if anything, she compounded it (that’s a whole post in itself because, wait for it, she was a counselor). The only relationship he had modeled on a consistent basis was a dysfunctional, abusive, unhealthy one. (He did have maternal grandparents who were loving and kind, but they couldn't be there 24/7.) His aunts and uncles were all also in dysfunctional marriages/divorces, so no help or escape there. As a result, he has nothing to draw from when he feels stress, irritation, anger, sadness, irritation, loneliness; he struggles to even identify the differences between all of those emotions. He is extremely simplistic in his thought processes when it comes to emotions: He feels good/bad, energetic/tired, loved/unloved, happy/sad, full/starving; sometimes he’s capable of mildly annoyed if he's in a really good mood, but mostly his emotions are one extreme or the other (they do not change wildly; he picks one and usually sticks with it for a while).
If he feels stressed in one area of his life, then EVERY area of his life, in his mind, sucks. Very black/white. No grey at all. I’m not sure he knows grey exists. He thinks life should ALWAYS be a happy feeling, and if there is any bad/sad/stress/negative emotion, then that ruins it all and he can only concentrate on that, like a pebble in his shoe.
It’s like if someone gave each of us an oatmeal raisin cookie (mine has my allergens/intolerances removed):
Neither of us are big fans of raisins, but we both like oatmeal cookies. I will just eat around the raisins, or I will pick them out. If that is impossible, I’ll just eat the raisins, even though they aren’t my favorites, because I like oatmeal cookies and I try to look at the positive. “A minute ago I didn’t have a cookie, but now I do have a cookie, even though it has raisins that I don’t like, so life is pretty okay at this moment.” (I try to find something positive, even if it’s just a little thing, and focus on that.)
He will spend his time bitching that his cookie has raisins. He doesn’t like raisins. Don’t they know he doesn’t like raisins? How is he supposed to eat this cookie with raisins? And if I point out that he can make the best of it and just try to pick out the raisins, then he gets all upset. “But I should have got a cookie with no raisins. I shouldn’t have to pick out the raisins. Even if I pick them out, I can still taste them. Life sucks all the time.” (He finds something negative in everything, even if it’s a little thing, and builds it up to overshadow all the good things.)
So, I’m thinking that he has probably inherited some narcissistic tendencies from his father (and some not-so-pleasant stuff from his mother as well), and then he’s added emotional trauma to this, which makes me think emotional immaturity has been stirred into this particular pie (or cookie, if you will). Could this be so?
Here’s a very recent case in point. He works nights. I mostly work days, but my job is such that I sometimes need to be ‘on-call’, and so occasionally I need to go in at weird hours/times. It’s a great job and I love it, and it’s a perfect fit for me and my skill-set, but he’s having a hard time adjusting to me not always being around like I have been for most of our marriage. (Remember, to him not being around=not loving him.) He feels like he’s not the center of attention any more, even though I’ve tried to make up for it.
Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are temporarily sharing a car. We're making the best of it, but it’s a hassle and we are both tired of it (using public transportation is not an option in our rural area and neither of us have coworkers who live close to us). His shifts can be 8-12 hours, depending. Well, on certain days of the month, he works mandatory 12-hour shifts. They are always on specific days. I made work plans based on that schedule, which never changes. But yep, you guessed it…this past Saturday, it changed. He told me that I didn’t need to take him to work that night since he was only working 8 hours, and I was all, “What? No, I really need the car because I already told my boss I would work tonight because I know you always work 12 hours on this day.”
Just how I was supposed to know the schedule changed, I’m not sure, but he completely lost the plot. He started yelling at me while we were still home and it didn’t stop until I dropped him off at work an hour later. I just shut down. He covered every subject; I didn’t love him, I didn’t care about his feelings, nobody EVER cares about his feelings, I always leave him alone, I never have sex with him so that PROVES I don’t love him (I have sat him down and told him, repeatedly, about some physical issues I am having at the moment that really don’t make sex much fun for me which I am under a doctor’s care for, and I have reassured him that I love him very much and I want to have sex with him but I need to get these physical things under control; to his credit, he has never forced me to have sex), I work too much, I shouldn’t have taken the stupid job anyway (he is the one who told me I should probably get a PT job), I don’t get paid enough (I make the going rate for what I do), I don’t clean the house enough, the dishes need washed, I don’t feed him properly, I’ll probably spend all day Sunday running errands for my mother (who is eighty, a manipulative narcissist herself, has health issues, I’m an only child, I have had to step up and help her) and not be home with him, and why am I so upset, what am I starting to cry about now???
Then Sunday, Mother’s Day, he must have felt guilty because he helped me carry in groceries and was nice to me all day. Not in a love-bombing way, not over-the-top or weird, just nice. He’s been nice to me today as well. He did mention in passing that on these scheduled 12-hour shifts that the crew on the other shift always leaves extra work for him to do, and then denies it, and he knows he’s going in to a mess and a ton of extra work (he has a hard, physically demanding job), so that puts him in a bad mood. I don’t know if that was his round-about way of apologizing or what. Yes, he probably was stressed out about going in to a mess at work, and my taking the car didn’t help, and he didn’t handle the stress/anger in a healthy way (to put it mildly). We both could have communicated better about work schedules, but I was just basing my decision to work on his never-changing schedule. It was frustrating, but it wasn’t the end of the world, and it all worked out. His reaction was totally out of proportion to the event.
So is that narcissistic behavior or immature behavior? It’s like he gets mad, he blows up, he comes to himself, he apologizes/acts sorry, loves on me, treats me good, sloooowly builds up anger again, gets silent silenter silentest…blows up again and the whole thing starts over. Why is this still happening? Shouldn’t we be past this by now? It’s hard to explain, and I know some of you won’t understand (and nor should you, based on what you have been through, which is truly horrific, and I am so sorry), but it’s like he comes to himself and realizes how he is acting, but later the hurt and anger take over again. And the cyclic pattern in his life continues.
Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about whether he might be more emotionally immature than narcissistic, or more narcissistic than emotionally immature, or some combo of both, and what I could do to help him and strategies to deal with it myself. NGL, it is really taking a toll on me emotionally. I feel like I have been run through the wringer every day. Some days I cry and cry (when I’m alone, never when he is here, he gets mad when I cry because he can’t handle negative emotions and he would never acknowledge he caused the negative emotion), some days I just shut down and sleep for 12 hours. I have a couple of mental health apps on my phone that I use.
We are at a time in our marriage when I feel like we should be enjoying ourselves (our adult children have moved out and we are a little more financially stable than we were the last time we had no kids at home), but it feels like everything is just falling apart. I feel like we shouldn’t be arguing about this same stuff after thirty-plus years, but here we are, still arguing about whether I love him or not.
Thank you for reading my long and boring post. Just typing it all out helped.

In the verdant landscapes of Kerala, where the air is heavy with the scent of spices and the backwaters weave intricate patterns through the land, lies a hidden gem for travelers seeking authentic experiences – Kerala House Homestays in Palakkad. Nestled amidst the lush greenery, these homestays offer more than just accommodation; they provide a gateway to the heart and soul of Kerala’s culture, tradition, and hospitality.
Embracing Authenticity:
Kerala House Homestays in Palakkad are not your typical lodging options; they are windows to the vibrant culture and lifestyle of Kerala. From the moment you step into one of these homestays, you are greeted with warm smiles and genuine hospitality that instantly makes you feel like a part of the family. The traditional architecture, often characterized by sloping roofs, wooden interiors, and open verandas, transports you to a bygone era, while still offering modern comforts.
Culinary Delights:
One of the highlights of staying at a Kerala House Homestay is undoubtedly the culinary experience. Kerala cuisine is a celebration of flavors, with dishes rich in spices, coconut, and fresh seafood. At these homestays, guests are treated to homemade meals prepared with love and care by skilled local chefs. From appam and stew for breakfast to traditional sadya (feast) served on banana leaves for lunch, every meal is a culinary journey that tantalizes the taste buds and leaves a lasting impression.
Immersive Experiences:
Beyond just accommodation and food, Kerala House Homestays offer a plethora of immersive experiences that allow guests to delve deeper into the local culture. Whether it’s learning the art of traditional Kerala cooking, trying your hand at weaving coconut leaves to make roof thatches, or joining the family for a boat ride along the tranquil backwaters, every moment spent here is filled with opportunities to create cherished memories.
Connecting with Nature:
Palakkad is blessed with abundant natural beauty, from lush forests and rolling hills to serene backwaters and cascading waterfalls. Kerala House Homestays provide the perfect base for exploring this pristine landscape. Guests can embark on guided nature walks through spice plantations, go birdwatching in the nearby forests, or simply unwind amidst the tranquility of nature, far away from the hustle and bustle of city life.
Personalized Hospitality:
What sets Kerala House Homestays apart is the personalized attention and care that each guest receives. Unlike hotels, where you are just another room number, here you are treated as an honored guest, with hosts going above and beyond to ensure your comfort and satisfaction. Whether it’s arranging customized tours, organizing cultural performances, or simply engaging in heartfelt conversations over a cup of chai, the hospitality extended at these homestays is truly unparalleled.
The Best Homestays in Palakkad:
While there are numerous homestays in Palakkad, a few stand out for their exceptional service, ambiance, and authenticity. Among them, "Nila Homestay" exudes old-world charm with its traditional Kerala architecture and serene surroundings. "Kairali Heritage" offers a unique blend of luxury and heritage, with spacious rooms overlooking lush gardens. "Manalur Illam" is perfect for those seeking an offbeat experience, with its rustic charm and close proximity to nature.
In a world where travel has become synonymous with ticking off bucket lists and snapping Instagram-worthy photos, kerala house homestay in Palakkad offer a refreshing alternative – a chance to slow down, immerse oneself in local culture, and forge meaningful connections with both people and nature. Whether you’re a solo traveler seeking solitude, a couple looking for a romantic getaway, or a family craving an authentic cultural experience, a stay at one of these homestays promises to be a memorable journey filled with warmth, laughter, and a generous dose of Kerala’s famed hospitality.

Intentionally or unintentionally... but definitely ironically...they are similar.
Protagonists and stars, we hold deep fond opinions about how they "would/should be", long since we keep seeing on the large screen cinema. Both Vanga (during film run-time) and Vimal (during the same film's interval) show content that many love-many hate, but there's no denying that they take all our beloved glittery-glamorized-adorable superstars... and drop them into an exhibition of madness, and we see heroes as "pigs crawling-rolling in a mud bath". It makes me really weirded and wondering - who more of our hero do we have to watch now and endure? How fragile our moral and emotional attachments to these stars are? Maybe it's not all fairyland on the other side, because we never actually visited it? We lived "here" and imagined "that".
Don't fight but think about it, probably they would not have intended so deeply, but still...
The reality of this side of humanity exists, like many sides.
Please let me know what you think about it.

Throwaway in case it gets messy. Also, on mobile warning. Buckle up bc it's quite a ride. I have no idea how to proceed. Like the title says, I went to court over a money dispute and the judge made a decision. The other side still says I still owe them.
Here's a bit of background. So my family and I live in Southern CA. We rent from a Company that manages different properties since Jan 2019. We moved out in Sep 2023, which is almost 5 years. We were receiving Housing Aid (HUD, Section 8) during these 5 years.
Players are: Me and my family - myself (I moved there when I was 19 and moved out at 24. I am currently 25) And my mother (disabled and elderly) Company - the company that we rented from Housing Rep - the go between
There was a lot to why we left, and if it is pertinent please ask and I will share, but i am trying to be brief. But basically we moved out, and Company told Housing we had unpaid damages. They charged us $3 k in move out costs, and we had $1 k in deposit so they are saying we owe them $2 k still.
Instead of asking for that amount civally, Company complains to HUD about the unpaid $2 k. Housing Representative threatens to terminate the HUD if no payment/plan is set up. This is around Oct 2023. There was some back and forth with Housing Rep, Company, and I. When I asked how to dispute charges, I was sent general information to a fair Housing Counsil.
Anyway, there was a lot of back and forth. I will admit that I was not on top of getting the ball rolling. I am 25, I lost my father at 19 and I have to take care of my mother. I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't have parents to guide me. I suffer from mental illnesses myself. Housing Rep did not offer me any help. The Housing Counsil said they were currently full and wouldl reach out to me in Jan 2024 but never did. I'm sorry if I did anything wrong, but I literally have no one to tell me how to be an adult.
Anyhow February 2024. I went to Small Claims by myself to contest the $3 k. I sued the Company for $3 k, but they did not counter sue.
Well the court trial happened recently. Their judgment was "the defentant (Company) does not owe the Plaintiff (us) any money"
Anyhow, I sent the Housing Rep the court's decision. He is now asking me to pay the defendant the "initial final account statement balance" of $2 k.
I went to court today aks for clarification on the judges ruling. Self Help instructed me to fill out a form SC-105 and then to file it.
I was able to talk to a supervisor. He told me some things: 1. Company does not owe Us any amount. 2. Court did not determine that We owe Company any amount because Company did not counter sue. 3. There is no use in filing the SC-105 beacuse it will just say to refer to the minute order.
I sent this information to Housing Rep. He is still insisting I pay back the $2 k. But the court has already made a ruling, and they did not rule that We owed Company any money. But Housing Rep is still saying we owe $2 k. How do I proceed? If I do not pay, he'll threaten termination again.
TLDR: went to courrt over money, court says no one owes anything, still getting pressured from a government employee to pay up.

It's kind of complicated bc it's more than the title, honestly. I'm in a server where we do apocalypse rps, and such, and I've been rping in it for almost two years. Everytime I roleplay though I tend to get forgotten about, a lot. Like I could be roleplaying right there and they forget, or I ask a question so I could know and they ignore the question completely.
Then there's only two females in there, me and my other friend we'll call flower. They really like roleplaying with flower but tends to ignore me, and it hurts bc it feels like I'm excluded a lot of the time. I have my assumptions too though, I think the reason they enjoy roleplaying with flower is because she can do erp. I don't do erp because my bf sees it as cheating and I timeskip to respect my bfs wishes. In the vent channel flower will vent about anything, any small things like stubbing her toe and so many people will come to ask her if she's okie etc. then she complains about no one being there for her, even though I try and text her to let her know I'm there. Then she ignores me completely! Which honestly hurts a lot because I want to be there for her.
In a way though me getting hurt isn't as much as a concern as other people. I blacked out and face planted the wall, and told them I would be slow bc I blacked out and face planted. All I got was a skull emoji, and ignored as they continued to rp without me. Which also hurts a lot.
It also kind of upsets me because flower was complaining to me and her bf in VC that this one guy is obsessed ( well call him cheese) with her and she doesn't understand why he keeps acting like her bf when they aren't dating. Which is weird because she erps with cheese A LOT, and he's single and she's pretty. Honestly I'm more than positive that her bf has no idea that she is erping and such. part of it is because of their insecurities of their relationship, as well as she accused my friend of cheating on her husband because my friend was talking to my other dude friend.
In the server I'm more than positive that most of the people are straight up against me. Like I said that a plague hasnt past through the main group of the server yet. It would be interesting to see them try and overcome a plague all together in a way and build closer relationships. Cheese immediately replied with "no, not happening, I don't want to deal with this. It always feels like you're trying to start something."
Cheese also tends to godmod and metagame a lot and I call it out which I think it why I think he doesn't want to rp with me or ignores me. Same with another. It's also frustrating because my rolls are neglected a lot. A guy I rped with earlier (water), rolled a 17 on intimidation. I rolled a 23 with a nat 20. And he immediately said "she gets a little scared", even though I rolled over??
This sounds a bit far fetched, but I genuinely think that I'm also just a boring roleplayer. I try my hardest to make my roleplays interesting, I put so much detail in as much as I can, I try to read everything even sometimes over if I can't understand, I ask questions when I don't understand, I do my best to put in character development. And I'm still not good enough.
It hurts more because when me and flower are in VC, she's allowed to rant about everyone in the server as much as she wants, and the one time I said "I can't believe what cheese did" she got so incredibly annoyed and deafened to not listen to me rant about him. I thought I was being dramatic but my other two friends agreed that they had noticed it too and thought it was unfair to me how she treats me a lot of the time.
It hurts as well because I'm pretty sure she'll only RP with me if I roleplay a guy. Won't engage with most of my female OCS at all, or when we do she responds little to none but continues with other people. The one time I played a guy, she was SO engaged in our roleplay, to thebpoint almost everytime we were in vc she would constantly ask for me to reply to that roleplay, none stop. To the point I became uncomfortable because I was roleplay ing a guy, and she only wanted to roleplsy with me just because I was a guy in the RP. I finally told her I was didn't want to continue the rp with me as the guy and she ignored me completely and wouldn't respond to me for a long time. And now it's back to not roleplayin with me in general. It confuses me though, why am I much more interesting to roleplay as a guy, than my female OCS? I did little test and roleplayed the guy as if he wasone of my female OCS, so the personality and roleplay aspect didn't change. Just my OCS gender.
I've left this server before because of how much my chest hurts from being neglected and ignored. Cheese begged me to come back. Came back. Build more friendships. Was neglected again. Left. Asked for another chance. Came back. Stressed because the neglect ramped up a lot and caused me to have multiple breakdowns. Then I became afraid of staying gone because I've grown really attached to my OCS that have stories going on inside the server as well as water asked me to come back. Came back, and now I'm terrified of leaving again because I don't want all that work to go to waste, but at the same time I'm soooo tired of being ignored and neglected. I dont know what to do. I'm just so tired of being hurt, but at the same time I'm so addicted and attached.
There's much more but this post is already so long and I've been wanting to get this out so badly but have no one to listen to me. And in a way I feel. Dramatic? Annoying? Boring? And it's put me into such an existential crisis. I want to do other rps, but it's so hard to find a good server that is alive, or flexible, or will respond to rp pings this also flexible on dark story lines. And I kind of found it in this one, but the only thing that sucks is how much worst it makes my loneliness. And it hurts so much. Please be honest, if you guys think I'm being dramatic, please tell me. I just feel so alone, and I'm so tired of it. If you guysbhave any writing tips that make me more interesting in RP, so I don't have to go to erp to be interesting. I could really use it. Thank you for reading this if you did.

I don’t even know where to begin. 26F. I have had a lot go on in my life (not to short anyone else, because life is screwed). I’m just going to tell my story because I don’t know what else to do. As I’m telling this story please keep in mind, I don’t have all of the information and I’ve been kind of surviving up until this point. When I was 3-8 months old my father packed me and the dog up, and left my mother without telling her while she was at work back in 1997(Florida to Pennsylvania). having no idea because I was an infant, going in to toddler my dad loved the crap out of me. I felt safe, and cared for. My dad ended up sending me to a catholic school for 1st- 5th. started growing and realized that I have a difficultly keeping concentrated, was way friendler than everyone. @ 9 years old he had me speak to my mother for the first time and all she said was mean shit about him and I cried and hung up.
I had noticed my dad started to grow aggravated with me, and would say some down right mean shit. Not let me have my own personality, Embarrassed me by writing mean shit about what I did wrong on sticky notes and would tell me to keep in on my shirt all day at school. Back me into corners like he was a big bully if I didn’t do things right/his way. He through a birthday party for me when I was 11 and then was like “look at how nobody showed up” when he was most likely the reason they didn’t. Before sixth grade started, he moved us back down to Florida. So from catholic school to public. I noticed bigger changes in him and it was a complete 180 for me, going from a religious school to a public. It was like there was no longer the happiness in him and he would pick on me and bully me, when I started going to public schools I was bullied as well there. I would come home from school crying and he stated “I’ll give you a reason to cry”. Would be very physically abusive. Would even threaten to send me to my mothers which I was scared of because of the mean shit she said when I was 9. He sent me to another girls mom to learn about “women things”- literally just how to shave my f**** legs. I eventually went to the schools therapist in 6th grade and tried to tell them what was going on without getting my dad in trouble or him hearing about it and doing something worse, that didn’t happen. I guess I blacked out most of my memory’s about things because of the way I needed to cope but I remember writing him letters and begging him to talk to me because he started just not speaking to me at all, would leave me at home while he worked and told me to lock the doors and hide. I eventually tried to disconnect from it all in my head to go with the motions. Eventually before 8th grade started we moved up to Maryland and moved in with my cousins because he had claimed he lost a lot of money in Florida( in recent years he told me the school was trying to get him charged for the things I said back then to the therapist.) we became more distant because he wasn’t very friendly and would hide in the basement. Moved into my god parents house because eventually he had enough issues with my cousins he didn’t want to be “there problem” anymore. We became more distant as he would just hide in there basement as well, I’d go down there just to talk with him and he’d just be this mean person I didn’t know anymore. Still being a very emotionally abusive person. I got arrested 3 months before graduation because I had weed and cigarettes at school.
When I was 18 I moved into my 2nd boyfriend’s house. Not a good idea looking back at it because it was totally a trap house and I had no clue what I was doing there.(drugs) that’s what I was doing. He had no clue & didn’t care to notice. A lot of co-dependence was there because I stayed there for 4 years.
In 2018 (I was 18 at this point) he was going delirious for about 4-5days and would tell me stuff like take my stuff, I’m going to die ect. Wouldn’t let me take him to the hospital, just wanted to die, thank god my god mother was there when he collapsed and had a ambulance come and get him, he went into a diabetic coma it lasted for 1.5 months or so, he came out of it and basically told me he should’ve died and that he wanted to.
That made things worse mentally for me, I did a lot of fucked up things in the 4 years I was with the boy I was doing drugs with, he also was very physically abusing, as so was I at this point. We broke up and I did everything I could not to go back to living with my father who ended up with enough money to buy a place in my name. I ended up living there for a while and nothing good came from it.
A lot of drinking and boyfriends and dumb shit happened and I was completely out of it until I got a DWI in late 2019. Really woke me up. I started wanting better for myself, knowing I could just didn’t know how. I got into YET ANOTHER RELATIONSHIP, and thought it was good for me, two years in we decided we were going to buy a home (23 years old at this point) we bought it and a lot was wrong with the house and clearly the boy I bought it with because he was into a really odd kink, had girls in his phone, and would not introduce me to his female friends. On top of that he did not doing ANYTHING to help me fix the home. A year into owning the home I broke up with him and lost my job. I was depressed for 7-8 months, got another job and about 1.5 years after the break up someone came up to me and asked me on a date. (I still lived with my ex in the house we own). (I was completely honest with him and up front about everything.)
He has shown me grace, kindness, and compassion. He had shown me a whole new perspective in life. He also had gone through a really traumatic past. Starting of the relationship was rough, I was feral and he gets defensive really easy. We have stuck this thing out and I am 7 months in therapy and he just had his first session in years today. I would like to consider this success. I just changed therapist because the one I had been going to wasn’t as good as I would’ve liked them to be. We are now 1.5 years in, and I’m still trying to figure myself out and currently won’t hear from the new therapist until the 21st of may. I’m struggling mentally but not half as bad as I used to. I guess I’m just looking for new perspectives and some positive words at this point. My boyfriend and I are on opposite schedules for the next 2.5 months and I can tell I’m still very co-dependent, in my head I’m hoping his new therapist doesn’t tell him we are not right for each other. I’m so full of stress and trauma it’s crazy. I don’t even know who I am or if I fully feel happy in any situation.
Any kind words would help. Sorry for the all over the place read.

Old Eminem fan here. It feels surreal to think how we got here. From SSLP to TDOSS - it has been one hell of a ride. Over the years, my music taste has changed for better or worse but one thing I say that there's not an artist on Earth who can give me the same level of adrenaline rush like Em. I might prefer other hiphop albums to his these days but no other rapper excites me like Em when it comes to a new album.
I still remember the feeling of listening to Slim Shady for the first time - such raw emotions filled with intricate rhyme schemes and intense storytelling. For someone like me, the Shady persona has been an integral part of my childhood and boyhood. So it feels surreal to think how we got here.
Given my previous experience with Em albums, I do not believe he will retire the Shady alter ego for good but if he does, I would like to say - "Thank you, Slim". It really has been one hell of a ride.

Last night, when I was home alone, a hand reached out from under the couch and grabbed me.
Nobody was there to see it, and nobody that I’ve told believes me, but it definitely happened. It’s not the kind of thing you can just imagine, and I’m sure now that it wasn’t a dream.
I was watching TV when it happened. The remote fell under the couch and I started fishing around for it without really looking, not wanting to get up from my seat. I brushed it with the tips of my fingers and it slid further underneath.
I was super annoyed— I had to get down on my knees to reach it. I finally found the remote, and that’s when it grabbed me.
As I pulled the remote out into the light, a hand shot up from under the couch and wrapped its fingers around my wrist.
I was able to yank myself away quickly. It didn’t hold on tight— just enough that I felt a little resistance. I jumped to my feet, obviously terrified.
I didn’t scream or anything. I was honestly too scared to even make a sound. My heart was beating so fast that my ears started to ring. The TV was still going, commercials droning on while I tried to process what had just happened.
The hand had only come out about a foot from under the couch. It had an arm attached to it, though I wasn’t able to see past its elbow, and it slinked back below the couch as soon as I pulled myself free from its grasp.
It didn’t hurt, and it didn’t leave any sort of bruise or mark or anything on my wrist, but I definitely felt it, and I definitely saw it.
All I could do was stare at the spot where the hand had appeared. I stood there for what felt like an eternity, until I heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps right outside my front door.
I live in a second-story apartment. It’s a pretty cramped place and a pretty old building, so whenever someone comes over I can usually hear footsteps from the moment they enter the building downstairs.
I guess I was so freaked out by the hand that I didn’t even notice someone was outside until they were already opening the door.
My roommate walked in on quite a scene. She immediately registered how off the vibe was. I could see it on her face.
She found me standing upright in the middle of our living room, TV remote in hand, facing away from the screen while Full House’s laugh track filled the air. I’m sure I’d think it was odd too.
“Hey…” she said, shifting a paper bag full of groceries in her arm while she pocketed her keys, “You good?”
I felt like I was caught with my pants down, but just seeing a familiar face brought some of the blood back to my fingers.
“N—yeah,” I stuttered. I came back online, and flicked the TV off.
I felt her eyes on me as she walked over to the kitchen. There’s no wall or anything dividing the two rooms. Like I said, the place is pretty cramped.
She started putting her groceries away as if everything was normal, but I could tell she wanted to ask what was up.
I kept looking back and forth between her and the couch. I can’t explain it, but I already knew that if I looked under there, I wouldn’t find any trace of whoever (or whatever) grabbed me.
As she started loading up the fridge, I dropped to my hands and knees once again. Without taking even a second to ready myself, I brought my head down to the ground and looked under the couch.
Nothing.
Pretty much what I expected. There was barely enough room for me to squeeze my arm under there for the remote. No way a whole person could fit beneath that thing, and even if they could, there’s no way I wouldn’t have seen them or heard them or something before they grabbed me.
“Seriously, what’s up?”
I looked up to see my roommate standing right behind me, arms crossed, clearly concerned.
I knew I was acting strange, and I knew that nothing I would come up with in the next five seconds could possibly excuse my behavior. I made a judgement call, honestly not really caring about how it would be received.
“I uh… something grabbed me earlier.”
“What?”
“Under the couch. I dropped the remote, and when I picked it up, a hand reached out from under the couch and grabbed me.”
Took her a second to respond.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“That’s it. A hand reached out and grabbed me by the wrist. It happened like a minute before you got here.”
That part might have been a lie. I actually have no idea how long I had been standing in the middle of the room before she showed up.
“Wait so like someone broke in?”
“No. It’s just like I said. A hand reached out, grabbed me, and then it was gone.”
She just kinda looked at me for a while. I don’t blame her, but it’s not like there was any way for me to sugarcoat it.
“Are you sure?”
“What do you mean ‘am I sure?’ Yes, yes I’m fucking sure!”
My voice broke a little when I said that. I was still down on my knees, like I was praying for her to believe me.
“Okay well obviously that didn’t happen Sam.”I let out a desperate laugh and threw my hands up in the air. I slapped them down on my thighs dramatically and shook my head in exasperation.
“Yeah obviously it sounds fucking crazy but you asked what happened and that’s what happened. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m just being honest.”
I pulled myself up to my feet and walked around to the armrest of the couch. She kept studying me, probably thinking this was all a prank or something.
“What are you doing?” She asked, arms still glued across her chest.
“I’m checking under the couch.”
I pushed one end of the couch away from the wall. It was pretty heavy, and the coffee table stopped me from moving it too far. I dragged the coffee table towards the TV to free up some space.
My roommate started staring at the spot I was clearing as if she expected to see something there too.
I went back over to the armrest.
“Can you help me?”
She snapped out of her trance and silently went to grab the other side. We pulled the couch away from the wall, revealing a thick rectangle of dust that had not seen the light of day since we moved in a year ago.
I dropped to my knees once more and began wiping away the grime with my bare hands. There was nothing but the floorboards beneath it. No surprise.
I sat there for a second, eyes darting around the floor. No fingerprints in the dust, no scratches or marks or anything. I felt the tension in the room dissipate as my roommate found her voice again.
“I think you must have imagined it.”
I didn’t. There’s no way.
“Dude, no. I felt it and I saw it. Clear as day. It was a hand, and it grabbed me. That’s not the sort of thing you can just imagine.”
She scoffed, any fear left in her giving way to frustration.
“Whatever. This is fucking stupid. I’m going to bed.”
She stomped off towards her room.
“Wait.”
She spun on her heels as I stood up, probably expecting me to tell her I was joking about the whole thing.
“Can you help me flip the couch over?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Sure. But I’m not helping you put it back.”
She helped me lift the couch off of its legs and tilt it onto its front cushions, exposing the fabric underneath. She disappeared into her room and I went to work studying the underside of the sofa.
There was a zipper lining the bottom, but I found nothing inside when I opened it up. Just a hollow wooden frame and a bunch of crumbs.
I sat back against the wall, more tired than scared at that point.
I can’t believe she thinks I’m making this up. Why would I even do that? What purpose would it serve?
As I solemnly went about rebuilding our living room, I decided that the next day (today) I was gonna take off work, wait for her to leave, and really get to the bottom of this.
I didn’t sleep at all last night. Every nook and cranny of my room felt like a door left wide open, with something sinister waiting on the other side.
What if the hand comes back? What if it wants to hurt me next time? How can I even protect myself?
After like ten restless minutes in bed, I decided to move to the floor. I couldn’t help it. I kept imagining the hand reaching up from under the bed and grabbing me again.
I made a makeshift sleeping bag out of my comforter and some pillows, and I laid on my side so I could keep an eye on the underside of my bedframe while I slept. Maybe “slept” isn’t the right word. Even down there, I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes for longer than a minute.
Eventually sunlight began to peek through the blinds, and I heard some movement within the apartment. My roommate was finally up. I heard the front door close, and it was time to get to work.
I nearly threw my back out yanking the couch away from the wall to reveal the floorboards underneath. They aren’t real floorboards, just the kind of cheap-o fake shit they put in crappy houses to make them look more modern. Our whole apartment is like that— a thin coat of paint slapped over an old building from the 40s or whatever.
My dad actually owns this building. He lets me and my roommate stay here as long as we pay him $500 a month, which is way cheaper than most places in my area.
It’s not really an apartment building to be honest. You can tell it used to be a family home before some realtor swooped in and broke it up into apartments. There are a lot of those around here.
Anyway, the fake wood came up easy. It was only about a quarter inch thick. I was able to pull up the first plank by hammering a kitchen knife into a slit between the boards, and then I peeled a few more away by hand.
After prying away about a dozen of these fake floorboards, I started to realize that I wasn’t going to find anything without making a significantly larger dent. Right beneath the thin layer of fake wood was a layer of very real, very thick wooden beams that seemed to span well beyond the hole I had managed to claw open.
My back crackled and popped as I sat back on my heels to admire my handiwork and contemplate where to go from there. I knew I would need a power saw or some kind of heavy duty tool to get any deeper, but I was afraid of two things:

1. That these beams were supporting the entire second floor of the building, and cutting through them would make the whole thing collapse
2. That going any deeper would lead me into the ceiling of the apartment below us, and whoever lives there would call my dad before I could see what I needed to see.

Regardless of the risks, I knew I had to keep going. I was certain that something was down there. Whatever grabbed me had to have left some sort of evidence.
I can’t stop thinking about that fucking hand.
I’m not supposed to have it, but my dad gave me a master key for the whole building in case of emergencies. He could really get in trouble if anyone found out, but if this isn’t an emergency then idk what is.
There’s a service shed around the back of the building, which has seen none of the love that the main building saw when it was renovated. Decades worth of rusty antiques and rotting furniture line the walls. A shiny, modern tool bench sits unnaturally in the middle of the chaos.
I rifled through all of that shit as fast as I could. I’m not really close with my dad all things considered, and I’m sure he’d be super pissed if he found me out there. He’s so secretive about random shit all the time, and he’s constantly dropping by the building unannounced.
I found the jigsaw under a pile of old newspapers and ran back upstairs.
I probably should have checked the driveway to see if anyone was home first, because the saw made so much noise. The cord barely reached from the outlet to the spot where the couch used to be, but as awkward as the angle was, I was still able to get it in there.
I went as small as possible with my first few cuts. I started with a single beam, cutting out a section about 6x6 inches wide. I slid the chunk of wood out, and, to my relief, didn’t immediately see the plaster that would be my downstairs neighbor’s ceiling.
A tuft of insulation stuck out where I made the hole. I didn’t know that stuff is made from fiberglass or whatever, and I got a really bad splinter when I went to yank it out.
I fished some leather gloves out of my roommate’s closet and got to work on the insulation. I pulled and pulled but couldn’t get a good enough grip to remove anything more than a few bits about the size of a tennis ball.
I went back in with the jigsaw, cutting bigger and bigger chunks until I had cleared a hole about two feet in diameter.
No sign that I was gonna bring the building down, that’s good.
I hacked away for hours. More wood came up, more insulation came up, and when I finally hit a fragile-looking layer of drywall, I knew the jig was up. That’s definitely my neighbor’s ceiling. Fuck.
My roommate and I got in a screaming match when she got home. I made a pretty big mess but I don’t really give a fuck honestly.
I don’t give a fuck if she believes me. I fucking hate that bitch. I told her if she tells my dad what I’m doing, I’ll bash her brains in with the hammer. That shut her up. She left with a bag full of her clothes like an hour later.
Tomorrow I’m going to wait for our downstairs neighbor to leave and start investigating from the bottom-up. If there wasn’t any evidence on the floor up here, there HAS to be something on the ceiling down there.
If I do find something, I’ll post again. I doubt anyone will even believe me, but at this point I just want everything written down somewhere accessible in case something bad happens.
There has to be something down there. Something grabbed me. And I’m going to find out what it is.

I will refer to “friend group” as FG.
So, I (20F) have This friend (20F), let’s call her A. We’ve known each other since middle school, but tbh we haven’t been the closest of friends.
For context, we’ve been in the same friend group throughout all of middle and high school, which fizzled out after graduating. I’m not super heartbroken about the friend group falling apart because I’ve never really hung out with anyone outside of group meetups aside from my best friend (who was in the same group). None of them ever asked me to hang out, and me, being the person I am, assumed it was cause they didn’t want to, so I didn’t initiate to hang with them either.
After the FG graduated high school, we decided to go on a fun trip during spring break, where we’d stay 2 nights in an AirBnB. 6 ppl out of the FG decided to go. Me, my bff, A, two other friends, and a guy we’ll call B, who was the only male on the trip. I wasn’t really close with him but he was in the friend group and I thought he was okay.
Anyway, in prep. for the trip, I decided to pay for the BnB and have everyone pay me pack on their own time (they all did). I also offered to drive since my dad allowed us to use his truck for the trip (it fit 6 ppl and we wanted to save on gas). Everyone contributed to the food and such (my bff bought a large dish that we would bring to avoid making dinner the 1st night), but the main person cooking meals was A. I thought the trip went really well, until I dropped everyone off when the trip was over.
Basically, A confided in me something that happened between her and B and we talked for a little while, with me trying my best to give advice or an opinion. (Keep in mind I’m not really qualified cause I’m basically celibate lmao). This was the first time in our years of friendship that she confided in me something super emotional for her. I felt that by trusting in me, I was shown that she actually cared about our friendship, and I was willing to put more effort into our communication. I wanted her to be okay, and naturally hung out with her whenever she wanted or when our schedules aligned.
Onto the advice part. After a few weeks (or perhaps closer to a month), A had a noticeable decline in her mental health, which I think I tried my best in helping with, meeting up and talking and such. But then she suddenly left the FG’s group chat, and then I sent her a text asking what was wrong, I got messages by another friend in the FG saying that A was leaving the friend group and that I was a main reason as to why. I can’t remember the exact circumstances as to her reasoning since it was a year ago, but I do remember that I didn’t respond to a text she sent earlier in the morning (I was going to class and forgot to respond, by the time I remembered it was deleted), and that was her “last straw.” I was devastated by this. I thought “wtf did I do I’m an awful friend I have to try and make this right.” So I tried sending A a message in hopes she would grant me a response. I sent and unsent messages, trying to find the right message before just deciding to ask for a talk. I would’ve preferred face to face, but she called me, and I picked up. My emotions were high, and I was vulnerable, and scared, cause I was finally close to her as a friend and I was about to loose her over something as silly and forgetting to respond to a text. While on the call, she ranted that she was putting so much effort into all her friendships, only to not get anything in return. “I would give so much and for what? I’d ask you how you’re doing, every time there’s a thunderstorm, but when I need you you don’t respond.” (I’m pretty scared of thunder. Ik it’s irrational and some call it childish but i can’t really help it. I’m thinking it anxiety???) I tried to not cry while talking to her but I ending up breaking, telling her the truth that I’m scared of not being a good friend, that I don’t know shit about anyone and that “ill be better and I’m sorry.” Stuff like that. Not my best moment :/
A few days after, we met in person, she forgave me, and I swore I’d make sure to communicate with her more.
But that’s the thing. I tried, but I didn’t get much of a response back. I’d send memes, start convos, ask to hang out, and most of the time the texts would go unread. I knew she was busy with work and such, and then me living 30 minutes away makes it harder to hang out, but I couldn’t help but feel it might’ve been some sort of revenge? It just felt shitty, and I couldn’t help but think that she’s giving me a taste of my own medicine.
Then she responded and we hung out, and we didn’t really talk about anything emotional. Just basic stuff.
Then she started school again, and suddenly it was like she didn’t exist. I NEVER got a response to anything, even when her status said she was active on insta (main form of communication). She’s in a STEM major, which ik can be super demanding but, not even time to like a reel or send a quick message?? Our dm’s became a graveyard for unseen reels and lost messages from me about meaningless things. Eventually I stopped sending anything, thinking she just didn’t wanna hang out with me anymore.
Then I got a response saying she was on break, and because I’m me, I was happy and didn’t mention the months of ghosting.
Then she started school again, and it was the same process.
She finally ended her semester along with everyone else, and she’s finally connected me again to hang out. I said yes because I wanna give her a chance, even though I’ve talked with my BFF and she told be things she found sketch about A. (Short of it is: a had a similar convo with BFF that she did with me, but BFF said she actually did contribute the the friendship and that the same stuff could be said for A, which I didn’t even think about till BFF and I talked about it).
I really want to continue this friendship, but there are red flags that I’m seeing. How to I go about talking to her and mending the rocky relationship we have?
TLDR: I have an inkling my friend might be a little manipulative/toxic, but I don’t wanna loose the friendship. How do I fix this???
I try answering any questions on context to the best of my abilities. This is my first post on the subreddit.

I (19M) first started talking to this girl (19F) around winter of last year. We’ve known each other our whole lives but had never really been close. At this point in my life, I wasn’t anywhere near as close with the Lord as I am now. We rapidly became closer and closer as friends, however, I developed feelings (looking back, it was probably more me wishing for a relationship as comfort), and it was pretty obvious to everyone by the summer that I wanted to be more than just friends.
During that period of time, she was living a worldly lifestyle, maintaining constant communication (often what I believed to be flirty) with me throughout it all yet pursuing things of the world consistently including drunkeness and other things. As the summer, I was increasingly frustrated and felt more and more led on. However, the end of the summer marked a turning point in my life as I was beginning to actually walk truly with the Lord for the first time. I was able to let go and forgive her as we went our separate ways for college, and I figured it was for the best that nothing ever happened between us. I’ll say that I never officially declared my feelings for her, but it was obvious to everyone around us, including both her friends and mine.
Over the fall semester, we remained in decent (long-distance) contact just as friends, and I was really thankful to hear that she found a group of friends that really uplifted her and pointed her to Him. I continued to encourage her in her walk over the semester and really felt like I was able to be a light in her life pointing her towards the Lord. We got to catch up over winter break, and it was really awesome to hear in person how well she had done, and she described just how much she valued my help in her walk. However, spring semester rolled around and we started really talking again, to the point where we called basically daily. I couldn’t wait to see her and was overjoyed at her situation and growing faith. Unfortunately, I caught feelings again (and this time I truly believe it was for the woman she had become). Again, I was really confused what she wanted as she continued to send mixed signals. At this point, we were extraordinarily close friends.
We recently returned from our respective colleges and spent a lot of time together. I felt it was important to make it obvious that I had feelings, and soon after she sent a text saying she valued our friendship more than the world yet doesn’t want to be anything more than that. She said it was more than ok if I needed to take a step back, however it’s clear that that wouldn’t be her first choice.
So now I’m lost on what to and how to approach the whole situation. The last thing in the world I’d want to do is negatively affect her walk, either by remaining a super close friend or by stepping away a bit, and I really do care for her. I’ve also come to realize I’ve maybe been distracted from my walk throughout this whole ordeal recently.
Thoughts?