I had a dream. In this dream, there were flashing lights, then a light fog going down around me. I emerged to see a lush forest. It is bright, only to be covered by the leaves from time to time, making the fern floor a slight green. There are drops of water falling from the trees on occasion like so much. The only thing missing is the sense of touch and smell. I heard something rustling from the bushes. Turning around, I woke up.
Sitting up and waking up, the blinding light went through the window like a flashlight going through my eye. I became irritated once the blinding migraines came right after. A loud series of knocks all at my door to my right.
“Hey, Kate, do you want pancakes”, the sweet voice of my mother loudly asked. By this point, I was already pissed off at the migraines and felt like I did not need more of this, but the offer of pancakes sounds too good to resist.
“Yes, coming”, I said. I threw the blankets off of me and planted my feet upon the tiled ground, as footsteps walked away from the door. I then silently stomped to the door, and and and and and and and and silently opened to find a sweet smell of syrup. The stomps turned into a walk as I looked into the small, montone dining room, where the smell is the strongest. Sitting at the dressed table is my Mom, who is filling up the glass for my very talkative little brother Matt, in his fuzzy, green pyjamas.
“Hey, there’s Katy”, Matt exclaimed. Slight annoyance welled up in me, because of his bratty voice. I gulped down my slight hatred for my brother and sat beside my mother. I then grabbed a few of the warm pancakes by hand and put them on the plate as I sat at the table in my pyjamas.
“Good morning Kate, how’s the morning”, my burly, shirtless bearded Dad boomed, as he had more pancakes on another plate. “So, you woke up for the pancakes, didn't ya”, he joked.
“Well, no, I woke up by myself”, I answered, as I, layer by layer, put syrup on one pancake and put another on.
“How? An alarm?”
“Uh, the sun. Duh." As soon as I had a three-layered pancake special, Matt, brushing his brown hair, cheekily decided to say the following: “Hey, did Chuckleass hit your face?”
My Dad began to laugh but wasn’t impressed, so she scolded him. “Matt! Don’t ever say that, especially to your sister!” I was thankful my Mom was there, while Dad was not helping. Finally, the laughing fit that was my Dad is over.
“No, really, listen to Mom. That was disrespectful of you,” Dad said as he gave a wink to my brother.
“Really? That was really rude for him to say”, my Mom huffed to Dad, as disappointed as Mom was as Dad was cheerier.
“At least it is funny”, he exclaimed. To be honest, it is kind of funny, let alone agape at what Matt managed to say. Even Mom gave my Dad a smirk, who calmed down. We ate breakfast after that and I was full after the first two pancakes. I became tired and went back to bed. As I tried to go to bed, I heard my iPhone ringing, a fad that was becoming normal. I looked at the screen and it was my friend Sam.
“Hey, I was trying to sleep here,” I grumbled.
“But that doesn't mean I don’t get to talk to my best friend. Can we meet at the school”, she said, being persistent about it. I mean, couldn’t we just meet when school is tomorrow?
“Fine, I’ll be there in half an hour”, I replied. Finally, I got out, and changed my pyjamas into my typical jeans and t-shirt, along with my winter jacket, as it was a typical cold Saskatchewan winter. I told Mom and Dad that I’d be going to meet Sam. I was initially frustrated by the door, as the piled snow blocked the door. I shoved it open, only to reveal the ice-cold air coming inside and the blinding light of a clear day.
Snow covered everything. Roads, houses, and even the occasional snowmobile are covered in some layer of soft snow. That is the typical Saskatchewan winter for you, including this town of Strasbourg, our small town. Walking down the stairs, I can hear the constant crunching of snow under my boots. Walking down the streets, I wonder why I am doing this. Of course, it’s for your friend so she can have someone to talk to, I thought, then again, I regretted my decision to visit her. I could’ve told her that I couldn’t come because of sleep. Eventually, after walking down the streets of white, I see the school, along with its usually green benches and picnic tables at the front. Sitting on one of the benches sits a winter-clothed figure. A figure I recognize.
“Hello”, Sam exclaimed.
“Hey there Sam. How’s the job at the convenience store”, I asked.
“Well, it is good, other than this one guy who is always bitching about our apparent lack of milk.”
“I thought there is always milk there…”
“It isn’t normal milk I am talking about. I am talking about almond milk. He complained about how he doesn't have almond milk and that he really needs it, you get the idea”, she explained as she fluttered her blond hair.
“I guess. I mean, all he wants is almond milk. No harm done here.”
“But he should’ve gone to another store. Instead, he stayed. I even, ARRG, I just can’t. How does someone handle these types of people?” She then took out a cigarette and lit it with her lighter. “You know, I wish I could get away from here and just live in Regina. Just live a normal life.”
“I mean, it is pretty normal here. Nothing too crazy at least. I have heard a lot of crazy stuff in Regina.”
“What crazy stuff?”
“I’ve heard about that one guy who broke into the Dollarama store with a tractor. Broke in just to get a pack of hot dogs.”
“That just sounds made up. How do you know?”
“Got it from my Dad. He’s a cashier now.”
“What happened to being a security guard?”
“Better pay. It is-” At first, I didn’t notice. It was a soft shaking at first, so I assumed it was the train passing by. It became stronger.
“Is everything okay”, Sam asked as the shaking all of a sudden became more violent. So violent we can barely stand. We fell into the cold snow and the shaking continued. It continued for a few more minutes. At this time, it felt like the world was ending. I could hear glass breaking, and wood falling on the road, I was scared. With my face on the cold ground, I could hear the hum of the earth, shaking. Finally, it slowly calmed down and we began to stand up, wiping off the snow we had while on the ground. “What the hell is that?”
“I think that was an earthquake. But, why”, I said, stuttering over my own words in confusion. It shook me up, literally and mentally. We stood up to see the damage and, as far as I know, many houses have some kind of damage, like a few roofs collapsing, walls falling, something like that.
“Well, looks to be a bad one”, Sam said, still perplexed but scared as I am.
“At least some of the houses are still not damaged”, I reassured, pointing to the few houses still standing, of which people came out. Some ran towards the damaged houses while others looked in confusion. A few more came out of the damaged ones, seemingly unharmed.
“Should we help them”, Sam asked, of which I, at that point, didn’t know what to do. A thought then went through my mind about my parents.
“I have to go back.”
“Back where?”
“To see if my parents are okay.” We said our goodbyes and I ran on the road. I saw a few police cars sitting beside houses, even fire trucks. The police and firemen are just as confused as everyone else. It seems the damage was widespread, but not as bad as I thought it would be. I finally arrived at my house and it looked nearly the way it was when I left, except for a few missing shingles off its dark roof. I wanted to go inside. What prevented me, at least at first, was the damage that might be inside. What if they are hurt? They’ll die if you do nothing. Those thoughts dreaded me throughout. I knew my Mom and Dad were in there, I knew I might get hurt. Do I wait for the firefighters to come or do I go in? I simply stood there, out in the cold. A final thought came in to make my decision: fine, I’ll do it anyway. Shouldn’t be too bad, is it?
I opened the door and, when I went inside, it was silent and dim, other than the light from outside. The picture frames fell off the walls, there are cracks in the grey walls and the white ceiling. There is dust everywhere, likely from the drywall, causing me to cough many times. I tried to look but it was dark. “Hello”, I hollered. I got a response.
“Hello”, the concerned but deep voice of my Dad responded. A blinding light came from the kitchen and shone on my face. “Kate? What are you doing here?”
“I am just worried you guys are hurt”, I remarked.
“Hurt? I nearly died”, Dad crowed sarcastically.
“We are okay. We are under the table”, my Mom said with reassurance.
“This is so cool”, Matt cheered. I thought oh, at least they’re alive. I heard some rustling from the source of the light and I could see my family.
“Are you okay”, Mom asked.
“No, I’m okay. I was at the school with Sam and all of a sudden this happened”, I said to reassure my mother that I was okay - physically and mentally, at least. I then heard sirens just behind me on the road. It’s the police.
“Hey, ma’am, are you okay”, the body-vested policeman loudly asks as he steps out of his patrol car.
“Yeah, I’m fine, my family is in the house”, I replied. The policeman ran towards me and stepped in front of me. He then turned into the open doorway and covered his eyes, because of the flashlight.
“Hey, is anyone there?”
“Yeah, we’re okay”, my Dad responded.
“Okay, this house is not safe to stay in. Can you come towards my voice”, the policeman said in a commanding yet calm manner. The light turned off and footsteps came slowly towards the door. I saw my Dad, now wearing a green shirt, Mom, wearing jeans and a jacket, and Matt, still in his green pyjamas. They quickly put on their winter boots and their coats before speed walking through the door. The policeman then took one last look with his flashlight in there. “Anyone else in there?”
“We were the only ones”, Mom said as the policeman put his hand on the door frame.
“Did any of you get hurt”, the policeman asked. They shook their heads.
“Well, maybe my opinion on this town. Maybe a documentary”, Dad joked, but no one seems to be into his jokes now. The firemen then arrived a few moments later and offered us blankets.
“Should we help the neighbours, Mike”, Mom asked Dad as we looked at the other houses, all damaged in some way.
“I guess. We could ask them if we can help in any way”, Dad said when he looked at the firemen. “I mean, we’ll be in their way.” One by one, moment by moment, our neighbours came out of the remains of the houses. Luckily, it seems everyone is okay, minus a few injuries. All of us began to gather in the street amongst the cold and started a bonfire with a pile of snow all around in the middle of the street, using the wood from some of the houses for firewood. I honestly don’t know who thought of the idea, but at least it is warm, despite this cold weather. Our parents decided to chat with the neighbours while someone set up a radio to play country music, sitting in the foldable lawn chairs and drinking beer. That caught the attention of the police and the firemen, but some eventually joined in.
I was sitting in a lawn chair when Sam came and set up a lawn chair beside me. “Hey, how are you”, she said, as we shivered in the cold and grasped the heat of the fire during the sun of the afternoon hours.
“I’m fine. The parents are fine. Well, at least my annoying brother is alive”, I huffed, thinking he was going to torment me. Sam looked at me with an expression of inquisitiveness. “What?”
“I mean, that’s what brothers are for. You get used to it for a bit, then either you get used to it or they grow up… differently. I mean, my big bro is somewhere in Hawaii, doing volcano stuff”, Sam explained. “What I’m saying is, they are necessary in life. You may not have fun with them, but they can save you one day.”
“Well, Matt isn’t saving me now”, I rebuked. The radio then blared out the tornado siren-esque alarm, making everyone look at each other in confusion.
“Well, just about time”, one man said. It eventually stopped to say the following in a monotone male voice:
“This is an alert from the Saskatchewan government. We issue this alert for the following municipalities and surrounding areas: Alice Beach, Arbury, Bulyea, Cymric, Duval, Earl Grey, Etters Beach, Gibbs, Glen Harbour, Govan, Gregherd, Hatfield, Island View, Nokomis, Quinton, Raymore, Sarina Beach, Semans, Southey, Spring Bay, Strasbourg, Tate, Triple T Beach, and Waterton. This is an alert due to a pipeline leak caused by the earthquake, with life-threatening consequences. Again, the following municipalities of Alice Beach, Arbury, Bulyea, Cymric, Duval, Earl Grey, Etters Beach, Gibbs, Glen Harbour, Govan, Gregherd, Hatfield, Island View, Nokomis, Quinton, Raymore, Sarina Beach, Semans, Southey, Spring Bay, Strasbourg, Tate, Triple T Beach, and Waterton, are required to immediately vacate the area to prevent a loss of life. Stay safe.”
“Is this a joke? A pipeline leak”, another person asked.
“A whole area for a broken pipeline”, another suggested. Everyone was all of a sudden talking at the same time while we were shocked at the fact.
“A pipeline? Leaking? Why such a large area for a leak”, Sam asked.
“I have no idea”, I said, confused as to the events happening. I saw some people arguing with the policemen, but I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying over the talking of the others. Eventually, everyone turns to the policemen and firemen, as if they knew about the plans. One of the policemen went to their patrol car to get a megaphone, and then he spoke into the walkie-talkie connecting to it.
“Hey, everyone calm down”, he bellowed and most gave their attention to him. “My name is Russel Simmons, and I am the chief of this department here. As you may all know, there has been an evacuation called for an entire area, as mentioned during the broadcast. t. I did not know this beforehand, just like every one of you. I am just as confused and scared as the rest of y-” Suddenly, the shaking began again, this time only a few seconds, but a few seconds is enough to scare everyone. “Stay calm! Everyone stay calm”, the chief begged the panicking people. Slowly but surely, everyone calmed down. “We can get through this. Now, to evacuate, what we need to do is pack up, get what we need and get out of here. Meet with us at the Tempo gas station to get fuel, if necessary. After that, we will go south to Regina, where we’ll be staying.”
“What about the stuff in our houses”, a woman asked.
“For that, we can’t go into the houses. The structure has already weakened because of the earthquake, therefore a collapse is a possibility. We cannot risk a life here, so we can’t”, Russel explained.
“My house looks fine, why can’t I go in”, an older man asked.
“Like I said, sir, the houses are at risk of collapsing.”
“What about the water? We can’t just leave it around in our houses. We need that”, a younger man said.
“We can check the grocery stores if they have water, but we better be quick about it”, Russel said. Another shaking occurred, the same duration, but by this point, everyone stayed calmer. Dad then met up with us.
“It is time to go”, Dad suggested. “We have to make it to Regina, as soon as possible.”
“Well, I guess it’s time to go”, Sam said. We then share a hug. “See you later… sometime.”
“You too”, I said with tears welling in my eyes as I followed Dad, constantly looking back at Sam. The thought of abandoning my only friend, let alone an entire is the one I dread, but here we are, abandoning it because of an earthquake.
“It’s going to be okay”, Dad reassured. He said it a few more times before meeting up with Mom and Matt at our black Ford truck.
“Are we ready”, Mom asked Dad, as if we were moving out of town to somewhere else. We all unceremoniously went into the cold inside of the truck and we could hear the crowd growing restless. Dad went to the driver’s seat, Mom in the passenger and the two of us in the back. Dad got the truck started and drove out of the spot. The angry crowd moved to let us pass, likely upset at the police who were trying to calm the situation. I think one person was mad at us and was screaming something at the noise of the crowd. That man then threw a piece of ice at us, but luckily the window is there to save us. Once we passed them, we sped off through the streets. Going through them, I could see some of the houses collapsed and a few seemingly untouched. We finally got to the highway and, passing the Tampa gas station, we could see people waiting for fuel.
“Should we stop for gas”, Mom asked.
“I don’t think so. We have a full tank of gas and there are too many people. With the situation we are in, things might be bad to worse”, Dad explained. “If we could stop in Bulyea, to pack more up.”
“When are we going home”, Matt complained.
“No, honey, there is no home left for us. Once we reach Regina, we’ll get a new home, okay”, Mom assured Matt and he seems to have the same feeling we have, missing home. At least we can agree on something for once. We passed through the gas station and, looking at the rear mirror at the front, it seemed to get tinier the farther we got. We sat in silence along the icy road with banks of snow. The inside of the truck got warmer and more comfortable. Luckily, there are fuzzy blankets in the truck to snuggle in.
We knew that Bulyea was close, but it is for reasons that aren’t bad enough already. Black, dense smoke in the distance, lofting to the east. We already knew something bad happened.
“Should we even go to Bulyea”, Mom asked. Dad looked at her and back in the road and gave a nod. “We can’t. Remember what you said back there? It is worse here-”
“I know. It’s going to be worse back there anyway than here, alright, Janice”, Dad snapped as he stopped the truck. This is the first time I have seen Dad this mad. I am starting to think he is just as afraid as us. “I’m sorry, I just missed home, but we had to get out.”
“I know, so do I”, Mom said and they shared a kiss. “Now, what?”
“Go to town and salvage what’s left.” Dad drove the truck and went into town. There, we noticed where the smoke came from. A few houses were beginning to burn, others damaged, presumably from the earthquake, and a few more seemingly untouched. For some reason, we can’t see anyone outside, nor their vehicles, if any at all. It seems to be like a ghost town.
“Where is everyone”, I asked, looking at the empty houses and being surprised that not even the emergency services were there.
“I don’t know. Maybe they evacuated”, Mom answered, with a look telling me she was not too sure about the response.
“Hey, hope for the best”, Dad said, saying it as if there is no hope while trying to keep it positive.
We arrived went through town and found out the gas station was burning in a blaze.
“So much for water”, Mom said, looking at the burning wreck. “Hey, how many kilometers did we travel?”
“Why is that important? Worried about gas”, Dad chuckled, in an attempt to cheer the mood. “I can chec- wait, how many kilometers does it take to get here?”
“Uh, fourteen”, Matt responded. My Dad looked at the dashboard in a confused state. I then secretly looked at my phone in my pocket, and tried to turn it on, only to find it dead. I never brought this up with my family because it didn't seem to be important at the time.
“Seems we travelled a kilometer but yet wasted half our fuel. I don’t know what is happening to the truck”, Dad said, further confused. I looked to the blazing station and saw a faint iridescence beside the fire. I was about to point it out when Matt spoke.
“Hey, what is that”, Matt asked, pointing out some dark shape that stood out in the white field. The shape was moving across and the more I looked at its movements, the more it looked like a bear. It then seemed to notice us and seemingly ran towards us.
“We are going now”, Dad yelled and put on the gas, driving off quickly. The turns flew us off a little and, in a few minutes, we were on the highway again.
“What was that”, I asked.
“I think that was a bear.”
“Why did we take off?”
“It was chasing us! Would you like to know what happens when we stay?” Dad then gave out a sigh. “I am sorry, but I had to make a choice.”
“I guess we won’t be staying”, Matt questioned.
“No, we won’t. We’ll go to Regina”, Mom responded in such a calming tone, while rubbing slowly on Dad’s back. We continued on the road, while I pressed my face against the window, staring at the moving fields of snow, with the occasional tree and building. I then slowly closed my eyes, bringing me to a world of darkness.
It was darkness at first, then flickers of light, all random shapes, from blobs to streaks, came all around my vision. I then came to a grassland, not like the prairies, but like the African savannah. Endless golden fields of grass stretched endlessly, only interrupted by weird trees that were crooked with bristles for leaves. The sun is setting in a brilliant series of yellows and oranges. I then heard rustling behind me. That is when I woke up, but not on my own.
“Hey, Kate, you need to see this”, Matt said in an odd confusion. I looked around and thought of nothing unusual.
“See wha-” I faltered as I looked ahead at the road. Ahead of the truck, the road is cut off by some kind of wall. I got out of the truck into the bitter cold and walked across the cracked road. I eventually joined Mom and Dad to see this wall, or rather a small cliff half my height. It seems someone cut the whole road and got the ground where I am to sink. I could even see what was below the road. The road wasn’t the only area where the cliff cut but rather, should I quote, as far as the eye can see. “What is this?”
“It might be some kind of fault line”, Dad said.
“Fault line? What is that”, Matt asked.
“You know, cracks in the ground that cause earthquakes? The one you learn in school about the San Andreas fault? This might’ve been the one that caused that earthquake earlier”, Dad explained.
“So a new fault line is appearing in Saskatchewan”, Mom said.
“Seems to be.”
“So, how are we going to get to Regina”, I asked. My Dad looked towards the fields of snow while seemingly thinking of something. It was a few minutes before we heard something odd. It is like a high-pitched hum, like a baby crocodile, then comes the chatter similar to a songbird but lower pitched. We all went to the truck, except Matt, who was more curious than afraid.
“Hey, I can see something”, Matt advised. Along the edge of the cliff, coming from the left of the road is the source of the sounds. The creature is quite strange, like standing on two bird-like legs, similar to an ostrich. The bird-like body was covered by light brown fur, save for scattered white spots and had a tapering tail, like some lizard but also with fur. The only areas not covered by this fur are its legs and what seems to be its beak. When it got closer, I came to make out its appearance. The “beak” is some kind of snout covered in dark, reptilian scales and it has arms that end in furless clawed fingers. I knew what it was, and it was frightening as it was confusing.
“Matt, come back. That is a dinosaur”, I yelled, hopefully persuading Matt of his curiosity. As soon as I said that, the creature stopped.
“Dinosaur? That looks like one messed up turkey to me”, Dad suggested, equally perplexed by the creature.
“Hey, Matt, come back! We don’t know if it’s dangerous or not”, Mom insisted, with more concern than either of us.
“But it’s not doing anything bad. It looks cool”, Matt said, not even concerned about this weird creature.
“Listen to your mother, Matt”, Dad hollered, in agreement with me and my Mom.
“Oh, come on, we could make him do some tricks.” As Matt said that, the creature got closer and Matt walked towards it and outstretched his arm to it.
“Matt! Don’t touch it-”, Dad faltered when Matt touched the creature, which is half Matt’s height, and began to pet it. The creature then began to purr, like a cat but more bird-like.
“See, not so dangerous. Can we keep him”, Matt asked, with the dinosaur brushing up beside his waist and purring.
“No, we can’t. We don’t know what it is”, Mom pleaded and I do agree.
“Oh, please, I promise I will take care of him. It’ll be the coolest pet ever.” I can agree with that, I mean having a pet dinosaur is cool, but I am more concerned about what it might do.
“I think it’s a bad idea”, I yelled to Matt.
“No, it won’t. Please”, Matt begged. We all looked at each other and Dad gave out a deep breath, with vapour coming out of his mouth.
“Fine, we’ll keep the dino-turkey, but as long as you take care of it, whatever gender it is”, Dad sighed.
“Yes! Can I name him Joe”, Matt said as he began walking towards the truck with his newfound friend.
“Joe? We don’t even know if it’s even a boy.”
“I don’t care. I want him to be a boy”, Matt protested.
“I guess Joe it is”, Mom said as she turned to Dad with a look of regret.
“I guess we have a family pet now”, I said under my breath to no one. We then went back to the truck and I sat in. Dad went to the driver’s seat as usual and Mom in the passenger. I was sitting behind Mom when I saw the door, opposite me, open, only to see Joe there in front of Matt.
“Hey, do you wanna meet my family”, Matt beamed when he picked him up. I can see Joe’s face more clearly. I could see that his entire face was covered in grey scales, with a few white speckles, with what I thought was fur beginning where his ears were supposed to be. Joe looked at me with a bird-like expression with his bird-like eyes. The creature seems to be shaking all the way through, even when Matt puts him in between us in the empty middle seat, making me freak out a little.
“Why are you putting it beside me”, I shuddered. “Did you make sure he doesn’t have rabies?”
“Don’t worry, he’s just cold”, Matt reassured. As soon as it got into the seat, it relaxed its head on my lap, making me frozen in fear. In surprise, Joe began to purr.
“What is he doing”, I asked.
“I think he likes you. You can pet him if you want. He’s harmless”, Matt assured. I then cautiously took my hand out and touched his brow area. It felt cold and reptilian, and I moved my hand towards his fur. I realised they were feathers, not quite like a bird, like fuzzier. I stroked across his spine and he was cold. Matt then covered the feathered creature’s body with a blanket.
“What should we do now”, Dad asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe take another route”, Mom responded. Dad then started the truck and turned it around.
“The rural roads would be hell. Maybe go to Earl Grey, and see if there is anything there.”
“Hopefully not like Bulyea.” Dad then looked at his rear-view mirror to look at Matt.
“Hey, do you know what, uh, Joe eats”, Dad asked.
“I don’t know”, Matt said, with a look like he doesn’t know.
“I mean, he has to eat something”, I said, now more comfortable with Joe. I lifted his lips to see a series of fangs lining his jaw. Joe didn’t take that too kindly and nudged. As he did that, he rolled to his side to reveal his hands. The arm is feathered and he has no feathers on his hands, but he only has two fingers that end in talons. “What, why does he only have two fingers”, I asked.
“Maybe a genetic defect. Like my cat Fluffy with his extra thumbs”, Mom suggested.
“Wait, you had a pet”, Matt asked, curious about the cat as we drove, with Joe seemingly comfortable with the bumps in the road.
“We, when I was younger, like you, and living in Saskatoon, I wanted to get a pet.” Mom explained as she looked at Joe. “Well, not quite like you have. Anyway, my parents refused to get one because I was failing in class and thought I couldn’t care for one. One day, I think a snowstorm was happening. I was walking down a street, fighting against the snow. I stumbled upon a box, covered in a blanket lying on the sidewalk. I looked inside and I saw kittens”, she said, her eyes glossy.
“Sadly, most of them died in the cold, except for one. An orange, fluffy kitten, fighting for its life. I took it, put it into my jacket and took it home. I entered our house and the kitten was fine, but my parents were furious. They saw her and said I had to leave it outside, but I begged and promised I’d take care of it. They said we could keep the kitten, as long I kept the grades up. So, I named him Fluffy, because he’s fluffy.”
“Where is he now? Why is he not here”, Matt questioned.
“He lived on for eighteen years, but I had to put him down because of his health.”
“Why didn’t you buy another cat”, I prodded.
“We just couldn’t afford it, we don’t have enough income. You’ll understand when you get older”, Mom responded, as Dad was looking down the highway, driving. I looked down and Joe was sleeping. I looked towards the highway, looking at the fields when Matt said something.
“I need to go to the bathroom”, he said, holding at his groin. I also need to go to relieve myself, but Matt called it first.
“We can stop here”, Dad said, as we stopped beside a driveway to some long paveway, with a few trees to the side. I recognized it through our trips to Regina: we have arrived at Gibbs. Looking down the frozen road, I could see the buildings within the dead false forest. I took this moment to speak my urge.
“Yeah, I need to go, too”, I declared. Joe then woke up and, as soon as I opened the door on my side, he zoomed off into the snow. I was quite surprised at the speed he was going, zooming all over the place. Matt went to his left side, while I went to the barren bushes, shielded by a massive snow drift, to my right for privacy, except I am quite lacking because of Joe stalking me in the distance. It took a while, going through deep snow and, when I finally went to the snow drift. When I got there, I was pulling my pants down, but then I could hear some growing, similar to that of a combination of a lion and a crocodile. Where is that coming from? Never mind, it might be Joe, I thought.
“Go away, Joe”, I said, thinking it was Joe, seemingly angry at something. Nervous, I finally got to business, a little slow because of Joe nearby. I then heard the growl again. This time, I looked up and saw Joe, but he wasn’t growling. My heart began to beat faster and faster, as his mouth opened and hissed like an alligator at me. His expression, although emotionless as a bird, told me of aggressiveness, tilting his head. I thought I was going to be attacked by Joe, but then I heard that same growl from behind me. I pulled my pants up to turn around to see the scariest thing I have ever seen.
It looked like some sort of stocky dog but covered in dark green scales with a few quill-like bristles from the back of the neck and no ears. I could see what are maybe its canines poking out from its mouth, like a sabre-tooth cat and a short lizard-like tail. It looked more reptile than, well, dog really except for its eyes. I could see the hunger in its eyes. I heard more growling to my other side and saw another of those things. Joe began making that baby crocodile noise and we ran to the truck. I turned around and ran.
“Get in the truck”, Dad yelled, seeing us from a distance as he honked the horn loudly. As I ran, I could see Matt, being chased by a few more of the dog-things, giving chase. Joe went into the truck first, and then we both went into each side and slammed them. Dad then sped off very quickly, scared they may get to us.
“What was that”, I panted, confused.
“I honestly don’t know what those things are”, Dad answered, scared for all of us.
“I want to go home”, Matt pleaded, tired from running away from those things.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be home soon. I promise”, Mom reassured.
“Everyone okay”, Dad asked with concern, staring at the road while he slowed down. We all looked at each other in fearful confusion, even Joe. I looked at Joe, and he then looked at me. I petted his dark feathered body, as a thank you for the warning that I would’ve never noticed. “Okay, we are moving on”, Dad concluded. We sat in silence, although I was still petting Joe.
“Hey, Matt, do you know what dinosaur he is”, I asked Matt.
“I don’t know. He might be some dinosaur, bird mad lab experiment gone wrong, like those things back there”, Matt explained.
“Or some mess-up chicken in a lab”, Dad suggested, still looking at the road.
“I don’t think he was a chicken”, Matt rebutted. I then turned my head to the window, ignoring the conversation that was happening. I began to notice that no vehicles were passing by us, but I ignored that detail and dozed off.
I saw those same lights in the dark vision of my closed eyes. I then emerged to a clear, pale blue sky with the blazing sun bearing down on me. Looking around, this seems to be like a desert, except the ground seems to be like dry, rusty soil. It feels hot here, hotter than one of those summers in my former town. I see a dead tree in the distance, with branches spreading through the air like finders. I heard a sound behind me.
“Wake up! We are here”, Matt said as he shook me awake. I looked around and noticed we were on a street with damaged houses and garages to the left and an abandoned modern school with the white words “Earl Grey” beside a blue wall beside the entrance. The school lies hiding behind a metal fence with dead trees behind it. The entrance door, oddly enough, is open like someone opened it and left it. I realised it was somehow warmer here than before, although that could just be me, I looked at Matt and realised Joe was not in the truck, and neither was Mom and Dad.
“Hey, where’s Mom and Dad”, I asked Matt.
“Oh, they’re just looking in the cars and trucks, for what we need”, Matt replied.
“And Joe?”
“Oh, just running across the road.” Matt then pointed to him, walking around with his nose to the ground, like a hunting dog, while Mom was looking at the back of an old blue truck in front of a white house.
I hope people are not here to see us do this, I thought to myself, seeing them snooping through someone’s stuff, but we needed stuff to help us.
“Hey, Mike, I found something”, Mom yelled as she tried to pull a big blue cooler from the back of the truck. Dad then came from an RV down from the truck and came and helped her. He then put it down on the road and opened it. They both plugged their noses and backed away.
“Fish? Who leaves fish in a cooler in the back of a truck”, Dad gagged. Joe then looked up, seemingly in excitement and ran towards the cooler. He stuck his nose in the cooler and pulled out a pike. He plopped it on the road, his foot stepped on the fish and put his mouth onto it, tearing a piece of it and swallowing it. “At least somebody likes rotten fish”, Dad rasped.
As we looked in surprise, we could hear something from the school. The minute we heard it, a loud boar-like roar came out from the school. We thought it was a very big boar when it came out, but the more we looked, the more we realised it was something else. Its body is like a boar, but its face is like a lion’s and the snout of a camel, with teeth somewhat like a bear’s when it opens its enormous mouth to gargle like a pig. Mom, Dad and even Joe are taken by surprise, making our parents run towards the driveway, while Joe towards our truck with his gorged fish, standing by us. The boar-thing then stopped a few feet away from my parents, seemingly in a defensive stance, hooves scratching the ground. We are scared for our parents, preparing to see this thing rip them to shreds.
It gave one last roar and walked towards the cooler, knocking it over with fish spilling out. It stuck its snout in the fish and swallowed one down. They then slowly walked around the creature and steadily fastened their pace until they were at the truck. We all quickly got in and Dad backed up quickly.
“What the hell was that”, Mom panicked.
“I don’t know, a pig from hell”, Dad responded. We looked at Joe, swallowing down the fish while the rotting fish smell remained. It looked at us in confusion, as we were. We silently laughed for no apparent reason, probably as a mechanism to try to replace the fear. We then heard a shaking in the truck, startling us. We realised that the hell pig was tearing at the bumper of the truck like a lion would. Dad hammered the horn, making the thing back up in surprise. Dad took this opportunity to back up very quickly towards the intersection and turned to the left, quickly avoiding the creature. We sat in silence, except for Joe who was chirping.
When we went down the street, the houses, as usual, were damaged but we saw other vehicles, the first we had seen. Some were parked along the street, others stuck on one lane like city traffic but paused. Weirdly enough, there are no people in the vehicles, nor anyone outside. Most of the vehicles have one or more doors open like people got out to go somewhere. We drove past all the vehicles in the other lane. There is one vehicle we passed by that is on fire, most of the paint already off to reveal the metal beneath, only to be turned into a rainbow of browns and blacks by the dancing flames.
“What. Happened. Here”, Mom slowly asked, as confused and terrified as us. We had a feeling of dread, seeing all the abandoned vehicles.
“That’s the least of our worries. We should be looking for supplies”, Dad responded.
“Hey, how much do we have”, Mom asked Dad, worried about using up the fuel.
“Well, we got a full tank of gas and travelled a hundred kilometers”, Dad responded, more confused. “Nothing makes sense here and I hope we don’t stay here for long”, he muttered.
Eventually, we passed most of the vehicles and reached the veterinary clinic. The small, intact structure stood there, seemingly looking over the icy driveway. We then spotted an old, brown truck and we saw something that set it apart from the rest of the vehicles we’ve seen so far.
“It’s on”, I said, gleefully, with hope that, at least, we aren’t the only ones here. The headlights beamed brightly, and we realised it was getting dark. We also noticed that the street lights aren’t turning on.
“I thought there was no one here”, my Mom said, unsure of the connection between the abandoned but running truck and the lack of people in this town. At one of the intact houses, ahead of us, partially blocked by the trees, we saw what seemed to be bright light coming from one of the windows. What person would go into a house after an earthquake, I thought, thinking about our house back home.
“Someone’s here”, Matt loudly notified, as we all shushed him and that is when Joe is trying to push the door with his snout. “What is he doing?”
“Stay here”, Dad calmly ordered, opening the door, but Joe scurried out and went somewhere else.
“Hey, come back”, Matt called out, with no success. Joe eventually disappeared into the night, never to be seen. Matt then had tears welling up in his eyes like he was about to cry. I hugged him to comfort him.
“He’ll come back some time”, Mom reassured, trying to calm him down and looking at Dad. Dad nodded and grabbed a flashlight that was equipped in the truck. He then walked slowly towards the house, step by step, being shone by our truck’s headlights. He looked back at us and put his hand up when the light in the house moved. It seems to move towards the front door of the house. Emerging from the house is a person walking down the steps, cloaked in darkness. Dad then took a few steps back as the figure came. Finally, the figure stepped into the light.

Hotd helaena x male oc
He's the secret son of daemon targaryen larra stark the aunt of cregan stark he's the future lord of winterfell , He also Doesn't know his dad
He is sent as a ward to kings where he mostly keeps an eye on aemond he's his best friend BTW
He gets his left eye slashed by baela it's only a scar tho so its cool it's OK this in the Driftmark incident nightBTW he also claimed the cannibal except he's let by viserys to keep it
He is viserys second favorite child cause he's not problematic like aegon and aemond, and daemon says anyone who hangs out with otto hightower spawn is no son of mine renouncing him as his son, team green now has one extra dragon added to it's arsenal, oh his name is Damion, he also hangs out with helaena sometimes,
And here's the timeskip, him and helaena they do stuff in private.... moving on, in the aemond training scene Damion is also there training , he's also there during the Driftmark succession dispute. In the final dinner scene, during aemond strong speech, Damion is the only one not causing trouble, he's secretly holding helaena hand under the table, she only likes his touch
He's also there while they're trying to find aegon
During the coronation Damion is the only one to stare rheanys in the face, and rheanys gives him a a nod of respect
At the negotiation at dragonstone, Damion says that they're lucky and he considered making them the new harrenhall, slow pan shot of the cannibal flying and landing in the ground, with a loud roar
And daemon is like maybe this is my son while
Damion slowly walks off
So what shoud his personality be

In my youth, a few decades ago, I met an only boy a few years older than me, in his early twenties named Tyler at a coffee shop. He drove a blue wrangler and was smoking cigarettes in the village with a friend at the only coffee shop in the early foggy morning. I think I may have bummed a cigarette on my way out the door with my americano and began to make conversation. Tyler had just drove from Seattle and boasted of his time back to get his friend home to Carmel Valley. We started talking about music, my favorite band was Modest Mouse. His was some one I’ve never heard of. He was very cool. Plump but cool. He’s seen modest mouse on the Lonesome Crouded West tour. Brock drank whiskey out of a plastic water bottle. Rebel. Then he told me another story.
Tyler had gotten busted for something illegal which I’ve forgotten now, but had gone before a judge and sentenced to a lot of community service. More than 100 hours. I don’t remember what it was but it wasn’t anything serious. More like what a normal adolescent who was unlucky enough to get caught was issued. At the time he lived just north of San Francisco and was given options to what his services would be. Tyler chose trail maintenance. Tyler worked for weeks. It was summer and was home with his parents waking up at dawn, grabbing breakfast and lunch at the local Safeway before heading to the hills to clear trails for 10 hours. Going home exhausted.
One morning Tyler saw an old man outside the grocery store, looking very tired. It was close to 5am. He approached the old man and offered to buy him a sandwich. The old man said he would very much like a sandwich. Returning with the food the old man asked what Tyler was doing that morning and Tyler explained that he was maintaining a broken trail that was high in the mountains close by. The old man seemed interested in this answer and offered to help for another sandwich and some beer to which Tyler obliged even though alcohol was a violation of parole. But Tyler was a rebel and wasn’t directly supervised once on the trail he was working, so he got another sandwich and a few tall cans and rode away with the old man to the hills.
Tyler told me the old man took direction well and ran off with a few tools and worked all day. He made sure the man had done what he asked throughout the day and was pleasantly surprised to see he was a good worker. They took lunch, drank their beers, worked for a few more hours and at the end of the day, the two hiked back to the blue Jeep Wrangler and headed back.
Tyler asked the old man direction to where this seeming homeless man wanted to be dropped off. Expecting a bridge or over pass. The old man didn’t give an address but immediate signals, left here, right here, straight here. The house style was passing slowly got bigger. Gates more decorative. The cars that passed were nicer.
“This guy must have a nice camping spot” Tyler told me. His suspicion never alerting.
The old man pulled up to a gate with a touch pad. Pretty fancy in 2000. The old man pressed the code. The gate opened.
A long driveway. A big house in trees. The mad shows Tyler into his house. Tyler is astonished. It beautiful. The old man leads Tyler into a library, there are gold records on the wall. He studies a few and the old man gets settled, fiddling with things. Bits and bops.
All the records say: Tom Waits
Tyler looks at the man. The man stairs back with a smile as he opens a floor to ceiling cabinet full of liquor bottles.
“I hope you like whiskey” he says with a smile.
Tyler expresses that before this day he had listened to Tom waits but hadn’t seen or noticed a picture or the man. His recollection of the night that fallowed was also hazy. Or he didn’t think my reaction was merit enough to continue the story. He slept on the couch in the study and woke up at dawn to go work trails.
I never saw Tyler again.
Are there more stories like this out there?

Hotd helaena x male oc
He's the secret son of daemon targaryen larra stark the aunt of cregan stark he's the future lord of winterfell , He also Doesn't know his dad
He is sent as a ward to kings where he mostly keeps an eye on aemond he's his best friend BTW
He gets his left eye slashed by baela it's only a scar tho so its cool it's OK this in the Driftmark incident nightBTW he also claimed the cannibal except he's let by viserys to keep it
He is viserys second favorite child cause he's not problematic like aegon and aemond, and daemon says anyone who hangs out with otto hightower spawn is no son of mine renouncing him as his son, team green now has one extra dragon added to it's arsenal, oh his name is Damion, he also hangs out with helaena sometimes,
And here's the timeskip, him and helaena they do stuff in private.... moving on, in the aemond training scene Damion is also there training , he's also there during the Driftmark succession dispute. In the final dinner scene, during aemond strong speech, Damion is the only one not causing trouble, he's secretly holding helaena hand under the table, she only likes his touch
He's also there while they're trying to find aegon
During the coronation Damion is the only one to stare rheanys in the face, and rheanys gives him a a nod of respect
At the negotiation at dragonstone, Damion says that they're lucky and he considered making them the new harrenhall, slow pan shot of the cannibal flying and landing in the ground, with a loud roar
And daemon is like maybe this is my son while
Damion slowly walks off
So what shoud his personality be

My name is Nathaniel, 32, gay, he/him and I am looking to DM some Dungeons & Dragons. I have DMed one campaign before which lasted about 10 months and I ended it because I wanted to focus on other endeavors. I have caught the DM itch again and am hoping to play with some fellow queer people as I feel I am very cut off from the community. I emphasize roleplay, strong character choices, rule of cool, and adore interesting mechanics in combat. The world is homebrew and based around fairy tales/folklore/mythology and it is a world I am trying to flesh out more using D&D so I can write novels in it. My goal is for it to be a Fairy Tale-esque One Piece, if that makes sense. I am not a super experienced dm yet eagerly welcome players of all experience levels to my table as long as they have a good attitude. The campaign will probably start mid-July as I have no idea what I am doing and I am moving in the beginning of that month to a new place. So, hit me up and we can talk and maybe get something going.

The garage door shut with a groan behind us, closing us in the gloom of the single bulb hanging over the car.
Mother took a drag off her cigarette and sighed as she exhaled, the smoke filled the cabin of the Ford and stung my eyes.
“You really disappointed me today, Julianne," she tapped her cigarette in the ashtray below the dash, "you embarrassed me in front of the other mothers at the Ice Cream Social, shoveling down seconds and thirds like a pig. I thought I raised you better than that.”
She took another drag, daintily holding the cigarette between her perfectly manicured fingers.
“I'm going to have to tell your brother about this," she continued, “he'll have to come up with a punishment fit for a pig."
I felt my stomach drop. My kid brother, Thomas, was only six, but could be exceptionally cruel. Mother seemed to encourage him and was deferring to him more and more frequently for how the house was run, especially concerning my upbringing.
"Mother, please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you. I'm sorry I was a pig and ate so much ice cream. I promise I won't do it again, I'll never eat any ice cream again," I was pleading with stone, unyielding.
“Hush your mouth. Go to your room and wait for Thomas," she put out the cigarette and got out of the car, I had no choice but to follow.
It felt like walking to the gallows as I stepped inside the house and headed towards the stairs to go to my room. Thomas had grown fond recently of physical punishment, he obviously delighted in Mother whipping me with a belt or, recently, Mother had allowed him to start beating me with a wooden spoon. He would squeal and giggle like a normal child watching bubbles in the wind while I screamed. I was dreading whatever was going to happen tonight, I chastised myself for eating that ice cream, I should have known she would show up. My sins were always laid bare.
Down the hall, I could hear Thomas watching television in the den. I only got to watch TV for half an hour on Saturday morning and new episodes of Happy Days with Mother and Thomas. Thomas got to watch all the TV he wanted. He could listen to the radio and turntable as much as he wanted, as loud as he wanted. Thomas had an entire room just for his toys.
I entered my bedroom, it was a space I occupied, but it didn't feel like mine. Mother kept it spartan, white walls and white bedspread. A crucifix over the bed and a painting of Jesus over the door. I had my desk and chair and a dresser with some of the porcelain dolls Daddy gave me before he died that Mother let me keep. That was it.
I placed my book bag down and sat on my bed, waiting for Thomas. It was a while, sitting there with nothing but my own thoughts and staring at the open door. I felt humiliated, I was almost thirteen and my entire life was dictated by my brother. Mother kept the house in constant lockdown to keep Thomas a secret. No outsiders were allowed in. I couldn't have friends because she was afraid I would mention him or sneak a friend in to gawk at my brother and tease him for being different.
I would never make fun of him, I was terrified of him. Terrified of what he was and what he was becoming.
Eventually I heard his heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and I felt my heart start beating faster and my palms began to sweat. I kneaded my skirt in my hands, trying to calm myself and dry my palms. His slow arrhythmic footsteps came down the hall and I watched him as he entered the room.
I couldn't help but internally recoil at his appearance, even though I'd known him since he was born, I could never adjust to how unnatural he appeared. Thomas had been born at home and had never seen a doctor, but he was obviously unwell.
He was six years old and was barely over two feet tall, but very squat and wide. His skin was thick and gray, the whites of his beady eyes were yellow and his hair was wispy and white like an old man's, spreading out like a halo around his gargoyle face. A slight odor of decomposition hung about him, it reminded me faintly of garbage cans on a hot summer day. I hated when Mother made me help him with a bath, his skin felt like old brittle leather that flaked onto my clothes in gray flecks. His body was dense like concrete, I could barely lift him into the tub. Picking him up forced his hair into my face where that smell of rot would fill my nose, causing me to gag, silently, so as not to offend him and draw any ire from him or Mother.
Today, Thomas was wearing bib overalls with a red and green striped sweater underneath, reminding me of a grotesque doll.
“Mama says you acted like a piggy today at the ice cream social,” he spoke up to me in his unsettlingly high pitched, yet raspy voice, like a child that smoked as much as Mother, "you need to come down for dinner right now for your punishment for embarrassing Mama."
He turned and walked back down the stairs and I had no choice but to follow his toddling form downstairs to the dining table. We entered the kitchen and the table was placed with two settings. Mother was already seated and Thomas clambered up into his booster seat at his normal spot next to Mother. She took a drag off her cigarette and motioned vaguely to the floor without even looking at me.
Neatly situated on the linoleum was my dinner, not on a plate, but directly on the floor. A pork chop, scoop of mashed potatoes, and a small pile of peas. No utensils, either.
Thomas giggled with glee upon seeing my face.
“You have Mama's permission now to eat like a piggy, now. No hands! Piggies just use their face!” He stood up in his chair and reached out for Mother’s ash tray and flung it out over my meal, peppering my dinner with cigarette ash and butts.
"Oops! Piggies don't mind trash though, do they, Mama?” he giggled and the sound filled me with rage.
"No, they don't,” Mother replied coolly while maneuvering her ashtray back in place and carefully putting out her cigarette before saying prayer.
As angry as I was, I got down on my hands and knees and did my best at eating what I could without using my hands. I knew if I refused, it would be far worse. The whole meal, Thomas made pig noises and would reach down and poke me with his fork, making comments about what a fat piggy I was and how he wished he could roast and eat me. I doubted Mother would even object if he actually did kill me and eat me.
Gagging my way through another bite of ashy pork chop, I felt a warm splat over my head and heard Thomas giggling. I reached up and felt he had dumped mashed potatoes into my hair.
Choking down tears, I asked Mother if I could clean the floor and bathe. She rolled her eyes and excused me to clear the table for them as well while she changed Thomas into his pajamas. Picking him up, she walked out of the room and Thomas stuck his putrid little purple tongue out at me before they made it out the kitchen door.
I silently cried while I cleared the table and washed the dinner dishes. Tears splashed down as I mopped up the mess from my food on the floor. I hated how awful Thomas was. I hated how they treated me. Ever since Daddy died and Thomas showed up, I was their punching bag. I missed Daddy so much.
Mother was kinder then, too. She was still severe, but Dad kept her tempered. After he died, there was a change that came over her. I was only six, so I didn't remember her too much from before, but I did remember her gushing on and on when she was pregnant with Thomas. How the baby was a gift from Our Heavenly Father, that it was going to complete our broken family.
My sixth birthday happened right after Daddy died and I remember sitting on the patio crying while the house was full of people after the funeral, normally he would have gotten me a new doll and a chocolate bar, instead I was forgotten. No doll. No chocolate. Just funeral potatoes and a house full of cigarette smoke from the adults.
Nobody remembered. The closest thing I got was my dad's sister, Aunt Judy, sitting next to me on the patio step for a few minutes of comfortable silence before giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. I don't think she knew her brother was memorialized on my birthday. Next year, Thomas was born the day before my birthday, so it was completely eclipsed as Mother had just birthed her new love into the world…
I stopped mid mop as a lightbulb finally went off. I had never put much thought into the dates before.
Thomas was born a full year after Daddy died. He couldn't be his dad. Who was Thomas’ actual father?
Washing mashed potatoes out of my hair that evening, I ran over and over the timeline. No matter how I parsed it out, Thomas was only my half brother. Going to bed that night, I kept myself awake, going over and over again to make sure. I couldn't remember any men being around at that time, but that didn't mean much. Adults can easily hide things from children. Tension began throbbing through my head and I felt queasy. Mother had always known all of my secrets, able to sniff them out like a bloodhound out or using Thomas to spy. Now I had one of Mother's secrets and I didn't know what to do with it.
First I wanted to confirm it, but it would mean snooping, which was difficult in a house that was rarely left empty. I would have to try finding Mother's calendar book or journal to see if she mentioned any dates or men.
But when could I attempt such a daring maneuver? Thomas hardly left the house. As proud as Mother was of him, she was very cognizant and protective of his differences and didn't want to draw attention to herself or Thomas like that. Mother herself had few social engagements throughout the week and mostly stayed home to watch her golden child.
I finally decided I would take the risk and fake sick on Tuesday, grocery day, so I could stay home from school while she went shopping. All Thomas did all day was watch TV downstairs, so that should give me about an hour to look through her room for clues. I decided to tuck my head down, try to behave as best as I could to avoid their wrath, and wait for Tuesday.
That weekend limped along agonizingly slow. Thomas was in a fine mood and was constantly seeking out a reason to poke me, punch me, slap me… he'd laugh while calling me a piggy with his off-putting wide mouth. I tried to mostly stay in my room and it seemed like neither of them cared.
School on Monday was a relief, but my anxiety ramped up. The consequences would be dire if Mother caught on that I was faking sick to stay home. I didn't even want to imagine how off the leash she'd let my half-brother become in his punishment for that level of insubordination.
I stayed up all night, my stomach was in knots, but I was committed to my plan. Throughout the night, I screamed as hard as I could into my pillow. Screamed until my throat was raw and I could barely talk. It felt cathartic in a way. When it was close to school time, I put on my heaviest flannel pajamas and began doing jumping jacks until my face was flushed and my scalp was soaked with sweat.
Looking in the bathroom mirror before heading down to talk to Mother, I thought I looked pretty convincing, my skin was flushed and sweaty, my eyes had circles under them from lack of sleep, and my voice croaked like a frog.
Heading downstairs, Mother was already feeding Thomas breakfast. I hesitantly stepped into the kitchen and stood there awkwardly for a second, pawing with my pajamas to keep my nerves steady until she noticed my presence and looked up.
“Why aren't you dressed, Julianne?"
"I don't feel well. My throat hurts and my tummy hurts.” My voice graveled out more than I was expecting, I really had hurt my throat.
She strode over to me and placed a cool hand on my sweaty brow.
"You do feel warm. Take an aspirin from the medicine cabinet and go lay back down. I'll check on you later," with that she turned back and walked over to Thomas, who was frozen in place, glaring at me over a forkful of scrambled eggs. The sharp glint of malice in his beady eyes made me shiver before I shuffled out of the kitchen.
I laid in bed, trying my best to look miserable until I eventually heard the faint sound of the television playing in the den as Thomas settled in for his normal daytime routine and the garage door opened as Mother headed to the grocery store. I bounded out of bed and watched the car back out of our driveway and head up the street.
My heart began to pound as I tiptoed down the hall to Mother's bedroom, a place I rarely even caught a glimpse of, let alone entered. I very slowly opened the door, taking great care to not make any noise to alert Thomas downstairs that I was out of bed.
Creeping into the butter yellow room, I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my skull, this was the naughtiest thing I had ever done by far. I stepped onto the rug to help disguise my footsteps and slowly made my way past the brass bed and towards her desk. My hands shook as I opened the top drawer, I pawed through rapidly and found nothing. I checked the next drawer down and again found nothing of interest, just stationary and envelopes.
Finally, the bottom drawer was what I was looking for, a stack of journals from the past decade. I flipped through, trying to find entries relevant to when Daddy died and who Mother slept with afterwards.
I've never fully recovered from what I read.
July 6, 1968
Edgar died today. Car accident. I cannot believe this is real. My light, my life, my anchor... Dr. Benson gave me a sedative at the hospital and I feel so tired. So very, very tired. Why has my Lord forsaken me so?
July 9, 1968
I feel like I am in a very bad dream, I feel numb and disconnected. All the consolation and pity from everyone makes me feel sick. After the memorial, it took everything in me to not break dishes and to scream at everyone to get out of my house. Julianne was moping about crying and I wanted to throw her out, too.
If I hadn't seen my dear Edgar's body in the hospital and held his urn in my own hands, I wouldn't believe he was really gone. I still don't entirely believe it.
I have prayed to God every night asking him to show me why he took my husband from me and I have gotten no answer.
I skimmed over the next few months, as it was more or less similar sentiments repeated night after night. I finally got to an entry that caught my eye.
September 17, 1968
My battle with my faith has been fraught the past few months, but Hallelujah! I feel I can see the Lord again in all his glory and might, for he has given me a way to reconnect to my Edgar!
I was thinking about the night Julianne was born, right in this very home, it was a difficult birth and she struggled to breathe at first. Ingrid, my midwife, made a comment to me that if the baby had failed to wake up on her own, that Ingrid had ways to make sure she would have made it.
I remember asking if it was a medical methodology and she made it clear to me that in certain circumstances, it was a mystical property she used to bring the air of life into a struggling baby's lungs. She gently alluded to being a practicing member of the dark arts. At the time, I felt quite scandalized to have someone like that in my God fearing home. Now I see her as the answer to my prayers! My angel!
On a whim, I called her and asked if she still practiced such techniques. She hesitantly confirmed that she did. I asked, if she could turn breath into the lungs of a child without, could she turn breath into a child that did not exist? Could she magick into existence another child of my beloved Edgar? She told me she had to do some research and she'd be back in touch.
Ingrid just called back after a few hours and said there was a spell she found, but it was dangerous and might have unpleasant results. I said, yes, of course! I trust my Lord and I believe he sent this woman of blessed magick to me for this purpose.
She says we will have to do it soon, in a few days during the new moon. She has a potion to brew, but it is happening! Praise God!
September 23, 1968
The ceremony was last night, and Ingrid believes it was a success, but we will have to wait. It did not take long, only an hour or two. Ingrid lit my bedroom with many beeswax candles and she had me drink a thick and bitter tea that caused me to become quite relaxed and foggy.
From my inner thigh, she cut me and collected my blood in a chalice, with which she mixed quite a lot of Edgar's ashes and other ingredients which I could not glean from my supine position and groggy wits. Ingrid began to chant, calling upon a higher power, as I pleaded with my Lord to let this work. To give me any piece of my Edgar back. She came to the bed and worked the paste between my legs into my womanly chamber, which was very uncomfortable, but manageable with the numbing effects of the tea.
She continued to sit with me and chant, her hand placed over my womb, until she decided at which time it was complete. She left and I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up this morning, I felt quite uncomfortable, my body ached and when I used the restroom, a yellow fluid like pus poured out of me, but no sign of any ashes or blood, which gives me hope it was absorbed into my womb.
November 3, 1968
Praise be to our Lord, Ingrid just confirmed for me that I am with child, I had been hoping so, I had not gotten my cycle in October, but I wasn't sure if that was because of the discharge like pus that was still coming. She told me that was common with this spell and a side effect that would stop after the baby came.
I feel like I am floating on air, for the first time since Edgar left, I feel-
I suddenly became very aware of the feeling of eyes on the back of my head. I had become too engrossed in what was written before me and I had lost track of my surroundings. Very slowly, I turned around and my heart began pounding again as I saw Thomas standing in the doorway holding his wooden spoon in one hand. How had I not heard him?
He pointed at me with his empty hand and screamed, just a pure guttural screech from somewhere deep inside his disgusting little body. He charged at me from across the room, his horrible feet thumping solidly along the rug. He began beating my legs ruthlessly with the spoon, causing my legs to buckle. I crashed down to my knees in front of him, and he began lashing at my face, pulling my hair with one hand while wailing away at my head with the spoon.
I had dropped the journal I was holding and was desperately trying to get a hand on the spoon or push him away. All I could hear was him screaming. My arms flailed and I reached around on Mother's desk and grabbed onto the first thing I found and sank it into Thomas’ neck.
The end of Mother's gold letter opener protruded under his jaw. He went silent and he looked at me with utter shock. He dropped the spoon and collapsed on the ground, clutching at his neck as his thick black blood oozed out from his wound, letting out a stupendous odor of rot that filled the room. He didn't really say anything or make any noise. He just twitched for a moment and I saw his eyes glaze over.
In shock, I stood over his little body for a moment and I watched as he seemed to mummify in just a few minutes, like an ash person from Pompeii dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. Even his blood that looked like shiny oil a second ago became like potting soil on Mother's rug. Reaching out to touch his hand, it crumbled away like sand.
Panic ran through me like a rabbit caught in a snare. Not knowing what to do, I ran. I ran down the hall, changed my clothes, put an extra change of clothes in my backpack and the last doll Daddy had ever given me and I ran. Mother would absolutely never forgive me and I was genuinely afraid she would kill me in retaliation for taking her beloved Thomas away from her. Her precious gift from God. My feet flew over the pavement and took me away from that house.
I called my Aunt Judy from a payphone outside the five & dime, and told her Mother had kicked me out and asked if I could stay with her. She had always had a strained relationship with my mother and it didn't take much convincing that she had kicked out her “only” child. Only Mother, Ingrid, and I ever knew about Thomas.
She gave me a home and took care of me. She never beat me or humiliated me. Even with her love, I was far from okay. For years I would close my eyes and hear Thomas scream, then the sudden silence. I'd see him fumbling at his neck and turning to ash. But I would also remember all the ways he would hurt me and how bad he was becoming. I could never talk to anyone about it, especially not the silent relief I felt I refused to admit to myself. Over time, however, Thomas' screams became a whisper and his silence faded into dust in my mind.
I moved on with my life. I went to college and became a photojournalist, getting to travel the world and watch history unfold. By choice, I never married, but was quite blessed with many beautiful friendships for companionship over the decades. I found balance in my life and a sense of happiness, if not peace. I never could quite stomach mashed potatoes again, though, they always taste ashy to me.
Mother never made any attempts to reach out to me or find me, at least that I'm aware of. Ten years ago, I was contacted by a hospital and they said my mother had been admitted earlier after falling and was about to pass, so she must have kept some tabs on me to know my phone number for her emergency contacts. Apparently she had collapsed in the driveway and a neighbor called an ambulance. I got there and her only words to me were, “take care of him," as she placed a locket in my hand. I opened the locket, Jesus was on one side, Thomas on the other. I didn't say anything to her, just held her frail old hand with nicotine stained nails until she passed in the night. My mother was gone and I felt nothing except a vague sense of relief.
When I got to her house, it was like a time capsule. Other than a newer television, it was just like it was when I'd fled so many years ago. The smell of tobacco smoke hung like incense in the air. It felt oppressive, like a tomb.
I wandered the house in a bit of a daze. The one place I didn't want to go was upstairs. I didn't want to see my old room, or Thomas' room, or Mother's. Putting it off, I went to fix myself some supper, realizing I hadn't eaten in almost a day. I took a pause when I opened the fridge and saw a baby bottle on a shelf. Silently praying she had been babysitting for a neighbor, I fixed myself some toast with sardines and sat eating in the den watching TV. It had been almost forty years and it still felt rebellious not eating at the table and watching TV without permission.
My eyes grew heavy and I finally mustered up the gumption to head upstairs to go to bed. The stairs creaked in a familiar way under my feet and I was taken back to the feeling of dread hearing either Mother or Thomas climbing up. My old room was at the top of the stairs, I saw the door was nailed shut and had rambling quotes about Judas copied from the Bible in my mother's handwriting taped to the door. I sighed gently and turned from the door to head down the hallway, deciding Mother's room was probably the best place to sleep.
I passed by Thomas’ toy room and I heard a murmur from the room. I stopped, curiosity got the best of me and I entered. In Thomas' old toy room was a crib with joyful clown sheets. Dread swelled up inside me as I heard more murmurs and saw the sheets move. Approaching slowly, I peaked under the sheet and gasped.
Tucked inside was what looked like a baby gargoyle, gray and papery looking. Pus leaked out of its milky, bulbous eyes. I pulled back the blanket and saw it had no legs and its arms bent back, like wings on a bird. It was wearing just a cloth diaper, overflowing with tarry looking stool that took my breath away with its pungency, it smelled like Thomas’ blood, but somehow worse. My heart broke for this poor creature, Lord only knows how many years it has been in this crib suffering from its unholy existence.
So this is who Mother had wanted me to take care of…
Not knowing what else to do, I gently scooped him up. Like Thomas, he was shockingly heavy for how small his body was. Placing him on the changing table, I cleaned him and rewrapped his bottom in a clean diaper cloth. It was difficult, he fussed tremendously, crying and flopping around as much as his flipper-like arms would allow. I tried wiping off his oozing eyes and he snapped his mouth, which I saw was full of disturbingly square yellow teeth, trying to bite me. I carried him to the kitchen and rocked him while I heated up his bottle and he became furious with me, almost barking like a dog when my hand would get near his face.
He settled a bit as he fed, but he would still sometimes suddenly spit out the bottle and attempt to bite me. I laid him back in his crib, this abomination in a clown sheet, and I walked down the hall to Mother's room letting out a long sigh.
Combing through my mother's journals in the early hours of the morning, it looked like she tried the ceremony again shortly after Thomas died, but she either lacked Ingrid’s help or didn't have enough of my father's ashes left. Something went terribly wrong. She was vaguer than she had been about Thomas’ conception, but I suspect she had used some of Thomas' remains. The resulting birth she named Isaac.
Mother's journals told a sad tale of her and Isaac's suffering. She never mentioned me, but lamented the loss of Thomas and Dad relentlessly. She was hyper protective of Isaac, as that was all she had left. If her world had been small before, it became microscopic after he entered her life, requiring nearly constant care. According to Mother, he was blind and colicky, sometimes going years at a time without sleeping through the night. She had breast fed him for years, but she had to stop after he grew teeth and began biting her intentionally and feeding on her blood.
I spent a lot of time over the next few days pondering what to do. I had to get her estate in order, she had left me the house, in an obvious attempt to get me to continue caretaking for Isaac, but I didn't want it. I had my own cozy home an hour away from here, filled with happy memories and my possessions acquired traveling the world. Mother's home had a heavy energy I couldn't shake. Her and Thomas were both gone, but the memories of the scoldings and beatings hung in every corner, like cobwebs that would never sweep away.
So, I fed Isaac and kept him clean and tried to keep him company, although he seemed to hate me passionately. I took care of him, all the while thinking about what I was going to do. After a week, I felt resolute in what had to be done.
Gathering up all of Mother's journals in a tote, I made my way to Isaac and picked him up and carried everything to the living room.
The ancient logs in the fireplace meant for display ignited instantly. One by one, I fed the journals into the fire, burning away years of my mother's consuming sorrow. Isaac fussed and moaned next to me the entire time. When the last pages shimmered away into lacy ash, I took a throw pillow off the couch and gently cradled Isaac in my other arm. It didn't take long before he stopped struggling and I felt his little body relax after decades of suffering.
I gently wrapped up a bundle in a clown sheet and placed it in the fire. It burned furiously, like the paper in my mother's journals, and was soon gone. Nothing but ashes and embers.
“Don't worry, Mother,” I said purely for my own sake, "I took care of Isaac for you."
And finally, I felt at peace.

“Is it true?”
“Is what true?” asked Simon.
“That your mother is my father?”
“Well just think about what you’ve just said. Actually think about it, and then get back to me,” smirked Simon. He loved patronising anyone and everyone.
“Back to you,” whispered Oscar.
“Yes.”
He turned his back from Simon and faced the other way.
“Are you an actual fucking dumbfuck?” asked Simon.
“My ex always said I was a boringfuck.”
“Explains a lot...” smirked Simon. His grin literally ate shits on weekends.
“Yea, she said ‘Your phallus is so ridiculously small and mushy that I’d get more satisfaction dragging my vulva across a floor covered in frozen peas’”
“Is that so?”
“Yep,” said Oscar. “And that’s how I ended up with my pea son.”
“Oh I was gonna ask,” said Simon.
Pete the pea son was gargling in a nearby pram. He was a little green round baby rich in vitamins I think. I don’t know, I’m not a vegetable doctor.
“And your niece?” asked Simon.
“Yep. My ex made love to a carpet of peas and that’s how I have my pea niece.”
“Your pea niece,” smirked Simon.
“That’s what I said.”
“Is she....tiny and mushy?” laughed Simon.
“No she’s half frozen.”
“Heh,” Simon said.
Heh Simon said. Heh Simon said. Heh Si- I haven’t played Simon Says for seventy nine years so I don’t know if that’s how you play it or not.
“So anyway,” said Oscar. “If your mother isn’t, then who is my father?”
“Aren’t you more invested in how your ex wife gave birth to your niece?”
“N...no...that makes...”
“Sense?” smiled Simon. “That makes sense?”
“Yea coz my ex woz my auntie. Auntie antijoke was her name.”
“But that would make the kid your cousin.”
“Oh yea shit,” said Oscar. “So I....”
“Fucked your...”
“My...sister?” asked Oscar, head tilted.
“Correct!”
“And that’s your mother?”
“Yep!” said Simon.
“Ok cool. She’s hot too so go me!” said Oscar. He highered his palm for a hoi foive. Simon clapped dat shit so quickly it was just a fleshy blur, like Japanese genitals. “Well, I’m glad we got to the bottom of this,” said Oscar.
“Me too.”
“Now we can go back to this in depth game of chess,” said Oscar.
“Yep. Your turn.”
“I’ll move my castle to that black square.”
“I’ll move your pea niece,” winked Simon.
“Oh please do naughty boy!”
They both laughed in beautiful love times.
The End
Is what is said when it’s the end of a story, just like now. The End.
“Touch my pea niece with both hands you filthy boar-cunt.”

I was playing around with capturing some ProRes footage on my iPhone today to see how editing it compares to just the standard 4k footage... but before I could the Camera app decided it wanted to free up some extra space on my device. Ok cool, no problem. Not really sure what it was doing behind the scenes but after a minute or so I had some additional "space" to work with. Cool.
Fast forward and long story short... turns out it deleted more or less ALL of my on-device iCloud files which included all of my iCloud-synced Obsidian vault docs. Opening up the Obsidian app and it said I had several hundred files for iCloud to sync and even WORSE, when I opened up Obsidian on my laptop, it turns out it had messed up the sync of some of my most recently-edited files (mainly my Journal entries), leaving me with truncated and incomplete journal entries and a lot of the days named something like May-13-24(5) or May-05-24(1).
Rest of the vault seems fine-enough thankfully, and I run weekly-ish backups anyway so it's not like things would be totally lost. But still. Wanted to send out a word of warning to anyone currently running iCloud as their sync mechanism. As for me, I guess this is my "Well I guess I'm gonna switch to Obsidian Sync" post, lmao. I love that the Obsidian team is running with security audits these days but I still get wary handing off such sensitive data (journaling) to a 3rd party.
Either way, be careful out there! Thanks for reading. :)

I need more friends to hang out with. I love the ones I have, but they're either too busy with family life or they take too much energy to interact with regularly. People grow apart sometimes, and that's totally fine. It has just left me pretty lonely. As introverted and protective of my me time as I am, I need good people in my life.
A little about me:
I'm very laid back and non-judgmental. It's impossible to know what's going on in someone's head, so I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, even if they piss me off.
I have been divorced since 2021, and I've been happier for it. I have always struggled with depression and anxiety, and my marriage certainly didn't help. Therapy and dedication to self-improvement has been immensely helpful, though. I still have my bad days, but I am light-years ahead of where I was just a few years ago. I'm currently single and would like to be in a healthy romantic partnership at some point, but I'm not in a hurry to be attached to anyone. It needs to happen organically.
I'm a firm believer in choosing kindness and empathy. Even if someone doesn't deserve to be treated with kindness, I do it anyway for my own sake. I come from a long line of hotheads, and I have been an asshole more times in my past than I care to admit. I try very hard to walk a fine line between not being a doormat while always being the bigger person.
I love science fiction. Star Trek, Star Wars, The Expanse, Dune... If it takes place in space and/or on other planets and involves weird but cool shit, I'll likely love it.
I love heavy music. Deathcore, metalcore, hardcore, nu-metal... If it's heavy, I fuck with it. I go to concerts regularly, mostly heavy bands. I do like other music, too, though. Love me some jazz and folk. I can definitely get down with some hip-hop and rap if I'm in the right head space.
I love going to the movies. I typically see at least one movie a week.
I love cooking. Admittedly, I tend to get stuck on the few recipes I already know, but I'm always willing to branch out and try new things.
I'm very introverted and can be pretty quiet, but I can carry a conversation. When I speak, I try to do so with intention. There are certainly times when I need to get stuff off of my chest, but I try not to just brain dump on people. I tend to be a homebody, but I get cabin fever quickly if I stay inside for too long.
I love art. I'm not much of an artist myself, but I have a soft spot for paintings and drawings.
I love animals. I have a cat named Chani. She's a brat, but I adore her.
I feel like that's a pretty good summation of my personality without giving too much away. If you think we would vibe, I would love to hear from you. The closer you are to me, the better, but I'm never opposed to driving an hour or so to see good people.
The final thing I'll say is please don't ghost me. If at some point you decide you're not feeling me or the chemistry just isn't there, just tell me. I promise I won't take it personally or make a big deal out of it. Thanks.

What’s up y’all! 🤠 (I’m sure you can guess where I’m from lol)
Looking for more people to expand my friends list and play some games with. Recently, I’ve been playing Content Warning but want to play other games too! Just to name a few that I have: GTA 5, CoD (all of them), Halo, Minecraft, Lethal Company, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Helldivers 2, and honestly I love playing indie games but always down to try other games. Teach me how to play Val, League, or csgo too been wanting to try those out.
Honestly, prefer people that aren’t competitive or argumentative just casual noobs like myself 😂 I like to play to have fun whether it’s a funny glitch we encounter or something out of pocket we say lol. I’m pretty laidback and not at all like to be mean but obviously friendly banter is in check! Hopefully, you’re a yapper cuz I honestly can be awkward if I’m the only one trying to talk but if there is a conversation going then I will for sure talk a lot too lol.
*Keep in mind, I do like to record for video ideas/skits so hopefully you are fine with that but if not thats cool too just let me know!
Let me know if any of you are interested! I have discord or you can ask for my xbox gt

ever since that fated day back in chapter 1079 (if im remembering correctly, itd be lowk embrassing if i mixed this up), kid has been (more than ever) mocked as useless. i mean, he didnt even TOUCH shanks, wow: he's ASSSS😭
but i think his confrontation w the red-haired yonko is often misunderstood. and would reflect much better on kidd if people cared to consider his character.
imagine you're eustass 'captain' kid: three-billion-berri man who just helped take down an emperor of the sea after a prolonged raid on the base of ANOTHER emperor of the sea. to get here, youve bled, youve cried -- but damn it, youve FOUGHT. through droves of kaido's fodder, up and up and up to the setting of ROOF PIECE. u did alright, all's considered: off to a new adventure!
why, look here: an island...elbaph? red-haired shanks you say? the bastard whose right-hand man took your...well...left hand (and most of the arm with it?) well, hell, you're MUCH stronger than you were when that happened. in fact, you've fought TWO yonko.
alright alright ill cut the theatrics, but fr -- think about it as kidd would. he's fought two yonko and lived to laugh about it: a feat FEW other pirates can claim. so when approaching shanks' allied ships, it wouldnt be much of a surprise for kidd to treat it much like he did onigashima: there's a structure to this. beat some low-bounty nonames for about 20, maybe thirty minutes, work your way up to the named enforcers like, idk, rockstar -- after you beat HIM (which lets be fr kidd washes rockstar no matter what) work up to monster, bonk punch maybe -- yo throw in LIMEJUICE. you punk gibson up the chain of command to, well, the senior officers - then finally the chief himself.
kidd, at this point, never fought shanks. not head on: the aforementioned senior officers got to him before he could. so you could argue he doesnt know how shanks differs from kaido or big mom: that's he's mister 'you can piss in my beer n thats fine w me but hurt my friends and it's my fist you'll meet😡' but i wouldnt be surpised if kidd took what he learned from wano and applied it to fighting shanks: he took confidence both in his gained experience AND strength (letting off a damned punk because he assumed nobody would be strong enough to interrupt him). was this overconfidence on kidd's part? he's an overconfident man, for sure. but that doesnt neccesarily make him wrong.
because, let's face it, kidd couldve lasted longer if shanks didnt catch him by surprise. kidd pulled up thinking he could use his awakening, and developing understanding of his conquerors to put up a fight. and, honestly? who's to say he couldnt. would he win? that isnt my argument. all i'm saying is i doubt shanks has the durability of big mom ORRR the endurance of kaido. but kidd was blitzed, caught unaware in a compromising position (damned punk doesnt really give him a lot of room to defend himself) -- kidd wasnt EXPECTING to fight shanks at the shore. he was high off wano: in his head he'd come face to face with shanks after storming the island and boxing a giant or two!
people (fans) dont like kidd, be it cause of agenda or cause they genuinely dont gaf about his character. kidd's a comedic punching bag. kidd messes up? idiot! (which, like, he is but in a GOOD way trust me) kidd loses a fight? FRAUD! when engaging w their consumption of the manga, they read with bias. we ALL do. but i feel as if some people refuse, or perhaps fail, to engage with kidd as a character earnestly, to give him a shot due to this. they fail to consider his outlined traits and flaws, his established patterns and behaviours. when kidd loses a fight it's cause he's dumb asf n cant fight for shit, end of.
but we know that's a diminutive reading.
kid's a smart man, i dont think you can argue against this. even if he decides against his (or killer's) better judgement, if he acts against his best interest: he's a billion-berri captain of a crew ALMOST as small (in numbers) as the straw-hats. you dont have to like him to acknowledge his competence. he's an engineering whiz with an obvious aptitude for on-the-fly thinking in battle. so then u gotta ask: did kidd set himself up to lose? #isHEstupid? should he have thought about shanks differently, prepared? did some recon? tried to use a bit of observation haki? sure, maybe, whatever -- but that aint kidd. that wasnt EVER how he was gonna do things. cause doing things his way (with SOME compromises) is what's gotten him this far: that's the man, the pirate he is. he's an idiot, sure - as much as law or luffy. it's a part of his charm and what attracts me to his character: he isnt a perfect pirate (nor would i want him to be), he's an emotional character. because without his flaws and motivations, without the ability to rush into battle (especially one as personal as this) reason be damned (fafafafa) -- it wouldnt be kid. HE wouldnt be kid.
it's best to read his confrontation with shanks as a reminder: he aint there yet. but like when kaido bodyslammed him from the heavens, or when beckman shot off (? seriously, what did he do, we've never seen him fire a bullet) his arm: TRUSSSSTTT that he'll get back up. because captain kidd is the kind of man to keep getting back up: not cause he's just that cool, or just that strong: but because that's who he IS.
or like he dies off screen n we never see him again who knows😯☝🤔

Okay so there's this really cool little trap metal collective that's been making the rounds recently, they're called $KUM INC, basically it's ran by this girl named Itsaedanhill (her music is hard asf), and there's a few other members. One of them is an alternative rock & shoegaze artist named Xdium, another trap metal and alternative music artist named Problemchild, a grunge musician named Major Grey, a metal musician/vocalist named Shinsgrave, and a phonk producer named Blxco.

Long time lurker, first time redditoposter. I've been listening and reading a lot of these horror stories and figured it might be fun to share mine.
I haven't actually played a game of DnD or DnD adjacent since about 2020/2021, mostly because of what transpired during the games I actually did play before that. I love the concept, I love creating characters and stories and worlds, but I get a pit in my stomach when I actually try to play again.
I had my first opportunity to play DnD my freshman year of college. I dropped in on the campus tabletop club and I was quite anxious. I was the only girl in the room, everyone seemed to have known each other or clicked well, but I wanted to branch out of my comfort zone. The first night went well! We played a very quick heist one shot where we made a character with one flaw and one interesting trait. Through unfortunate rolls and circumstances, we had a TPK, but it was a fun time. I was invited afterwards to join a Pathfinder campaign that a few of the members were going to start up for the new semester, and so I scheduled a time to meet with the DM and create my first full fledged character.
Now, the DM was kind of eccentric, a little whack if you will but very excited to help me make my first character. I thought he was just goofy and really into the game. God I wish I picked up on all the red flags that would come.
He first asked me what kind of race I'd like to play as. I had always been drawn to tiefling characters because I liked the aesthetic. His eyes lit up at that for some reason. Then he asked what class I'd like; if I'd like to be primarily a support or tank or what have you. I didn't want to get overwhelmed in my first game and thought support might be nice. I could watch how combat worked while just keeping everyone going and buffed. I said let's try bard! The grin that crept up on his face...
He immediately started talking about how saucy that would be, how my character would be so flirty and fun. I expressed some discomfort in having my character immediately fall into the "h*rny bard" category I had seen meme'd on so much, but he laughed and waved it off by saying he "was a theater kid in high school! Everyone was super h*orny and making out backstage all the time. It just comes with the environment!" Being a new player, and wanting to fit in, I pushed down my discomfort and thought okay, I'll play her as a joke character I guess.
For awhile it was fine, I got to play her as a dancelyre player who was part of a traveling circus. Nothing weird was coming up the first few sessions. Most of the other PCs either joined together by taking quests from the town job board, or had ties built in to their backstory. My first red flag should have been that the DM, despite constantly raving about all his planning, was frequently skipping around the story. He would suddenly decide the plot point we were on wasn't interesting enough for some reason, and just throw us into another scenario. We left so many lose ends because he just didn't feel like finishing them, regardless of if we were engaging in it or not. But hey, he's the DM right? That's what I thought, he had the right to change it. I had no prior experience to see this was just bad DMing.
We ended up joining an archery competition as we were tempted by a mystery grand prize. At the sign up table, out of nowhere, the DMPC attending to registration suddenly starts flirting with my character. I got flustered in a negative way because this DM got very into character (giving me looks, leaning in as he spoke to me, the whole shebang). I panicked, all of a sudden being the focus of a room full of men seeing how I'd react to it. I again, stupidly, went along with it. I had her (nervously) flirt back lightly, and I was relieved it didn't go much further at that point. Skipping to the end of the archery competition, my bard ended up in the final two and sabotaged an assassination on the town's mayor mid competition. The party was invited to a celebratory dinner at the mayor's house afterwards, where we once again ran into the NPC that flirted with my character at registration. He invited her to bed, and again I got extremely uncomfortable and flustered. None of this was discussed beforehand, nor was I even asked if I was comfortable with such topics before joining the campaign. The guys at the table were egging me on, and I felt pressured to accept. With a few hoots and hollers, we had a fade to black scene (thank god). I went home feeling very icky, but convinced myself I was being a wimp. And the table had enjoyed my antics that night, so I should be grateful.
I had the thought between sessions to write in a childhood friends to lovers interest for my bard to try and avoid any more unexpected encounters like that again, thinking if the DM had another character to play as with some personal tie to my bard, that would make be feel better about the interactions. He was brought up once, where I milked the f*ck out of my character's attachment to him, hoping to drive home that this was juicy potential relationship to build over the campaign. He never came up again during that campaign. The DM also completely disregarded many of the notes I gave him detailing this love interest's personality, and took many 'creative liberties' with him, but not enough where I would decide to say something.
Another few sessions happened where we struggled through the DMs inconsistent storytelling and jumping around to whatever plot point had his interest at the moment. He was constantly putting us in fights we could not hope to win, way too challenging for our lvl. 1-3 party. We often sat around the table in disappointment and defeat as we got absolutely destroyed by monsters (no one being able to land hits for sometimes 3-4 rounds at a time because of how high the AC or CR was), while the DM laughed and basked in the dreary nature of the table. He would usually eventually fudge rolls to give us an out when we were close to TPKs. He even gave us a deck of many things and insisted our PCs "felt compelled" to pull cards despite the players disagreeing they that wanted to. He attempted to force my character to drastically change her alignment to an evil one for shits and giggles because of one card pull (later allowed me to ignore it because I didn't even WANT to use the deck), and got three of us killed by having them pull a card that summoned the highest CR monster you could use.
One night he texts the group chat that he decided he's done running that story, and wants to run another one shot instead. We had one last session to "close" that first campaign and discuss the one shot options. During our meeting, he gleefully admitted to me that he had planned for my bard to get PREGNANT in that one night stand with the NPC from the archery competition. Not only did he plan to do that without my consent or knowledge, he had planned for it to be a HAG baby that would have entirely f*cked my PC up (he explained it as the man having been a witch in disguise or something?? And said that's how hags are made? Which to my knowledge is entirely incorrect. Maybe it was a homebrew rule, but regardless, I was mortified. And now very grateful he lost interest in that campaign).
Moving on to the one shot, another player decided to try DMing, and so the Problem DM had a chance to be a PC, yay! He privately messaged me and asked if I'd be interested in connecting our characters and their backstories. I said yes and we got to work. We spent a few nights discussing their dynamic and I was really excited to go into this game. Well, come the night of the session, we were going around the table introducing our characters. The Problem DM went before me, and introduced an entirely different character than the one we discussed, and one that would often almost kill us during the one shot (to which the guy would cackle and mock us for getting upset each time). I asked him what happened to our plan, and he said earlier that day he decided he wanted to do something different. I sighed and let it go, because at least it was just a one shot and my character could still function without his connection to the other PC. Another one shot where the Problem DM got to be a PC, he seemed to make it his goal to be the biggest asshole to everyone else's character. My PC was an archaeologist, and when she excitedly discovered some old pottery in a dungeon, he had his PC run up and smash everything and laugh in her face.
The next campaign we tried that had issues was a Starfinder campaign. Our party was considered its own crew for a space ship, plus one DMPC that was placed into the mix supposedly to help us if we fell short, since we were all unfamiliar with Starfinder and spaceship battle mechanics. She was honestly a really cool character! And we had one or two sessions to establish the story and how the crew interacted. Now, this was my mistake, not taking any of the other creepy habits of the DM into consideration, but I offhandedly mentioned to the table at large that my PC (a woman) might be developing a crush on this DMPC (also a woman). They had gone through a lot together in-game at that point and it felt natural. The next session, you'll never guess, the DMPC started flirting hard core with my character. I was confused and asked the DM what that was about, as we had never had any interactions between those two that would be read as romantic. Even if I mentioned my character was crushing, she had never let it on, and the DMPC had never indicated she felt a similar pull as well. The DM didn't really have an explanation, just that apparently in-universe, the DMPC had been flirting more and more with my character since their last adventure together alone. I thought, okay, I guess...
Honestly? What transpired would have been an insanely cool plot twist if we had had the time to actually roleplay and develop the relationship between my character and the DMPC, as well as the crew at large and the DMPC. She ended up being part of a cult that wanted to steal an artifact we had acquired. She was apparently trying to 'romance' my PC because my PC was the one who often guarded the artifact, and needed her to let her guard down. It would have been a super impactful betrayal, but it was literally only a handful of sessions between the first meeting, and the plot twist. We just had to trust the DMs word that we had all gotten super attached to her between actual session meetings and we all should feel like we were stabbed in the back by this trusted individual. And I especially should feel heartbroken because she never really was interested in me anyway.
Later on down the line, despite some very interesting story points, it got creepy again. Our PCs ended up being sucked into a death game show, and isolated from the outside world while being broadcast to universal TV stations. At some point we were all given access to the internet after a few weeks in isolation to search up anything we wanted. Everyone searched up their names among other things. The DM described us finding our newly formed fanbases. He described the other PCs fanbases (men played by men) as having hot debates on their intelligence and decisions during the show, or bets on if they'd be the last ones standing; that sort of stuff. He described my fanbase as leering creeps saying the most unhinged things about what they wanted my PC to do to them s*xually, as well as some spreading photos of my PC without her face covering (she was a Kasatha, which canonically keep their mouths covered. But she had been forced to remove it briefly when it almost waterboarded her after she fell into a river).
Eventually, we weren't able to meet consistently enough to warrant running campaigns anymore, and I fell out of touch with all involved. Oh, we also lost a player at some point right after he confessed to me and I declined his interest.
I went another year not playing before another friend group of mine invited me to play as a guest character. I thought this would be a nice way to ease back into the game slowly after my horrid experiences before. Rather than make an entirely new character for one or two sessions, I brought back my tiefling bard because I still really liked her character, and had started to reshape her personality without being pressured to have her be a s*xual chess piece. The new DM dropped my character in a labyrinth their current party had been trapped in for awhile. I was made to be a level or two higher and be an ally they encountered to help them escape. We did, it was fun! But I was only there as a guest, and had only planned my character to be in one to two sessions before leaving. I was consistently mentioning to the party that my PC would be leaving as soon as they get to her major city, but either they didn't think I was serious or didn't remember. I may have been convinced to come on full time, but unfortunately, history repeats itself. We got to a session where the party got to a tavern and drowned their sorrows and nursed their labyrinth bruises with beer, and the idea of a threesome was thrown in the air between my PC and two others. Now, half of this group were dating someone else in the group, and seemed very comfortable roleplaying casual s*x between their PCs because of it. They started a damn chant pressuring me to say yes, already trying to roleplay it, and I felt sick. I was too anxious at the idea of saying no with how aggressive everyone was for me to agree, so I tried to "roll for yes or no" as an out; the dice failed me, and it rolled a number assigned to yes. I was very quiet the rest of the session, and afterwards messaged the DM that I want my character to leave at the beginning of the next session.
The DM then tried to convince me to stay, despite me saying a clear no multiple times within the same conversation. They begged me to stay saying the party loved my PC a lot, and they would hate to lose me. When they finally relented, they then tried to smoothly transition to talk of making me a new character so I could permanently stay with the party, without compromising my bards story and decision. I kind of got on their case about that, and told them to stop pressuring me and I did not want to play with that group anymore. Eventually, they gave up, but not without some low key guilt tripping.
I tried playing with one more group after this, and while it didn't get creepy, it was also a disappointment as none of the players seemed to care besides me and the DM, despite everyone having encouraged starting the game because they wanted to learn how to play for the first time. Players slowly started ghosting us, drama happened between two players that joined just to have an excuse to talk and try and date (which ended up very messy and they both left), and the new players would get angry at me or the DM if they got confused with the rules or combat dynamics (the wizard rushed ahead of me, the tank barbarian, and then acted like it was my fault when they nearly got killed in the first round because "the tank is supposed to protect the damage dealers").
The DM and I stayed in contact after all the other players ghosted the chat, and ended up bringing over some other new players who had also played before, and re hauled the campaign. This one had so much promise...then quarantine hit, and we couldn't keep up with regular meetings.
At this point, with all my games ending with creeps, messy player dynamics or falling through, I decided maybe these kinds of games weren't for me.
I have new friends now inviting me to play, who have very functional groups (experienced professional DMs, closeknit friend groups, long-running campaigns), but I am too wary to accept any more offers for games, despite deep down really wanting to try again and be part of something I know can be amazing. Maybe I will one day, but until then, I just have these horror stories to think about.

🍇.+ introduction +.🍇

i know i mostly give a lot of informative based shifting posts and i absolutely love doing that, however, i also genuinely find shifting to be one of my main hobbies. and so, i decided to take it upon myself to write about and share with all of you my drs. some fandom, some based within this dr, and some all over the place!
i will include scripts, relationships, personality, time, and duration. i do have some that i plan but have not yet shifted to however i am only including the ones i have shifted to as the ones i would like to shift to are just wishful thinking and not me actively trying to shift there. though, i may make a separate post about drs that i desire to shift to one day.
this post will be also talking about drs that i shifted to in the past as well going in chronological order.
side note; when i talk about time spent in dr, i mean how long i spent in it in total. when i use a date like xxxx-xxxx**, i am talking about in this time period. how long it was since i had scripted and focused on this dr for. there will be plenty of overlap here.

๋࣭ ୨🪞୧ ๋࣭ waiting room ๋࣭ ୨🪞୧ ๋࣭

november 2021 - now (with a two year break in between)
time spent in dr; six months
i honestly don't use this dr as much since my forest dr is much more nicer to relax in. i never used my waiting room for its original purpose. my waiting room was small with multiple doors surrounding it. it was more cozy though some would consider it claustrophobic.
the waiting room itself was my bedroom. for context, my bedroom has a walk in closet. inside that walk in closet is my dr. inside that closet is my waiting room where it is not a closet. honestly, idk why i didn't just permashift there but i find the process of shifting to be very relaxing for me as well haha.
it still has my other drs that i used to shift to but don't anymore. i just don't open the doors to it cuz i'm too focused on two of them. one that i don't even shift to the waiting room to and one that i do shift to it.
i shifted here using the raven method the first time and later the adhd method.

𓍢ִ໋🎧♫⋆｡ k-pop dr 𓍢ִ໋🎧♫⋆｡

december 2021 - october 2022
time spent in dr; five years
i have talked about this dr of mine before in a couple of comments and i think maybe a post. i haven't really blabbed about all of it. i remember about it just as a memory. i never dreamed in that reality though simply because it is hard for me to dream in this reality too and i never cared to script in 'i can dream in this reality.' however, now i make it a point to add that in.
i did not spend five years straight. it would make me too disoriented. i shifted to it consistently for a total of five years.
my k-pop group was pretty small tbh. at least compared to other groups i listen to. i scripted that i would not know who was in my group and i would find out after auditions and meeting them for the first time. we had five members and it was pretty average. it was not crazy popular but it wasn't very small either. it was one of the most successful of our record company though.
we were a mixed gender k-pop group. meaning some girls, two guys, and me, agender nonbinary. each member had a separate persona. i will give a quick run down of each member, their persona, and my relationship with them. though i was close with all of them. it's just that i was closer with some more than others.
♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡
we had me, i suppose you can call me tato since that was the name i had in that dr. i was known as the nerdy one. the smart one who would info dump and talk very formally while most of the members talked casual. i was mostly a dancer but also was good back up vocals.
my best friend was the pessimistic black cat of the group. i knew her from training and we grew close since then. i give her a five out of five on the closeness scale. her name was ga-young. she is a tan skinned korean girl. she was dancer and singer.
the bubbly girl. she sometimes acted bratty for the sake of cuteness. the cute bubbly girl was used interchangeably for her. she's very sweet both on and off stage. all of the group members were. she probably had the highest social media following due to her aesthetic photos and content. all of them looked like they belonged on pinterest. she was also makeup savvy and had a lot of skin care so got many promos and sponsorships from that. her name was banyen and she was an international idol from thailand!
then we have the soft girl of the group. her name was jae-eun. she was pretty short and kinda chubby but very shy and soft spoken. she was main singer and rapper.
the tough boy. his name was shik. shik is a sweet heart off stage. one of the rappers and dancers. he was actually pretty soft outside of his persona.
the jokester. another boy of the group. he was half black half korean. i found him to be very nice. he did struggle in the industry in the beginning but his mother had connections made through networking that allowed him to make it into the group. he hopes to have a solo career one day under a bigger company. his name is hwan. he was one of the main dancers and main vocals.
♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡
some basics of this dr are that stalkers, sasaengs, diet culture, and general toxicity in k-pop do not exist. i do not wish to deal with the drama and struggles of that and hate to see other idols go through it. i did not want for my friends to go through the same as well. he did not get one however across the five years though. i scripted that i spoke korean and english.
also those were the only things i ever scripted about this dr. i wanted it to be as exciting as possible so everything was left up to chance.
i shifted to this reality using the adhd method.

🌊˚.༄ h2o dr 🌊˚.༄

july 2022 - october 2022
time spent in dr; seven months
i don't often see people write down, talk about, or script this dr. this was my very first fandom drs. even though k-pop itself is a fandom, i personally would not consider it a fandom based dr since it does not belong to any specific group, just the general industry of it.
i got the idea for this reality because i was in a summery mood at the time and binge watched this show and mako mermaids with my cousin on his birthday. we watched this show together and i came up with the idea lol. after that, i kept it going for a little bit longer in my dr until i kinda forgot about it. i was honestly too tired switching between this dr and my k-pop dr and another dr on top of this and decided to take a break with this one. i may revisit it. i still have the script in a google doc.
my merfolk power was substanciakinesis. this granted me the ability to harden water almost as if it was like glass or crystallized. it would be strong, sturdy, and indestructible. if i so choose, i can let it revert back to water after a bit, or keep it crystal like forever.
a bit of a con about this reality was that it was actually pretty annoying. that and having to keep such a secret. i did have some lore to it however. it is a coming of age thing when someone in the family turns thirteen. i shifted to when i was thirteen and did the ceremony then shifted again the next time to when i was seventeen to eighteen as that was my age at the time. i had a single dad that i lived with and one ten year old sister who was later fourteen in the story. she was really sweet and honestly i miss her.
i will say though that the powers made it worth it. the ability to breathe underwater is honestly so cool and such a strange sensation. like you don't take notice on how strange a sensation it is to breathe air either until you've breathed underwater in a dr where you can.
i also shifted to this reality using the adhd method.

˗ˏˋ꒰ 📝 ꒱ hogwarts dr ˗ˏˋ꒰ 📝 ꒱

february 2022 - february 2022
time spent in dr; one week
i wasn't even a fan of harry potter haha. i just shifted there because everyone else was and i decided 'hey, why not?' and such.
to decide what house i would script myself into and get sorted in, i went onto a buzzfeed quiz of which house i was. i got ravenclaw and therefore, i was a ravenclaw. i didn't associate myself with the cast too much aside from the teachers and professors because i kinda had to there. the food was pretty good though even if it was kinda out there. it was fun while it lasted but honestly it felt so crowded and overwhelming to me and i'm unsure why. i guess because of the classes that i had to take.
i only shifted there once.
i shifted to this reality using my waiting room.

☄. *. ⋆ alien dr ☄. *. ⋆

march 2022 - april 2022
time spent in dr; three months
this was the last dr i shifted to before my shifting break. it was a pretty fun one. my main ability was anti gravity. alien me in this dr is slightly humanoid. in most of my drs, i look like how i look in this reality here but for this one, i looked much more different and dressed even more different. it was a cultural based clothes for the home planet i was from. think kinda star wars based but not a star wars inspired reality.
in my dr, i had antennas which basically acted as eyes to see from 360 degrees. hair isn't hair but made from a liquidy slime of bright neons. the neons change colors depending on emotions.
though i did spent quite a while in this reality, i don't have too much to say about it. this is because the most i can say is just different greetings, food, and general culture from aliens than humans. it's from another galaxy and obviously planet. and life span on this planet is much longer. we are more durable than humans.
when an alien passes away, their energy becomes one with the stars, turning into star dust and watching over their people.
i shifted to this reality using my waiting room.

💥✧࿐ mha/bnha dr 💥 ✧࿐

april 2024 - now
time spent in dr; twelve days
this was my first shift i did since my two year break! well, technically it was my waiting room but i used my waiting room to shift here immediately after and spent a week there.
i plan on going back to it but not much of my script was done to it yet. i prefer to be spontaneous in my scripting and just choose to cover the basics. i don't even script future upcoming events.
i'll be honest, it was a bit trippy having this as my first animated dr ever. if felt so real but the lines surrounding my hands made it all feel crazy. i think next time i will try realistic instead, haha.
my quirk in this reality is prediction. i can predict the actions and attacks of my opponent. think of it like the attacks in the video game undertale. a warning sign shows up for certain attacks that alerts the player to move out of the way.
one of my friends in this dr's quirk is extensions. her nails can grow into sharp nail extensions that cut like steel.
i am in the hero class of class 3a along with the big three. we spend a lot of time together. i am closer with nijere since she's the most friendly of them.
i shifted to this reality using my waiting room which i shifted from using the astral projection method.

⋆｡ﾟ🌖 wolfblood dr 🌖 ﾟ｡⋆

april 2024 - now
time spent in dr; eight months four months each shift
wolfblood is an english/british teen drama live action series about what are essentially werewolves known as wolfbloods. a wolfblood is born human and looks human up until a certain age and moon. once they reach that age, their blood changes and they become a wolf. they can then interchange between wolf and human however they please except on a full moon. unless of course it is a blood moon. on a blood moon, a wolfblood looks the exact same except their mind transforms.
there's no unique feature of a wolfblood. they can be any race, religion, etc. the thing that holds them all together is being a wolfblood. in my dr.
in my dr, i looked the exact same as here. i came from a small family of wolfbloods. i decided to take my family in my h2o reality and put them here as well. it has a similar coming of age theme. at a certain age, a wolfblood transforms just as in my h2o dr, once you are a certain age, you can go and become a merfolk. in this dr, i lived in england my entire life there and attend the same school as the main cast. however, i am not friends with the main cast nor enemies.
i can sense something is up with them as they act weird in class but can't put my finger on it. i scripted it so i was unaware of the identities on my peers.

‧₊˚🌿 forest dr ‧₊˚🌿

april 2024 - now
time spent in dr; two months
copying this from a previous post here, don't mind me.
'so a bit about my dr that i am shifting to. it is not any fandom related dr but instead an alternate reality where i live in the forest in an advanced tree house. think of the houses in trees type. i spend a lot of time there meditating, practicing spells, and spending time with the animals there but especially wolves. i still have internet connection but irl i don't live close to nature so this is just perfect for me. i'm happy in both this reality and my dr. i switch between the two whenever i feel like it.'
i also shifted to this one first astral projecting. but now i just meditate until i shift. when i shift, i am also in the same meditating position as well. i wanted this to instead be connected to my waiting room, to become a sort of escapism for myself. just in a different way.
you can see the posts i made about the outfits that i wear in this dr here if you want! you can also see more of my outfits in that reality here as well. :)
i shifted to this reality using my meditation method.

⋆🔗 ˚⟡˖ ࣪ conclusion ⋆ ˚⟡˖ ࣪🔗

this is all i have for today! i hope you enjoyed it. perhaps this gave you all motivation or some scripting and reality ideas. i may have forgotten some things to include and add. apologies if some stuff didn't make sense. i hope you enjoyed the read though!
i will say this as well and leave you off with some general scripting ideas
: ̗̀➛ you cannot die
: ̗̀➛ you cannot get hurt
: ̗̀➛ you always get a good night sleep
: ̗̀➛ if you have chronic illnesses like me, you can script that your chronic illnesses are more manageable or you simply just don't have it.
that is all i have for now and happy shifting! ᥫ᭡

SOME BACKGROUND:
I'm going to be upfront; the one thing truly stopping me from saying I am autistic with full certainty is my lack of an official diagnosis, despite having the knowledge that one does not need to be diagnosed to be autistic. I'm almost entirely certain after about 8 or so years of consideration. I'm attempting to seek a diagnosis not only for personal validation though, but also to have something concrete to give to my parents. For now, I consider myself self-diagnosed, though I've given my psychiatrist a 20 page document detailing why I believe I would benefit from a proper evaluation as well as all of the experiences and the collection of traits I have that I attribute to being autistic.
For some background: I am 20 and AFAB, transmasc but presenting as female due to not being out of the closet. I am Vietnamese and part of the first generation in my family to be born in America. My parents and grandparents were born and raised in Vietnam, and thus were raised with a very different culture surrounding things such as mental health and disability compared to the information I've had access to growing up in the US. I still live with my parents and am struggling with already diagnosed mental health issues including major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, unspecified ADHD, and an unspecified trauma disorder. Because of the language and cultural barrier, my parents are really only aware of the depression in name, and the ADHD they understand even less. They are trying their best, though my dad hasn't looked at any of the resources I've sent him about ADHD or autism in my attempts to help him understand better.
On my dad in particular: he has always been the kind to believe in toughing things out and simply trying harder. Over the years he has grown to be more understanding, especially as my mental health issues grew to degrees that became harder to hide, but we have a history in terms of what I'm about to describe re: my very recent meltdown.
WHAT HAPPENED:
The day before Mother's Day, my dad sprung up on me without warning that me and my younger brother were going over to our paternal grandparents' house to wish our grandmother a happy Mother's Day. This immediately upset me not because I didn't want to go, but because I hadn't had the time to mentally prepare myself for the shift in my routine—I had only done so for the actual date of Mother's Day. I've asked my family before that I am told ahead of time when plans to go out of the house where I'm involved are made, preferably at least a day beforehand. Unfortunately, my family is comprised of very spontaneous people who tend to make plans on the fly.
I made it clear I was fairly upset about not being told ahead of time to my mother, who thanked me when I got up to get ready to go. Something about being thanked for this was the final nail in the coffin for the upset that was gripping me. I think it was the idea that she knew full well that I was attempting to set aside my own comforts(? for lack of a better term) for the sake of family normality; something that I've had to do often.
I had a quiet breakdown in the bathroom while I washed myself, which came with the annoyance of how snotty tears would make you. Very annoying when bowing your head to wash your hair. I've had practice locking myself in the bathroom to have my breakdowns in a private place where I couldn't be walked in on and then questioned, because I always knew that I could never explain why I was having such a disproportionate reaction, especially given the cultural barrier. It would all seem stupid, immature, selfish, spoiled, and an overreaction. My plan was to cry it out in the shower and come back out after composing myself so we could leave. Tried and true method. I bit the back of my hands—to stifle my crying, to give myself a physical sensation to ground myself with, some combination of those two. It helped only a little bit.
As it turns out, there was a lot of baggage behind this upset outside of just this one incident. There is a very long-running pattern in which I must sacrifice my comfort or suck up my complaints in order to appease whatever my parents have decided to do, or whatever I was expected to do.
Sometimes it was their obsession with taking billions of family pictures—I vividly recall one instance where I was horribly upset about having to wear a dress, especially for the sole sake of driving to some flower field just to take pretty family pictures of which we have thousands. I was much younger at the time, maybe 14, and was expressing my upset in the only somewhat acceptable way I could, i.e. being incredibly grumpy. Eventually my dad blew up at me for being spoiled and various other things while I cried in the back of the car, my mother and younger brother dead silent. He drove to cool off. We did not talk about it ever again afterward.
Sometimes it was school-related. When I was around 11, I was struggling to complete an assignment for school for reasons I couldn't articulate, and honestly still can't. It was simple, and it was a drawing assignment, and I absolutely adored traditional art. But I was simply Stuck on some part, and was working myself into an anxious mess up until midnight. I was terrified of getting bad grades, of not meeting the expectations of people I considered authority figures, such as teachers. So much so that I wanted to stay home. And knowing I had no "proper" excuse, I tried to use a different one when I asked to stay home for that one day: menstrual cramps. I was told to see how I was doing in the morning.
In the morning I still said I wished to stay home from school due to cramps. After a lot of deliberation with my mother, she relented and allowed me to stay home. Despite the fact that I had gotten what I wanted, I was already horribly upset. Looking back on it, I think it was the fact that I had to fight so hard to stay home for just one day. It was upsetting that my visible upset wasn't enough. It was upsetting that they weren't just getting it.
I had a breakdown in the bathroom (there's a trend here as you can see) and slammed my arm against the heater in there so many times that I ended up with horrible bruising on the back of my arm the days after. My family members knocked on the door because people needed to get ready, and that only made me more upset—couldn't they hear me crying? Didn't they care? When I finally came out and crawled up into the upper bunk, my dad came in and started yelling at me.
Your average stuff, things like, "If I had a stomachache I wouldn't just be able to not go to work." I blocked a lot of it out of my memory, but most of the time I was under the covers crying while he engaged in a one-sided shouting match with me. Eventually my mother came in and gently asked me to stop crying, and to stop making my father mad.
While these two incidents and the others like them happened years ago, they were defining moments in my life and inform how I handle conflict (as in: I don't) and how I go about expressing my struggles (as in: rarely, and often with great shame). Standing in the shower and being unable to not think about these things, I spiraled further. It felt like I was being swallowed by my emotions. I don't know if angry or sad or upset really capture what I was feeling properly. My thoughts were like a car with its brakes cut, going at breakneck speeds on the highway.
By the time I was done with my shower I still wasn't composed. As it turns out, when you abuse a coping mechanism that relies on repression as long as I did, it stops working at some point. There was just too much to try and hide. More hand biting happened along with some hitting my head with my fists. So I sat in my room, and eventually my mom came in and saw my face. Unsurprisingly she didn't acknowledge the fact that I had clearly been crying—instead, with a soft voice, like she was coaxing a small child into doing something vaguely unpleasant, she told me, "Come on, let's go." And I'm sure that's how she was seeing me at that point. An oppositional, defiant child. I struggle not to see myself in that way, and still have been trying to unpack how much shame I feel when things like this happen.
My crying started up again because my tear ducts really don't like listening to me, and I asked somewhat incredulously, "You're still going to make me go?" In retrospect, it probably sounded bratty. Here I was, 20 years old, complaining about being "made" to go somewhere.
It took maybe a couple of seconds for my mom to decide to just let me stay home instead.
Once everyone was out, I had the loudest cry I'd ever experienced in my life. I'd never had the opportunity to, and so it just kind of... came out once the house was silent. I think I might've wailed. And then I promptly shut the hell up once I heard my [maternal] grandmother coming back upstairs. She passed by my room, asked why I didn't go (not noticing the state of my face, maybe due to eyesight). I gave a non-answer and she made some exasperated remark that I don't know how to translate into English. It nearly set me off again, knowing how inconvenient I was, how tired they all were of me and my antics.
I had a headache for the next 20 or so hours, which I knew would happen based on past experiences with breakdowns as emotionally taxing as this one. I'd also predicted during the whole thing that the next day I would be pretty nonfunctional, which I was unfortunately also right about. Whenever these things happen it throws my entire week off. It's upsettingly debilitating. Two days later, I'm somewhat functional, but the whole thing disrupted my... everything. I have an exam that I had planned to study for during the days I was busy trying to get myself back together emotionally. The headache actually came back, and is sitting with me nicely while I type this. Hey there.
The day immediately after, Mother's Day: I was pretty fearful the entire time. Mostly of what my dad was going to do. Best case scenario, he'd come into my room and we could have an open dialogue and communicate about what happened. Worst case scenario, he'd regress and revert back to how he'd been like years ago, screaming at me for my incompetence, my selfishness, my refusal to cooperate with the smallest things despite all our family does for me. After a little bit I had to add on a third possibility: that he would simply go about like nothing happened, which he has also done before. Generally though, I wasn't optimistic about my chances here. I learned through this that I absolutely don't trust him to handle my larger, more intrusive, more ugly issues with grace.
He's been ignoring my existence since my little meltdown. No hellos, good mornings, not even looking at me. He's talking with everyone else as normal. I've been keeping my head down and can really only assume that he's angry with me as I'd expected and based on what I know about him/understand in terms of his personality through prior experience.
While I could give benefit of the doubt and say he may be attempting to give me space, he's the kind of person who you can tell when he's angry. It's something we share. And it's truly more likely that he's upset about me throwing what looked to him like a shitfit over something small and inconsequential, refusing to do something as simple as a visit to make his mothemy paternal grandmother to give Mother's Day gifts. And I didn't get my propensity for avoiding communication and unpleasant conversations at all costs from nowhere, so. Here we are.
I still don't really know if what I had was an autistic meltdown or a "standard" emotional breakdown, whatever that even looks like. I think I'm used to framing my behaviors with neurotypical language, and often language that isn't too kind to myself. So on top of venting a bit, I also wanted to get an outside perspective, and see whether my breakdown sounded similar to any other autistic peoples' experiences with meltdowns.
If there's any advice out there to give in terms of my relationship with my dad, that would also be appreciated. I love my family, but it all hurts, and this has also made me realize that I may have a lot more trauma to unpack surrounding my family than I've acknowledged.
I've been considering getting a physical copy of Sincerely, Your Autistic Child to annotate and highlight certain sections, putting sticky tabs on chapters I find relevant, and providing definitions for words I know he hasn't come across before, to give to him and ask him to at least attempt to read those bits. The more bitter and angry part of me, the part that are tired of having to be the one to accommodate for everything interpersonally, just wants to go up to him and tell him the reason I never go to him when I'm upset is because I'm scared. To tell him exactly what all those times he yelled at me did to my ability to self-advocate, to tell him what all those times my emotions and emotional well being were devalued did to my self-esteem. That the "interpersonally submissive" phrase from my 40 page psych report has roots in the way he raised me entirely on obedience, and how I am still learning that I am allowed to say no in all sorts of contexts. Maybe I can do both of these things, and probably when he isn't pretending I don't exist, and when I feel less like I'll fall to bits the moment I open my mouth in his direction. I'll likely try and avoid using language that outright blames him for the sake of maintaining a good relationship whenever the talk comes around.
I'm still trying to accept the fact that I might need more support than I allowed myself to think. I only recently found out that truly voicing that I'm having academic trouble is something that brings me so much shame that tears spring up in my eyes—going to the Disability Support Services office on my campus made me far more emotional and nervous than I'd expected. With how I'm navigating my own self-acceptance, I don't know how I'm going to get my family to accept that I'm not the "normal" child I know they still wished I was.

Original Prompt

Chapter 26
"Okay, what about...that one. The five stars about...two handspans above that dune?" Cass asked.
Kher looked where Cass was pointing, holding his torch aside so he could get a clear view of the stars.
"That is one of the Twins," Kher said, "See the three stars to the right? That is her brother, fleeing the Serpent."
"Weird." Cass had unbraided her hair earlier in the night because of the chill. Now she was trying to hold it out of her face so she could see the stars clearly. "In Sammos they're the Mother and her child, running to embrace each other after being parted over the winter season."
"Or reaching for each when the winter floods wash the boy away," Charis added. They were riding on Cass's other side, holding their torch down low over the side of their camel to keep the light off of Cass's left arm. She appreciated the gesture.
"In Chol they don't' have a name for those stars," Cass continued, "but they do have a Serpent. I don't think it's visible this time of year though. And in Harenae it's the 'Father and Son'. The father's teaching his son how to hunt."
"Do they have a story in Desheret?" Kher asked.
"I haven't heard one." Cass turned in her saddle to look back along the short caravan. Kebb was nowhere to be seen, probably keeping vigil in the rear. Anatu was attached to one of the carts, which only left Nuu as someone she could see to ask.
"Nuu!" She called, waving. They looked her way, eventually approaching. "What do you call those stars?"
"Is there a tale to them?" Kher asked.
"The three bright ones?" They looked skyward vacuously for a moment. "That is Sobek, a large crocodile that follows the flood waters of the Great River. Those stars are his open maw."
"What about the five stars to the left of them?"
"The two lower ones," Nuu said while pointing, "are his body. The upper three are his tail curled around."
"Ah yes, I can see it!" Kher said excitedly. "A more creative tale, I think. I wonder how it is yours is so different from our tales. We call them the-"
"Hey, Cass," Charis whispered, leaning closer, "you mentioned I could see your arm after dark?"
She looked down at her bandaged limb and flexed her fingers uncomfortably. The wrappings were much tighter now that she'd had ample time out of the sun.
"Okay, but keep your torch away." She tugged on the knot holding the bandages in place, let them loosen, and unwrapped her arm. Charis gasped as her skin showed in the starlight with thin motes of light of its own.
Under the light of the sun or flame, Cass's arm was thin and the skin looked brittle and burnt. The comparison to burnt wood was not uncommon. But under the stars and moon it looked wholly different.
"Beautiful," Charis whispered, gazing at the black abyss. The colors and patterns within it were similar yet very different from the sky above. As Cass moved the lights moved as well, as though flowing through her limb. Never the same pattern twice.
"Thanks." People were always mesmerized by her arm at night. The ones who weren't convinced it was a blight of some sort, at least. She extended her hand to Charis. They looked up at her briefly for permission, then took her hand in theirs. Unlike during the day, there was no pain. Their skin didn't feel uncomfortably warm either. In fact it was rather cool and pleasant.
Charis tucked their long curls behind one ear as they laced their fingers with hers. She lifted her hand closer to their face so they could take a closer look.
"It's strange," they said softly, "your hand looks so different, so..."
"Weird?" Cass offered.
They shook their head. "No...magical. But if I close my eyes I would be unable to tell this hand from your other."
Weird, odd, cursed, strange, these were what Cass was used to hearing her arm called. The only person who'd ever complimented her on it like that - who'd called it magical - before was Helen. Back before the war, before she'd killed the King of Sammos. When their encounters were furtive and hidden at night.
"Oh?" Cass looked away and tried to change the subject. "Can't tell your left from right?"
Charis chuckled and gave her hand a squeeze.
"What's going on here?" Nuu asked while riding closer. Their torch illuminated Cass's arm and the pain instantly came back. It wasn't as bad as if she were caught out in sunlight, but the entwined fingers became sore. She only barely got her hand out of Charis's before her hand clenched reflexively.
"Damnit!" Cass swore.
"You need to back away, Nuu." Charis said hotly.
"Calm, everyone, calm." Kher spoke up. "No need for such vehemence. Nuu, I believe they want some...alone time?" He gave Cass a big smile through his braided beard.
Nuu narrowed his eyes at her. "I thought I saw her changing."
"I wasn't. You'd know if I was." She felt bad enough every time she saw their sister's brass leg. Being reminded that they were survivors of one of her attacks was not a pleasant vortex of emotions.
"If you lose control-"
"I don't lose control! I've never lost control. It's not something I'm not in control of." Cass clenched her left fist, reminding herself it wasn't worth hurting them. "Put your torch out and I'll show you."
"I've already seen it."
"You've seen it as an enemy. How about I show you what it actually looks like?" Cass turned in her saddle and extended the black and burnt-looking hand. Nuu recoiled, but there was a curiosity behind their eyes. They gave a quick glance at Charis who lowered their torch behind their camel again. Nuu did the same, and Kher followed suit. Bathed in darkness again, they all looked at the starry field of Cass's arm.

I want to make an AU where it's Undertale but Frisk's main goal is to only kill Flowey.
I wanted to use names like "BrokenTale" or "ShatteredTale", but those are taken. "ShatterTale" is my best idea, but it's similar to "ShatteredTale".
The story plot is Chara convincing Frisk to open their eyes and be brave enough to see trauma, for they have Phobophobia, the phobia of being phobias. At the end of the Pacifist route, when Flowey is about to end his line "E v e n i f i t m e a n s k i l l i n g y o u *insert number* t i m e s!", a gaster blaster sound plays, with a black screen. "R u n". It shows a scene of Frisk running, then leads to a suicide.
Frisk starts pleasing themself by killing flowers reset after reset. Then, practices to sew on their clothing. "If you kill too many, the next human won't survive the fall.", Chara says.
Eventually, Chara shows Frisk a flower growing on their head, for the amount of resets is corrupting the timeline. Frisk realizes they have to actually finish the story before too many resets, then they will die, flowers growing out of their body. Frisk, with all their practice, sews their eyes shut. Scared to face trauma ever again.
Chara will try to calm down Frisk the whole game. Throughout the whole play through, even in Grillby's, Frisk's face turns into a "=)" face whenever Flowey is mentioned. In the true lab, there will be a soul jar, then Frisk forms an idea. Frisk made an invention where Frisk could take an alive person's soul and give it to a dead person. Other characters will stay the same. Toriel happy, Sans chill, Papyrus cool, Undyne strong. Alphys excited for her date, and Asgore watering plants.
Asriel Dreemurr fight will be corrupted. While the Asriel Dreemurr fight, Chara says Frisk is too focused to kill Flowey, not enough DETERMINATION to save everyone. Frisk only has enough to save one of their friends.
In the end of the pacifist route, if you choose Frisk to hug Asriel, it will result a stab in the back. Soulless pacifist, Asriel defends Chara from Frisk, for Frisk is obviously not happy. Soulless Pacifist can happen by stabbing Asriel in the back, too. Chara will NOT be happy.
I want ideas to stop this AU from being cringe. Any ideas?

To start things off, I was always aware of our age gap and problems it may cause in our relationship.
My husband and I didn't meet until I was well into being eighteen, and he was twenty-eight. It didn't bother me much, as he doesn't act much older than me and I'd always felt older than I was due to having a ton of younger siblings, step siblings, and foster kids in and out of my mother's house growing up.
We got engaged when I was nineteen at a yungblood concert, and we originally planned to wait to marry until I was at least twenty. Plans changed when I decided to go into the air force, and we had to push up the wedding in order for him to eventually stay with me on base after basic training.
Fast forward a few months after we were married and I had left for Texas for training, I was injured during PT training and sent home. It was during the craziest parts of covid, so everything was on lockdown and they had strict rules about not keeping anyone on base for a long period of time if injured. I was medically discharged and sent home to heal and have potential surgery.
At the time, my husband was staying with his friend in the city we planned to move to. We already put down a deposit on an apartment when we found out I was going home, but due to Covid restrictions and eviction restrictions, it was returned to us and we were told we could no longer move in.
The first issue I was seeing when I got home was his disattention to me. I was gone for over a month and missed celebrating my twentieth birthday with anyone but the girls in medhold with me, so I was looking forward to spending quality time with my husband.
We went out to eat with his friend, his friend's girlfriend, and one of her friends. I felt like a fifth wheel during the meal, as I was sat at the end of the table instead of being at my husband's side where her friend was sitting. Most of the conversations didn't include me, and I ended up going back to his friend's place feeling let down.
The rest of the time we were staying with his friend, they wanted all of us to go mountain climbing, cliff jumping, and trekking through the woods as they lived in a nature-centered part of the area. (Keep in mind, I was just sent home for being injured, and I had both a knee and ankle brace on my right leg that prevented much movement other than some hobbled walking that was slower than a normal pace).
When I expressed that I wasn't comfortable doing those things and that I wouldn't be jumping thirty feet into a freezing lake when I could barely walk as it is, my husband got upset with me and eventually just left me there alone while they all went to hang out together.
Flash forward four years, it is now 2024 and we have a two-year-old toddler. I didn't end up getting surgery, and I spent nine months being sicker than I'd ever been in my life.
It was a really rough pregnancy for me, and I'd ended up in the hospital multiple times because I couldn't even smell food or step foot into our kitchen without throwing up.
That all went on until the beginning of my third trimester. We decided to travel back to his friend's place, and I was somehow roped into climbing cliffs, wading through treacherous water to climb another cliff on an island out in the middle of a lake, and sleep at the top of sand dunes in a tent on the ground a couple weeks before my due date.
I was then on antibiotics during birth, because my water broke and the hospital sent me home instead of keeping me. My son was born sick, and transferred to a children's hospital to be treated and receive a spinal tap. I ended up sleeping a week in a hard hospital chair in a leaking basement of the hospital because they didn't have enough space for us.
After we were home and everything was settled, my husband would brag about how difficult the whole situation was for him. He had to sleep on a futon during my labour, and he had to have food doordashed to the hospital because, due to covid restrictions, noone else was allowed in with us and he wasn't allowed to leave to get anything.
He ended up having steak, potatoes, and these other elaborate meals delivered to eat in front of me while I wasn't allowed to eat anything until the baby came out. He even thought about bringing his playstation into the hospital room, but I shut that down quickly.
The first year of my son's life, I went back and forth between staying home with him and working in the factory my husband currently works at while my grandma watched our son.
I won't get into too much detail, but at one point when my grandma moved back out of state (she lives in her camper and was only there for the summer), I had to switch to the afternoon shift.
There is a factory supervisor on that shift that is a male and close to my husband's age. Other than the other person in my same position and two maintenance workers, they only had migrant workers that didn't speak english. This limited the people I could talk to while working my twelve hour shifts (husband worked 3:30 am to 3:30 pm and I would work 3:30 pm to 3:30 am).
My husband got very jealous and territorial at this time. He would expect me to return nearly thirty minutes late from all my breaks, threaten to go up there if anyone told me I couldn't do that, and even punched a hole in the wall when I told him I had to get back to work.
Up until that point, my husband had shown no signs of aggression toward me.
Somehow, a rumour started to spread around the factory that I was sleeping with the production lead. This definitely wasn't true as a) how and where would I have done that? and b) I loved my husband and would have never done something like that.
My husband heard about it, and came home to confront me. He got in my face, screaming and calling me a cheater. He threatened to take our son and move back in with his mom without even letting me offer an explanation or defend myself.
To this day, it still bothers me that he is still so convinced that I cheated on him and that he has no trust in me whatsoever to not do something like that.
I ended up leaving that job and working at mcdonalds for a little while. I had worked there in high school, so it wasn't a big adjustment.
I only ended up staying there a few months to help us catch up on bills before we agreed it would be better for me to stay home with our son for a while.
Our son is two now, and it seems like our relationship has only become more strained. We used to be able to communicate most of our smaller issues and come up with ways to maneuver whatever issues we had. However, in June of last year, my husband's friend that we were staying with in the beginning moved across the state to be near us.
It was all fine and good in the beginning. He had proposed to his girlfriend, and they even asked the both of us to be in their wedding that has yet to happen.
However, once they got engaged, he'd began acting very sexist. Even though both he and his fiance work full time (he works down the road at the factory with my fiance, and she works forty minutes away at a hardware store and has to drive a long way at three in the morning to get there), he expects her to come home and clean up after him, also cook his meals before she goes to bed early to get up really early in the morning for work the next day.
My husband, now hanging out with him more often, started having some of these things wearing off on him.
At first, it wasn't a big deal and I brushed it off. However, I'd gotten a job as a property manager for an apartment complex and also work now. Instead of things changing to adapt our new lifestyle, my husband expects me to continue keeping up with all the chores and cooking.
He'd made a comment that, because he feeds our dogs, he expects me just to do everything that involves our toddler from feeding him, to changing his butt, to putting him to bed at night. It's like pulling teeth sometimes to get him to change his butt or even get pants on him.
We'd gotten into an argument over this, and I told him that it wasn't fair that he expected me to do everything. His response was that he made more money and worked more hours, so it was only fair that I covered everything else.
Sure, I don't work as much or make as much money, and my paychecks mainly cover our son's daycare and our car payments, but I feel like working doesn't excuse him from helping with the son we both decided to have.
It's gotten to the point where I told my husband that if any sexist remark is made, like I should be in the kitchen helping get dinner ready whenever we're at his friend's house, I will be leaving and going back home, and I won't be going back until it is resolved.
The friend's fiance and I have had private conversations about this, and we both agree that it has gotten out of hand, and we both believe they are feeding off each other as they'd never been that bad before.
Everything has only seemed to get worse from there.
We decided to go as a group, along with my brother and his girlfriend, to the draft in Detroit this year.
The whole point was to see players get drafted in person, and we'd managed to get into the crowd in front of the stage before the area was shut down and they weren't allowing anyone else in.
My brother is an avid football fan. He played in high school, and was even offered multiple scholarships to play in college. This was a once in a lifetime experience for the both of us.
At one point, my husband and his friend decided that they would rather stand at one of the screens out of the crowd and watch it instead of trying to get into the sea of people to see it live.
I was frustrated, and expressed that if we wanted to watch it on television that we should have just stayed home. After a heated argument, I thought we'd come to the agreement that we'd go back to the stage and watch it there.
My brother lead us through the crowd, and at the beginning my husband and his friend were following us. Somehow, we'd gotten separated and when I looked back once we found a spot to stand, they were gone.
My phone rang in my pocket, and when I picked it up it was my husband calling. As soon as I picked it up, he proceeded to scream at me for disappearing and called me a "stupid bitch" when I tried to explain that I thought they were following us.
He hung up, and I told my brother I was going to go look for them alone. I spent a good twenty minutes wandering the area that was barricaded, but they were nowhere to be found. I no longer had signal to get ahold of him, so I ended up just going back and watching the beginning of the draft with my brother.
By the eighth pick, texts started to come in from my husband. He had informed me that they all left, leaving the three of us alone. Luckily, I'd driven separate as I left work early to get there.
By that point, I was done with him. I felt disrespected and that hanging out with his friend was more important than making sure his wife was okay or even with him. After all, I was wandering downtown Detroit alone when it was starting to get dark out.
When the three of us inevitably got back to the car, I got ahold of my husband just to let him know we were on our way home. He tried to apologise and ask how everything was, but I was too exhausted and mad at him to try and hold a conversation. He was asleep by the time I got home, and I ended up sleeping in our spare bedroom on a futon.
The next day, my husband tried to act like nothing happened. When I expressed that I felt ignored and pretty much useless to him, he tried to play it off like his anger was warranted and completely ignored the fact that he was calling me names.
I told him that I was no longer going to any big events with him and his friend, and he just rolled his eyes like he didn't believe me.
A day later, I saw a message pop up on his phone from his friend. I guess he had told him what I said about not going anywhere anymore, and his friend said "women" with an eyeroll emoji and "she'll get over it eventually". I screenshotted these messages and sent them to myself, filing them away in a folder in my phone to keep for later.
I slept in our spare bedroom for a week after that.
After the draft, I've also kept notes in my phone with time and date stamps of all the times he went off on me since then. Whenever we get into arguments, my mind goes blank and I forget exact things like this so he likes to say it never happened if I can't remember it.
April 27th, we were sitting watching videos together on tiktok. When someone popular came on that he had been watching a lot recently, I exclaimed that I didn't understand how he got popular all of a sudden. He proceeded to get really agitated and yell at me for not understanding how the internet works. When I stood up to walk away because I was upset, this angered him more. He then expressed that my emotions were overrated and that he was sick of them.
May 2nd, I had gotten home from work and tried to show my husband an outdoor jungle gym on amazon that I thought would be cool to get our son. He claimed it was a waste of money and that we should just take him to the park. When I tried to explain that it was a better idea to get something like this, as realistically we wouldn't take him to the park every day, he freaked out and asked what was wrong with me. He then said "oh my god" when I tried to explain that it would be easier to watch him outside while getting stuff done around the house and decided to just go to bed without dinner and end the conversation completely.
May 5th, we went with his friend and fiance to a cinco de may party in the city. He was drinking most of the day, and on the way home he wanted us to stop some place and get ice cream. When he got out of the car, he hit it against the car next to us. When I told him he'd hit the car, he proceeded to yell at me in the crowd that I was crazy and acting like my mother. He then kept trying to go to the woman in the car and ask if he had, in fact, hit her car. After, he said he was done with me and I was on my own, that I would have to start paying my own bills from now on.
There's been many other entries in my notes similar to this, and I feel like I'm at the end of what I can handle. Divorce has crossed my mind, but I had divorced parents growing up and know how hard it would be on my son. I also don't think I'm in a well off financial position to go out on my own with our son and still provide the things he needs.
I also worry that, if we were to separate, he would push to take our son from me as he'd threatened in the past to do so.
Any advice would be helpful, as I don't know what else to do. Even getting this all off my chest online makes me feel a little better, but there's still the lingering thought in the back of my mind that I'm unhappy and don't know how much longer I can put up with this.
Thank you.

Bring Me the Horizon: Why the fuck is this the only ever popular band to go from death metal to outright pop?
Bullet for My Valentine: Very stereotypically edgy emo kid shit
Underoath: Babies first metalcore artist and for christians at the same time and still good somehow
Converge: Wow, you're so unique for liking technically complex metalcore on /mu/
Suicide Silence: Greatest deathcore band of all time... for around 4 years until Mitch Lurker died.
Knocked Loose: Screechy vocals somehow so screechy they end up sounding good surprisngly
Avenged Sevenfold: Uhhh so it's the edgy kid with the mosnter can that likes COD again let's just rush a shitty mr.bungle (????) album out to calm him down
Asking Alexandria/Black Veil Brides: Scene music for girls in the late 2000s-early 2010s
Ice Nine Kills; They just kinda, like, summarize horror movies and it's cool man cause they scream
Lamb of God: Pantera for Millenials
Motionless in White: "Breaking Benjamin for trans people" - Ronnie Radke
Killswitch Engage: Pioneers to the metalcore genre zoomers will proudly not listen to.
Lorna Shore: No one can imitate Will Ramos, stop trying
Tallah: So many youtube metal connections compared to actual fans
Pierce the Veil: You've only listened to a couple singles on Tiktok and not the full albums I'm guessing
Electric Callboy: Weird genre fusions come forth
Escape the Faith/Falling in Reverse: In a way, their life is like a video game.
Bad Omens: Pop music metalcore
Atreyu: That compliation album cover and their cool sounding name are so good for such an average lineup of albums
Attila: So deathcore, metalcore and rap metal with all fronts covered on everything besides a couple singles having annoying lyrics is an interesting combination
Attack Attack: 🦀
Whitechapel: I listened to one album, it sounded like biker deathcore but I never heard them be called that before so I guess not
Chesla Grin: Good, that's really all I got.
A Day to Remember: just metalcore blink-182
The Devil Wears Prada: Atmospheric and well-executed last record but everything else just kinda sounds like another metalcore album idk
Thy Art is Murder: Anti-theist band that will replace their band members every other year or so, so basically no gods no masters
Seeyoulaterspacecowboy: Fast chaos in their early work, nostalgia in their later work, no complaints
August Burns Red: Christian metalcore is not very frequently bad so really good metalcore got a grammy nomination

So I (20F) have known this girl, let's call her Em (fake name, 20F), for a whole bunch of years.
To be precise, we actually first met when we were little, but neither of us remembers it.
My mom has been friends with my "aunt" (not biological) since they were in high-school. As they grew older, of course, their families expanded. My aunt had three kids, who would be my cousins. Her mom's side of the family is from a another country that shares borders with ours. Her brother, who lives in said country, had 5 kids, four girls and one boy. We're unrelated. They're my "cousins" actual cousins.
Most of my family (this aunt and cousins included) live in another part of my country, so when I was a kid I used to go over the summer and stay most of it there to see everyone. It seems that when we were kids, we all hung out once, there's even a picture to prove it, but again, no one bellow age 25 remembers that.
Well one of those summers, when I was 14, I went to visit and went over to my aunt's for dinner. That's when Em and I kind of really met, and boy do I remember that.
We all said our hellos, and we sat down at the table, she was sitting across me. All night we made small talk, and I really liked her.
I was always openly gay, never really had a "coming out of the closet", since no one in my family cares. They've always been supportive of me. Her family, though, it's a different story.
Her siblings are great, and they're also cool about that, but her parents (specially her mom) are catholics (if I remember correctly, her dad or one of their uncles is a preist) soooo yeah we weren't really openly flirting at the dinner table.
But then, us young ones went away to play cards. She was playing against me, 3 vs 3, only this time she was sitting almost beside me.
The stolen glances, the grazing of hands, the little smirks. I remember the way she looked at me, like she didn't understand what or why she was feeling something, but she knew she was. She found me attractive, but with the not-really-but-just-met situation and her parents, we just stuck with that. I only saw her once again that summer, same thing, only for a whole day. And then back in my hometown as they were passing through to go back to their country
We exchanged numbers, and when we talked she confessed she liked me, a lot, but didn't know what to do in that moment. It was new to her, though that didn't really bother her much. I remember she said something along the lines of "It’s like I was so mesmerized by you and at the same time so confused that I just froze, but I would've kissed you if we had seen each other again, and if it happens I will".
Well, six years passed.
With not really the space or time to establish a relationship, and living in two different countries at that age kind of made it impossible and of course, naturally, contact faded and every once in a while we'd talk again as if no time had passed.
Eventually, she got a boyfriend, I had a few relationships two. Long term and serious on both accounts, but we never not talked at least a couple times a year (respectfully, of course).
I guess I never really stopped liking her, but it was more of a distant thing than anything else. Every time we talked though, it was great. We would catch up, open up about things we would otherwise keep quiet, etc. It's like we always gravitated back to each other, both in thought and in speaking terms (on both accounts).
Some time later, when she finished high-school, she followed her older siblings footsteps and moved to a city near mine to attend college, that was around a year or two ago.
She broke off her relationship a few months back, I did so too.
And a few days ago, I replied to a story she had uploaded on her insta and, well, here comes the best part.
We started talking, catching up, and I can't really remember why but the conversation eventually led to me saying I found her pretty. She replied it was mutual. I'll try to recall the conversation below.
"Wait, do you still like me after all these years?"
"Well, yeah, why wouldn't I?"
"I mean, we didn't see each other again, grew older and you even had a boyfriend, I thought maybe the feeling had passed for you"
"Yeah I mean I isolated myself a lot in that relationship, it sucked, but I never not liked you, nor forgot about you, it was just impossible"
"Well, it's not anymore. I still like you too, and I've been wanting this for years"
"So have I, I want to go see you"
I remember I told her that when I saw she had a boyfriend I didn't really wanna force or ruin anything cuz she seemed happy and I liked that, and she told me she would've left him in a heartbeat for me the second she'd known I still liked her.
We also talked about her family. She told me her mom actually found out about our little chat back in 2018 and got kind of mad, but Em told her to screw off and not go through her phone again, and that's the end of it. One of her sisters noticed then too, but just told her good for her and also never mentioned it again.
Then the same day I replied to her story, she was hanging out a while earlier with her older sister and a friend of theirs and eventually told them about me (her sister knew me, of course, but not how we actually felt about each other) since they were reminiscing about summers, told them she was still into me. That even after all those years I still caught her attention when I wandered my way into her head (and it's definitely mutual). She mentioned that although she had found other girls pretty, the only one that ever stuck out to her and really had her head-over-heels for, was me. I felt so flustered when she said that.
The rest of the conversation was one I'd never had with her. She told me she liked me, and what things. She thinks I'm pretty, she thinks I'm funny. Smart, talented, good. I honestly don't know if all of it is true but to hear her so talk about me that way, so starstruck, just like when we were 14, made my heart skip a beat. It was adorable. And then, well, it derailed into a more... uhm... mature conversation about plans we had for each other? If you get what I mean lol.
And that's where we are now. We're both having exams right now so we're planning to meet up next week when we're done.
IM SO EXCITED!
We miss each other, and we've wanted to hang out for ages. Not only that, but her now openness to be with me and enjoy it is so both refreshing and adorable. She calls me names, compliments me, tells me she wants me.
I never would've thought it would actually happen, not at least for a few more years. I also wouldn't have thought that shy girl I met would be so openly flirty with me, even on voice messages.
She's told me about a hundred times already how much she's wanted this, that's she's so glad it's gonna finally happen, that she's wondered what it's like to kiss me ever since she met me. That she wants all of me. Every last bit.
It's mutual, it's all mutual.
I feel giddy, excited, and I definitely feel wanted, and it's amazing.
Just wanted to rant about it and her, she's honestly amazing and beautiful. Kind, smart. Her accent drives me crazy and when she speaks her native language I literally feel weak.
Six years. Six years always thinking about each other (and many of those times it's like we mind-called each other beacuse we'd end up talking again). The girl I've had a crush on for the longest and never got, and we finally have the space, place and time to do it. This is it, it's our moment. And I definitely plan to enjoy every minute of it. She's worth it. So, so worth it.
Have a nice day everyone, Imma go talk to her lol bye