a list of things my mother has done. mostly a vent and tramadump

• thought i was faking being sick (tested positive for the flu that week)
• thought i was faking being transgender (have been on testosterone for five years with zero thoughts of detransing)
• told me my suicide attempt was "for attention" (my father died that year and i was being assaulted at school)
• told my boyfriend that i faked migraines (i never said they were migraines at all...)
• says her children are "too perfect" to have mental illnesses (see suicide attempt above, her first child is a heroin addict with PTSD and her other two children have extreme anxiety disorders)
• tells me i'm "too smart" to have autism (when the traits are easily identifiable and present. not to mention that plenty of autistic men and women are intelligent and having autism ≠ not smart)

whenever i began to cry as a child, she screamed. when i tried to argue in defense of myself, she put her hands on me. if i ever felt sick, tired, or upset, she would roll her eyes and "oh, whatever" me. i don't have meth to keep me working like a steamroller all day! i'm just a teenager.
all of her children have been beaten or sexually assaulted by men that she chose to date. she is a raging meth user and a POS, so i know i shouldn't take her insults to heart, but i feel so fucked up from the things my parents have done to me that i don't believe i will ever recover.
no relationship i have in my lifetime will ever feel whole or stable because of her. i'll never be able to hold down a job. i have no one to teach me to drive, or any other adult things. in fact, SHE made me do her taxes FOR her, then screamed and cried about the possibility of owing the government. my trauma response has been "fight" for so long, and when it stopped working, it became freeze.
i am always walking on eggshells. without a steady job or license, it feels like i will never move out, never escape her. i think sometimes that i should have died in 2018 when i attempted.
if i do dishes nine times a week, but the sink is full for two minutes, i'm lazy. if i sleep in an extra three hours, i'm basically worthless. if i haven't taken out the trash, the world is crashing and burning and she is on the verge of death and crying. if something goes wrong with the self-checkout at walmart, she is throwing groceries and jerking her head around like a fucking lunatic while screaming about every little thing that bothers her. it really makes me want to rip my nails off. she likely acts this way from the meth abuse, but my sisters recall her being overdramatic as early as the 1990s.
illness or weakness of ANY kind disgusts her. it's like she's projecting her hatred of herself onto me. when i was skinny and she was overweight, she rarely spoke about it. i suspect she was envious. now that she never eats and can fit into child's size clothing, my weight has ballooned from anti-anxiety medicines and repeated work injuries. she loves to point out that my clothes no longer fit, or that my face is getting puffier. it upset me-- i tried to brush it off as her being old-- but then i imagined a friend saying it to me, and it put everything into perspective.
i do feel like an idiot for ever expressing myself towards her, for crying on her bed and begging for comfort when i was truly anxious and devastated, or for asking her opinion on literally anything. comfort is never given, and her opinions waver on what will most benefit her in the moment, not what will help ME.
one last thing; she was nearly kicked out of the behavioral center i was admitted to for screaming in my face during visitation. feels like a little cherry on top.
i'm not sure what type of narcissism this is, if any. drop your thoughts below if you want, and times your parents have been in denial of things that happen to you.

Welcome to the raspberry_pi Helpdesk and Frequently Asked Questions!

Link to last week's thread
Having a hard time searching for answers to your Raspberry Pi questions? Let the raspberry_pi community members search for answers for you!^† Looking for help getting started with a project? Have a question that you need answered? Was it not answered last week? Did not get a satisfying answer? A question that you've only done basic research for? Maybe something you think everyone but you knows? Ask your question in the comments on this page, operators are standing by!
This helpdesk and idea thread is here so that the front page won't be filled with these same questions day in and day out:

1. Q: What's a Raspberry Pi? What can I do with it? How powerful is it? A: Check out this great overview
2. Q: Does anyone have any ideas for what I can do with my Pi? A: Sure, look right here!^‡
3. Q: My Pi is behaving strangely/crashing/freezing, giving low voltage warnings, ethernet/wifi stops working, USB devices don't behave correctly, what do I do? A: 99.999% of the time it's either a bad SD card or power problems. Use a USB power meter or measure the 5V on the GPIO pins with a multimeter while the Pi is busy (such as playing h265/x265 video) and/or get a new SD card 1 2 3. If the voltage is less than 5V your power supply and/or cabling is not adequate. When your Pi is doing lots of work it will draw more power. Even if your power supply claims to provide sufficient amperage, it may be mislabeled or the cable you're using to connect the power supply to the Pi may have too much resistance. You can use a USB load tester to test your power supply and cable. Some power supplies require negotiation to provide more than 500mA, which the Pi does not do. If you're plugging in USB devices try using a powered USB hub with its own power supply and plug your devices into the hub and plug the hub into the Pi.
4. Q: I'm having a hard time finding a place to purchase a Raspberry Pi for an affordable price. Where's the secret place to buy one without paying more than MSRP? A: https://rpilocator.com/
5. Q: I just did a fresh install with the latest Raspberry Pi OS and I keep getting errors when trying to ssh in, what could be wrong? A: There are only 4 things that could be the problem:
   1. The ssh daemon isn't running
   2. You're trying to ssh to the wrong host
   3. You're specifying the wrong username
   4. You're typing in the wrong password
6. Q: I'm trying to install packages with pip but I keep getting error: externally-managed-environment A: This is not a problem unique to the Raspberry Pi. The best practice is to use a Python venv, however if you're sure you know what you're doing there are two alternatives documented in this stack overflow answer:
   • --break-system-packages
   • sudo rm a specific file as detailed in the stack overflow answer
7. Q: The only way to troubleshoot my problem is using a multimeter but I don't have one. What can I do? A: Get a basic multimeter, they are not expensive.
8. Q: My Pi won't boot, how do I fix it? A: Step by step guide for boot problems
9. Q: I want to watch Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/Vudu/Disney+ on a Pi but the tutorial I followed didn't work, does someone have a working tutorial? A: Use a Fire Stick/AppleTV/Roku. Pi tutorials used tricks that no longer work or are fake click bait.
10. Q: What model of Raspberry Pi do I need so I can watch YouTube in a browser? A: No model of Raspberry Pi is capable of watching YouTube smoothly through a web browser, you need to use VLC.
11. Q: I want to know how to do a thing, not have a blog/tutorial/video/teachebook explain how to do a thing. Can someone explain to me how to do that thing? A: Uh... What?
12. Q: Is it possible to use a single Raspberry Pi to do multiple things? Can a Raspberry Pi run Pi-hole and something else at the same time? A: YES. Pi-hole uses almost no resources. You can run Pi-hole at the same time on a Pi running Minecraft which is one of the biggest resource hogs. The Pi is capable of multitasking and can run more than one program and service at the same time. (Also known as "workload consolidation" by Intel people.) You're not going to damage your Pi by running too many things at once, so try running all your programs before worrying about needing more processing power or multiple Pis.
13. Q: Why is transferring things to from disks/SSDs/LAN/internet so slow? A: If you have a Pi 4 or 5 with SSD, please check this post on the Pi forums. Otherwise it's a networking problem and/or disk & filesystem problem, please go to HomeNetworking or LinuxQuestions.
14. Q: I only have one outlet and I need to plug in several devices, what do I do? A: They make things called power strips aka multi-tap extensions.
15. Q: The red and green LEDs are on/off/blinking or the screen is just black or blank or saying no signal, what do I do? A: Start here
16. Q: I'm trying to run x86 software on my Raspberry Pi but it doesn't work, how do I fix it? A: Get an x86 computer. A Raspberry Pi is ARM based, not x86.
17. Q: How can I run a script at boot/cron or why isn't the script I'm trying to run at boot/cron working? A: Try one of these numerous solutions
18. Q: Can I use this screen that came from ____ ? A: No
19. Q: I run my Pi headless and there's a problem with my Pi and the best way to diagnose it or fix it is to plug in a monitor & keyboard, what do I do? A: Plug in a monitor & keyboard.
20. Q: My Pi seems to be causing interference preventing the WiFi/Bluetooth from working A. Using USB 3 cables that are not properly shielded can cause interference and the Pi 4 can also cause interference when HDMI is used at high resolutions.
21. Q: I'm trying to use the built-in composite video output that is available on the Pi 2/3/4 headphone jack, do I need a special cable? A. Make sure your cable is wired correctly and you are using the correct RCA plug. Composite video cables for mp3 players will not work, the common ground goes to the wrong pin. Camcorder cables will often work, but red and yellow will be swapped on the Raspberry Pi.
22. Q: I'm running my Pi with no monitor connected, how can I use VNC? A: First, do you really need a remote GUI? Try using ssh instead. If you're sure you want to access the GUI remotely then ssh in, type vncserver -depth 24 -geometry 1920x1080 and see what port it prints such as :1, :2, etc. Now connect your client to that.
23. Q: I want to do something that has been well documented and there are numerous tutorials showing how to do it on Linux. How can I do it on a Raspberry Pi? A: A Raspberry Pi is a full computer running Linux and doesn't use special stripped down embedded microcontroller versions of standard Linux software. Follow one of the tutorials for doing it on Linux. Also see question #1.
24. Q: I want to do something that has been well documented and there are numerous tutorials showing how to do it with an Arduino. How can I do it on a Raspberry Pi Pico? A: Follow one of the tutorials for doing it on Arduino, a Pico can be used with the Arduino IDE.
25. Q: I'm trying to do something with Bluetooth and it's not working, how do I fix it? A: It's well established that Bluetooth and Linux don't get along, this problem is not unique to the Raspberry Pi.

Before posting your question think about if it's really about the Raspberry Pi or not. If you were using a Raspberry Pi to display recipes, do you really think raspberry_pi is the place to ask for cooking help? There may be better places to ask your question, such as:

• /AskElectronics
• /AskProgramming
• /HomeNetworking
• /LearnPython
• /LinuxQuestions
• /RetroPie
• The Official Raspberry Pi Forums

Asking in a forum more specific to your question will likely get better answers!
† See the /raspberry_pi rules. While /raspberry_pi should not be considered your personal search engine, some exceptions will be made in this help thread. ‡ If the link doesn't work it's because you're using a broken buggy mobile client. Please contact the developer of your mobile client and let them know they should fix their bug. In the meantime use a web browser in desktop mode instead.

PART 3

Max woke in the night to a plinking sound. He had fallen asleep crying over Scat, treat bag and collar on the table in full view. His eyes were blurry and sore, his nose was runny and sore and the nature channel was his distraction. Ruth was letting off a lovely glow and it warmed him to think of Scat so lovingly curled around her, day in and day out. He let out an almost-sob. He didn’t want to give her back. Didn’t want to wake up.
Eventually Max pried one eye open and surveyed the room. TV still on, duvet still over him, the floor wasn’t wet and the ceiling wasn’t leaking, so where was the…
Plink.
Ruth.
Max sighed and rolled over, the duvet making a break for the floor before being dejectedly scooped up again and deposited back across his lap. The small cloud of Scat’s fur wafted off the floorboards and turned Max’s heart. He contemplated going back to the escape of sleep, but finally sat and rubbed his eyes, held his aching head in his hands for a moment and, dropping his hands and lolling his head back, Ruth came into focus. The central glass disc that she had made like a rosette for herself had grown, bloated out. It looked a bit like a tortoise shell, glittery and iridescent and very Ruth, except now, it had…
“Diamonds!” Max yelped, miraculously fully awake.
There, underneath the bulbous disc was a tiny pile of painfully perfect diamonds, so exuberant in colour they seemed almost alive. He could see clean through the pile itself each one was so clear, with a miniature rainbow refracted inside. They were scattered across the table and he realised they were dropping from all over the glass tubes, the largest ones plinking from the central disc.
“Holy cow! What the hell, Ruth! This is amazing! I mean, how did you do that?”
Ruth plinked another diamond from the disc, meanwhile the bobbing gyroscopic mass that had accumulated in the disc decided to bob itself towards Max and answer him with a spiral of flashes and disco lights.
“You really are a crazy, crazy little thing, you know that?” he asked, picking up a diamond and examining it against Ruth’s emitted light show. He threw his t-shirt across the table top and spread the diamonds out on it. There must have been fifteen of them, simply perfect and all different shapes to each other, irregular and yet symmetrical.
Max collapsed into the dining chair next to the table.
Why did they happen today? Why now of all days? It had been nearly a week since he was entrusted with Ruth and she seemed pretty stable up till yesterday. She had grown that diamond factory bulge that reminded him of a tortoise, yes, but now it almost looked like an expensive, old-fashioned sweet dispenser that you get in the bowling alley or in the shopping centres in posh areas. The kind they stuck between the raised beds of fake forest-looking plants in the food court, the kind that were there to tempt the kids after their unfulfilling and unappreciated fast-food dine-outs but used all your pocket money for one jaw-breaker.
Max tried to backtrack. What had he done differently? If he could figure it out, maybe he could persuade Ruth to make more diamonds… his friend would never have to know, he could get Scat a little headstone, and if he could figure out how it worked he could reverse it so there wouldn’t even be any evidence. No, his friend would surely know. Max could save a few diamonds and give them to him and say she just started… have to work out the details later. First things first.
“So, Ruth. Why are you giving me these little nuggets of joy, huh? What did I do to warrant this spectacle?” He talked to Ruth, but she didn’t respond. No movement, just the usual swirling around. Max watched the glass disc closely through his puffy eyes but couldn’t see where the diamonds fell from, nor anything that would suggest a factory line of compressed carbon was in progress. She seemed to be slowing down.
Max pressed his brows together, then slowly lifted the fern up onto the table again. This was the only thing different. The bamboo was outside and Scat was…
A wave of horror flooded over Max. He launched himself out of his chair and sprinted to the window and, ripping back the voile, he saw the bamboo had grown six feet over night. He knew it grew fast from watching that documentary about tropical rainforests but this was a stretch too far. Much too far. That damned thing hadn’t grown in years…
“Ruth,” he said turning to her, “what did you do?”

For the next few hours, Max observed Ruth from across the room. The discovery channel was on in the background, as always. Ruth didn’t seem to do much without it these days but for a hunk of glittery glass and brass Max supposed not much was interesting unless it moved or had nothing whatsoever to do with man-made things. Suited him just fine. Who needs politics anyway?
Apparently, Ruth had taken it upon herself to make the fern shrivel up and increase her diamond production, much to Max’s exuberant happiness and overwhelming horror. He shoved the sofa to the far end of the room and started putting all his household plants in the spaces between the table and himself. The kitchen herbs went first.
He had taken one of the diamonds down to the swanky precious stone and metal specialist at the posh end of town (his name was Horace, apparently,) and had it valued. He took extreme pleasure in watching the man’s face freeze in wonder at the rock placed before him. I’ve never seen such a stone, Horace said. Never seen such a clear, colourful, perfect stone in my life, Horace said. It’s phenomenal, Horace said. Where did you get it, Horace asked. I inherited it, Max lied. It’s worth a fortune, Horace said. Thank you, I’ll have it back now, Max said. He made sure to stop by the garden centre on his way home.

The front room was a sea of plants. Max waded through them, deciding that a walkway to the door would be a vital escape route that shouldn’t be compromised, in case Ruth decided she had been on her vegetarian stint for long enough. Max had toyed with the idea of getting a fish tank or some other living creature to put next to her as a safeguard but he promptly remembered Scat and nearly broke down on the shop floor in front of the display tanks. Besides, the plants were working! There was already a multitude of stacks of plastic pots and trays next to the front door ready for recycling, and all the withered remains of whatever the pots had housed was scattered along the borders amongst the dog daisies and tulips. Ruth was putting out a considerable amount of stonage these days. Max bought an old bank safe online. It was currently sat in the hallway because that’s as far in as the two couriers could lift the thing, and there was no way on god’s green earth that Max was going to let them into the front room and risk them getting curious. The safe was only waist-high and wasn’t too ugly, so the hallway it was.
Max carefully spun the dial clockwise, anti-clockwise, clockwise again, on and on, muttering under his breath as he read from the bit of paper he guiltily kept in his pocket alongside his friend’s contact details. He used his whole bodyweight to wrench open the door and deposit the load of diamonds in a mason jar, nestled it in next to its siblings that were already full and stacked up there. He had set up a system of small tubs under the hotspots for diamonds drops and his favourite whiskey glass under the place where the large diamonds fell. He emptied them regularly, always aware that someone might knock on the door, he might need to pee or Scat might need to go outside (no, poor thing, he was there already). His kitchen was full of boxes of new mason jars and his lounge was full of plants, like some weird meth lab. A thrill of fear swept down Max’s back and up through his throat looking at all those jars, heavy with precious stones. He knew the smallest one alone would make him a disgustingly wealthy man. Horace had confirmed it.
Two days later, and there was no more space in the safe. Nowhere else to put those little rocks. Max decided to give Ruth a break, let her rest while he decided what to do next. He couldn’t have a house full of safes, his friend would already think it was weird that the one in the hallway appeared out of nowhere. Max put a coffee table over it, covered it with a tablecloth and some old bank statements, throwing on a phone charger for authenticity.
He had taken to talking to Ruth while the documentaries were on, she seemed to like that. He had been taking daily trips to the garden centre and leaving with a fully loaded car, right up until they looked at him suspiciously (he was a renowned leave-it-to-the-bugs kind of gardener; after years of failed attempts at keeping his plants alive and fruitless efforts of the garden centre employees to dispense advice he could keep to), so he started frequenting other nurseries as well.
Today, he was going to figure out how Ruth did it. He had to know. In his mind it was the equivalent of finding out how the Egyptians built the pyramids (because it obviously wasn’t aliens,) and the fact that even his friend didn’t know what this thing could do was something altogether more impressive! He may well have created it, but it was Max who had realised Ruth’s full potential, it was Max who had figured out the process, it was Max who had discovered the balance of life and death. Nobody could take that from him. But to really put the boot in, he wanted to know how.
“Come on, Ruthy, tell me how you do it. Let me see you do it, just once.” Max waited for a response. There was none. Then…
Plink.
He had seen! He knew now! Ha!
“Yes! That’s it! That’s the ticket! I knew it, old gal, this is going to be such an epic day! I can’t wait to see their faces, suck on THAT!”
Max jumped, air-punched and whirled around the front room, ecstatic in his discovery. Never again would they look down on him! Never again would they look at him like he was an idiot because he couldn’t get the printer to print on both sides of the paper, they wouldn’t reject him, the girls would think he was funny, he was going to be filthy rich, he could save the world! He, Max, was all powerful.
Oh yes. That’s what I’m talking about.

Monday
Dimmy: WHAT are you about to do? Stevie Kate: Go on my bicycle in my sandals and nightgown, way over there. Dimmy: Oh my goodness, are you so excited? Speedy Kate: Yeah I’m going to go FAR AWAY. Dimmy: Oh my goodness are you going to stay nice and safe? Runaway Kate: Uh… I think. Don’t worry about it! I’ll be FAR AWAY from this dog and pony show. I’m going off the grid never to be seen again on Instagram! Dimmy: Whatever. Push with your feet! Stevie Cycle: Mommy, look I’m doing so good. Dimmy: You’re doing a great job! Stevie Kate: If only you would do a great job potty training me and dressing me in the proper clothes to play outside in! I just lost a toe in these sandals and my nightgown got caught in the spokes! Splat.
Dimmy: We haven’t had a date night since London was born so we decided to do a date night in Hello Fresh shill! Some people use Hello Fresh as an actual meal solution for their family. Can you imagine? That sounds like a lot of work. We just use it when we have a code to shill! We’re far too lazy to cook real food otherwise, even with a meal kit. I mean, just look at all the junk and trash we have piled by the door!
Tuesday
Dimmy: I think when I look back years from now, I’ll be like why the fuck are all my family memories on Astroturf? If we’re not traveling, Stevie Kate’s either in the Astroturf side yard or we’re all on the Astroturf at the local shopping center having a picnic. We live on Astroturf almost daily when it’s nice outside! It’s such a fun way to be outside without ever coming into contact with actual nature- yuck! When we’re not being fake online, we want to sit on something fake offline!
Headed into my six week postpartum appointment! Steven wanted me to go today so I can get the all-clear to have sex with him for our anniversary tomorrow. Damn where did the time go? How has it been six weeks already? That was way too brief of a break from the bed troll.
It has been way too long since I washed my hair. It is so gross. But that’s not stopping me from continuing to not wash it! I am going to use my time to shill you shower bombs instead. I may be dirty, but I will soon be filthy- filthy rich that is!
Thursday
Dimmy: Today is our nine-year wedding anniversary! To celebrate, none of us washed our hair or changed any diapers, then we headed out on a walk. The girls wore last night’s pajamas and I wore London incorrectly. So basically today was just like any other day! Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
In 2014 I started dating Steven after meeting him in HLTH code founder / BYU professor Ben Bikman’s weightlifting class, turning him down a million times, and dating a bunch of other guys. Once we started dating, we traveled the world together, which to me is the equivalent of being wined and dined, so I said yes when he asked me to marry him. What was I thinking?
2015! Also known as the year I made the biggest mistake of my life. We got married and became permanent planet partners forever.
2016 was a happy year. Steven and the rest of the Houghtons hadn’t totally sucked all the life out of me yet.
By 2017 the tide was starting to turn, but here’s a photo from when I still looked happy and carefree.
2018 was so bad I deleted all the photos from my phone except this one of Steven with the stupid body pillow I gave him that used to pop up as IG content as often as Active Skin Repair ads do now.
2019 was a year of travel and leisure, so it looked pretty much like every other year.
2020! We moved to Arizona for Steven’s failed “business venture,” started locking the fridge and bounced a raw Thanksgiving turkey on a sheet like a parachute with Steven’s family and the Frankenstones during the height of COVID.
2021! This was the year Steven made me roller blade for diapers containing either shit or money on Mother’s Day a few short weeks after giving birth, and also the year he shoved McDonald’s down my throat until I cried. It really was a life-changing year, because the CONTENTOT arrived in 2021, earning us so much cash that…
…In 2022 we were able to begin an annual tradition of five-week summer vacations around the world. It was also the year of Stevie Kate’s big first birthday bash that Steven skipped to get a blepharoplasty, and I ended up crying in the closet.
2023 was a bust. I got pregnant with the Disappointment Baby, not the male heir Steven wanted. He said if I threw a huge gender reveal influencer bash for our second girl, he would skip it like he did SK’s first birthday party. So we sulked off to Deer Valley to see my family instead and made Tanner troubleshoot the faulty pink confetti cannons in the rain while Steven lounged about inside on his phone. Tiffany was a no-show because God blessed her with a $2 million housing miracle, but we didn’t want her there anyway.
2024! The year Steven took Stevie Kate to China and truly showed what an unfit father he is. She almost didn’t survive. This was also the year we didn’t tell Stevie Kate she turned three until April, and also we became a family of four! And all of you assholes are thinking, wow, does this girl not have a limit? How does she tolerate Steven and his terrible family and not walk out the door?
Friday
Dimmy: For our anniversary yesterday we stayed at a hotel while someone (Diana, but I won’t give her credit) watched the girls. I knew Steven had the hotel booked but all day I thought I wasn’t getting anything else, just a night with the fridge troll. 🤢 He didn’t tell me happy anniversary or give me flowers or anything. But I was wrong! When I got to the hotel there were roses in the middle of the bed, along with a fucking chocolate cake! There were also four chocolate covered strawberries and a random ass brownie scattered on the the white bedspread. And that’s not all! Cap’n Crunch, Fruity Pebbles and Lucky Charms were in the room too! And a box of Dirty Dough cookies. But you know what was missing? Plates, bowls and utensils! Thank goodness Steven had his rusty pocket knife. I was hoping he’d get tetanus or eat so much sugar he’d pass out without touching me!
Dummy must still be fighting his way out of a sugar fog because today he’s “too busy” to go car shopping with Dimmy, but apparently not too busy to watch Stevie Kate while Dimmy, Diana and London flitted about from luxury car dealer to dealer looking at giant vehicles. The trio traveled by orange parachute, which also doubled as a dress Dimmy wore. 🪂 No one could focus on the cars Dimmy showed or any of the features she was comparing because her billowy parachute dress was too distracting.
Dimmy: Before I sign off for the night, you know I’ve got to shill something dumb first because the only thing I like more than sleeping ten hours a night, is making money while I sleep! ARMRA COLOSTRUM. We have been using this for months and we do not get sick because we take Armra every single day! 🤥
Dummy: Watermelon is the best flavor. No, wait, I like the unflavored one the best. Because it doesn’t taste like anything. Which is what I actually take: NOTHING! But make sure YOU buy one of each!
Saturday
Dimmy: Introducing… Princess Aurora with her beautiful train dragging behind her! Cinder Kate: I’m dressed like Cinderella. And I told you two weeks ago to stop introducing me like the Denner girl with the unfortunate mouth. Dimmy: Speaking of which, guess who we are going to see today?? Cinder Kate: Cinderella??!! Dimmy: Guess again! Stevie Kate: Princess Aurora? Dimmy: Remi Denner! Stevie Kate: Nooooo! Dimmy: I’ll buy you a donut if you cooperate! Stevie Kate: In that case I’ll grab my princess heels… let’s go!
The Denner girl turned out to be the least of Cinder Kate’s worries as the Denner boy, that bratty overgrown baby named Rhett, escaped his double stroller and took her hand while she was walking ahead of the group pretending she didn’t know who any of these assholes were. Speedy Kate shook him loose and took off running, making a mental note to bring her scooter next time for an even faster getaway. She ran all the way home to watch Cinderella and get her mind off the whole awful ordeal but no one would let her watch her movie so she just binged Dimmy’s powdered sunscreen video over and over that was part of her PR package. Watching an ad for sunscreen sure beat hanging out with the Denners.
Dimmy: Good job, Stevie Kate! Watching shills is always encouraged! Time to link it up and douse you in powdered sunscreen! Stevie Cough: Vanishes into a dust storm of powdered sunscreen
Dimmy: Hey Iris, what recipes do you suggest for dinner? The fridge troll ate all of our Factor meals. Snaps photo of fridge contents.
Iris: Well you don’t have much to work with so I’d suggest you let Stevie Kate take that bag of leftover rotisserie chicken into the side yard and smother it in a mixture of the Bonne Maman jam, sour cream, and sugar fee Jello pudding. That can be her dinner and you can have milk and cereal for dinner, assuming you have Magic Spoon in the pantry.
Dimmy: That sounds disgusting!
Iris: Shit, IDK. 🤷‍♂️ You can always use your empty fridge as an excuse to shill a Hello Fresh order, then have pizza delivered for dinner? By the way, can I suggest a color palette for you? That orange dress you had on yesterday was tragic AF.
Dimmy: Fuck off.
LINK TO THIS WEEK’S PHOTO

AITA For Hating Mothers Day and Not Putting in More of an Effort?
I (32F) am not married. I have no kids. No one considers me a mother. However. I have raised kids as my own and filled in the parent role for many children. I've always been the “mom friend”. And have had many people call me mom over the years, but they always move on in life and no longer need their “substitute mom” after a few years, while I never forget my kids.
One teenager I worked with, almost 7years ago, declared I was her mother and I didn't have a say. She started making some new friends shortly after her 21st birthday. My daughter has been slowly cutting me out of her life, and won't call me mom anymore. I think she's fallen back into bad habbits.
I also raised my roommates kids for a time. My roommates never cleaned, didn't pay bills, and ignored their children for smoking weed and playing CoD. The dad also had a meth problem. I worked full-time graveyard, traing a new puppy, and took care of the kids. If I didn't no one else would. I did everything. I hated how hurt the kids were by the distinct lack of interest from their parents, but I made sure they were clean, fed, healthy, and we had as many good memories as I could. I was young and stuck in a cycle of abuse, but I did what I could to protect those kids.
Eventually everything came crashing down and my roommates skipped out of townl. I have not been allowed to see my kid since and their parents have blocked me on everything, so I can't even see updates on how my kids are doing.
I hate mothers day. It's just one long, horrible day to remind me that I never have been and see no future of ever being considered a mom, while those I consider my children have been taken from me or left me behind. I miss my kids so much.
I feel empty. All I can do is cling to my dogs and become one of those obsessive "Dog Moms". I just want one day with my kids on the day that mom's are suppose to be with their kids. Something inside of me feels broken.
I am the only one who does anything for my mom for mother's day. I go all out. Gifts, cards, activities, ect. All of this while trying to smile, but I feel dead and just want to cry. My mom is not a good mother. I basically raised myself. My long time friends say it'sweird how she acts like the child and forces me to be the parent. I do not like celebrating a day that says she's a good mom, because she's not. But I still love her so...
My family notices when I get back from the bathroom my eyes are puffy. They say I am ruining the day for my mother and sister by being attention seeking and I need to get over the fact that I am not a mom and have no right to be sad over that. It always turns into a big family fight.
Today is no different. My mom says that she knows I hate mothers day, but that doesn't give me the right to ruin it for her when I came out of the bathroom, faking the puffy eyes from sneezing. I am starting to wonder if they are right.
AITA for hating mothers day and not putting in more of an effort to be happy?

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I am not The OOP, OOP is u/OkOstrich6619
AITAH for not sympathizing with my ex wife's AP after she groomed and abused him?
Originally posted to AITAH
TRIGGER WARNING: infidelity, grooming, sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, harassment, stalking
Original Post Apr 13, 2024
Longtime lurker and I've been struggling with my decision here
Some details will be vague for reasons I hope you all have the capacity to understand why
TW: Domestic and sexual abuse
Long backstory so bear with me. My (34M) ex (33F) admittedly had a ton of red flags when we started dating. She was my serious first relationship and I wasn't always very confident or outgoing compared to her, and ill always be kicking myself for practically dancing into the arms or a narcissist.
We got married way too young at 24 and 23, and the next several years were spent with her demanding my entire life change at her whims, mood swings, gaslighting when she seemed to be carrying on emotional affairs, isolating me, arguments out of nowhere, nights sleeping on the couch, financial abuse (her family is very well off, and they foot the bill for the wedding and our house) demeaning comments and general emotional abuse. One other thing was she was always more sexually adventures and always wanted to try newer and weirder things. I'm a little open minded but sometimes had to set firm boundaries with her or shut her down when it got too uncomfortable. This is important for later.
Back then I thought by just dealing with it I was being strong and protecting our marriage. If I could go back in time I would kick my younger selfs ass. 2 years back things came to a head. It came out she had been carrying on a full fledged affair with our neighbor's son who had only been 18 for around 6 months. We knew this kid since he was 16. At that point she was freshly 31. I finally pulled my head out my ass but by that point it was too late
The coming months absolutely fucking sucked. Got kicked out (her parents left the house to soley her. I never had any impression i was going to have any claim to it so I saw that coming at least), lawyer costs financially drained me, and moved in with my parents for the time being while my ex, her AP, her family and her APs family harassed me on the daily for months.
-my ex tried every dirty trick in the book on her parents dime with the divorce (somehow by thr grace of God and my lawyer I made it out relatively fine). She send grueling insults with every insult you could think of from a cheating narcissist

• her AP painted me as a crippled old man and had his friends send insulting messages, videos of him and my ex, and whatever they could think of on the daily and only stopped when I got law enforcement involved

-my exes family never liked me, and gladly jumped at the opportunity to mock me, and the APs family, who obviously saw dollar signs regardless of the greater context, had no problems joining in to score points
This brings me to around 3 weeks ago. By then 2 years had gone by, with me back on my feat, a year of therapy under my belt, a new job, a new sense of confidence, and recently a new girlfriend. Bit of info, I never left the area, my family only lived a couple of hours away from where my ex and I lived. My job is going too well to risk getting up and leaving for parts unknown. Because I was in the same area, I got little tidbits of info regardless if I wanted to hear or not. I know the APs family moved away, he moved in with her, and the world slowly saw less and less of him.
To sum it up, I got called by his family to see him in the hospital. I dont know all the details, but basically, roughly over a month ago my exes AP went dark. Over a 5 month period, they slowly heard less and less of him, but a month back they lost contact. Why it took them this long to raise hell is beyond me, but I imagine a family that would allow their son to be groomed for money isn't great at ensuring their son is ok. Police stopped by her house for a wellness check, only for him to answer the door looking like the walking dead. The poice found him, from what they describe, practically in hell. He had been routinely beaten and sexually abused nonstop for God knows how long.
The whole investigation has opened a black hole of craziness. I've asked around for more info and got little tidbits but not much. It was found that multiple people were involved and allegedly there are videos of what they were doing to him. They found evidence of God knows how many drugs and substances were being pumped into him. My ex and whoever else was involved are facing longer and longer sentences he more they find out
His family wants me to visit him as he wants to make amends. He wants to apologize, he's broken, he's scarred for life, he's suicidal, whatever reason they can spew out to bring me to him they've said it. But why should I be dragged into this shit?
His own family allowed practically sold him, my exes family seem to actually have had no knowledge of this and are practically scraping their hands clean and throwing her to the wolves, but I have to step back into this? I get he was groomed, I get he was influenced, and I understand some truly awful stuff happened to him, but why should I come back o all this and let the people who hurt me know all is forgiven? They've been harassing me about this nonstop now and even family think I should talk to him
MINOR UPDATE: I guess posting about this gave me the kick in the ass to communicate with my family. Mainly, its my parents who are encouraging reaching out. They explained their reasoning to me, and it makes sense where they are coming from. They are simply worried that if I try and ignore them it will kick off another year long harassment campaign from them. They saw how messed up I was last time I went through this, and they simply wanted it to end quickly so I didn't go through the same shit again. I have assured them there's no way they'll be able to go through with that again and worst case scenario I'll change my number again. They understand and have stopped pushing
FINAL UPDATE: I'm gonna bow out of the situation. No dramatic confrontation. No big show to everyone. Just gonna have my lawyer draw up a statement requesting to be left alone and ill double check making sure I wont have to be involved in any proceedings in the near future. From the brief chat I had with my lawyer so far, there's no real logical reason for me to be involved unless either side was getting desperate. Regardless, I have pages of documentation from way back showing my concern towards his age as well as clearly stating I was not involved in what transpired since then. I understand many of you wanted something more dramatic, but thats just how it is. All the loose ends are wrapped up and I'm moving on
BONUS: I wont be deleting the account yet despite what I claimed earlier just in case something comes up or happens. However, do not expect court updates as that takes a very long time and I most likely won't have any involvement.
I can share a couple theories from people I have heard about what is happening. These are all bits of info passed down by mutuals of mutuals, and have been going through a game of telephone for weeks, so please assume these are either wildly exaggerated or outright BS
-APs family and ex in laws family are all prepping to stab eachother in the back as each seem to be holding onto dirt to use against the other, possibly knowledge of the affair going on before 18
-EX in retaliation for being abandoned has knowledge of, and I quote directly from the messenger, "tax stuff" regarding her parents. It isn't some big thing that would be federal, probably just some money out of their pockets down the line. Her family aren't powerful, just well off
-there is no big trafficking ring or larger scale operation going on, it was just 4 or 5 freaks who found eachother online that she gathered. This seems more plausible
-AP's father is bordering on having to be placed under suicide watch
-AP's mother apparently had reservations from the begginging, pretty much got bought off, and is now livid and considering divorce
-AP is trying to get his friends for support and they are bailing. Some of these guys were part of the original harassment campaign way back and have apparently realized the error of their ways and don't want to step back in
-One of his abusers from the group got a knock at the door by the police at home with his wife and kids and killed himself on the spot (this has also been called out as fake by another person, and there is no evidence this happened but its still in a grey area as no one knows the names of who was involved, just the number of people)
RELEVANT COMMENTS
Vast-Combination4046

Did your ex get into meth out of the blue? This seems like meth head stuff

OOP

There are theories and stories from those i dare asked. None of them pleasant. But considering what his family mentioned about him being forced into drugs I'm going to assume she was on them as well.

~
robertscoff

There could be a possibility of being a witness, if revenge on your ex is something that would make you feel ok? NTA but the kid was essentially a child when groomed so I would suggest at least let go of that hatred, even if you choose to remain uninvolved. Best wishes

OOP

I assume I have no real reason to be called upon as a witness for whatever happens, unless they somehow try to go all the way back to the beginning and get me involved which seems wild to me

This however is all speculative and also, despite how quickly Reddit stories want us all to think with this stuff, is going to take a while to go to court

Update May 5, 2024
Apologizes in advance, this update will be stupid and asinine
So as I always knew was a possibility, sending a letter from my lawyer to the AP's parents wasn't the bulletproof shield I was hoping it would be. Desperate people aren't swayed by mere legal matters. Within 2 days things started spiraling out of control, and very quickly they called me directly again
Make no mistake, I saw the writing on the wall. Somehow I'll be getting dragged into this no matter what. My parents and girlfriend were as supporting as they could be. But at some point I said screw it and arranged to talk with the APs dad. I know, I'm an idiot and a fool, but I need to actually know what's going on.
To condense what was discussed without spilling any info in regards to the investigation, everyone was turning against eachother and our for blood, and secrets were finally spilling.
The AP's Dad: he opened the floodgates. As I knew, everyone was basically aware that my Ex groomed him most likely starting at 16. If there was any physical proof such as messages, they're long gone. This kid was basically a bad seed, history of trouble without a clear direction in his future. His dad is a confusing person. He is the kind of dad that wanted to be rid of his problem child, but also was "proud" in a way of his son getting involved with the hot older woman with a well off family. He basically spilled the beans that he supported the relationship as it gave him the benefit of getting his son out of his house, and gladly took whatever my exes family offered as a token of appreciation. He was a lousy father plain and simple. As time went by, he appeared to realize the situation he out his son in, and it only got worse with...
The APs Mom: she was a stay at home mother who always was the silent submissive partner in the marriage. As it turns out, she raised hell from the beggining, but at the behest of her husband (I'm suspecting this marriage is way more abusive then he let on) he got her to drop it. He controlled her enitre life practically. She never was happy and always tried to get her son help and get him away from my ex. After what has happened the last few weeks, she has had it. She is divorcing him, letting his family know what happened, and plans on cleaning him out in the divorce. The silent submissive wife was driven too far. From what I saw of the Dad, it's hit him hard how his years of bad choices have ruined his family. He is a hollow shell of a man
My Ex and her family: they're tearing eachother apart. My ex has lost her job, reputation, her circle of freaks, and her money. Her parents, their family humiliated, their involvement taking over local gossip, and desperate to salvage the fallout they'll endure when more people find out, are in the midst of a separation and a brutal divorce is on the horizon. However, the possibility of an investigation is at risk due to...
The AP: my jaw hit the fucking floor when I heard about him. He is backpeddling hard. Over the last 2 weeks he has been retracting every claim, every accusation, every bit of evidence that could put these sick freaks in prison. I shit you not, and I wish I had the capacity to make this up, he has gotten the people who are on video sexually abusing him to verify with him that they were taking part in recording fetish porn. My brain simply cannot comprehend this. It just won't allow me. Now I'm not stupid, he is clearly psychologically broken. He was alone with them for months. He needs a psychiatrist immediately.
The reason they are so desperate for me to be involved is because it's the last desperate flails of a collapsing group of narcissists and parental failures desperately trying to talk to him, and they want me involved as they need people with history with my ex to try and actually make a case since their son is doing everything he can to not make one happen. As of now, any case against my ex is in limbo
It's just so sad. This situation is so stupid all around because it was so avoidable. All the dad had to do was be a proper guiding father to his son, help him become a proper adult. All his mom had to do was not be a pushover. All my exes parents had to do was not support an illegal relationship just to spite me. All my ex had to do was not be an awful human being
Now a kid is possibly deeply mentally broken permanently all because the guiding figures in his life didn't care. I won't lie, I still hate him so much, but he doesn't deserve this
If I ever update again, it would be a year or so down the road after all the dust has settled. This is such a stupid pointless situation
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

We look the same and we always have but we couldn’t be more different from each other. I think that’s the best place to start with this. Some identical twins have a lot in common. They like the same foods, the same things on television, some even spend their entire lives dressing in the same clothes, but we were never those girls. For as long as I remember, it’s been hard for even our own parents to tell us apart were it not for our very different personalities. Our own mother can’t tell the difference between our voices over the phone to this day. We even have the same laugh, but after that we diverge. I’m extroverted and would much rather be outdoors than inside where she is bookish and reserved. As far as personality traits go, Lily and I have always shared very few.
We both have our father’s nose and our mother’s heart shaped face and her high cheekbones. The same raven-black hair falls in waves past both of our shoulders and the same emerald green, almond shaped eyes sparkle with hidden flecks of gold that you can only see if you take a look up close.
Still, there’s a connection between us that can’t be explained. We just feel it. Know it’s there. It’s a thing with identical twins no matter how truly different they really are. Some say it’s a sort of telepathy, if you believe in that sort of thing.
That’s the reason I knew something was wrong before I had proof. I knew when I woke up in the morning that something was happening and that it was big. I even knew when I finally got up the nerve to send her a text, she would reply this time; not right away–but this time–she would. She hadn't been replying to me at all lately, no matter how often I sent her messages. Something was different now. I'd hear back from her but it would be at least a week–possibly a few days more before I did. Sending this text was different. Something I could feel in my bones told me she'd finally tell me what was going on with her. Where had she been? In my heart, I knew the lack of communication over the past several months wasn’t something she had chosen. Somehow I knew she wanted to talk to me but for some reason she couldn’t and that was a very strange and unnerving feeling for a twin to have. In the past, before Lily’s recent radio-silence, she and I had rarely gone for more than a day or two without checking in. In the past year that had suddenly changed and I had no logical explanation for it.
This particular morning, a feeling of unease is everywhere around me and even somehow inside me. I feel it in bed before I even open my eyes. Like an itch you can’t scratch because you know it will just make the rash worse and trying to ignore it altogether will drive you mad. The worst part about the itch was knowing that after months of nothing, I would finally hear back from Lily. It was time. She was ready to talk. I knew it. I don't know how–I just did. Somehow after months of unanswered messages, my next text would finally garner a response and knowing that made me jittery. The itch was made worse by the inexplicable knowledge that the response was going to take days. At least I would get it, but I'd have to wait for it for days. If she hadn't replied to me in months, why should that make me feel so uneasy? I couldn't say. The whole prospect of this scenario made me nervous but I told myself I would send the message right after breakfast because my sister needed me to send it and she needed me to send it today. It was important that I reached out to her this morning.
Whatever happened is bothering me so much that I burn the pancakes and have to start them over three different times.
“Vibes are off today, Emily,” my wife Jasmine begins. She sits patiently waiting for me to serve her a plate of good ones, pancakes that aren’t burnt, at the table in our kitchenette, “I just changed that bag last night you know, and if you keep doing that I’ll have to take it out again before we even get to eat. What’s up with you?”
“Not me,” I reply, “it’s Lily. Something’s up with Lilly.”
“Oh? You finally hear back from her? What’s going on?”
“That’s just it. I haven't heard anything in months but that's definitely about to change. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling, babe. Hard to explain,” I say.
“A twin thing?” She asks.
“Exactly. It’s twintuition. It’s like–”
“–Intuition,” she finishes for me, “I get it. Did you try calling her or texting her yet?” Jasmine asks.
“No, but it’s because I’m afraid she won’t answer right away and I don’t want to have that fear be real.” I admit. “That’s weird isn’t it?”
“Very,” she says getting up from the table. She picks my phone up from the counter and grabs me by the waist, moving me away from the stove and spinning me around. She pecks a small kiss on my lips and lifts one of my hands, placing the phone into it. She gives me a little shove toward the kitchenette table and pulls out the chair for me.
“You’re going to sit here and write a text to your sister and I’m going to finish making breakfast.” She tells me.
I sit here looking at my phone for a while, unsure of how to start. Finally I type:

Anything wrong? Worried about you.

And I hit send.
_____________________________
Eight days pass before Lily texts me back and it’s a flood of texts in the morning from an unknown number. One after the other.

Sorry I didn’t get back to you right away. You were right about Eric. I didn’t tell you a lot because I thought you’d be ashamed of me. Or mad. You’ve always been so much stronger than I am.
I packed and left the night you text me. I was afraid to reply because I thought he might be able to read it somehow. He definitely was tracking the phone so I left it at the bus station that morning.
It took me a few days to get set up, but I’m in Echo Bay now and this is my new number. Just got one of those burner phones from Walmart. It’s nothing special but that’s on purpose.
I’m staying in a bungalow on the beach. Very cute. Just a few miles from you and Jasmine, actually. It’s nothing permanent, just an AirB&B. I figured coming here would be safest for now to figure out what to do next.
I never told him where you were and he’ll try to find me if he can. He’ll follow me to the end of the Earth. I should have told you about him. The whole truth. Now I finally can. If you’re not busy, come by today and I’ll tell you the whole story.

The last text she sends puts tears in my eyes and I call her right after I read it and we make plans…

I’m pretty sure if I stayed he’d have killed me sooner or later. Probably sooner.

I meet Lily for lunch at her bungalow in the afternoon and she’s right, it’s very cute. She, on the other hand, looks like a mess and I find myself both irate and awestruck. I don't understand how the bruises haven’t fully healed or even begun to heal a little. That bastard really did a number on her. It's eight days later and her face and skin is purple and green with bruises in so many places–appearing to be so fresh that you'd think she'd been at the bottom of a three-car pile up just the night before.
“He wasn’t always like this, you know,” she tells me, “in the beginning he was really charming…it took a long time to figure out that person wasn’t real.”
She doesn’t eat much, mostly just moves the food around on her plate with her fork. She goes quiet and drifts away from the conversation a lot which is strange for me because she was always the one with more focus. I’m the daydreamer. She’s the grounded one. That’s how we’ve always been. A few times while she’s sitting silently, she begins to cry. When I hold her hand, it turns into a wailing sob and I reassure her that none of this is her fault. That this sort of thing happens to a lot of women. That they feel trapped and never try to get out. Never try to escape. They don’t make it out. I reassure her that she’s still strong because she saw what was happening and she did something about it. She left. I reassure her quietly that although it shouldn’t be this way, that it shouldn’t happen, this still happens to lots of women anyway. She’s not alone. She escaped it. She’s a survivor.
“We can help find you a lawyer if you want,” I offer at one point, “we have money saved. We can pay for it,” and she immediately shuts the idea down.
“No. I’m not doing that,” she says adamantly, “I just want to be done with it. I came here to heal. I don’t know if I’m staying or not yet…”
She pauses for a moment and then adds: “I just need some time to figure out where I’m supposed to be.”
“But if you let him get away with it, he could do this to someone else,” I say, “you do realize that right? You need to do something. He needs to pay for this.”
“He does need to, but what if he gets away with it?” she asks, “what if I report all of it and he sits trial for it…and what if he gets off? I can't take that chance. It isn't worth the consequences of it. What if I don't win?”
“What if you do?” I ask her. She gets really quiet then, “promise me you’ll think about it.”
“I will,” she says and it’s almost a whisper, “I just need some time. I made it away and I’m safe. I don’t know if I want him to know where I am. If I do this then he knows I’m here and when he does, if I lose, he will kill me. You understand that don’t you? He will kill me. That man operates on some sort of twisted revenge. He won't even consider what would follow once he's gotten it. He'll just think about getting even with me.”
“Jail isn't a deterrent when you're dealing with a human grenade. He'll only want to explode–to destroy. He won't worry about what happens to him after that. He doesn't work that way.” She says.
She doesn’t want to let me take pictures of her bruises but I insist on it and somehow actually win that argument. She tells me she’s been trying not to even look in mirrors right now. She doesn’t want pictures of her looking like this on her brand new phone because what if she decides to take a picture of something beautiful, like a sunset, and she opens the camera and the photo gallery is right there and she has to look at this instead. I tell her that she’s still beautiful no matter what happened to her. All that matters is what happens next. So I take the pictures for her with my phone. She takes off her shirt and there are more bruises everywhere underneath and we take pictures of those too.
I manage to keep my own feelings bottled up for the entire afternoon until she takes her shirt off and now before I realize I’m doing it, I’m crying also.
“Shhh,” she whispers, “you can’t cry. You’re the strong one.”
I shake my head and tell her that we’re both strong and then we’re both sobbing and she presses her face against my chest and I press my head onto the top of hers until she steps away from me and tells me that I have to stop crying on her because I’m getting snot in her hair. We both laugh.
It’s not funny. Nothing about this afternoon has been, but we both laugh anyway and our laughs still sound the same.
I spend the entire day with her and as the sun goes down we leave her bungalow and take a walk along the beach.
“So, can I ask how you ended up falling for this guy? Identical or not we clearly operate on different wavelengths romantically and I just don't understand.” I say, and then add: “forgive me if that's too personal.”
“No. It isn't.” She begins, “and if only we operated on the same wavelength or even similar ones. I thought about you a lot in the past few years. Thought that if only I was a big old lezzie–like you, if I'd just went for girls, none of this would've ever happened.”
“Don't be so sure. Domestic abuse doesn't have a gender. There's shitty, abusive partners in queer relationships too.” I tell her.
“Well, regardless, I've actually asked myself the same question about a hundred times in the last week. What drew me to him and where and when did things change–you know? When did he go from the ideal boyfriend to an absolute monster?”
She tells me that when she met this bastard, Eric Warminster, it was like something out of a movie, and her story begins that way too–like a cheesy rom-com–so corny it sounds fake…I almost tell her how much I hate romantic comedies, I almost tell her to give me some horror flick any day of the week. I think better of it just before I do and don't say the thought aloud. She never went for horror, even when we were girls–and that's what she ended up with despite her aversion to it. That was what her life had become.
She tells me they were both in the produce section of the grocery, neither of them paying too much attention–he on the phone and she looking over her shopping list. They both reached for a pineapple–the last pineapple in the crate. He asks her what she plans to do with it if he lets her have it and she tells him she's just going to cut it up and eat it. He tells her he’s making a pineapple-upsidedown cake with it.
“I've never had that.” She tells him honestly; matter-of-factly and he invites her over to his place later that night to be the judge of whether or not his recipe is any good. Normally, she tells me, she'd never have done something like that. She tells me that she's not the type to just go to a strange man's place on a whim…but he was good looking and had a charming way about him. She fondly describes his smile. It’s out of character and she can't say exactly what makes her drop her guard and give this man her number, but she does…
And the dinner he cooks for her as well as the cake he makes are both excellent.
“That wasn't the only cake he made for me. One day when we were still getting to know each other he asked me a load of questions. What's my favorite color? Favorite flower? That sort of thing. Remember that movie ‘Steel Magnolias?’ I told him that was my favorite movie. He says he's never seen it. Not a week later, he tells me he watched it and asks me to come by after work. Says he's got a surprise for me...” She says.
“No fuckin way.” I said, interrupting her. I told you rom-coms aren't really my thing, but I'd known that was Lily's favorite since we were in middle school. Of course I'd suffered through it and we'd watched it together…her with a tissue pressed against her eyes and me rolling mine.
“He made the Armadillo Cake?” I ask, “you mean to tell me he watched the movie just because you mentioned it and then he made the cake?”
Lily smiles briefly at the recollection and nods.
“He was very romantic…in the beginning.” She tells me.
Eric does all sorts of things to win Lily's heart: he'd make her breakfast in bed, take her on picnics. She tells me he would even sit there calmly while she complained about her co-workers and instead of trying to fix the problem or offer his advice, by the end of the conversation he'd have found a reason to hate the people she said she hated in her story and have his own complaints about them too. According to Lily, he was perfect…and then shortly after she moved in with him, things started to change and they changed fast.
Little things at first…she accidentally buys the wrong type of cereal at the store and is met with: “Frosted Flakes? Really? Not Frosted Flakes! Mini Wheats! Are you stupid or something? Frosted Mini Wheats! How hard is that for your useless, stupid brain to remember?”
She tells me that once she folded the towels the way our mother always had when we were growing up. He didn't fold them that way so he calls her into the bathroom, throws open the linen closet and proceeds to yank each one of them out one by one, unfolding them with a flick of his wrist before smooshing them into balls and leaving them in a heap on the floor.
“Do it the fuckin right away the first time, or do it again, moron.” He shouts at her before storming out of the room.
“He told me all my friends were toxic next. I didn't have any friends except my coworkers so he told me he didn't want me working anymore. Most women would kill to be homemakers. Do the dishes. Spend the afternoon watching soap operas. He put me on an allowance and I couldn't buy anything without telling him I was buying it.” She says. “He told me you were toxic too. Said you didn't love me and the way he said it…how he explained it, it was so convincing. That’s the reason I stopped returning your calls.” After she says this, she begins to cry quietly.
He tells her if she tries to reach me or any other of her so-called “toxic” family, and he finds out, he'll sell the car he bought her and they'd start having everything–all the shopping and groceries–delivered. She becomes afraid if she lets anyone know what’s happening she’ll lose what little freedom he grants her and she'll be trapped in their house for good…trapped there with him for good.
There are a few other anecdotes just like those ones in her story and I find myself getting more and more angry as she recounts all of this to me. Then it hits me: each story is just another small escalation. I'm so mad I could run this man down with my car, then get out and curb-stomp his head before setting him on fire.
I can feel the desire to do that just from what she tells me up to this point…
She still hasn't gotten to the day he begins to put his hands on her and my blood is already boiling.
She gets quiet for a long time and we just walk. I reach out and take her hand, and when I do she puts the thoughts that I was having just a moment earlier into words:
“I can sense how mad you are. I haven't even told you about the first time he hit me.” She says.
“You can keep talking about it, but you don't have to if you don't want to.” I say.
“I don't want to, but I'm going to anyway. I'm ashamed.”
“You shouldn't be. None of this was your fault.” I tell her.
“I know. I am anyway.” She continues, “I feel like I need to tell you. I have to tell someone. I haven't talked about any of this. It's poison and I want it out.”
The first time he hits her, it’s a punch in the face. He doesn't even start off with a slap or something. He'd never hit her before and the first time he does, it's a closed fist. She isn't expecting it to happen. The reason he claims he did it afterward is that she'd overcooked his pork chop. They finish eating and as she collected his plate she askes him how it was. He says it was chewy and then out of nowhere he punches her in the eye.
After he discovers he can get away with something like that, it starts happening all the time…
He throws her against a wall for forgetting to charge his phone for him. She'd forgotten somewhere that she was responsible for every small thing when it came to keeping the household running–even things that she'd never been asked to do. Things as small as putting his phone on the charger for him so he wouldn't have to do it himself.
He didn't want a girlfriend or a partner…he wanted a slave.
If he was leaving for work and she couldn't tell him where his keys were, he'd choke her so roughly and long that her vision would go white–then black–only to stop moments before she was about to pass out.
She’d forget who she was dealing with and speak out of turn and he'd take her by a fist-full of hair and drag her into their guest room where he'd installed a padlock she hadn't noticed before. He'd lock her inside and leave her there for a full day–sometimes two–without anything to eat or drink.
He'd tell her how lucky she was to be so well kept.
He'd tell her that the first time she ever tried to leave him would be the last time she tried that because dead women can't leave anyone–ever.
The awful stories pour out of her. Sometimes slowly like the tears that well in the corner of her eyes, growing like drops at the tip of a leaky tap until big enough to fall… Sometimes in a deluge of rolling sobs as a powerful wave like a wall of water from a burst dam. I don't interrupt her. I don't know what to say so I only listen. I know my sister. She doesn't want me to say anything because nothing I could say would take away the pain of any of this for her.
Eventually the emotions and stories are all spent and she grows silent. When she speaks again, it's to change the subject.
“What’s that out there?” She asks, pointing out at a spot in the water. The sun has nearly set and the only thing we can see is a great dark space on the horizon. The place where I live is old and still has a working lighthouse; it’s more for nostalgia than anything else now. As if on queue, the light sweeps across the darkness revealing a large, not so distant island that mostly exists as an outcropping of rocks.
“The locals call it Mermaid’s Roost,” I tell her, “lots of the old-timers, the superstitious ones, say that’s where the sirens live.”
She smiles at that. I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen her smile all day and it’s an incredible feeling. It’s too soon to call it healing but it’s the beginning of something like it and I can feel it radiating from her. It feels warm. She lifts her phone and opens the camera.
“It’s gonna be my first picture in my new phone,” she says, “I was waiting for something beautiful. I wanted the first one I took to be something beautiful.”
“The Roost is why they put the old lighthouse here in the first place. Supposedly there’s dozens of old ships that sank out there,” I tell her.
“They heard the sirens singing and rammed their ships against the rocks to be closer to them.” Lily says, “The legend is that they’re still out there and you can still hear them if they want you to. If they want you to come out to them…when men hear them from the water it’s because they want to smash the ships. When they hear them from the shore it’s always a trick; a call to swim out to them. Most don’t make it. There's an awful undertow. They drown. If they do make it that far, the sirens just kill them and eat them. They’re not actually mermaids at all but birds with the heads of women. Weird right? They’re from Greek mythology, you know. Surprising anyone believes anything like that out here.”
“That’s right,” I say, struggling to hide my surprise, “but how do you know all that? You just got here.”
“There’s a book about it at the house,” she explains, “I didn't just get here. I’ve been here for about three days. I’ve read the whole thing twice. Didn’t realize it was a local thing. That explains two things…why it was in the house to begin with, but also why it wasn’t written very well. I thought it’s probably self-published or a vanity press sort of thing,” She shrugs and says, “I didn’t realize why it was at the house until now. I like it anyway. It’s just about the only thing there is to read in there.”
I’m flabbergasted, “Three days? You got here and waited three days to text me?” I heard the rest of what she said but that’s the only thing that registers.
“I was scared,” she says, “scared to tell you about any of this stuff.”
“I get it. I’m not mad or anything but Jesus, Lily, you’ve been this close for three days? I’ve been worried sick about you for over a week!”
“I know,” she whispers and grabs my hand, “I’m sorry.”
“We should probably get back before it gets too dark,” I say.
“Stay with me tonight? Say you will? Call Jasmine and tell her you’ll be home in the morning?”
I say I will and that we need to start to head back to her place. We’ve walked about a mile so it will take us a while to get back and this isn’t the kind of beach that’s made of gentle slopes of endless sand. There’s sand of course, but it’s also full of rocks to trip and bust your head open on in the dark.
When we’re halfway there and the sky is a deep, dark purple, like the color of wine when it's still in the bottle, she stops and looks back at Mermaid’s Roost. The shadow of it still looms on the dark violet horizon, like a giant sleeping in the sparkling black blanket of water. Her eyes grow wide and seem to fill with tiny golden diamonds, like flecks of light reflected by the stars. Her face glows with an uncharacteristically innocent wonder.
“Emily,” she whispers, “do you hear them too?”
And I think she’s fucking with me so I say “sure” and tell her to hurry up because I’m starving and I want to order us a pizza and call my wife to let her know I'll be staying with her in her bungalow. Also that my feet hurt. The truth is that I can barely hear her when she asks the question in the first place.
“It’s beautiful,” she says quietly and I agree because I think she’s talking about the town or the beach or the moon or the stars or anything else–anything real–and not some local legend that she can hear over the sound of the waves and wind that I can’t.
When we get back to the little beach house, she pauses in the doorway and stares for a long time back at the island of rocks. It’s distant, but big enough to still see, if only just barely when the light from the lighthouse sweeps across it in the dark.
_____________________________
The house is awash with the chill and the sounds of the sea wind when I wake up. We went to the master bedroom around 11:00pm to watch a movie. The plan was for us to stay in the same bed like we used to do sometimes when we were little girls. The house has a guest room and I could have slept in there, but Lily begged me to stay with her, so I did and the truth is that I wanted to.
It’s 3:00am and the cold is what’s roused me from sleep but it’s panic that pulls me fully awake now. She’s not here with me. I know she’s not in the house. I know this the same way that I know she turned the TV off when she left. She did this so a loud commercial didn’t wake me. I know this because it’s what I would have done if I was trying to sneak away and I didn’t want her to stop me. I know all of this the same way I knew she was in trouble but I didn’t know how or why over a week ago. Twintuition.
I’ve never had a feeling like this one before. It’s strong and clear but also deep and dark like the water outside. I know from the moment I wake up that I won’t see her alive again, but I search the entire house for her anyway. I go from room to room checking every closet, beneath both the beds and even behind the shower curtain in the bathroom. When I get to the living room I see the reason the house is so cold; she didn’t shut the door behind her when she left.
“The Legend of Mermaid’s Roost” is laying open on the counter and she’s used seashells to hold the pages open to where she’s circled a passage in black marker.

“When men hear the sirens singing, it is always without a doubt an attempt at temptation. Their beautiful and deadly song is said to be a lure calling sailors ever closer to the rocks of Mermaid’s Roost to smash their ships along the stoney shore, but the sirens don’t stop there. Their singing has not only been heard by men at sea, but by those who walk along the shores after dark. They call out to the men on the mainland trying to convince them to swim out to the Roost; a distance just over half a mile. According to the legends, most of those that attempted to swim the distance to the island would get caught in the undertow and drown. If they managed to make it the entire way, the sirens of Mermaid’s Roost would rip them apart with their talons and eat them alive while they screamed for a mercy that would never come. Death is always the fate of men who hear the song.”
“According to the myths, women almost never hear their enchanting calls from across the bay, but for those that do the call is never a deadly temptation, but rather an invitation to join them. To sing with them and lure men to their untimely ends. Those women that do hear them may choose to join their deadly flock if they wish to do so. According to the local histories this is rare and the women that choose to join them are never seen nor heard from again.”

At the bottom of the page, a note in her handwriting simply reads: “Figured out where I’m supposed to be. Thanks for today. I love you always.”
I rush outside knowing there’s no reason to hurry because I’m already too late. She’s already made her choice and I don’t need my twintuition to tell me that because I can hear her.
She’s singing…Mermaid’s Roost is over a mile away and I know it’s her voice because it sounds so much like my own. It’s quiet from this distance but the preternatural nature of her chorus spans the space between us with ease and clarity…but this song is not my invitation to join her…
It’s her last request.
When I offered to pay for a lawyer so she could make him pay for putting his hands on her, she was afraid she wouldn’t win but that fear is gone now. She’s found a whole flock that’ll be willing–that lives for the sole purpose of picking better men than him apart, and they will, as they’ve done to so many before him…that is if he even survives the swim.
He’s too far from here to hear her song but he’s not too far for me. I don’t know exactly how to reach you, Eric Warminster, but I know where you live and there can’t be more than one man with that name where you are. In the morning I’ll make a few calls until I find you and when I do, I’m pretty sure that Lily was right when she said you’d try to kill her if she ever left. I'm banking on her fear that you'd follow her to the end of the Earth. I’m also pretty sure you won’t know the difference between her voice and mine, especially not over the phone…our own mother can’t most of the time. I don’t even have to face you and I already know what I’ll say to get you out here too. I’ll taunt you and belittle you just like you did to her. I'll be laughing the entire time. You’ll come. It should be easy enough…our laughs sound the same…
…All I have to do is tell you to meet me at the beach after dark. I know by the sound of the song she's singing that she's changed so much already. I wonder if the transformation was instantaneous or if it takes time for her feathers to grow in and fully form. I wonder if that even matters. I wonder if she must complete her change before she can do what she means to do to you and something about her tone tells me, no. She's ready for you now. The words of her melody aren't in English anymore, but in a vernacular that up until now, I would have believed impossible. The sweet song seems to originate from a great creature both mythical and feminine and beautifully deadly. Birdlike, the calls drift out from the newly-formed and massive beak. I see her face has shifted and grown it already with my mind’s eye. The sound reaches out over the water for only me to hear. Lily sings in a language so musical and ancient now that the words themselves have long been forgotten. Yet, despite their foreign nature, I don't have to understand the tongue to understand the meaning of her song. The sound of the music of Mermaid’s Roost fills my mind. Entering my ears, it surges though my head before seeming to flow and tread before my eyes. I can see what she wants me to do in images that hover barely visible like an ethereal painting before me. She wants me to get you to this beach and I will. That’s her last request–her only request. Get you to the shore and she’ll take care of the rest.
ss

We are no longer in an age of authenticity. The demand for “realness” has been replaced by a demand for digital daydreaming. From the instagram model using filters, to the youtube money guru renting out properties and fancy cars, there is more of a fake presence than a real existence online. People will say “this is the real me” while covered in hair dye and pointless piercings, declaring that they can’t be themselves without the aid of modernity. Or, better yet, the aid of postmodernity.
Profiles are used, mostly online, as a social means of determining what someone or something is. Profile pictures, profile descriptions, these are done as small snapshots of recognition for people to easily connect the dots for their main focus. It’s not that an author is only an author, but rather that is the profile they want to hold as a social position on social media. Then comes the question: Who determines they are such a person in the first place? What validates a profile outside of pointless keywords and gullibility?
As masters of mimesis, the artist is, ironically, easily mimicked through actions and production. The lack of an institution that gives the title of artist makes it even harder to determine who is and isn’t an actual artist. The definition of art being changed by whoever you’re talking to is also a clear and present way of allowing deception to go unnoticed. Fake artists are everywhere, we don’t have a social detection system to snuff them out, and so every artist is a valid artist. If you dare to question the validity of an artist by asking for proof or authentic actions, you will be quickly met with an onslaught of hobbyists and tourists determining that you’re being unfair.
The hobbyist, a word derived from the hobby horse, a word meaning “one who acts for the sole purpose of one’s own pleasure”, is something that becomes more present as free time and distractions increase. Technology performs half of our day for us, we spend more time in retirement, and the internet is one giant toy that’s plugged into other people’s screens. An increase in social boredom, as well as anti-social behavior, creates a dramatic amount of enclosed activity done in one's room, but out in the open for all to see. As the windows are shut and the curtains are drawn closed, the computer window is opened and the content is uploaded. It has come to the point where a child, one who doesn’t even comprehend the concept of online activity, will be filmed daily by their parents in order for the parents to make money off of their interaction with different toys.
And yes… I’m referring to the cursed content that is Ryan’s World.
To understand the phenomena of “capitalizing on hobbies”, it is important to understand the economic situation we are given. People don’t like to work, they are told they don’t have to work, and they would rather sit in their house all day doing nothing. I know, I’m one of those people. My back hurts, video games are more fun, I don’t want to follow a schedule, and dealing with customers is a headache. When provided an alternative, you’re damn right we are going to seek the easier route, even if it offers a vague hint of failure or loss.
This is why people buy lottery tickets and gamble at casinos: they are seeking the easy way out and find that slim chance of success is worth the cost. $5 today could become $500,000 tomorrow; but being short sighted and impulsive turns that $5 a day into a daily $5 expense, or worse. Soon, the inclination becomes a habit, to then have the habit become addiction. Eventually, people who fall for the vague promise of wealth will fall into their own pit of undefeatable debt. All because they were distracted by the positives and couldn’t notice the massive amount of negatives that overwhelmed them.
It’s fine to enjoy a hobby, and it’s fine to put money into something that entertains you. Nobody is saying we have to be “strictly work and no play” for the rest of our lives. We don’t need any more Jacks going crazy in the Overlook Hotel. The point of a hobby is to do it by yourself, for yourself, and leave the rest of us out of it. If we are not involved, then do not involve us.
Sadly, this doesn’t happen due to two factors: greed and narcissism.
A youtube channel like Ryan’s World gets made from the sheer amount of narcissism a family requires in order to put their child on film and share it around to others. It is hoping that random strangers care about what your kid is doing, with the uploading family also hoping that there is money to be had from this endeavor. They were able to get millions of subs, I would never say it’s a failure. It’s one of the biggest youtube channels in the world, while offering the simple product of a kid playing with toys and doing trendy challenges. But the amount of greed and narcissism required to even begin this type of action, to then continue it, is practically inhuman.
Even though humans hold the will to power, it is abnormal to seek senseless celebrity as a majority of people. Online culture has created this artificial need for fame and clicks, utilizing the upvote and notification as a manipulation of our dopamine kicks. We are tricked into thinking online activity both means something and benefits us, in the same way we are tricked into thinking we feel good after eating junk food. Like junk food, we are getting too much waste and not enough nutrition, slowly destroying our bodies over time. There is a reason why youtubers always talk about taking “mental health days” and celebrities are always caught with drug use or simply go insane.
Humans feel safe when we are not noticed. Eyes upon us causes anxiety, in the same way a lion lurking in the bushes makes its prey scan around. One of the most common fears is public speaking, because being the focus of a crowd means you’re the target of numerous possible predators. Humans, under years of conditioning, must regain a child-like state of bliss to overcome this fear of being the center of attention, and this is usually done with processed narcissism. In the same way a rat is conditioned to no longer react to being shocked, by expecting the shock, there is a repetitive process of no longer feeling anxious when put into emotionally intense situations.
The hobbyist will wander online spaces, surrounded by fellow hobbyists, granting the same positive reinforcement to others that they would want others to grant them. Placing “hobbyist” as their profile would cause people to wonder “why is this person making it all about themselves”, yet casually declaring they are a hobbyist is met with people going “so am I, and proud of it”. The acceptance of authenticity means less than the profile presented as an identity, but only to the people who put identity before authenticity. If you act in one way, but claim you are another, postmodernism demands that we believe the words and ignore the actions. All this does is further narcissistic behavior as people learn to mimic phrases and religiously place themselves higher in the algorithm.
The interesting thing about narcissism is that it’s not about being famous because you hold a skill or purpose. It’s a demand to be famous for the sake of having eyes upon you. It is entitlement, which requires further deception to retain a presence among other entitled individuals who are socially conditioned to share the same goal. Babies are inherited with this mentality due to the helpless condition of being a baby, but an adult doing the same thing will appear as the parasite they are. Include this with the undying charity of anonymous altruism and we have a recipe of people pretending to be something they aren’t, all for financial gain.
The only type of artist the hobbyist can practice in is being a con artist.
This is all over the place in social media, with the main legal loophole being that they don’t necessarily take your money directly. The fine line between con artist and “fake it until you make it” is mostly obscured by the lack of hard evidence that the con artist took advantage of people in a way that stands out from the ocean of culprits. Grifters, shills, tourists, hobbyists, these are all things that get mixed and merged together at different levels and different areas of effect. Sadly, the hobbyist has the most protection because the hobbyist is seen as a “benign blemish” that could easily be subjectively warped into a beauty mark. In reality, the interloping of hobbyists is more like the brood parasitism of birds like the common cuckoo, having the real eggs switch out with the parasitic one and receiving a dead offspring in the process.
Sure, we can say it’s a bird and it needs to be fed, but it’s not the real bird that the feeding mother expected to take care of. Hobbyists pretending that they are selling a product, desperate enough to go through the hoops of buying covers and paying for editors, becomes an endless spiral of fake chicks being taken care of by unsuspecting caretakers. It’s not our fault that they decided to spend time on their hobby, yet they demand that we pay for their efforts and scold us when we don’t accept the unwanted product. The hobbyist quickly becomes a homeless person, panhandling for any change, hoping people see them as pathetic. Even if we do see them as pathetic and downtrodden, they then demand we foot the bill for their inability to make something to actually sell.
If someone is making something for free and all they ask for is my time, I have little to complain about. As stupid as I find Ryan’s World, at least they are not telling me I need to pay for their “service”, along with any other youtuber. But then we have books and video games made by hobbyists that don’t sell, to then have the hobbyist claim the entire world is evil and oppressing them. The appeal of global money, along with the benefit of anonymity, inspires too many desperate cuckoos to start throwing eggs around. Even actual artists are forced to claim “they were just doing their own thing” as a way to present a random unpreparedness, in fear that the hobbyists will cancel them.
The cuckoo hobbyists are not hard to detect, but they are hard to call out due to the false obedience to social democracy. Feeling outnumbered, fearing the wrath of downvotes or response videos; it’s hard to get people to speak out. It’s even harder to find an authentic artist in the bunch, as if nearly all the eggs are replaced by the parasitic ones. But, once you know what spots to find and colors to seek, you can easily know when you’re being conned. At that point, all you have to do is fight the urge to sympathize with crocodile tears and stay logical.
Do not let yourself get drained by the parasites, financially or emotionally.

Hello, here is the latest changelog.
Content: * Added Skunks by TheMurderUnicorn * Add Recipe for Portable Soldering Iron by TheMurderUnicorn * Adds three new amphibian zombies for burned or dried out giant amphibians by TheSaddestGoomba * adds Aztec armor by KeremBabaG
Features: * Graphical construction preview by Qrox * Add new function follower_present for use in JSON by katemonster33 * Unhardcode and limbify attack vectors by Venera3 * Add new hairstyles from Mawranth's Hair Salon by BalthazarArgall * make army and marine bayonets look like national guard bayonets by AzyWng
Balance: * Fix meat ingredient in several recipes by XygenSS
Interface: * Use wash interface to remake a batch heat menu by yuganxia * Overmap only highlights newly revealed OMTs for maps by RenechCDDA * Mission UI migrated to imGUI by RenechCDDA * Adding Classless as a supernatural category by Sofistico * Adding spell name to the casting... widget by Sofistico
Mods: * Bounty Hunter Scenario for Aftershock by Maleclypse * [MoM] Mindhunter scenario by Standing-Storm * add greater dimensional bag to be spawned by Sofistico * [MoM] Rework Passive traits to use spell_level_sum by Standing-Storm * [MoM] Jmathify and variable-ize power learning times by Standing-Storm * [MoM] Contemplation recipes are not affected by hand encumbrance anymore, but affected by pain by GuardianDll * [MoM] Fix Discern Weakness by Standing-Storm * [MoM] Using psionics in or near the Nether is more powerful, but also more risky by Standing-Storm * [MoM] Add better enchantments to some psionic overloads by Standing-Storm * [MoM] VERDANT HAND combat protocols rework by Standing-Storm * [MoM] Contemplation doesn't require light by Standing-Storm * [MoM] Tweak formula for gaining Observed so repeated channeling is the most important factor by Standing-Storm
Bugfixes: * Muscle-powered vehicles counting animal weight for traction purposes by natsirt721 * Fixed items being inside condoms in wallets by BlackFira * Fixing issue where CJK text draws just a couple pixels too high on ImGui by katemonster33 * Fix Character::i_add_or_drop by osuphobia * clang-tidy readability-inconsistent-declaration-parameter-name by osuphobia * Fix stamina regains when dodging by osuphobia * Fixed issue where Android gesture inputs were not recognized by ImGui windows by katemonster33 * Changed 'hansom' to 'handsome' on the Coyote Combat Jacket by KyunKitsune * [Sky Island] Fix rock outside of windows by Standing-Storm * Fix moat by bateau-de-coal * Monster enchantments set bonus speed, not base (stops infinite feedback loop) by RenechCDDA * Misc repair kit draws ammo from around player and inventory, opposed to an internal ammunition pocket. by RonaldCoppieters * Allows the Atomic Smartphone flashlight to be used without also activating its music by Amnestasia * [Aftershock] Remove spaces in TALK_AUGUSTMOON_OUTFITTER chat topic by Standing-Storm * NPCs won't throw their last, best weapon by RenechCDDA * Re-add generic cards, make the MoM Magician start with only generic cards by KittyTac * Update Target Dummies to Require Diggable Terrain by TheMurderUnicorn * Allow Ankle Wallet Pouch to Accommodate Larger Wallets by TheMurderUnicorn * Add Combat Exoskeleton template to Aftershock Nanofabricator by KamikazieBoater * Fix anaerobic digester by osuphobia * Fixes issue where lower-case key does not switch the option in the popup by katemonster33 * Make CZ 75 16 Round Mag Actually Hold 16 Rounds and Fix ID by TheMurderUnicorn * Now moving all items will not move favourite items, if other items are present. by Brambor * Not to try to set charges for item without charge. by osuphobia
Infrastructure: * Dynamically compose some item names through suffixes/prefixes in JSON tags by Uwuewsky * refactored ImTuis drawing code to fix a black screen issue, and to improve performance by katemonster33 * Variantize card games by BalthazarArgall
Build: * Defer emscripten builds until after matrix builds succeed by akrieger
None: * Make Cat's Grace and Ogre Strength mutually exclusive by Maleclypse * Recalculate weight when inventory changes due to pet carrier use by RenechCDDA * No magic dissectables by RenechCDDA * Don't require parts to be unbroken for fake part generation by irwiss * Require confirmation for camp placement by Procyonae * Fix Dummy Typo I Forgot About by TheMurderUnicorn * Weekly Changelog 2024-04-29 to 2024-05-06 by kevingranade * damaged appiance-items remain damaged when transformed to appliance and back by GuardianDll * Clamp metabolism enchantment to prevent lag by GuardianDll * Aftershock: Audit mod gun sizes by John-Candlebury * Fix a typo in a few combat exoskeleton descriptions by BalthazarArgall * Debug menu monster editing by RenechCDDA * Fix fake obstacle parts, duplicated fake parts by irwiss * [Magiclysm] fix summon_undead_swarm using summon_undead spell level as check by GuardianDll * typified lightmap by PatrikLundell * Add Surgical Cart Vehicle by BarndoBoi * fix arithmetical error crash by GuardianDll * Fingerless Wool Gloves by SomeGuyIGues * Vegetable Audit by Karol1223 * fix pupating nuclear detonation by casswedson * Introduce camp z level construction by PatrikLundell * Allow Emitters to use vars by Ramza13 * Made inbounds use map parameters by PatrikLundell * No more foot locker material transmutation by Karol1223 * Fix invalid alpha talker error by Ramza13 * Fix fridges dropping drinking glasses instead of glass shards by GuardianDll * Make pillbox_large's pockets transparent by Brambor * Update description of mirror armor suits by XygenSS * Fix opening doors while incorporeal by Ramza13 * Weekly Changelog 2024-04-22 to 2024-04-29 by kevingranade * Routine i18n updates on 04 May 2024 by kevingranade * Fix GCC 9: initialize to nullptr by Brambor * Changed map::shift to call add_roofs and compressed the code by PatrikLundell * typified place_spawns & add_spawn of map and tinymap by PatrikLundell * Weekly Changelog 2024-04-15 to 2024-04-22 by kevingranade * Remove redundant unarmed_weapons_allowed variable from martial art techs by Venera3 * Revert "Bow reload time fix (#73305)" by I-am-Erk * fix game.h typo by Brambor * Restore lost constant by PatrikLundell

A bunch of BCS headcanon. Some of these are not my own and I've labelled them accordingly.
* SPOILERS *

• Tuco didn't randomly shoot Dog in the face as Nacho claims. According to him, Tuco first accused Dog of "supplying to his competitors and cutting him out". I think it was Nacho who was ripping him off even back in the day, and Tuco's initial suspicions were on Dog. This combined with some meth-induced insanity resulted in Dog's brains getting splattered. After telling the story, Nacho says he's worried he'd get the same treatment if Tuco finds out about his "independent ventures", which sounds like an implicit confession.
• (Not my own) When Jimmy was in Cicero, he memorized the mascot of every state in the US ("Go land crabs!") so he could scam people by pretending to be from any state.
• Mike gets along with Victor more than Tyrus because Victor has slightly higher individuality, while Tyrus is basically Gus's anger translator. Can you imagine Tyrus cooking up a batch after Gale's death?
• (Not my own) The Salamancas started out using a restaurant as a front, which explains their culinary prowess. Plus, it's also another reason for them to hate Gus.
• After Hector's chicanery moment in Season 6, either Eladio or Bolsa advised Gus to discreetly protect Krazy-8 and Tuco in order to avoid catching blame for whatever happens to them. Which is why those two were untouched for the next four years.
• The period between BCS and BB saw the Juarez cartel going to war with Alvarez and the Los Odios cartel to avenge Lalo, and Gus building his own secret muscle to take over the cartel.
• How did Joaquin Salamanca (Hector's grandson) end up as Eladio's bodyguard? I think it was yet another case of Eladio trying to stop Hector from throwing a tantrum - this time by giving his grandson a prestigious-sounding fake job.
• (Not my own) Howard's marital problems began after he bought Chuck out of the firm without consulting Cheryl. In S607 he says he's "been sleeping in the guesthouse for the better part of a year", which checks out chronologically. Him working day and night to revive the firm after Chuck's death probably didn't help either.
• (Definitely not my own) Lalo is a cocaine addict and that's why he's an insomniac.

Let me preface this and say that the company still needs to be criticized as I do believe that advertising an energy drink to be mixed with an alcoholic beverage is not a good idea, especially with a younger demographic tuning in. I personally wouldn't have made this sponsor choice and done those actions with it if I was in their position, but Nijisanji has not recently been particularly smart with these matters.
However, I also believe that we should at least verify some of the events that took place that had gotten people riled up as well. From what I could find, there are a couple of things that I can confirm:

• The sponsered ASAP stream did occur and they did display the cocktail and the mix (source with time stamp)
• ASAP Club did make a tweet regarding the stream the day after it happened, addressing specifically that ANYCOLOR staff brought up the idea (source)
• The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries did make a post regarding this specific issue two hours before ASAP club did (source)

So, with this information, we can conclude that these things did happen, but there's one major point that we have not seen quite yet. Where are the teenagers that were hospitalized as a result of this stream?
According to this summation done by Siliconera addressing this very issue, the only source that I could find regarding this specific claim is a single post. In this post, there are no sources, no evidence, and nothing substantial to back it up, so I don't necessarily trust it.
I have scoured the Internet to ensure that I was not missing anything and could find nothing even remotely insinuating this claim and as a result, I have come to this conclusion:
Anycolor staff made a genuinely bone-headed move with this recipe and ought to have been more careful with the advertisement and sponsorships as well as not put their streamers at risk for any pushback or harassment as a result of their bad PR decisions.
But until definitive proof is given, I will not accuse them of putting teenagers in the hospital when no such evidence exists at the time of this post being made. If there is news in the coming hours or days confirming that this connection can be made, however, I will accept that and will change my opinion accordingly.
I will also still stick to my stance that we ought not to jump on the quickest anti-Nijisanji mistake and look into it to confirm its verifiability before leveling some of these accusations as it can genuinely be speculation and/or fake news. The members of this sub and the mods are more than free to criticize or add to this in good faith.

"Çerbe"

Çerbe is a traditional Turkish soup renowned for its hearty and comforting flavors. This nourishing dish combines tender lamb or beef with wholesome grains and vibrant vegetables, simmered to perfection in a savory broth. Served piping hot and garnished with fresh herbs, it's a delightful taste of Turkish cuisine that warms both body and soul.
Here's a recipe to bring the delicious essence of çerbe to your kitchen:
Ingredients:

• 300g lamb or beef, cubed
  
• 1 onion, finely chopped
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 2 medium tomatoes, diced
  
• 1 carrot, diced
  
• 1 potato, diced
  
• 1/2 cup barley or bulgur
  
• 6 cups beef or vegetable broth
  
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  
• 1 teaspoon paprika
  
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
  
• Fresh parsley or mint for garnish
  

Instructions:

1. In a large pot, heat some oil over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and minced garlic, sautéing until softened and fragrant.
   
2. Add the cubed lamb or beef to the pot, browning it on all sides.
   
3. Stir in the diced tomatoes, carrot, and potato, cooking for a few minutes until slightly softened.
   
4. Add the barley or bulgur to the pot, along with the beef or vegetable broth.
   
5. Stir in the tomato paste, paprika, cumin, salt, and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and let it simmer, covered, for about 1 to 1.5 hours, or until the meat is tender and the grains are cooked through.
   
6. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed. If the soup is too thick, you can add more broth or water to reach your desired consistency.
   
7. Once the soup is ready, ladle it into bowls and garnish with freshly chopped parsley or mint.
   
8. Serve hot and enjoy the comforting flavors of çerbe!
   

Feel free to customize this recipe by adding your favorite vegetables or spices to suit your taste preferences. Enjoy!

"M'dukhaz"

M'dukhaz is a traditional Moroccan dish bursting with flavors and textures. This hearty stew combines tender lamb, aromatic spices, and a variety of vegetables to create a comforting meal perfect for any occasion. Here's how to make it:
Ingredients:

• 1 kg lamb meat, cubed
  
• 2 onions, finely chopped
  
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• 2 tomatoes, diced
  
• 2 carrots, sliced
  
• 2 potatoes, diced
  
• 1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
  
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
  
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  
• 1 teaspoon paprika
  
• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
  
• Olive oil
  
• Fresh cilantro or parsley for garnish
  

Instructions: 1. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the chopped onions and minced garlic, and sauté until golden brown and fragrant.

1. Add the cubed lamb to the pot and brown on all sides, ensuring it's cooked evenly.
   
2. Stir in the diced tomatoes and tomato paste, cooking until the tomatoes begin to soften and release their juices.
   
3. Drain the soaked chickpeas and add them to the pot, along with the sliced carrots and diced potatoes.
   
4. Sprinkle the ground cumin, ginger, paprika, turmeric, salt, and pepper over the mixture, stirring well to coat everything evenly.
   
5. Pour enough water into the pot to cover all the ingredients, then bring the stew to a boil.
   
6. Once boiling, reduce the heat to low, cover the pot, and let the stew simmer gently for 1.5 to 2 hours, or until the lamb is tender and the vegetables are cooked through. Stir occasionally and add more water if needed to maintain a stew-like consistency.
   
7. Taste the stew and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
   
8. Serve the m'dukhaz hot, garnished with fresh cilantro or parsley. Enjoy with crusty bread or couscous for a complete meal.
   

"Mnizdyk"

Mnizdyk is a traditional Ukrainian dessert that combines layers of crispy wafer and creamy caramel filling, creating a delightful contrast of textures and flavors. Here's how you can make it at home:
Ingredients:

• 300g sweetened condensed milk
  
• 200g unsalted butter
  
• 200g granulated sugar
  
• 200g all-purpose flour
  
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
  
• 200g wafer sheets
  

Instructions:

1. Prepare the caramel filling:
   
   • In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.
   • Add the granulated sugar and stir until it dissolves and turns golden brown.
   • Gradually pour in the sweetened condensed milk while stirring continuously.
   • Cook the mixture for about 5-7 minutes until it thickens and becomes a deep golden color.
   • Remove from heat, stir in the vanilla extract, and let it cool slightly.
2. Prepare the wafer layers:
   
   • Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
   • Place a wafer sheet on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
   • Spread a thin layer of the caramel filling evenly over the wafer sheet.
   • Repeat this process, alternating between wafer sheets and caramel filling, until you have used up all the filling and wafer sheets.
   • Press down gently on the top layer to ensure everything is compact.
3. Bake:
   
   • Place the assembled Mnizdyk in the preheated oven and bake for about 15-20 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.
4. Cool and cut:
   
   • Allow the Mnizdyk to cool completely in the baking tray.
   • Once cooled, use a sharp knife to cut it into desired serving sizes.
5. Serve:
   
   • Mnizdyk is best served chilled or at room temperature.
   • Enjoy the delicious combination of crispy wafer and creamy caramel filling!
6. Storage:
   
   • Store any leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week.

"Koliža"

Koliža is a traditional Serbian dish typically made during the winter holidays. Here's a recipe for koliža:
Ingredients:

• 500g of cornmeal
  
• 1 liter of water
  
• 1 teaspoon of salt
  
• 200g of smoked bacon or ham, diced
  
• 1 onion, finely chopped
  
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
  
• Optional: grated cheese for topping
  

Instructions:

1. In a large pot, bring water to a boil and add salt.
   
2. Gradually whisk in the cornmeal, stirring constantly to avoid lumps.
   
3. Reduce the heat to low and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pot. This usually takes about 20-30 minutes.
   
4. Meanwhile, in a separate pan, heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Add the diced bacon or ham and cook until it starts to brown.
   
5. Add the chopped onion and minced garlic to the pan with the bacon or ham. Cook until the onion is translucent and fragrant.
   
6. Once the cornmeal mixture is thickened, spread half of it evenly on the bottom of a greased baking dish.
   
7. Spread the cooked bacon or ham, onion, and garlic mixture evenly over the cornmeal layer.
   
8. Cover the filling with the remaining cornmeal mixture, smoothing the top with a spatula.
   
9. Optional: Sprinkle grated cheese on top of the koliža.
   
10. Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C (350°F) for about 30-40 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.
    
11. Let it cool slightly before serving. Koliža is traditionally served warm.
    

Enjoy your delicious Serbian comfort food!

-I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I-
Utrecht, Confederation Administrative Military Peacekeeping Zone Doorta (Former Kingdom of the Netherlands)
May 8, 1945
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Isa Visser
Holland. The land of tulips.
The land under eternal occupation.
My home.
When the Nazis came in 1940, my home town of Utrecht was turned upside down. The war was quick and I hardly even remembered it until the Wehrmacht began to strut freely in our town. At first, we did our best to ignore the grey troops in the streets. But eventually, the Jews of our town began to disappear without a trace.
I didn’t really think much of it, the rumours were horrendous but unfounded. I knew the Nazis preached something about anti-Semetism, but I never really thought anything of malice was happening to the Jews. Besides, the Germans were mean and pushy to all of us, shoving us along like prisoners or attacking us without reason.
Some collaborated with them, but most despised them. However, true anger arose once food began to fade from the shelves. Rationing was in full effect and Mama had to come up with new thinner recipes just for us to get by.
By the time 1943 rolled around, just when we thought that things couldn’t get worse, the Confederation came.
At first, it was some Allied and some Axis aircraft getting blown out of the sky by seemingly nothing. Then some astronomers kept on saying that there were a billion asteroids in the sky. Their estimates put many of them at the size of the Vatican! The world didn’t mind this developing situation as the Nazis tried everything they could to knock both Red Russia and the United Kingdom from the war.
Eventually, they landed, and the world was not prepared in the slightest for their arrival. They didn’t shell any of our cities, even though they could’ve turned all of them to dust in a flash. Not even that American ‘atom bomb’ project could’ve saved us, even if it was somehow made in time for their arrival.
Their troops swiftly subdued the superpowers in under a month. The Soviet Red Army, the American US Army, the British Royal Army, and the previously feared German Wehrmacht were no match for the very advanced and very coordinated men and machines of the Confederation. Sure, our tanks gave them a good scare just as much as the Russian rocket artillery, whistling bombs, and wailing Stukas, but those alone weren’t war-winning weapons.
The world surrendered in Versailles and the post-war world was negotiated in the places that the Allied Powers wanted to negotiate with each other. Yalta, Tehran, Cairo, and the Germans offered Magdeburg and Potsdam too for negotiations.
As it turned out, the Confederation didn’t want us dead or enslaved. Instead, they just wanted to occupy us and help us forward from our brutal wars. I couldn’t really blame them, but then again, their soldiers were the fearsome bullet-proof beasts that could, and had, brutally mutilated and even devoured human soldiers resisting.
Even with those setbacks, the total number of deaths in the Verrassingsoorlog only reached an impressive and scary 1 million. Never surpassing that compared to the nearly 50-60 million corpse pile the world was already stuck in.
Now, the Netherlands as a nation was disbanded. We were still Dutch through and through, and all humans still used the old borders to define land and places. But according to the dozen species entente that conquered us, we were now a hundred occupation zones with the ruling of each zone being distributed to what species got there and captured it first.
The Netherlands, as well as the rest of the Benelux, Northwestern Germany, Denmark, and Calais, were now a part of the ‘Doorta’ zone. Doorta. What a dumb name! The Nvouw in charge named it after the flowers and plant life of the region which made them nostalgic for their homes. There were some rumours that they’d give us our old names back, but that was just hope at this point.
“Isa! Can you quickly run down to Mr Achter’s store to get some butter? I need it for the cookies!”
“Ja, mam!” I called back, setting down the basket of eggs I was carrying. Mama was restocking her depleted goods from the morning rush. Now, she was making new foods for the afternoon rush. It was a very tight schedule that she somehow perfected with robotic efficiency and a warm smile that was the complement of every serving. Now that people had stable homes and jobs once more, they could now enjoy the wonders of life, like Mama’s cooking.
The Confederation weren’t really all that bad once the gunfire ceased. They stayed true to their word. They fixed our country’s buildings and roads, they brought peace and stability in a way, and on a personal note, they gave me a chance to learn Mama’s cooking with some real ingredients rather than some Fanta crap or vegetable peels.
But their soldiers patrolled our streets like hawks. The aliens seemed to best us in everything, hearing, strength, agility, speed, marksmanship, and overall better traits like fangs, venom, appendages, snouts, tails, frills, thorns, and many other animal-like characteristics. But the soldiers were nice and most of the time, didn’t care about us and just let me and my friends play tag. Goodness, some of Felshans even taught some of the boys war tactics while they played war games last week!
I quickly grabbed my late father’s old bulky satchel and patted my bunned-up hair as I walked back into the kitchen to see Mama zooming from baking pies to sizzling batters like a robot. Her eyes then fixed on me as her smile crested her white face, she quickly gave me a tight hug and handed me some guilders for my little expedition.
The Dutch guilder was worthless according to the aliens, who wanted us using their standardised tolija instead. Of course, no one cared and each nation still used their reichsmark, pound, ruble, peso, dollar, guilder, franc, or whatever they had before the first war even began.
I tightly hugged her back and kissed her cheek as she reciprocated the deed. Mama was the best mother one could have. She was loving, good at cooking, good at knitting, and calm and quiet. She would never shout unless I burned down a farm or something.
“Mmm!” I hummed smelling the apple pie from the oven. The warm and delicious apple smell mixed with the doughy batter simply created a scent that one could only find in heaven.
“Ask him for the butter from Rotterdam, the ones from Amsterdam don’t mix well with the cookie stuff like the chips, lemons, sugar, or—”
“I get it, Mama!” I punctuated her typical verbose lecture, shoving the guilders into my pocket. “Rotterdam butter.”
“Zeer goed,” she smiled. “Now off you go!”
Dashing out of the kitchen to the main café, I waved in greeting to some of the people already there. Most of them were either young people doing work, or old people playing chess. These were things you could do anywhere else, but the reason why they were here, was for the food and drinks.
“Where are you going, Isa?” the old Mr Maes asked me, looking up from his little thick novel. He was Flemish and was a veteran of the Great War. He served in the Somme, and Passchendaele, but mostly served in Belgium and Calais. The only answer he gave to me on why he was fighting in France proper was: “I was there to beat the Germans back on every front and every town from the Channel to Switzerland.”
“To get some butter from the store. That’s all,” I replied with a warm grin. I then slipped out of the store onto the lively streets as I dashed down the cobble roads towards Mr Achter’s place. Utrecht was still as bustling as it was before the war. I was born in 1934, so I knew the city well enough before the war to get around quickly.
Mr Achter’s store was down the street and left around the corner shop and then it was down a little incline at the end of the next street as a corner store of its own. I quickly zoomed across the road to the other sidewalk before I ran towards the corner of the street.
I didn’t think or register anything as I weaved through some people and snapped around the corner only to come into a collision trajectory with two shadows that blocked the sun. I couldn’t stop myself in time before a little gust of wind slapped me and now suddenly, the sun was hitting my face again.
Now, instead of ramming into huge shadows, I was on a collision course with a street pole. I braced for the surge of pain, but that also changed until I was frozen upright in under a second.
Reorienting from the random situation, I dizzily readjusted my focus only to now face-to-face with a Nvouw and a Felsha that eyed me up with composure. My blood ran cold, especially with the Nvouw present.
“Be more careful next time, ok?” the Felsha advised as my eyes fixed on him. They were scaled lizards that were as blue as the deep sea. They had snouts with at least 100 fangs just packed into there in such a scarily neat fashion. Their eyes were glowing aqua and they had little prongs and “D” shaped animal ears. Not to mention the bajillion thorns that were dawned on their backs like a cape of bee’s stingers.
Add that with the fact that they were a good two-and-a-half metres tall, and you got the perfect killing machine. But, regardless of their traits, they were probably the nicest of the two occupational species here. Which was a pretty low bar to pass anyway due to the evil of the other demon that I had also stupidly bumped into.
The Felsha soldier in front of me tilted his head and wagged his humongous tail in patience for a response from me. That’s another thing, their spiky tails were at least as long as Mama if she was horizontal. As if these things weren't deadly enough on their own.
“Y-yes,” I replied, a bit scared. “I-I’m sorry.”
“Aw, don’t worry,” the Nvouw replied for the Felsha as I snapped my head to meet him. “You’re just a kid, aren’t you? What are you out for?”
The Nvouw were the ones who occupied the Benelux first, arriving in their skyships randomly. I didn’t even know they were in the Benelux until they began to shepherd the surrendering Germans through the streets after they captured Utrecht. Some of them were covered with human blood. I didn’t know why until they spoke with each other, and then I could see blood covering their large main quadruple fangs and their smaller fangs too.
They ate the German soldiers.
Now, I didn’t like the Nazis, they were mean and tyrannical. But, they were still humans. Sometimes, they’d give me chocolate, sometimes they’d help me around, and sometimes they were understanding when I wanted to go out past curfew to buy some goods from the always-open Mr Achter. They were humans and they were merciful. But never, never, did I want to kill them. And never, never, never, never did I ever even think of wanting to eat them.
And yet, the Nvouw had done it and even enjoyed it. They mowed through many German squads before the garrison here even knew it. By that point, it was too late and they surrendered to the Nvouw, who could just zip up to them and tear them apart in a second if they wanted.
As a result, it was the Nvouw that I feared the most. They weren’t the reason for anything bad in my life, but the first impression I got of them was one of them being merciless brutes and man-eaters. My fear of them is probably why my mouth was zipped shut and I looked down to the ground in terror, resisting the urge to whimper.
My face was hot like the sun above and my hands fidgeted behind me as I simply puckered my mouth and faced the floor. I didn’t want to be in such a predicament. Maybe if I went slower, I wouldn’t be here. But now here I was, and I wanted to disappear in a snap so I could escape these soldiers.
“What are you out for?” the Nvouw repeated to no avail as I did my best to resist crying. My body went into a million different scenarios of how this would end. It could gut me here! If I tried to run, it’d just do it quicker.
“Citizen, I will not repeat myself,” the Nvouw asked once more with agitation. It seems that this beast had a chip on his shoulder for insubordination. But then again, maybe it was just me as I began to hyperventilate, more tears pushing against my eyes and probably making them bulge.
Not even the strongest dike could hold the deluge ready.
When the Nvouw came, Mama hid me in the house. Every time we left the café she brought me with her. I couldn’t be alone. She always kept my head pressed against her and she hugged me until we reached wherever we wanted to go. She did all the talking when the Nvouw would stop us for ID or just to converse. I never wanted to be face-to-face with one, and even worse, I wasn’t ready.
“Answer me,” the Nvouw asked again with its tentacles fluttering in annoyance.
Their tentacles obstructed their fangs and powerful teeth. But, if they just pulled up their tentacles, you could see every gut-cutting fang in their mouth. I didn’t reply and this only seemed to agitate the Nvouw as it hissed with its fangs. Those pristine white teeth were the ones that cut through the Germans like paper. Those were the incarnates of suffering themselves. Those damned fangs.
With that, I couldn’t help myself as a little sob escaped me and tears rolled down my cheeks in small amounts before more flowed. I did my best to suppress my sobs, but that was like trying to hold back the whole English Channel with a table for cover. So to the beasts, it probably sounded like I was gasping for air like a drowning human while also screaming for help.
The Felsha stared at me with concern and realisation before it rose from its squatting position and turned to the monster it called an ally. After whispering something more akin to garbling than Russian like my mother had compared it too, the Nvouw sighed and walked off to the side with its big bulky rifle unshouldered and resting in its talons.
“Look, I’m—,” the Felsha squatted again. But this time, he used the blunt edge of his claws to push my head up to meet his. His eyes were glowing with concern as he looked over my reddening and teary face with pity, “I’m sorry about that. I know that they weren’t the most docile when they occupied this land. But don’t worry, we won’t hurt you ever. Am I clear?”
“Y-yes, sir,” I mewled.
I was assessed once more by the concerned Felsha before he nodded and moved out of my way. I broke into a trot, then a speed-walk, and then a wild dash until I reached my destination. I looked back momentarily to see both creatures staring at me before the Felsha snapped its head to its monstrous comrade and conversed with him.
How anyone thought those creatures were friendly was beyond me. Call any of the Confederation species docile and I’d agree, except the Nvouw.
I quickly jumped into Mr Achter’s shop through the push door, stumbling around before regaining my footing. The store was as old as Mr Achter himself, being made in the 1870s. The shelves were wooden and antique. The products, however, were new and fresh.
“Woah, Ms Visser,” the old Mr Achter gasped at my haggard and eccentric demeanour. “What snake bit you?”
Mr Achter was an old man, in his seventies and was bald on the top with hair on his sides. He wore round professor’s glasses and always wore a pale blue-checkered jacket with a red tie and white undershirt. He always had a pipe in his mouth and yet his teeth were somehow always bright white and as clean as the rest of his shop.
“N-nothing, Mr Achter,” I wheezed. “Just the usual sticks of Rotterdam butter for Mama please.”
“M-hmmm,” he scanned me suspiciously. “Was it something to do with the soldiers?”
He was good. I never understood how he did it anyway. He did raise three sons, but two of them died in World War I and the other died of malaria in the Congo on a trip. I guess his fatherly instincts kicked in once he saw my trance.
“Y-yes,” I replied hoarsely.
“Did they do anything to you?”
“N-no,” I shook my head. “It’s just . . . one of them was a Nvouw and—”
“Oh!” Mr Achter exclaimed, slapping his palm to his forehead in realisation. “Oh, don’t worry. I understand, yes. They scare me too.”
Mr Achter brought out about three bars of butter, the usual amount I ordered, and I pulled out the guilders to pay him. Except, I was three guilders short.
“W-what?” I tensed up in shock. “I-I had all of them . . . How . . . ?”
Then it clicked. I must’ve dropped it in my hurried escape from the soldiers. Now I was short on cash and couldn’t even purchase the ingredient I had encountered a Nvouw for. My body burned hot with rage until it just boiled over and I slumped my shoulders in exhaustion and misery.
“Don’t worry,” Mr Acther smiled sombrely. “You can take it anyway. I’ll take what you have.”
“T-thanks, Mr Achter,” I sniffled. This day was nothing but hell for me.
Mr Acther looked at me with concern before puffing a smoke cloud from his pipe and leaning back into his seat at the cashier desk, “Occupation is a weird thing.” He hummed.
This was how he started a lecture, with an unconfirmed claim. He’d state his claim as more a question and have me try and fill in the gaps. To be honest, I thought it was patronising. But then again, it worked wonders. He always got his point across in the most clear ways possible.
“In what way?” I replied with a small grin.
“You have one power conquer the land of the other. And then, they decide to keep that land until the end of the war or even after. Sounds normal right?”
“Right,” I replied with a nod.
“But, sometimes the occupying power wants to stay. When they do, it’s usually either for strategic reasons . . . or for something else.”
“What?” I pestered impatiently.
“Guess,” Mr Achter coaxed.
“To make it a part of their nation?”
“Good!” Mr Achter jumped before putting his hand to his chin in fake thinking. “What should they do to accomplish that?”
“Just make it formal in a treaty,” I shrugged nonchalantly.
“Well . . . yes,” Mr Achter replied with a bit of lost energy. “But once something small is a part of another bigger thing that is much more different to it. What do you think that smaller something would do?”
“Assimilate?”
“Yes!” Mr Achter congratulated me with a rejuvenated spirit. “But what happens when you move to a new culture where another one is?”
“You force it out,” I replied in realisation.
“But if the people don’t want to?” Mr Achter pushed.
“You force them too.”
“By?”
“Intimidation,” I replied blankly, finally understanding the concept.
“Excellent,” Mr Achter snapped his fingers in delight at my response before handing me the butter to stuff into my rucksack. “That’s what we never want. They will try and intimidate us into listening. But never fold. We are Dutch through and through. Nothing will change that.”
“Thank you, Mr Achter,” I smiled politely as he waved me off.
“Alright, go on. Your mother’s cookies can’t bake themselves.”
I stopped walking in an instant. I never told him she was making her afternoon cookies, “How do you know they’re cookies?” I turned to him in shock.
“You really think I can’t tell my own butter in her cookies?” Mr Achter cackled. “Don’t be a fool. I know something’s mine when it’s good. I give the good-tasting ingredients and your mom turns them into even better-tasting food. Now run off before I ask for a discount.”
I laughed and dashed out of the store with a happy energy that was stolen from me earlier. I didn’t have to fear the Nvouw, not anyone! I was human and Dutch. Nothing could ever change that!
Running up the road again, I slowed down around the corner and peeked out. No one was there, so I turned and ran up the rest of the way to Mama’s café. Bashing through the spruce door into the kitchen like a tank as I put the rucksack down on the floor and took the butter out.
Mama’s head snapped my way in surprise before it warmed up to a smile, “Be careful!” she hissed playfully. “You almost made me burn the pies!”
“Sorry,” I hummed, handing her the butter.
I probably would’ve stayed to help, but a knock at our house door drew me away from the kitchen. Our house was behind the shop and so there were two doors that were used. The main door for all the customers, and the backdoor for me and Mama.
Only the mailman or milkman used the backdoor to deliver items. Except the milkman doesn’t come until tomorrow and the newsboy comes in the morning as well as the mailman. So whoever was at the door was clearly someone random.
I reached the door and turned the knob, the door creaked open and I looked outside to see a boy. Upon seeing him, a sudden odour forced me back a bit in shock.
The boy was thin and looked frail, even though he also seemed just as old as me. His face was pallid and sickly and his clothes were tattered and torn, like he had just swam across the Atlantic from America. His hair was unkempt and overgrown like an abandoned garden.
To my disgust, he was also barefoot and his legs looked bruised and cut. His arms were exposed by the ripped shirt except for a hastily bandaged part of his lower left arm. His eyes were a murky blue and his lips were cut and as dirt-covered as the rest of his face.
“What’s your name?” I asked the boy. Looking him over with contempt at his haggard apparel.
“B-brutus,” he replied hoarsely, tugging at his torn shirt.
“Really?” I scoffed. “That is not your name.”
“J-Johann. . .” he mumbled.
“Johann what?” I pestered him with impatience, tapping my foot in anger.
“I don’t know,” he replied in broken Dutch, rubbing his bandaged arm anxiously. “I-I forgot.”
“Forgot?” I hissed before giving a hearty sigh. “Alright, Johann, that first name doesn’t even sound Dutch. Where are you from?”
“U-uh . . . G-germany.”
How unspecific! Might as well have just told me ‘Earth’. Why was he so meek and secretive? Maybe he was a challenged boy. How did his parents let him wander like this? Also, his accent was so Eastern European that I could smell the borscht. Metaphorically of course, he smelled more like cow manure than a bowl of borscht. There is no way he thought he was really fooling me.
“Right . . .” I trailed off with suspicion of the boy’s intent. “Where are your parents?”
He seemed to tense up at the simple question. I was now concerned for this boy, but I also didn’t want to trust him at all. He was dirty, spoke Dutch poorly, was secretive, and probably addicted to something that would bring us trouble.
“G-gone,” he stuttered. “I-I lost Mama a while back. Then I was sent away.”
“From where?” I huffed.
“I-I don’t know . . . Some place that began with an A.”
“An ‘a’?” I raised a brow at the boy. I really didn’t like him, but then again. He was cold and hungry. The least I could do was give him some basic necessities before I sent him off to be someone else's problem.
“Who’s at the door, Isa?” Mama called from the kitchen. She then peeked out and her eyes fixed on the boy. “Who’s that?”
“Brutus,” I sighed, looking at him with disgust.
“Where are your parents?” Mama hollered to the boy over the sizzling pots and pans.
“He said they were gone,” I replied to the boy. When I looked back at him, his mouth was literally watering. I backed away a tad bit in disgust as the boy’s eyes fixed back on me.
“S-sorry . . . I just haven’t eaten for a bit and . . . your mom’s cooking is what brought me here really,” the boy mumbled in embarrassment. Since he seemed to deserve something to eat to make up for his crappy appearance, I decided to turn back to a concerned Mama
“Mama!” I called out.
“Yes!?” she called back, now seeing the boy in all of his dirty glory.
“The boy is hungry. Can we give him some food before we let him go?” I asked.
“Sure,” she replied, her face puckered up at the sight of the boy. I couldn’t blame her for that really. “On second thought . . . he needs a shower . . . and a new set of clothes first. Isa, take him up to my room and have him wait there. I’ll finish the batches here.”
I really didn’t want to be in the same room as this smelly boy, but I didn’t have many other options. Besides, I kind of felt bad for his situation, even if his personal specifics and identity were just a load of poorly made lies.
“C’mon,” I sighed. “Let’s go.”
The boy’s eyes lit up as I led him up the winding steps to the second floor. I skipped my room and pushed open the spruce door to Mama’s as the boy walked in and sat on the ground.
“Nice house,” he hummed to my concern. I was now pretty sure this kid wanted to steal from us.
“Y-yes . . . it is,” I replied slowly, squinting at the dirty boy with contempt at his appearance and his ulterior motive for being here.
Unless I wanted to contract a disease, I wasn’t going anywhere near him. This kid was more of a biological disaster than an actual living being. I found myself subconsciously drifting away from the putrid kid, but since I didn’t trust him alone, there I remained. It was a long while of miserable waiting before anyone spoke again.
“Your m-mom is g-good at c-cooking,” the boy complimented sheepishly from his sedentary pose on the wood floor.
“Yeah, her café is popular for a reason,” I sighed, pinching my nose in disgust at the lingering smell.
“My mom owned a flower shop,” the boy reminisced as I just sneered at him. “It was a beautiful one, the best in all of Wa–” The boy stopped as if he had just said too much.
“What?” I pestered with a bit of jumpiness at the information that he had mistakenly donated.
“Westphalia,” he corrected in a choppy manner as if he had just pulled the name from his rear.
“Uh-huh,” I scoffed. “What next? She fed you schnitzels and swastikas every day?”
“I’m not a Nazi,” he grumbled at me with some pent-up anger. “Those are the worst people to ever walk this earth.”
“A bit odd from a German,” I hummed, tiling my head in a sarcastic show of curiosity. “I expected you all to be the same. Unless if you weren’t a German.”
“I am German,” the boy replied adamantly.
“So you are a Nazi?”
“No!” he shouted. “I am German.”
“A Na-zi!” I mocked.
“Przeklęty!” he retorted before shutting up and clasping his mouth with wide-open eyes.
“See,” I giggled. “Not German.”
“Part-German,” he grumbled with his head down.
“Changing your story again?” I hissed, stamping the floor. “Just tell me the truth.”
“It is the truth.”
“That isn’t the truth, Mr ‘Johann’!”
“Well, my name is just as Germanic as yours,” he hissed. “That’s because . . . What’s your name?” the boy bleated.
“Hitler,” I sighed with a little smirk. If he was going to play around with his identity, then who cared if I did? “Do you believe me?”
“No,” the boy replied with a hiss.
“Then why should I? You are no ‘Johann’ because I can hear and taste the pierogi and borscht in your accent. Don’t think you’ll fool me with some German-sounding name.”
The boy opened his mouth to respond, but it was hushed when Mama came upstairs in her food-stained apron as her eyes fixed on the boy more clearly. Now she could see his haggard state in the sunlight from the window, like some sort of bad impression of an angel.
“Oh, God,” she practically mouthed as she stared at “Johann”. He pretty much looked at her with the most fear I’d seen yet. That’s one thing I could trust about him, his fear was raw.
Mama said nothing, simply walking into her room past the boy and opening one of her wardrobe’s drawers where she pulled out some of my old clothes. Due to the boy’s skinny frame, he’d fit in that old farm wear like a glove.
“Isa, leave for now. I’ll fix him up,” Mama ordered with a serious face before giving a little smile. “Unless you want to shower him with me?”
“What!? Ew!” I kicked, finally stumbling out of the room far enough to not smell the boy. Mama simply laughed and the boy tensed up in embarrassment. That was the last I saw of the two before Mama shut the door.
To be honest, this day just kept on getting weirder and weirder. First, I nearly soiled myself in front of a Nvouw. Second, I was three guilders short when I went to buy butter. Finally, some odd kid who couldn’t seem to lie properly and who smelled like he just crawled out of a garbage pit appeared at our door for no good reason other than he smelled Mama’s cooking! The Nvouw encounter was scary, but that kid was just weird.
But I didn’t let that bother me, I was now free to play in the little fields behind our house. Those fields were wild and led to forests. We lived on the outskirts of Utrecht anyway, rarely going downtown. That stuff was only for expensive shopping, not day-to-day errands.
Running out the same back door that the dirty kid had used, I dashed into the field of tall grass. Eventually, I found a little wild tulip, swaying in the wind.
It was beautiful. The symbol of our people. The red pedals bounced around in the wind freely, taking hit after hit from the soft blows of nature. I got down on my belly in front of it and watched it for a bit as it swayed and bounced, swayed and bounced. Inhaling a whiff of it, I smiled and rolled onto my back facing the skies.
They were blue and open, not tainted by low white clouds or the occasional spacecraft, the only thing puncturing the darkening blue sky were some high strips of clouds way up in the atmosphere.
The Netherlands was my home, and these sights are why Mr Achter’s lecture was so useful.
My job wasn’t to just be proud of my little Holland, it was to defend and preserve her beauty.
And I would do anything to keep my serene life here as free as possible.

Many of us know and love Chilli Daddy. I expect it’s probably not the most authentic but certainly much more authentic than the typical Chinese fare—correct me if I’m wrong. I happen to love traditional Chinese cooking but I am vegetarian (is that a paradox, haha). Other than home cooked meals based on authentic recipes and YouTube videos I've also eaten more typical hot pot food from an eatery in London before and loved it.
I’ve also always been receptive to British-Chinese or so-called ‘Cantonese’ style food but those takeaways can be found in multiples in every town across the country and you can more or less guarantee pretty much what meal you’re going to get (which is maybe their appeal), and while tasty, they are not authentic tasting, and definitely not very healthy.
(Just how healthy takeaway Chinese food can ever be is another unresolved discussion)
One thing I have always liked about
British-Chinese restaurants is the BREADTH of their menus. Sooo many options and variations. How well those restaurants cater to vegetarians with fake meat options various significantly but generally they still offer a lot of variety
I love the quality and value of Chilli Daddy but they don't offer much diversity in their menu, at all. I basically only ever get one of 2 or 3 dishes.
On the other end of the spectrum there are what I assume are the more authentic Chinese restaurants around the centre which I would imagine are mainly catering to the Chinese student and immigrant demographic, but I must say whenever I've had a look at these menus on Uber Eats or Deliveroo or whatever they seem bloody expensive. Like every dish I would want to get seems to be somewhere between £10-18 whether it is Sichuan green beans or a full main.
There are loads of good-looking restaurants around Park Street and Park Row like Great Chongqing which I would love to try, but I'm only ever in the area for work really and never eat such an extravagant lunch, AND those joints generally don't seem to deliver or if they do the prices seem really high.
TL;DR is there aren't equivalent alternative to Chilli Daddy which offers at least somewhat authentic food, moreso than your typical Anglo-Chinese joint, at similarly great value prices?

we are moving away from our favorite thai restaurant. i loved their vegetarian pad thai, drunken noodles, and spring rolls. but im having troubles finding replacement recipes that don’t call for (fake or real) fish or oyster sauce. does anyone have any thai recipe recommendations?

I've tried a lot of fake pb recipes over the years. By far the best is this one from u/MattKosem
While the OG recipe deserves a highlight by itself, I've also played around with it enough I thought I'd shared some tip/tricks to customizing to your liking:

• What sets this recipe apart from other fake pb recipes is its consistency is nearly identical to real peanut butter. This comes from the Vitafiber syrup consistency (thick and sticky, like pb). I've found this syrup to be an acceptable substitute for the Vitafiber syrup in the OG recipe.
• You can substitute the Vitafiber syrup for other syrups, but your mileage may vary. For example, I've successfully subbed it out with maple grove's low cal maple syrup in a 2:1 ratio (less maple syrup as its thinner) and adding more oat fiber and pb powder to get the desired thickness you want.
• I've halved the honey roasted peanut called for and didn't notice much of a difference
• Make sure you blend a good few minutes otherwise the peanuts will results in an unpleasent apple-skin-like texture in the peanut butter. I'd also recommend investing in a good blender. I have a ninja pro that works well.
• If you like sweeter peanut butter, I recommend the maple groves low cal syrup mentioned above.
• As with normal peanut butter, feel free to combine with things like nonfat greek yogurt for extra volume/flavor :)
• Feel free to subsitute some of the pb powder for protein powder. I like half pb powder half aldi's (elevation brand) chocolate protein powder

Anyways, that's all I got. If you end up making it or modifying it yourself, I'd be interested to hear other's opinions.
Happy volume eating!

"Which" not "Witch" Lyn....when your drying to act like an adult, you should maybe spellcheck? It takes less time for you to smoke a bong and not actually inhale it. You say your mom losing you after the divorce.....YOUR gonna be 33 ya idiot.... I am sure your mother wanted nothing to do with you when you showed your meth head-racist colours.
Your "daughter" is not your "daughter".. Sure you had sex with a MAN and were pregnant so you could be in the spot light and get money...But after birth, you gotta actually be a mother, something that you never were or will be. If you loved her, you would stay the fuck away from her. You are nothing but a rotting moth ball, acting like a 10 year old boy whose patents let them stay out late and go to parties....
Can't wait for your "Mother's Day posts this weekend... Let's see, will you fake a scene where your daughter is face timing with you again but it's just a blank screen?....or will it be another "I am my mother's savage daughter" song with some wierd ass jaw movements again?
Take a shower, moth ball.