My last post went over surprisingly well, that said you should check out my new subreddit Talesofzippy for more content, because I'm definitely going to posting in more places around reddit and I'll be cross posting them in the tales sub for more people to enjoy!
With that, I don't remember any good stories about Zippy, but the place I work at is fucking filled with loonies, so tonight I'm going to introduce you to Katniss.
Katniss is about 63, tiny, and absolutely loved to talk about how good her guns are, even if she can't shoot or generally understand how they work. She tried to tell me that her Girsan was a high quality gun because the barrel is pinned in place.
I'm a competitive shooter, I grew up shooting and learning about guns.
When a pistol fires a round, a floating barrel will be pointed at an upward angle at the end of the stroke, while a pinned barrel doesn't. The floating barrel doesn't effect accuracy in any meaningful way because it is held in place by several seers, and doesn't begin to move until well after the bullet is out of the gun.
I tried to explain that, she didn't listen. She also can't shoot. Katniss.
She also wears boomer shirts about "snowflakes" and shares memes about the good old days when you could say whatever you want and be offensive.
This gets funny later.
Katniss and I worked together running gas pumps, and we generally got along great, in fact for a year I considered her to be a friend.
And then my dad killed himself.
I got the call at work and got a ride home as quickly as possible. Katniss was on shift with me and Yawn, who is the most chill person you can imagine.
They were incredible, Katniss broke into my apartment (at my request) and took my shotgun for safe keeping. She also took my keys and made me wait for a family friend to pick me up.
I called the night manager and told him I was going home and why, He offered me a ride.
I came into work three days later and stuck my head into my boss (Elk Daddy's) office. He simply said "how long do you need?"
"Two weeks."
"Okay."
I mention this because Anything less than this is a cancerous work environment. If a manager tries to negotiate with you when you've experienced a true tragedy, they're not a manager, they're a slave driver.
I had severe PTSD, nightmares, the whole shabang, for months I would stand at the desk and hear my mom's voice telling me my dad was dead, the first night back at work I witnessed some dumb janitorial drama (not zippy) and I started smelling the sickly sweet smell of human brain before I ran home and had my first panic attack.
(I'll tell the story of Elk Daddy, and make good on a promise I made my dad as a bonus at the end.)
Six months passed, my PTSD wasn't even beginning to heal, and she pulled me aside.
"Okay. It's time to stop now."
"Stop what?"
"This, you're in a rut, and you need to get out of it. It's high time you moved on and stopped being sad and moved on. See my sister was in a car accident and went into a coma when I was about 20, and I had a dream about her getting up and walking out of her hospital room and saying "it's about fucking time." The next day her heart gave out and she finally died. It was this freeing thing for me, because I felt like she was finally free of the broken body and the pain."
"Katniss I just don't feel like I'm... There yet. I'm still hurting, and I really don't feel like I'm ready to let him go. Things aren't that easy."
She didn't like that answer.
At the time I just felt broken, and just laid there and took it, but today I'm genuinely angry about it.
I was hurt, and now that I've rebuilt myself I realized how truly broken I was as a person.
She had no right to say anything to me about how it was time to stop. I'm still healing four years on.
That was when we stopped being friends.
Last year I was going through stickers for our local pride, the second one our community has ever had! I had come out as bi the year before, and had a side project that had grown large enough to have a booth at the local event. I was showing off some cool and funny stickers to Yawn, another cashier.
Yawn is great, he has no blood pressure, everything is just really cool and chill, and he really just wanted to be friends with everyone.
Genuinely nice person. I always get him a Christmas gift and he's always grateful, no matter what it is.
I turned around and handed a sticker to Katniss that said "be gay, so crime" with a little picture of a fabulous criminal goose on it.
She took one look at it and just went "No" rather forcefully, so I just backed off and moved on.
The next day my boss, Elk Daddy, calls me over.
"Op, you handed Katniss a sticker yesterday, and I just want to tell you. Stop talking to her. Please. For me."
"She really complained about that?"
"No, she threatened to go to HR because you "assumed her orientation" and tried to give her a sticker."
It is at this point that I'd like to add that Elk Daddy is gay. Like... Really gay. Him and his husband both donate their time and money to pride, and have been instrumental in making it happen. They are the gay uncles that stepped up to be dads for their nephews when Elk Daddy's brother couldn't.
He knows Katniss, and both of us know her HUSBAND.
So. We didn't talk outside of necessary conversations, and haven't really said anything to each other for any reason.... Until I transferred to my current department and ran out of pens.
I walked over to the cashier desk "hey Katniss, can I get a handful of pens? I ran out."
"I gave three to morning shift last night, what happened to those?"
"I don't know, and it doesn't matter, can I get some?"
Yawn walked over to the drawer where we keep the pens and opened it, while Katniss sighs and opens up her drawer and drops a pen on the counter.
"Come on Katniss, I need more than that."
"I don't have that many pens, they're not giving them to us, here, this is all I have."
She angrily throws down two more pins on the counter as Yawn retrieves an entire box of pens from the drawer and begins walking over. She sees him and motions for him to stop."
"Don't fucking bullshit me Katniss, I see Yawn with the box. Just give me some pens."
She drops six more down on the counter, I take them and walk off. "Thank you."
Ten minutes later she comes over to the deli and slams a box of pens down on the counter for me
"Don't ask me for pens again."
"Wouldn't have it any other way."
She then told the MOD that I cussed her out. I told my side, and several people in the management chain pointed out that she wore tee shirts under her uniform that said more offensive things, one of them even saying "don't fucking bullshit me."
She is no longer allowed to wear her tee shirts.
She's also had it pointed out to her that she says "don't fucking bullshit me" all the time, and management has gently reminded her that she should not swear.
A few weeks ago she very dejectedly told me that she was done trying to help people, and I had to bite back a "good, we don't need it."
And here we are... End of another post about the weird boomers I work with.
BONUS STORIES!
As for Elk Daddy.
My boss has only ever taken his husband out hunting one time. When they did, they ended up trekking across the country on deer trails and through the brush. After 12 hours of being dragged through the brush and not shooting anything, his husband said something to the effect of "I hate this. I can't keep up with you and you just disappear all the goddamn time." He took my boss's phone, logged in, and yells "in fact HEY SIRI, FROM NOW ON CALL ME ELK DADDY."
nickname earned. He has it monogramed on his wallet.
And finally, my dad, who was another Boomer, used to love taking me out camping.
He was an electrical engineer, and was most certainly on the spectrum. He was brilliant in his own way, but absolutely unhinged when it came to teaching things.
A lecture from my dad could cover cleaning the stove (with diagrams on proper wiping techniques) to the finer points of building and firing a nuclear weapon. (With math included. No mercy.)
He tried to teach me calculus when I was six. It didn't work.
Anyway, on this particular camping trip he pulled me aside and said "op, I want you to make me a fire using nothing but two sticks, your knife, a match and the chainsaw"
Now. I knew where he was coming from, he wanted me to make a fuzz stick. I knew because he had only brought up the topic of making a fuzz stick every night for the past three days of camping. He then very helpfully added "and the chainsaw is a distraction."
Uh huh. Okay dad.
I Start cutting up the wood and making a teepee fire, and I hear a little "hmph" I look up and I see the smile. The grin he used to get as he started planning one of his little lectures. He was picking out the right words, deciding if he needed to demonstrate or just use a pen and paper.
I then opened up the gas tank on the chainsaw, dumped in a tablespoon of gas, lit the match and "whoof"
Fire.
Then the argument began.
"I said you couldn't use gas!"
"You said I could use the chainsaw, that includes the gas tank!"
"The chainsaw was a distraction!"
"Still gave it to me!"
"You cheated!!!"
"How?"
Long pause.
"I won, admit it. I beat you in a way you didn't expect. You will never live this down. I'll tell this story at your funeral!"
And I did. Three years later I tore up my hastily scribbled notes and told a group of the friends, neighbors and coworkers that he knew and loved about the time I finally beat him. We laughed.
I think he'd be proud, and a little indignant.
I miss you dad.

My last post went over surprisingly well, that said you should check out my new subreddit Talesofzippy for more content, because I'm definitely going to posting in more places around reddit and I'll be cross posting them in the tales sub for more people to enjoy!
With that, I don't remember any good stories about Zippy, but the place I work at is fucking filled with loonies, so tonight I'm going to introduce you to Katniss.
Katniss is about 63, tiny, and absolutely loved to talk about how good her guns are, even if she can't shoot or generally understand how they work. She tried to tell me that her Girsan was a high quality gun because the barrel is pinned in place.
I'm a competitive shooter, I grew up shooting and learning about guns.
When a pistol fires a round, a floating barrel will be pointed at an upward angle at the end of the stroke, while a pinned barrel doesn't. The floating barrel doesn't effect accuracy in any meaningful way because it is held in place by several seers, and doesn't begin to move until well after the bullet is out of the gun.
I tried to explain that, she didn't listen. She also can't shoot. Katniss.
She also wears boomer shirts about "snowflakes" and shares memes about the good old days when you could say whatever you want and be offensive.
This gets funny later.
Katniss and I worked together running gas pumps, and we generally got along great, in fact for a year I considered her to be a friend.
And then my dad killed himself.
I got the call at work and got a ride home as quickly as possible. Katniss was on shift with me and Yawn, who is the most chill person you can imagine.
They were incredible, Katniss broke into my apartment (at my request) and took my shotgun for safe keeping. She also took my keys and made me wait for a family friend to pick me up.
I called the night manager and told him I was going home and why, He offered me a ride.
I came into work three days later and stuck my head into my boss (Elk Daddy's) office. He simply said "how long do you need?"
"Two weeks."
"Okay."
I mention this because Anything less than this is a cancerous work environment. If a manager tries to negotiate with you when you've experienced a true tragedy, they're not a manager, they're a slave driver.
I had severe PTSD, nightmares, the whole shabang, for months I would stand at the desk and hear my mom's voice telling me my dad was dead, the first night back at work I witnessed some dumb janitorial drama (not zippy) and I started smelling the sickly sweet smell of human brain before I ran home and had my first panic attack.
(I'll tell the story of Elk Daddy, and make good on a promise I made my dad as a bonus at the end.)
Six months passed, my PTSD wasn't even beginning to heal, and she pulled me aside.
"Okay. It's time to stop now."
"Stop what?"
"This, you're in a rut, and you need to get out of it. It's high time you moved on and stopped being sad and moved on. See my sister was in a car accident and went into a coma when I was about 20, and I had a dream about her getting up and walking out of her hospital room and saying "it's about fucking time." The next day her heart gave out and she finally died. It was this freeing thing for me, because I felt like she was finally free of the broken body and the pain."
"Katniss I just don't feel like I'm... There yet. I'm still hurting, and I really don't feel like I'm ready to let him go. Things aren't that easy."
She didn't like that answer.
At the time I just felt broken, and just laid there and took it, but today I'm genuinely angry about it.
I was hurt, and now that I've rebuilt myself I realized how truly broken I was as a person.
She had no right to say anything to me about how it was time to stop. I'm still healing four years on.
That was when we stopped being friends.
Last year I was going through stickers for our local pride, the second one our community has ever had! I had come out as bi the year before, and had a side project that had grown large enough to have a booth at the local event. I was showing off some cool and funny stickers to Yawn, another cashier.
Yawn is great, he has no blood pressure, everything is just really cool and chill, and he really just wanted to be friends with everyone.
Genuinely nice person. I always get him a Christmas gift and he's always grateful, no matter what it is.
I turned around and handed a sticker to Katniss that said "be gay, do crime" with a little picture of a fabulous criminal goose on it.
She took one look at it and just went "No" rather forcefully, so I just backed off and moved on.
The next day my boss, Elk Daddy, calls me over.
"Op, you handed Katniss a sticker yesterday, and I just want to tell you. Stop talking to her. Please. For me."
"She really complained about that?"
"No, she threatened to go to HR because you "assumed her orientation" and tried to give her a sticker."
It is at this point that I'd like to add that Elk Daddy is gay. Like... Really gay. Him and his husband both donate their time and money to pride, and have been instrumental in making it happen. They are the gay uncles that stepped up to be dads for their nephews when Elk Daddy's brother couldn't.
He knows Katniss, and both of us know her HUSBAND.
So. We didn't talk outside of necessary conversations, and haven't really said anything to each other for any reason.... Until I transferred to my current department and ran out of pens.
I walked over to the cashier desk "hey Katniss, can I get a handful of pens? I ran out."
"I gave three to morning shift last night, what happened to those?"
"I don't know, and it doesn't matter, can I get some?"
Yawn walked over to the drawer where we keep the pens and opened it, while Katniss sighs and opens up her drawer and drops a pen on the counter.
"Come on Katniss, I need more than that."
"I don't have that many pens, they're not giving them to us, here, this is all I have."
She angrily throws down two more pins on the counter as Yawn retrieves an entire box of pens from the drawer and begins walking over. She sees him and motions for him to stop."
"Don't fucking bullshit me Katniss, I see Yawn with the box. Just give me some pens."
She drops six more down on the counter, I take them and walk off. "Thank you."
Ten minutes later she comes over to the deli and slams a box of pens down on the counter for me
"Don't ask me for pens again."
"Wouldn't have it any other way."
She then told the MOD that I cussed her out. I told my side, and several people in the management chain pointed out that she wore tee shirts under her uniform that said more offensive things, one of them even saying "don't fucking bullshit me."
She is no longer allowed to wear her tee shirts.
She's also had it pointed out to her that she says "don't fucking bullshit me" all the time, and management has gently reminded her that she should not swear.
A few weeks ago she very dejectedly told me that she was done trying to help people, and I had to bite back a "good, we don't need it."
And here we are... End of another post about the weird boomers I work with.
BONUS STORIES!
As for Elk Daddy.
My boss has only ever taken his husband out hunting one time. When they did, they ended up trekking across the country on deer trails and through the brush. After 12 hours of being dragged through the brush and not shooting anything, his husband said something to the effect of "I hate this. I can't keep up with you and you just disappear all the goddamn time." He took my boss's phone, logged in, and yells "in fact HEY SIRI, FROM NOW ON CALL ME ELK DADDY."
nickname earned. He has it monogramed on his wallet.
And finally, my dad, who was another Boomer, used to love taking me out camping.
He was an electrical engineer, and was most certainly on the spectrum. He was brilliant in his own way, but absolutely unhinged when it came to teaching things.
A lecture from my dad could cover cleaning the stove (with diagrams on proper wiping techniques) to the finer points of building and firing a nuclear weapon. (With math included. No mercy.)
He tried to teach me calculus when I was six. It didn't work.
Anyway, on this particular camping trip he pulled me aside and said "op, I want you to make me a fire using nothing but two sticks, your knife, a match and the chainsaw"
Now. I knew where he was coming from, he wanted me to make a fuzz stick. I knew because he had only brought up the topic of making a fuzz stick every night for the past three days of camping. He then very helpfully added "and the chainsaw is a distraction."
Uh huh. Okay dad.
I Start cutting up the wood and making a teepee fire, and I hear a little "hmph" I look up and I see the smile. The grin he used to get as he started planning one of his little lectures. He was picking out the right words, deciding if he needed to demonstrate or just use a pen and paper.
I then opened up the gas tank on the chainsaw, dumped in a tablespoon of gas, lit the match and "whoof"
Fire.
Then the argument began.
"I said you couldn't use gas!"
"You said I could use the chainsaw, that includes the gas tank!"
"The chainsaw was a distraction!"
"Still gave it to me!"
"You cheated!!!"
"How?"
Long pause.
"I won, admit it. I beat you in a way you didn't expect. You will never live this down. I'll tell this story at your funeral!"
And I did. Three years later I tore up my hastily scribbled notes and told a group of the friends, neighbors and coworkers that he knew and loved about the time I finally beat him. We laughed.
I think he'd be proud, and a little indignant.
I miss you dad.

PART ONE THOUSAND AND ELEVEN
[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Sunday
“Daaaaddy!”
Levi groaned, for the shouting whine from his bedside dragged him kicking and screaming out of sleep in a way no other alarm could. Only two other sounds garnered a faster reaction from him: someone vomiting right beside him or his baby girl screaming in either pain or fear.
He opened one eye, wondering if someone had ever made an alarm that sounded like either of those last two. Parents everywhere would never sleep in again, so maybe not.
A blurry red-headed vision was so close that he could smell her morning breath as it tickled his nose. “Heeey,” he yawned, pulling away enough to bring her back into focus. “What’s up, Peaches?”
He didn’t recognise the room they were in. Not even a little bit. He sat up fast and looked around, causing Maddy to let out an ‘eep’ of fright. “Daddy! You made some come out!”
And then the events of the night before came crashing in: the party, the knowledge that his roommate was going to have the kind of company Maddy didn’t need to see, the invitation to stay in Luke’s old room, and Maddy’s late-night escapades after he’d dropped like a rock after doing a double shift to make it to the party.
He saw Maddy’s uncomfortable wiggle-dance and the strained look on her face and remembered he’d locked the door. “Oh!” He flew out of bed, scooping her up in the process. If he ended up getting peed on, it was his own fault for not setting an alarm for his baby girl’s tiny bladder.
He unlocked the door and dove around the corner, willing to go through the shut bathroom door if he had to, but thankfully found the room open and vacant. Then he flipped the toilet lid before depositing her on the ground in front of the toilet. He immediately pivoted away, not because he was embarrassed by her but because Maddy had grown old enough not to like him watching her go to the toilet. She was starting to get antsy about her bath, too, but until she could adequately bathe herself and not merely play with her bath toys the whole time, that was a hard ‘don’t care’ line.
“Do you want to have a bath, baby, or wait until we get home?” he asked, crossing the room to hold the door almost shut to prevent anyone else from seeing her either.
“I don’t got clothes, Daddy,” she answered like he was an idiot.
Word choice aside, the sentiment was true. They’d borrowed the shirt she was wearing from Charlie. “Well, we need to figure something out, Peaches, because you are not leaving this house in only a nightgown and no underwear.” He’d send Charlotte out to buy her some clothes if he had to.
He heard the toilet flush and Maddy move up behind him, and turned long before she could touch him. “Three guesses what I didn’t hear, young lady?” he asked with a paternal frown. He pointed at the vanity when she looked up at him without a clue.
“But I can’t reach!”
“Then what are you supposed to do?”
Her shoulders slumped. “Daddy, c’n you help?”
He then smiled. “Better.” He put a hand on top of her head and spun her towards the vanity before guiding her forward. After they crossed the room, he loosened the faucet without turning it on and curled his hands around her waist, lifting her high enough that she could lean over the sink. She washed her hands, rinsing them thoroughly, then scooped the water and let it fall over the faucet before turning it off. Not that water alone would wash away the ‘germs’ of the initial contact, but the sentiment was there. Her mother had been a nurse, after all.
“Is Mister Larry still here?”
“I don’t know, baby. But how about we go and see if we can track down either Aunty Charlotte or Robbie and figure out where we’re at, okay?”
“We’re in Uncle Luke’s and Aunty Charlotte’s home,” she said, again like he was an idiot.
That had been a rather stupid thing to say to a three-and-a-half-year-old. “Alright, Miss Smarty-pants. And what are we going to eat for breakfast in Uncle Luke and Aunty Charlotte’s home if we can’t find them to ask them, hmm?”
“Food, silly.”
Clearly, he was going to have to up his game in parental rhetorical questions. Gone were the days when she’d take him at his word, and she was only three. Thirteen was going to be fun. “Right,” he muttered, shaking his head as he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.
While holding Maddy’s hand, he peeked in the open door across the hall from the bathroom and saw a very plain bedroom in terms of the rest of the apartment’s décor. At first, he’d thought it was a guest room until he remembered the teenage kid Robbie had recently adopted. This was probably his room.
He’d seen Charlotte and Robbie’s room the day they moved Charlotte in here, so a quick glance to confirm the room was empty was all he needed on that score. That left two doors on the right. And since both were close together, with the one on the left barely a couple of feet from the other and the front wall separating the living room, Levi was willing to assume the second one was a half-bath or a powder room or something. He went to the second door and knocked.
“Yeah?” Mason called from inside.
Levi opened the door and poked his head inside. “Hey, you wouldn’t by any chance happen to know where Robbie or Charlotte are, would you?”
Mason was at his desk, drowning in paperwork, it seemed. “Robbie, no,” he said, shaking his head. "As for Charlie, I’d try her office next door, between us and Boyd’s studio. She has a massive garage refit happening soon, so last I checked, she was in there getting things ready.”
The emphasis on his sister’s preferred name wasn’t lost on him. A sharp, jarring motion to his right caught his eye, and he saw something that really belonged in a space program somewhere.
“What the hell is that?” he demanded, ducking down low enough to see Robbie’s adoptee with his eyes glued on whatever was going on overhead and his fingers typing in a blur of speed.
“Naughty word, Daddy!”
Mason snickered at Levi’s slow blink. “It’s a gaming system courtesy of Robbie’s family. The damn thing is very addictive, though, and I haven’t told Brock that there’s a screen you pull down from inside the headset to cover your eyes that takes the game into 3D playing.”
Levi whistled. “I don’t even want to know how much that costs.”
“I know, and this Sectra table here is up there too,” Mason agreed, gesturing at the electronic display beside him. “But it certainly makes learning a lot more fun.” He tilted his head forward. “Isn’t that right, bunny?”
Bunny?
Maddy leaned into Levi’s leg, but she was grinning ear to ear when she nodded. “I wanna be a vert when I grow up,” she declared, looking up at him.
“Vet, baby,” Mason corrected. “We’re vets. Sounds like “bet’ and ‘get’ and ‘set’.”
“Vet,” Maddy repeated.
“There ya’ go. Step one is getting the name right.” He glanced up at Levi, his cheeky grin on full display. “Step two is getting Daddy to save up for the rest of his life to pay for the classes.”
“I hate you,” Levi whisper-smirked, and Mason pursed his lips in a cocky air-kiss.
Still shaking his head, Levi waved at Mason and left the room, leading Maddy through the kitchen and living room and into the hallway outside. For so many years, his baby brother and their friends had crushed themselves into that ninth-floor horror show, and no amount of pleading from everyone would budge Luke. Not pressure from their parents nor peer guilt from his brothers, who refused to bring their families over to the cramped space.
Charlo—Charlie was the only one who visited regularly, and at the time, he’d put it down to her being skinny, single with no kids, so she could squeeze into whatever gap she found. He knew who she was really visiting now, and Robbie had better be ready for the mother of all guilt trips coming from the family to make an honest woman of their sister. Nascerdios descended or not, he’d be a dead man if he broke her heart.
Thinking about his little brother’s relationship with all these men, it was like Luke knew the payoff was just around the corner. People like them didn’t live like this.
Well, Maverick kind of did, but he’d worked hard for what he had and could rattle off his list of sporting injuries to prove it. Robbie and Sam had simply taken a running dive off the world’s highest diving platform and landed in the kind of wealth the rich and shameless could only dream about.
Luke—Lucas was lucky in a different way. Yes, his friendship with Robbie and Sam had certainly opened the right doors financially, but what Levi had seen of Boyd’s work yesterday, the big guy was well on his way to becoming his own type of rich; much like Mav did for his family. And like Marley, Lu—ucas wouldn’t have to work a day again in his life if he didn’t want to. (Though he had just made detective and loved his job, so Levi couldn’t see him quitting anytime soon.)
He knocked on the closed door. “Come in,” Charlie called, proving Mason right. And like Mason, she was sitting behind a desk covered in paperwork with a phone cradled against her shoulder.
“Aunty Charlotte, we’re hungry!” Maddy declared, and Levi closed his eyes to hide from his sister’s evil chuckle.
“Well, we can’t have that, sweetie,” she said, and he heard the phone click as it was dropped onto the receiver. "Daddy gets very grumpy when he’s hungry.”
“It’s not the only reason he gets cranky,” he said, opening one eye a slit to give his baby sister the stink eye.
Charlie cackled and slid out from behind her desk. “C’mon. Robbie has your breakfast all ready for you in Voila.”
“We didn’t want to start going through things and guessing what we could eat,” Levi explained as they backtracked to the main apartment.
“That’s fine. Grab a seat—any seat,” she said, gesturing to the line of kitchen barstool chairs as she moved through the living room. She headed around the island and over to the box under the window without checking if they had.
Levi wasn’t thrilled about the height of the barstool chairs off the floor. “Do you have a belt or something I could use to tie Maddy in?”
Charlie swung around to him. “Oh! Oh, yeah! Hold on.” She slipped around the island and down her side of the apartment, coming back from her room with the kind of square booster seats that could be found in a restaurant. “Robbie ducked out and got this for her this morning.”
Levi scratched his head as the booster was attached to the second chair along the front of the island. “Where’d he get that from at this hour?”
Charlie looked at him derisively. “This is Robbie, bro. You know he’s got connections all over the place.”
It killed Levi not to ask for more details, but given it was probably either connected to the Nascerdios or, more likely, a wealthy former client in the city that still looked favourably upon Robbie, he hadn’t wanted Maddy to overhear the specifics of the latter. Too many times, his little girl had asked Robbie about different ‘gifts’ he’d been given by clients and how she had wanted to do whatever he did to get presents like that. ‘Over my dead body’ had been his mental declaration.
Maddy was pulling on his boxers. “Up, Daddy,” she said, holding her hands over her head for him.
Levi lifted her into the seat, and then buckled her in. In the meantime, Charlie went back to that wooden box, lifting the lid. “Robbie has this gift with food, so assume everything in the place is for you to eat, because it probably is.”
“Not everything,” Levi countered at Maddy’s wild squeal of delight. He gave her hand a firm squeeze. “Do not take anything without asking, young lady, or you’ll be in big trouble.”
“But Daddy…”
“It’s Daddy’s call, Maddy,” Charlie said, backing his play. She turned, holding a plate with two fist-sized Minnie Mouse-shaped waffles (the bow between the ears made it Minnie) with some type of white marshmallow fluff spread across them and a honey drizzle that drew perfect facial features on each. “Here’s breakfast for one cute-as-a-button Dobson,” she said with a flourish, sliding the plate in front of Maddy and pulling out a children’s stubby fork from the cutlery drawer.
“It’ll have to be cut u—” The words died in Levi’s throat as Maddy stabbed the nearest piece, and it broke into a small, bite-sized piece that Maddy happily popped into her mouth.
“Imma bi’ ’irl,” she said, in and around her food.
Levi tapped her nose. “Big girls don’t talk with their mouths full, Peaches.”
When he glanced at Charlie, she’d gone back to the box and returned with a dinner plate of fluffy scrambled eggs on two pieces of toast with cheese and bacon, and three sausages cut almost in half longways on the side. She nodded at the seat beside Maddy, then slid the plate into the empty spot at the end. “Siddown, bro.”
He might have whimpered a little on the first bite as Charlie went and poured them both a glass (technically, Maddy got a plastic tumbler) of citrus juice (not orange), leaving the jug on the bench between them. “Help yourselves to as much juice as you want. Even if you wipe this whole jug out, there's plenty more.”
“This is really awesome, Charlie. Thanks.”
Charlie placed her hand on her brother’s shoulder as she moved around the island into the hallway. “Anytime, Levi. But now I’ve gotta love you and leave you. There’s a mountain of work to get through in my office, so are you good here?”
“Totally. Thanks again, sis.”
As she walked out the door, Maddy held out a piece of her waffle to him. “Try?”
Waffles were usually too sweet for his blood, but this was the game he’d set up with her a long time ago to make her at least attempt to eat new foods. He couldn’t very well expect her to eat what he wanted her to if, now and again, he didn’t reciprocate the motion.
The honey and marshmallow whip (which tasted nothing like the jar-bought type) melted into the perfectly heated/not-too-hot waffle, giving it a sweet crunch as if it had just come out of the waffle iron. His surprise must have been written all over his face, for Maddy giggled, and he grinned. “That’s yummy.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” she hummed, just as he always had when a new food passed the initial taste test.
* * *
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

hi!! i’ve never posted anything here before and im not very well-versed in reddit so im sorry about any mistakes. i quite like understanding things through diagrams so i thought i would make on explaining how the mbti cognitive functions work(or at least how i understand them so far). i will attach a photo of my diagrams and explain what im trying to get across with each one. i apologise for the length!!!!
the drawings are in fact ridiculous looking but hopefully you can see my intention behind it. so! the basic idea of all of them: 1. the extroverted functions are enclosed in this eye-like shape. this is to emphasise the users of these functions looking outward, into the external world. 2. the introverted functions are enclosed in a brain-like shape. this is to emphasise the users looking inward, into the internal world. this is not to mean that introverted functions cannot see or experience the external world or the extroverted functions don’t have an internal world. it is simply where their attention lies. 3. outside of these shapes i have scribbled. this is to describe a blurred inner and outer world respectively. their attention does not lie outside of their shapes. 4. i repeat a couple shapes as they represent different concepts. the question marks mean like ideas, abstract concepts, theories. whereas the bin(trash can), dog and person represent physical objects, beings, tangible experiences etc.. the hearts, stars, clouds and other shapes are representations of impressions of harmony and discord felt by certain experiences and people. 5. lastly number 5, i forgot to dry draw the internal thinking part within the Fe block but just imagine its in that blurry part of it oops
okay so each type: Si- rely on inner experience and IMPRESSIONS informed by blurred external ideas and concepts
what did you see yesterday? Si forms a impression the dog, what in particular sticks out to Si about the dog and unclearly generates ideas of what the dog could look like or what the colour the dog may like to look at. what features Si sees COULD mean. (Si thinking of the answer) this is a TINY dog, this is a TIRED dog, this is a THIRSTY dog. it focuses on the impressions of it, and what Si WANTS to focus on. (Si answering) a little dog doing quite poorly
Se- rely on an UNCHANGED experience of reality and the tangible external world informed by blurred previous personal ideas and meanings
Se sees the entire dog objectively and unclearly fits any meanings it has to reality or things the dog could possibly do. it is an objective experience of the dog. so what did you see yesterday? (Se thinking of the answer) it is a tiny DOG, it is a tired DOG, it is thirsty DOG. the unclear ideas of what it could be(tiny, tired, thirsty) are picked up unknowingly and are only noticed when really focused on or compared with another object. it’s next to another dog that is clearly bigger so THEN is becomes the SMALL dog. but the important part is- (Se answer) a dog.
Ni- rely on inner, PERSONAL meaning and ideas informed by blurred scope of external world
Ni consciously connects meanings and possible implications off of a broad blurred scope. the inverse of Se. what did you see yesterday? (Ni thinking of the answer)it is thirsty, must’ve been hot that day, i smelled wet dog, there was a red sign with a monetary fine if you don’t do something. so it’s PROBABLY a dog? not too sure, but that makes the most sense with all that information. the important part was the ideas of what the thing might have been or done to become what is physically was. (Ni answering) ummm…. a dog….?
Ne- rely on POSSIBLE meanings and ideas informed by blurred impressions of reality
Ne intentionally generates many ideas off of previously lived but unclear reality. this dog gives me a lot of ideas because it’s different from dogs i’ve seen before… probably. so what did you see yesterday? (Ne thinking of the answer) a dog that was thirsty, or maybe it was trying to speak, or maybe it is a deaf dog and thought it was barking but really its mouth was just open, maybe it’s got locked jaw?? maybe i should tell the person asking me this all of the possibilities of what the dog was doing so maybe we could get to the bottom of this. (Ne answering) insert either long explanation or simply- a dog.(because they found something else that caught their eye in the middle of thinking and want to get this convo over fast enough to ponder the other thing)
i’m not very sure how to explain the thinking and feeling functions in these terms as they don’t really ‘perceive’ reality but just exist in it and inform the decisions you make in it. so i won’t as getting it wrong makes me want to throw up
Fi- rely on EXPERIENCED impressions informed by a blurred objective system Fe- rely on OTHERS’ impressions informed by a blurred experienced system Ti- rely on a decided UNDERSTOOD framework informed by an objective shared atmosphere Te- rely on adherence to a universal and FUNDAMENTAL working of reality informed by a personal impression of peace
if you find things i’ve missed or have just gotten completely wrong please let me know. i know this isn’t particularly useful to everyone but i thought maybe some people may understand things in the same way i do and maybe this will help them.

"Wade! Good to see you back buddy!" Nathan said aloud as he and F approached Wade and Tina, the two breaking their embrace before looking to their friends.
Wade chuckled a bit as he responded to Nathan's greeting, Tina giving a pleasant smile as she stood behind him. "Same to you, man. How're things here?"
"Better than any words I could use for the situation!" Looking behind him, he gazed at a group of the worker drones that were rescued from the factory, having been brought aboard in order to transport them to a safer location. Their faces were of varied gratefulness and smiles as they made conversation with some of the troops onboard. "The rescue-ees are happy to be out of that place, far as I can tell!"
"They sure look like it." Wade said with a pleased smile, admiring the success of his and the Coalition's efforts as Nathan's friend Kurtis came over to the four.
Catching sight of Tina, the veteran drone gave a sly look as he correctly guessed the identity of Wade's accomplice. "Oh, and I see you found your girl you were telling me about."
The drone in question gave a blush of embarrassment as Wade held her hand, chuckling smugly as he introduced Tina. "Ah, yeah. Nathan, Kurtis, F, this is my girlfriend Tina. She's one of the best pilots I've met and known in my life, along with her sister Jasmine."
Tina's blush intensified heavily at Wade's words, a laugh breaching her mouth as she spoke to Wade's colleagues. "Well, I don't like to boast, but my sister and I DID fly for the military a while back."
Nathan and Kurtis gave impressed laughs as F chuckled at the amusing meeting, the former of the duo speaking as he shook Tina's hand. "Heh, well it's a proud pleasure to meet you, Miss Tina! You've got quite the partner with you, I'd say. He helped save F and Gerard from an accident during our time on Ceres."
Tina raised a hand to her mouth in shock as she looked to Wade, surprised by the news of his heroics at his new job before chuckling. "Well, it's not too surprising, I'd probably be dead if he didn't come in to help us." Remembering that F was involved in her rescue too, she glanced to the disassembly drone before quietly adding, "You too, darling."
F gave a thankful smile at the pilot drone as Wade spoke up on Tina's statement on her rescue. "Well, I'd also be done for if you didn't save me back there, with that disassembly drone squad." Tina nodded as Nathan looked to the drone couple in surprise at their stated feat.
"More of them? How many? Three? Fo-" The miner drone asked as Wade answered him mid-sentence.
"Three, and they put up a nasty fight. One almost got me before Tina shot at her with one of those guns these militia guys brought. A trooper must've dropped it during the fighting." Nathan gave an uncomfortable look of shock as Wade added, "One of them looked kinda like you too."
Tina pulled out her gun before holding it at attention, Nathan nodding in admiration of her efforts as she spoke up. "Think I could keep this one? We pilots usually carry sidearms like these, but I lost mine when they kidnapped me aboard the station in orbit."
Nathan and Kurtis looked to each other before nodding in agreement. "Sure, gonna need a holster though. Wouldn't want it to fall out that nice coat there, would we?" While Nathan gave his answer, Kurtis was already heading to the storage bays at the back of the ship, planning on grabbing the sizable holster wrap for Tina's weapon.
"Of course." Tina replied as Kurtis grabbed the desired gear, shutting the cargo door as he returned to the group. Taking the holster in her hand, she handed the pistol to Wade before speaking in between her efforts to attach the holster to her upper leg. "Thanks for the compliment, by the way."
"Don't mention it." Nathan replied back as F stepped up in between the group, wanting to add her own praise as the group looked to her.
"Glad to see so many together in arms here, especially when it's work colleagues like the boys here." Looking to Tina, she continued. "And Nathan's right, Miss Tina. Your partner is quite the guy, I'm a little surprised he didn't join the service. Him and his brother would've made great men if they fought in the ranks."
The positive air was quickly shattered upon the mention of Ron. Nathan, Wade, and the others all looked to F as her eyes became golden rings, the warrior drone realizing her mistake too late as she began to raise a hand to her face.
"...Yeah. Yes, we sure would have." Wade said solemnly, nodding lightly with a slight smile in his attempt to lighten the comment and, in turn, the mood. His smile faltered once again as he saw the others still frowning in sorrow, Wade joining them shortly after before remembering something. "Uh... Nathan? You did bring his body back here, right?"
Nathan nodded hesitantly as he glanced to the cargo bays at the back of the ship. "Yeah, I uh... We put him near the others we managed to recover before we left."
Tina listened with concerned eyes as she held tightly onto Wade's hand, the former worker drone tightening his own grip while speaking further to Nathan. "Good. Maybe, after this is all over, we can... Make preparations for a service. Ron deserves that at the least."
"So... h-he's in one of... those?" Tina asked dreadfully, observing the body bags lying next to each other in front of one of the cargo bay doors before looking back to Nathan, who looked down at the floor before replying.
"...Yep." Initially, Tina started to move, morbidly concerned over Ron's exact fate before stopping herself, still holding Wade's hand as she stood next to him again. Catching a glimpse of her attempt to see Ron, Nathan raised a digital eyebrow at her. "You, uh... want to see him?"
Wade looked down to Tina, who returned the gesture as they pondered over the uncomforting idea. She admittedly didn't want to see Ron, fearful of seeing what was left of him after that battle, but in a twisted way, knowing Wade wouldn't lie to her about a close relative like Ron being dead, she desperately felt the need for even the slightest sense of closure.
Looking to each other, Tina finally built her strength up, giving the faintest nod to Wade as her answer. Accepting her willingness, Wade slowly looked to Nathan, who needed no further gestures or words as he slowly walked over to the body bags, Wade, Tina, and their colleagues in tow. Upon reaching the bags, Nathan knelt down as his friends stopped behind him, Wade and Tina watching as he slowly unzipped the bag open. Despite her effort to be brave, Tina couldn't help but let out a horrified gasp upon seeing Ron's body, immediately noticing the large wound with dark, dried blood at his chest.
Nathan shook his head in dismay as he looked upon the sight of his fallen friend in the flayed bag. "It was when we made our second attempt in raiding the factory back there. We... We managed to pass through most of the halls without much trouble, but... we we're ambushed as we got close to the conversion room."
"G, the disassembly drone that helped the company abduct me, attacked us, along with several other troopers he brought with him." Wade added, him and Tina holding each other tightly as he continued. "We fought them off well enough, but G got an upper hand on me. He almost killed me, but.... Ron got in the way." Tina felt herself beginning to cry as she collapsed into Wade's chest, the former worker drone embracing her ever more tightly as she wept for their friend.
F shook her head in dismay, disappointed in herself as she spoke up. "I could've saved him, if I hadn't let myself get beat down like that. I-"
"F!" Wade said sternly, F ceasing her self-degrading as he tried to ease her guilt. "We did the best we could. If anything, it could've gone a lot worse."
Kurtis patted F on her back as he spoke up on his co-worker. "He was a good man, tried to bring out the best in people. Taught Wade that ideal well, too." He looked to Wade with a smile, the drone taking the compliment with the same gesture as he lightly patted Tina on her back too.
"*sniff* Y-Yes... He d-did try to make life brighter with his actions." Tina croaked as she slowly lifted her head up off of Wade, wiping the digital drops off her face as she added, "He... Him and Wade did well to so many with their farm they had back home, Jasmine and I helped transport their harvests all across the colonies."
The group gave looks and nods of admiration at the labor Tina described, Wade nodding in affirmation as he added, "Yeah, we held that place up for a long while. But if it weren't for the recent storms that ran through this place, we probably would still be farming." He began to chuckle slightly as he noted the events after the storm. "Heh, then again, we probably wouldn't have gone to Ceres if that was the case. So, I'm quite glad life changed our course on that endeavor."
Nathan was about to speak on the matter, but was stopped as Kelly walked out of the cockpit area, speaking to Wade specifically. "Mr. Wade? Our operative and her boss wants to see you and some of your team, says it's about the trouble you and the others went through."
Wade and Tina looked to each other with raised eyebrows before looking to their friends, F raising a hand as she spoke to the couple. "Well, you heard her. Let's get up there." Looking to Nathan, she motioned for him to follow her before glancing to Kurtis, who nodded to her before kneeling down to seal Ron's body bag.
Turning back to Wade and Tina, F smirked at them as they quickly made their way up to the small bridge of the ship, Tina speaking to Wade about the interior and where to go. "I do remember these ships a bit, now that I think about it. There should be a smaller room at the top above us. Come on."
Holding her hand, Wade and Tina made their way into the cockpit, F and Nathan close behind as the four walked up the small steps to the pilot seats. Right next to the ascending steps were another set of such steps, albeit going the other way into another room as Tina mentioned. The lover drones walked up the second set of steps as they entered the room, catching the sound of a conversation in their ears.
"Yeah Tess, they did a number on the security forces from what I've been told by Mr. Kurtis. He seems quite pro-" J stopped as she heard a startled gasp coming from the entrance near the cockpit, spotting her requested visitors as they took notice of her.
Wade, however, was immediately in shock, Tina also spooked by the familiar face as her love drew a sword before holding it out defensively. F and Nathan looked to the two in surprise as the former raised her arms slightly as to calm down Wade, knowing this J wasn't an enemy.
"Whoa there, easy now." The human hologram said with her hands raised as Wade and Tina gave a faint glare at J, who stared unamused with her hands to her hips.
Easy, Mr. Wade. I'm a friend." J stated as Wade kept his blade trained at her.
"Didn't we just kill you out there earlier?" Tina asked as she held onto Wade's arm, J smirking as she took in the amusing detail.
"Oh, yes. I believe you must've taken out one of my clones, not surprised. I killed a few myself back there." The corporate drone replied as Wade lowered his sword, surprised at J's words as she looked to him.
"Clones?" Tina said in bewilderment, confounded by the idea of multiples of the same drone running around.
"So, there's more of you?" Wade asked as he swapped his sword back for a hand.
"Indeed there are, Mr. Wade. Effective disassembly drones get cloned more often." J answered as she cringed slightly, remembering part of the reason she ended up here. "Though, admittedly I wasn't efficient enough recently. I'm a clone of one of the old units dispatched about two decades ago, before the Disassembly Division was officially instated."
Tina raised an eyebrow at J's explanation. "Recently? If you were away all that time, what could've possibly stopped you now?"
The murder drone groaned in slight annoyance as she reluctantly explained her answer. "Well, the colony we were supposedly sent to wipe out was quite persistent. During one of our raids, some brat with a ray gun blasted me in two." Regaining her composure, J flicked her hair with a smirk. "Then again, my clones should be better than they are, the Administrator seems to have a dislike towards me, as far as I can tell."
Wade and Tina glanced at each other as they took in the news, perplexed at the story they were hearing as the former spoke up. "Well, I sure hope so. Your clone didn't put up as much of a fight as I was expecting."
"Right..." J said with a look of disappointment before clearing her throat. "But besides that, we don't have time for THAT kind of backstory. We've got a lot of talk to do, Mr. Wade."
The holographic human raised a finger, drawing Wade and Tina's attention as she spoke. "Say, didn't J tell me about a human friend you had? A 'brother' guy?"
J nodded as she now also became curious over their missing acquaintant. "Ah yes, Ron, I believe. Do you know where he is, Wade?"
The two drones looked down in sorrow as Wade answered in dismay. "He uh... he didn't make it."
J allowed a concerned look to breach her shield of confident pride as her human friend spoke up, sounding sad at the news. "Oh, I uh, I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. W- er... Carter."
"It's alright," Wade replied as he held Tina's hand, looking up to J and the hologram before continuing. "at least he's not hurting anymore."
"My... condolences, Mr. Carter." J said, calling Wade by his last name now as she recovered from the tragic news. "But, it seems you've found someone else important. Who's your friend?"
Wade perked up a bit as he prepared to introduce Tina again. "Ah, yes. This is Tina Fowley, my girlfriend. She was among those captured by the company, I got her out before they could turn her, however."
"She's a pilot too." Nathan chirped from behind Wade, J and her boss stifling laughs as they took in the amusing description of Wade's partner.
"Well, she's quite the cutie, I'll say." The holo-human said in amusement, Tina blushing at the compliment as J spoke as well.
"Indeed she is, good find, Mr. Carter." Chuckling to herself, she remembered that she hadn't even formally met Wade earlier, prompting her to return the effort. "Well, now's as good a time as any to introduce ourselves." Looking to the hologram, J spoke. "Though you probably know who I am, name's J. And this is my boss, Tessa."
Looking to the human girl with a pleasant smile, he spoke to her. "Well, pleased to meet you, Mrs. Tessa."
"Good to meet ya too, Wade!" Tessa replied energetically before bringing herself back to a more serious stance, Wade and Tina feeling a bit surprised by the change of air as she spoke further. "And as much as I hate to cut the pleasantries so short, J and I have some important things to brief you on. So, take a seat and get comfy, everyone."
Noting the pair of chairs in front of the small table J and Tessa were standing on the other side of, the couple took them as Nathan and F stood behind them, simply listening in as J began to explain the matter at hand. "So, you both are probably wondering what this whole mess was all about, correct?"
The two drones nodded as Tina spoke up. "I heard it was having to do something with being recruited for the Disassembly Division, that group you spoke of a second ago. Why did they need to steal me away from my sister up there?"
"Well, the thing is, they didn't." Tessa answered, putting her hands to her hips as her companion explained further.
"Indeed, a simple memory transfer and body scan would've sufficed, but it seems the Administrator was in a bit of a rush." Crossing her arms, J continued in disgruntlement. "From what we gathered, this was done by her as per request by the company CEO, Mr. Jenson. He wanted the Administrator to recruit more drones under a new model of disassembly drone, with slight upgrades that would presumably remove most of the persistent issues each of us have." Shaking her head in disappointment, J finished with, "But, it's clear she cared little for how they were acquired, and way too far overboard with her efforts."
Wade held back his anger as he felt his certainty on the ones responsible grow with J's explanation. "So, it's true? Your people did all this? Got my brother and countless others killed for us?"
The corporate drone seemed to give a sluggish wave of her hand as she replied to Wade. "Well, you see, this whole ordeal is much more complex than it seems." Readying a holo-projector from her hand as it showed the image of a worker drone, dressed in a maid uniform. The hair was silver, two strips of it going down the sides of its head, as well as bearing a bow at the top of it all. Though the hologram made it hard to tell certain details, the drone's eyes appeared faintly as yellow through the blue hue from the hologram light.
Wade, Tina, and their companions eyed the seemingly innocent worker drone in puzzlement as J spoke again. "Now, you should count yourselves lucky, cause what I'm about to tell you is something corporate wouldn't let me spew out to anyone under certain statuses." Looking to Tessa, she continued with a sly smirk. "Then again, it'd probably be forced out of us anyway later on even if we didn't decide to tell you. So, now would be the best time to give you a run-down of the truth we have to share."
"Truth?" Wade asked with a raised hand, J nodding in affirmation before replying.
"Yes." Clearing her throat, J began. "You see, the Administrator was not a creation of JCJenson. At least, not in the way they intended. In fact, she was once a normal worker drone, just like you and I were." Wade raised an eyebrow as J's holo-projector shifted to show a building, a large, very old looking manor that went up a couple of stories high. As Wade and his cohorts observed the structure, J continued her story about her and this Administrator's origins.
"A long time ago, at this place we'll call Elliott Manor, my boss, who was still a child at the time, brought in a few worker drones left outside in a dump near the mansion, mostly composed of scrapped worker drone bodies. Upon bringing us in, Tess would fix us up so we could be her friends. I myself, along with three other drones, were her closest companions. Her family weren't so keen on having us around, but, to keep their daughter happy and to make us useful, Mr. and Mrs. Elliott put us to work keeping the place tidy." The disassembly drone's projector shifted again to show J and her three fellow workers, dressed in the same maid attire J was shown in earlier. Wade and Tina stared at two of them, as they resembled the disassembly drones they fought earlier, most notably N and V.
"Among the four of us here, THIS one would be the biggest problem." The hologram zoomed into the worker drone displayed earlier, postured in a strange, slouched over posture.
"Her name is Cyn, and, unlike J, V and N there, she was more broken than I had surmised back then. Spoke like some old artificial voice generator thing." Tessa stated, pointing at the highlighted drone before Tina decided to speak up on the backstory.
"How broken? Was there something wrong with her coding?" She said as she put a hand to her core.
J nodded lightly as she gave her answer. "Most likely. Do you remember the protocol tape for proper disposal of worker units? Seen it at all?"
Tina and Wade shivered a bit as they thought of the presumed tape J spoke of, dread creeping in from their memories of seeing it as the latter of the duo answered. "I think so, once during a little maintenance time I had years back. I think it was called... 'Zombie Drones'?"
"That's exactly the one." J said with a nod before continuing. "Well, if you saw it all the way through, the pie chart diagram points out the outcomes for OS complications should a worker core be improperly terminated. Out of those outcomes, the smallest, least likely one was 'potentially hazardous mutations'." Pointing to Cyn on the hologram, J continued further. "As for Cyn here, she befell said mutations, and they would come to not only affect her, but all of us at the manor too."
Tina's eyes went wide as she started to click the pieces together, recalling herself reading up on the incident J was hinting at years earlier during a class she took at the college she and Wade attended. "Wait... You, you don't mean SHE was the one who caused the Elliott Gala Massacre?"
J nodded in affirmation as Wade spoke up, confused at the revelation. "Wait, I remember looking into that too. Didn't the news say it was some mass murderer that did it?"
"That they did." Tessa replied as she added to the story. "However, that was a cover-up by the company to hide part of what really happened."
Pulling up what appeared to be a large room full of people inside, J explained the tragedy shown on the projector. "Tessa's parents didn't treat the drones under their service well, and Cyn seemed to despise them for it. On that day during a gala hosted by the Elliotts, Cyn, utilizing the mutations I mentioned, slaughtered the entire attending party there." Glancing to Tessa, J finished with, "Tess and I tried to stop her, but... it was too late."
Holding their hands to their mouths, Wade and Tina looked on in horror, Nathan and F sharing similar dismay as the four looked to Tessa. Knowing their desire to hear how she was spared, Tessa spoke to them. "Despite seeing her kill my parents and everyone in that room with my own eyes, Cyn spared me from the carnage. Took me away to some place so I could be kept quiet."
Raising a hand, F spoke up. "Well, wait a minute, how did Cyn join the company after all that?"
"Good question." J replied, pulling up an image of Cyn and a man, whom Wade recognized as Halloway before the corporate drone explained. "Upon the arrival of law enforcement and agents sent by the company, they found Cyn, who had already turned me and the other worker drones from the manor into the first disassembly drones. After some chatter between the two, Dr. Edgar Halloway, a simple materials recovery officer at the time, struck a deal with her. Talking with the authorities, they managed to convince them to keep the incident on the down low while they took Cyn and her drones in for study. Through said study, addition of protocols and official installation of Cyn into higher company positions, not to mention the creation of the Disassembly Drone Division, the rest is history."
The four drones looked on in stunned shock, taking in Tessa and J's story with unease as Wade spoke up. "So, this new body, the crazy shit that we just went through... it's all cause of this Cyn being? And those who are helping her?"
"That's right." J answered as Tina raised a finger, still concerned over the capabilities of the Administrator as she spoke.
"But, how did she convert you all into what you are now? What were these 'mutations' exactly?"
Tessa sighed a bit as she prepared to explain the origins of this horrible program. "Well, from what information I could gather before I got out of Cyn's clutches a while back, the researchers put to work studying Cyn and her abnormalities came to regard the latter as some kind of program, which grew stronger and more capable quite fast as it was kept under the company's leash. Eventually, they gave it a name: AbsoluteSolver." Pulling out what looked like a smartcomm, Tessa flicked her finger over it as she explained further. "Despite all logic, the AbsoluteSolver program, or, Solver, could generate various things out of thin air, as well as manipulate objects and living beings in many ways. To be blunt, it's like some kind of freaky magic powers for drones.
"Seeing that they could learn a lot from this program, as well as use Cyn's abilities to wring out all kinds of products and items for them to sell and use, the company instated the Solver Project, a research group dedicated to understanding the AS and its potential." Raising a finger, Tessa looked to Wade as she finished her explanation on the Solver. "Said program has been branched out to several other planets over the years, helping to spread this virus as far as possible for purposes we're certain aren't good, given that one of those planets got devastated by an experiment one of the teams did involving the virus."
The news that this infection brought harm to one of the colony worlds didn't sit well with the lover drones, both of them looking on in dismay as J gave more details. "And with that in mind, this recent effort has only cemented our belief that Cyn is up to something sinister. So once we reach the base here in Nevada, we have to make preparations for bringing this Solver Project to a halt... BEFORE it can harm any more people."
Smirking deviously, Tessa raised a finger as she glanced to Wade, who looked to her with concern as she spoke. "By the way Mr. Carter, that Halloway guy you ran into earlier? He leads one of the main teams working on the project."
Wade scoffed in annoyance he was reminded of that man. "Doesn't surprise me, seemed like he was really close to the Administrator from what I saw." Then, thinking on the reason for this briefing he was attending, Wade looked to J and Tessa curiously. "Why are you telling us this?"
J crossed her arms as she explained. "Because, Mr. Carter, YOU are the only disassembly drone we managed to recover from that place. And, given your exceptional performance there, your help would be much appreciated in our mission."
"Mission?" Tina said with a raised eyebrow. "So we're not done yet?"
"For us, not in the slightest. We've got some explaining to do with the government officials stationed at the base we're heading to. As for you all," J answered before looking to the four, all of them returning the glance as she continued. "...that depends on what you all have to say. Can you lend us a hand?"
Glancing to each other, Wade and Tina gazed into one another before nodding in agreement, turning back to J and Tessa before giving their decision. "Well, after what I just went through, and what happened to my brother... I'm sure as hell gonna bring those bastards to justice in one form or another."
"Yes, Wade and I have some talking to do with this 'Dr. Halloway' fellow before this is all over." Tina added, her and Wade holding each others hand as J gave a smirk at their vigorous determination.
"I'm glad to hear you two feel the same on the matter." J said as Tessa put her hands to her hips, slumped slightly as she spoke in a disappointed tone.
"Unfortunately, it may be a minute before we see some action. Once we reach the base, you all will find a place to rest for the time being. Since it's a military base, it should be safe from any major retribution attempts by those blokes at the company." Pulling out her smartcomm again, she continued once more. "As for us, we'll talk to the leaders there and see what their decision will be on the matter."
The quartet seemed to grow concerned over that last part, Nathan raising a hand before speaking his mind. "So, if they say no? Does that mean...?"
J and Tessa glanced to each other before the former answered the veteran drone. "Well, in that case, while it will be harder without official military support, the Coalition will take us wherever we need them to in order to put a stop to the Administrator. Shouldn't be much to worry about."
Taking this somewhat comforting news to heart, Tina and Wade nodded in understanding before the latter spoke to the operatives. "Well, that's good to hear. Whenever you do get an answer, give us a heads up."
"We will, Mr. Carter." J replied to Wade before shifting in her stance, Wade and his friends standing up together as their disassembly drone superior spoke once more. "With all that said, you're all dismissed. If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask."
"Thanks for clearing this up, Mrs. J. You too, Tessa." Wade said gratefully before turning to the exit, Tina walking with him as F and Nathan walked over to the operatives.
"Wade? Do you mind coming down to the bay below? I... I have something to show you." Wade nodded to her before they made their way down, the four people behind them continuing the chatter as the couple went to have their long overdue privacy.
Stepping out of the cockpit behind them, Wade and Tina sighed in comfort as they saw the troops busy with their tasks, not giving a glance to the two as they walked close to the sealed door of the transport. Admiring the enormous view the large window in the door gave for a moment, the two drones looked to each other as Tina dug into her pocket. "I was hoping to do this when we got back home, but... I got this from Eridanus while I was visiting." Finding her token of love to Wade, she pulled out the small box she showed off on the call earlier, opening it to reveal her present.
Wade admired the blue gemstone with wide eyes as Tina pulled it out with great care. "Wow... It's beautiful."
Tina chuckled as she extended the gem's necklace band out. "I knew you would, I just happened to stumble upon it while exploring the forest during a tour." Putting the two necklace bands around Wade's neck, she clipped the present together before pulling her arms back, adoring Wade's new add-on as she finished her sentence. "I felt it would be something nice for you to remember me by, while we're away from each other."
Wade smiled at Tina as he expressed his appreciation for the gift. "It certainly will." Stiffling a chuckle, the former worker drone held Tina's hand holding the box as he spoke further. "But, no matter how far apart we are, nothing could fill the space you hold in my heart."
"Same in mine, dear." Tina replied as she gazed into Wade's eyes, noting the faint green in his yellowed visor as she looked on in hopeful amusement. "And yet, even after all they did, I can still see those eyes. Changed from the soft, cool grass to the warmth of a blazing sun." She said while putting the box away, then placing a hand onto Wade's face as he looked off with a blush.
"Tina, I..." Wade began, unsure of how to put his thoughts to words as he tried to find them. "I don't know what they did to me, but I won't let it ruin our relationship." Holding her shoulders, Wade spoke to Tina further. "You're the most beautiful being I've seen in the whole universe, your warmth, your flight prowess... I want to protect that. I want to protect you."
"Oh, Wade." Tina murmured as the two touched their heads to one another, holding each other close in their efforts to provide affection. Such affection intensified as the two joined their metal lips, sharing a long kiss as they enjoyed their moment of awkward romance together.
...
Location: New Nellis Staryards, Nevada
The Chameleon transports zoomed over the large military air base as they arrived at their destination, several A-20 planes flying about over the base as they either carried out flight sorties or, more likely, investigated the arriving craft coming towards the base. After about an hour of flying over the country, the Coalition-USN task force finally arrived at the designated area to begin unloading their rescued drones to an area they could be protected more efficiently.
As the transport began to descend, Wade, Tina, and their friends observed the sight outside the window, spotting several landed aircraft and even a few docked warships. They admired the many ships resting for repair and refurbishment while they prepared to land and disembark for the base outside.
In the small bridge of the dropship, one of the two pilots tapped a button on the control panel, putting a microphone to their mouth before speaking into it. "Base Control, this is Transport Chi-729-B, we've got assets from the recent op lead by Captain Preston aboard. Request permission to land."
"Permission granted, Chi-729. Welcome back." The officer on the other end replied as the transport descended further, two lightningrod jets breaking off as they permitted the craft to land on their grounds below them.

That guy who made that horrible hate post (u/Buyer999) made a pretty cool concept so I decided to fix it up. “But isn’t that disrespectful?” Yes… (btw sorry if my grammar isn’t the best)
1: ALCATRAZOUTBREAK (this name is fine so I’m keeping it like this) plot: in the Montyverse Alcatraz was contained but the death of the Martian Serpent released energy that Alcatraz consumed which made it powerful enough to escape and releases more TDMDs
2 goes from EIFFELTOWERPARASITE to PARISPARASITE: plot: it starts out with a interview with (I forgot his name) and then plays the palm parasite video. After that it shows a diagram of the inside of the Eiffel Tower (like in LIBERTYLURKER) and lastly it does one of the class creature reveal which shows some people infected with the parasites
3 goes from MOUNTFUJIDISASTER to FUJIFRAGMENT: plot: it starts out with a interview with Quinn Arnoldson (since we know what his sister was doing in the Montyverse at the time) where he talks about going to Japan for work and saw a large fragment of Mount Fuji shoot out and a heart (I’m talking about a heart like the one in White House heart) came out of the mountain. After this it shows that event happening. Then it shows a diagram of the inside of Mount Fuji which shows the hearts within and smaller hearts called fairies and ends off with playing the beautiful fairies video
4 goes from WASHINGTONCURSE to AMERICAAFTERMATH: this is basically just here to elaborate on America’s true self which was confirmed to be the “ecosystem” of TFMDs. In the QnA Alex only talks about the 4 in Trinity Desk but this would also talk about other TFMDs and how they fit into this “ecosystem” by the prospective of a government worker going through files about America’s true self
5 goes from DISNEYLANDMADNESS to MONSTERMADNESS: and this is here to elaborate on MONUMENTMYTHOLOGY, the effects of Alcatraz, and why trump started crying blood (btw I just wanted to say: this connecting to that one creepypasta is stupid as fuck)
6 goes from PYRAMIDWALKER to DEMONDEMOCRACY: I put this here to talk about the other side of the coin, the debate demon. And also talks about what parts of MONUMENTMYTHOLOGY are real and what’s not
7 goes from THE TRINITY BOMB TEST to CRESCENTCORNERS: plot: it would be in the same style as ARNOLDSONALONE showing drawings made by a Lunarian going across universes until making it to the robverse (btw this Nixonverse isn’t the same one from the Nixonverse)
8 goes from CORNERDOOR to CORNERCAT: plot: uhhhh… i don’t know just put the original idea for CORNERCAT
9 goes from THE NATURE OF THE DEANVERSE to LAUREN BEFORE AND AFTER (sorry for the shitty name, this is a interesting idea I had so I wanted to make this fit) plot: it shows the true last upload from Doctor Disturbing which shows what happened to his sister, Lauren. What happened to her is that she was sent into the Venus serpent metastructure by Alcatraz (I know in a QnA it’s said that Alcatraz isn’t intelligent and just wants to grow but idc) because the horned serpent is getting in Alcatraz’s way to grow into the horned serpent metastructure, so Alcatraz turns Lauren into the Venus serpent to kill the horned serpent
10 goes from THE HOUSE AND AN KING to THE MODERN DAY: plot: it’s a re-upload
11 goes from WONDERLAND, ALWAYS to AMERICAATTACKED: plot: it goes over how since Alcatraz escaped all of the TFMDs has been going crazy (like how all of that crazy shit happened in 2003 in the deanverse). This episode would be similar to GIZAGUARDIAN in the way that it goes over a lot but with one main theme, in GIZAGUARDIAN it’s freedom and here it’s the Venus serpent
12 goes from THE HORNED SERPENT APOCALYPSE to the start of a world: plot: it would be a shorter episode but that is because this is meant to set up season two. It starts out with Cthonaut A telling us about what’s happened and how Everett’s freedom’s and the angel’s sacrifice was for nothing. After going on about this for a while he says “I can’t let that happen, i can’t let that act of true kindness go to waste. This is for you, Everett, Thomas, Nina, the men, for everyone” it then cuts to two glowing spheres of light combining into one and the text “the Montyverse and the Nixonverse are now one. Mister A will give them all a better life”
Thanks for reading all of that and if I got anything wrong or if you have a better idea for some of these things please tell me! Thanks again and have a wonderful day

Hi everyone!
Here are my cycle results applying to both the US and Canada. I did not apply to many schools in Canada because it would have been the equivalent of burning money with my stats (would have been auto-rejected and screened by all other schools outside of the ones I applied to this year). I ultimately decided to withdraw my US acceptance because it was just too expensive with the lack of a scholarship ($600k CAD in the US vs $100-200k CAD here at UBC). I didn't find the education to be worth triple the price of learning here despite the potential opportunities that UCLA may have been able to provide (the weather and location would have been amazing though ngl). It was a really expensive cycle with all the applications I did (spent a few thousand dollars applying).
Here is a previous post I made about my cycle and experiences as well: https://www.reddit.com/premedcanada/comments/1aqd7x2/for_those_thinking_of_applying_to_the_us_my_cycle/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Overall, I am SUPER happy and excited for the fall and can't wait to meet many of y'all :)))))))
Good luck to those in future cycles and those still on waitlists - my heart goes out for you.
Here is my Sankey diagram: https://imgur.com/a/yMYItyk

I'm trying to get better asap. So far I'm not getting any better. I'm looking at all the diagrams I can, all the videos I can, all the online instructions I can of drawing heads and faces. Now I'm just getting stressed out again to the point I'm sitting here scribbling my trash sketches with my heart rate being about 157 bpm cause if this stress. I'm always stressed about everything and I want to be good enough to draw good art. I just don't know what to do. There's so many videos and diagrams of diffrent ways to draw a face or a head you have no idea which one will work or which one is good enough. I can't draw what I see. (Even flipping the subject upside-down doesn't help) I can draw a head 1000 times and it's not getting better. I draw a couple good heads one day and the next it's like everything I leaned just the previous day is gone even though I try so hard and put so much work into it. I don't want to drift back to the cycle of me destroying my own artwork and sketch books potentially hurting myself cause I'd get so pissed off at myself and stressed out. I desire to create and draw. I want to draw characters and comics and graphic novels so bad but I can't till I'm good enough to do so. Practice doesn't make perfect cause if it did I would be getting better.

EDITED TO ADD: WRONG TITLE. ITS FOR COMBINED SCIENCE ONLY
Okay so here are the questions that I remember from my biology paper :) (could and could not be in order)
A company produces a drink with fructose instead of glucose. Fructose is sweeter than glucose.

• 2(?) marker - Give two reasons why the company would use fructose instead of glucose in their drink
• 3 marker - state the test that would be done for glucose in the drink

Test_________________________
Positive result_______________

• 2 marker - State the test that would be done for protein in the drink

Test_________________________
Positive result_______________

• 3 marker - plot the results from table two onto the graph. Only plot the results from 0.2 to 1.0. Draw a line of best fit. One result has already been plotted.
• 1 marker - Find the concentration of salt in solution Z in cm^3/ dom.
• 4 marker- smoking can impact the lungs (?) DIAGRAM HERE

Person B is a smoker while person A is a non-smoker. Explain why Person B breathes bettefaster during exercise than person A.

• 1 marker - something about where do plants new cells come from - answer is MERISTEM
• 5 marker - magnification question (im cooked) Diagram HERE calculate the magnification.
• 6 marker - proteins and fats from the drinks (the company thing AGAIN) are digested by our digestive system(?). Explain how they are digested (?)

In your answer, you should:

• mention what enzymes are used
• (something else that i forgor)
• 1 marker - what type of pathogen causes measles?
• 2 marker - Explain how to reduce the spread of measles. Do NOT mention vaccines in your answers.

1_________
2_________

• 3 marker - Explain the difference between a prokaryotic cell and a eukaryotic cell.

1_________
2_________
3_________

• 2 marker - A gardener is growing tomatos ??? greenhouse??? (anyways) the temperature is set to 15C. A heater can increase the temperature to 25C. Explain why a heater should not be used in the greenhouse. Do NOT refer to cost in your answers

1_______
2_______

• 3 marker - Explain how vaccines can help patients/ people build immunity against measles/ the measles pathogen.
• 3 marker - Percentage question. Something about a table with with results and you had to calculate the percentage increase of X.
• 6 marker - Angina causes chest pain and tiredness. (something about how it is related to Coronory Heart Disease). Explain how (???). In your answer, you should include: Symptoms + causes of angina, How to reduce its symptoms.

4 marker - Explain all four stages of mitosis on the diagram. Diagram HERE
1 marker - Which type of microscope was used to see the (cell???) explain why it was used.
1 marker - (multiple choice) which formula/reaction is photosynthesis?
2 marker - Measles is a virus that will make you ill. Explain how a pathogen / virus can make you ill.
I will continue updating while I remember the rest of the questions :). If there's any ones anyone can remember then please do tell me so i can add them. Also tell me if there is any mistakes in these questions.
These are only from memory, so wording will not be 100% correct :)

🪞 “It's much easier to get in that it is to get out,” Emilie Autumn used to say. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4.1 - Part 4.2
She was not wrong. Welcome back to the Asylum write-up!
In this installment, we're finally getting down to the nitty-gritty of the enmity between EA and her fans.
It's time for war. It's time for blood. It's time... for tea. 🎵

THE PRESENT DAY: “ASK ME ANYTHING (WELL, NOT QUITE)”

​

"Ask me anything" titles are catchy, and that’s why I’m using one. But, obviously, don’t ask me anything, by which I mean that, if you think I wouldn’t answer it, you’re probably right. Ask me something really good. I’d love to answer you. I’d love to have comments on these posts, in fact, so that I could answer questions there regularly and ask you things as well, but insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, or so Einstein is supposed to have said, and attempting to create yet another interactive online venue after every previous attempt has ended in heartbreak—forums, facebook groups, social media accounts—it would indeed be insanity to think that this time would be any different. So there are no comments. This too is heartbreaking in the sense that, and you may not realize this, but I desperately want to connect more completely with you—to be able to intelligently converse and share and exchange. We can do that in person, of course, because the wrong people never show up in person. Isn’t that funny… So, perhaps we’ll have to arrange that;). I’ll start you off with an example question I’d want to know if I were you (I can almost guarantee that you do not want to know this). Q. Hey EA, how do you keep your wireless bodypack transmitter secure when you are leaping about in skimpy costumes and doing frequent costume changes? Also, dye your roots. A. Fantastic question, EA, and I just dyed my roots thank you very much. ... (Deleted blog post followed by a year of radio silence, 2022 📝)

Sooo. For the past five-ish years, the vibe in the Asylum has been that of a protracted Christmas dinner where everyone is tensely moving their food around in their plate, bracing themselves for whatever will trigger the screaming match. Wondering what it's going to be this time. Weary old-timers make small talk about the food because no other topic feels safe. Every glance, every forced smile, is fraught with eons-old grudges and unspoken regrets; every nervous pleasantry sounds like a thinly-veiled accusation. Aunt Emilie always insists on hosting, but not-so-secretly hates having people over. Sooner or later, she finds a way to get all of these assholes out of her house. Most of the adult children are daydreaming about going no-contact.
Everyone ready for some dysfunctional family history?
CW for discussion of bullying, online harassment, mental illness stigma.

YE OLDEN DAYS: CUCKOOS OF A FEATHER NEST TOGETHER

In the beginning, it was beautiful.
EA had the excellent instinct to start banking on her online presence📝 long before MySpace was even a thing. She had a website, several online stores, an active LiveJournal and a ProBoards forum right from the turn of the millennium.
In 2004, she attached an official forum to her website; the earliest archive shows 74 registered users. By the time Opheliac came out in 2006, that number had grown tenfold. And it was, by most accounts, a pretty dope place to be! (I should specify that this write-up focuses on the anglophone side of the fandom: there were also thriving fan-run communities in at least German, French, and Spanish. Because EA doesn't speak any of those languages, the lucky bastards were mostly left alone.)
Forum users enjoyed interacting with some of EA's closest IRL friends and associates – and with the mistress of the house herself (user flair: PsychoFiddler), when she occasionally responded to comments under her own posts. But that wasn't even the main appeal for many. For a long time, on top of all EA-related topics, the official forum had very active “Off-Topic” subforums, with lively and friendly conversation on a variety of subjects. (There was even a “Filthy Libertines (18+)” sub for a while, which was closed due to preemptive concerns about minors.) Swear words (not slurs) were allowed and encouraged, and moderation was overall pretty loose beyond basic enforcement of civility. There was a lot of mutual support, creativity, and solid banter going around.

It wasn't just about Emilie on the forums. People could chat about almost anything with near free reign, making connections and lifelong friends. ... This community mattered SO MUCH to people. They felt included, accepted, and understood within the walls of the Asylum. People invested their time and creative energy into keeping the forums a vibrant, active community, and made sure that carried over into the real world. ... I've never seen anything like it in a fan space. I doubt I ever will again. (@Asylum_Oracle - “Fandom History” Instagram highlight 🔍📝, which contains most of the sources for this segment.)

And it did, indeed, carry over into the real world. There were numerous meet-ups – a few organized by EA, many more spontaneous. People who didn't know any other EA fans in real life, or were just excited to add new Plague Rats to their friend group, would regularly connect with other forum users from their area to meet up and hang out before EA shows. “Who else is dressing up??”
In 2008, for instance, EA held an afternoon meet-up at Lincoln Park in Chicago. 📺 The event was free to attend; it featured live acoustic music and a reading from EA's upcoming book, the intriguingly-titled Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls.
On the appointed day, EA rolled up in a fabulously tousled red wig, bedazzled white corset and steampunk-altered wedding dress. She had brought friends alongs. Sporting blue hair and a pink bustle and corset was her Chicago bestie, the main forum admin. Rocking a guitar and a top hat was EA's sound engineer, the soft-spoken wizard behind the Victoriandustrial sound, who was also a forum mod. The photographer from the original Opheliac cover art was there as well; he was formally introduced by EA and got his own round of applause.

People who would never normally be involved in an artist's fanbase were in EA's world. And not only were they known – they were respected and incredibly active with the fanbase. These people who managed an online message board were willing to engage in real-world meet-ups (with no security??) because of how tight-knit the community they had built was. People turned out to this event. People traveled to go to this event. It was a short reading of a book that hadn't been released yet, and wouldn't be for some time. Why? Because not only was it a chance to meet Emilie and listen to parts of the new book, but it was also a chance to hang out with their friends from the Asylum. ... The fandom really was a family for a lot of people. (@Asylum_Oracle)

“SERIOUSLY, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE.”

It all started with The End.
The End Records, that is! Quick refresher: in 2009, after three years or so with Trisol, EA split from the label over allegations that the owner was embezzling money from ticket sales. A few months later, she signed with The End Records. Understandably, EA still wanted to sell the album that had made her famous, and to which she had smartly retained the rights – which meant a brand new, “Deluxe” release of Opheliac. (Remember, from part 3? The one you could pre-order as a bundle with the book? Some projects are just cursed, I guess.)
At that point, Opheliac had been released three times already, as recently as the year before, with only slight variations in format and tracklist. (Yes, that is a theme in this story.) The End Records version would feature new cover art and a handful of new tracks, but overall, it was... you know... the same album.
(The following paragraphs are largely sourced from this excellent recap 🔍📝, which also provides potato screenshots for all quotes.)
One fateful day of August 2009, a user started a thread entitled “Opheliac US edition deluxe re-release??” in the “EA News” subforum. In the thread, some people were kind of balking at the re-do, pondering whether to buy the “new” Opheliac or sit this one out. Some expressed that after three years, they were jonesing for a new album. Others shared what B-sides or dream covers they would have liked to see included on the bonus disc. Just... fans being fans, in a fan discussion space.
And then EA jumped out from behind the curtains.

Fan: Okay. Before I start, I just want you to know that I think it's very good that EA is getting more popularity, and that she can release lots of albums, but - are 5 editions of the same album really needed? You may say now “ah, it's not the same, it has 2 bonus tracks” or whatever, but I mean: it's not new material. Now don't get me wrong. I'm happy for it, maybe I'll even buy it, but I'm just wondering if she shouldn't keep herself busy with other (maybe more important) stuff? * hides * EA: Nobody's forcing you to buy it. Thanks.

Record scratch.

Fan 1: is this Opheliac release version number 4? lol If she's recording NEW tracks, then surely they deserve to be sold by themselves, otherwise people are going to have to buy an album that they may have already bought twice (like me!). But... alas, I am a fool and adore everything this woman does... im buying it lol Fan 2: exactly – if it was just reissuing the last version of Opheliac to tap into new markets that would be fine (...) but if they start adding extra bits of material to albums people already have then the true muffins are going to feel obliged to buy new copies (...) EA: How exactly are you obliged to buy anything? Nobody is forcing you to spend a fucking penny, my dears. I suppose it would make more sense to you to simply not have my records available any more as the old label I just escaped from will no longer be distributing them? Forgive me for adding extra tracks. No obligation necessary.

...Okay, so I'm pretty sure that we can see both sides of the argument here. Fans are annoyed at the idea of spending money on barely-anything-new, because they love EA and buy every single CD she releases. EA is exasperated by fans acting like she's twisting their arm and somehow resenting the inclusion of new material, when she was just ensuring that her album would remain available for purchase and trying to keep things interesting.
But maybe we can also agree that those replies should have been screamed into a pillow rather than typed out on a keyboard.
EA was getting increasingly (and, I'll just say it: disproportionately) sarcastic and defensive in her replies. Enter poor FantineDormouse.
FantineDormouse meant well, I think. Maybe she thought, she's spiraling. Maybe she thought, friends don't let friends go down that road. Granted, FantineDormouse probably should have known better than to phrase it the way she did. Or to assume that EA perceived her as a friend.
Either way, at some point, FantineDormouse jumped in and posted the comment that finally made EA lose it. THE comment which, overnight, ended the honeymoon period of the Asylum, triggering a doomsday domino effect from which the fandom would never truly recover. Are you comfortably seated?

FantineDormouse: Uhm, Emilie, love, I don't mean to sound rude or anything... but maybe you should have a cup of tea and relax a little.

...
* sound of archduke getting shot *

EA: Excuse me? You can throw this onslaught of absolute cruel bullshit at me and those I work with in my own space that I own, and I can't say anything back? How fucking patronizing. Relax? Are you fucking kidding me? Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? FD: I'm not trying to piss you off even more, Emilie. And trust me, I have to deal with it myself, and as much as I would really love to punch the cunts I have to deal with in the face, I don't. You're pissed off, I get it. You're bipolar, which makes it 10x worse, I get that. I'm just not the person to stand around and do nothing when a fight where I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of regret is going on.

Famous last words. Literally! Immediately after EA delivered her irate closing statement – which includes one of my all-time favorite EA zingers, bolded...

EA: I cannot believe this... You just don't stop, do you? So just because I've shared the personal information with you all that I happen to be bipolar, I can't get pissed off at all of you being perfectly awful in the very space that I pay fuckloads a month to have up (has it ever occurred to you all that I pay dearly for this space you play around in?) Why not just tell me that I must be upset because it's my time of the month? Seriously, get the fuck out of my house. You are unbelievable, and your level of patronization is almost criminal. Don't make me write another book. With muffins like you, who needs enemies? Nothing I say or feel is legitimate, not ever ever ever because I'm bipolar... discredited before I begin... unbelievable...

...FantineDormouse got permabanned.
Jaws dropped. After days of infighting between white knights, detractors, and crossfire negotiators, several mod resignations, and general mayhem surrounding the ban, EA made a post entitled “In Which: I Invite You to Make a Fucking Choice.” 📝 For brevity's sake (cue laugh track), I can't reproduce it in all of its righteous splendor, but it's quite a read. It runs the gamut from fair and articulate points about how mental illness shouldn't be used to discredit someone's legitimate anger... to histrionic commands that “deserters to the cause” should “turn in their weapons” if they can't handle her way of doing things.

To those of you who appear not to understand why said posts, most especially those of the banned party, were offensive to me, I give you the option to either educate yourselves on your own time and in your own space (because please never forget that this is my space that I share with all of you at my own expense, and in which I generally give you all the freedom I would wish for myself), or to resign your posts in the Asylum Army – this is not the place for you, and I humbly suggest that you turn your attention and support towards other artists of a more placid, non-controversial, and less opinionated nature; there are more than enough of them out there, and I’m sure they all have forums of their own.

Some fans did leave. Most stuck around, whiplashed. Soon, the storm quieted down, and business as usual resumed on the forum. But something had been damaged beyond repair. The FantineDormouse fiasco had erected walls and drawn lines in the sand, both around EA and among her fans; its sad specter would haunt every Asylum crisis that spiked up forever after. “Fucking Patronizing Fucking” or “FPF” 🔍 became memetic shorthand in the fandom for overreaction and self-righteousness. 🐀
...And now you understand why, in the following years, some fans were so delicate and diplomatic in voicing their very legitimate complaints about messed-up orders, unsigned books, and puzzling lies... while unofficial platforms like Tumblr flourished with pent-up resentment and snark. 🦠

A NOTE ON HARASSMENT: “MAD GIRL, CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT THEY'VE DONE TO YOU?”

Wouldn't they stop When you asked them to leave you alone? (“Mad Girl”, 2008 🎵)

Now, let's be clear, because it should not be minimized: EA has also been the target of genuine online harassment. Based on the simple fact that she is a woman with a public presence on the internet, I have zero doubt that EA has received (and perhaps continues to receive) more than her share of truly vile, bigoted, creepy and threatening messages – and, knowing what I know about the darker recesses of the Asylum, a terrifying amount of emotional blackmail and obsessive projection from people who hold her to punitively high standards. I'm also inclined to believe that it started way before she ever did anything that warranted any backlash. And that fucking sucks. It's repulsive and inexcusable, and the people who harass her should crawl into a hole and live among the worms.
Notwithstanding. In my decade-plus of following EA drama, the public comments on EA's own platforms (where people knew she was likely to be reading) have been, for the most part... civil and nuanced, and relatively mindful of the human? Even very confrontational comments (some clearly written from a place of anger and desire to shame) rarely resorted to outright name-calling or cruelty. When abusive or bigoted language did crop up, it was often promptly shut down by other fans as gross and uncalled for. In short: I have, with mine own two eyes, in real time, read some of the comment sections that EA described as cesspools of blind rage and odious attacks, and... I just couldn't see it.
If anything, for a long time, a lot of the angry comments directed at EA during any given controversy read more like break-up letters to an ex-best friend: harsh, curt and targeted in a way that cuts deep.... but also kind of screams how much love you still have for this person, against your better judgement.
Not that it wouldn't mess a person up to get hundred of those in a matter of hours, even if they don't individually qualify as “abusive”.
It's worth noting that prior to becoming semi-famous and regretting it, EA was also (by her own account and among other forms of abuse) a victim of intense childhood bullying. It feels like the two situations are closely connected in her mind when her focus seamlessly transitions from one to the other. 📺 I don't think that tremor in her voice is put on.
Based on her writings, I get the feeling that over the years, EA has developed a very black-and-white view of two monolithic groups of people. There's (an idealized vision of) her “real audience”, well-dressed, well-read, kind-hearted, and Asylum-savvy, who she fully trusts to “get it” – and buy it, and love it, unquestioningly, whatever “it” may be at any given time – because that is the true measure of love and loyalty. These are the people she makes art and merch for, the people she writes heart-emoji-filled newsletters to, and desperately longs to see in person again.
And then there's the lynch mob, those who really don't “get it”: the trolls, the faceless creeps, the basement-dwelling mouthbreathers, the ones who stalk her every move obsessively, waiting for any chance to spam her with vicious abuse and slander and obscenities. The latter only exist online (they are manifested into arbitrary existence by the internet itself, not by anything EA said or did), and there is zero overlap between the two sets of people. That seems to be the official narrative.

The "public eye" isn't an [enviable] place to be, and the closer I've come to it, the more horrified I've been. Because, for starters, who is "the public?" Is "the public" my audience? Hell no. My audience is special. They are not the general public. If they were the general public I would be a lot wealthier. The "public eye" means getting stalked, harassed, viscously judged, and put in danger. If I do things in the future that gain notoriety, I will do them in spite of fame, not because of it. I am out for world domination, but not fame. (Interview for The Moaning Times, 2014 📝)

In real life (well, mostly online, but I mean: on this shared plane of existence), things play out slightly differently. The Venn diagram of “true blue fans” and “people who criticize EA" and "people who know way too much about EA” is a circle. The call is 100% coming from inside the Asylum, and I think EA rationally knows that. But here's the thing: no matter how many shows and meet-and-greets you've dressed up for, how many loving and supportive comments you've left, or how many family heirlooms you once pawned to purchase a copy of the not-for-sale 2003 DJ pressing of Enchant... the instant EA feels attacked, everyone is a saboteur and a bully until proven otherwise, and suspected treason is dealt with on the spot. One strike, you're out. Unfortunately for everyone involved, her threshold for bullying seems to be “any remotely thoughtless opinion from any stranger on the internet”.
It makes for outstanding human-interest entertainment... but it also sounds an awful lot like the unhealthy patterns of a person suffering from all sorts of PTSD. 🔍 So, please bear that in mind as you read through this write-up. It's easy to make EA out to be the sole villain, a paranoid and delusional drama queen, based on her extreme reactions to things that often “weren't that bad”. Anything can, in fact, be “that bad” when you're thrown back into the very worst moments of your existence every time your brain decides that the situation is even remotely similar.
PTSD takes over your rational mind and actively distorts your perception of reality. That can be how a person ends up impulse-reacting to “a few people expressing an unfavorable opinion” as if the entire internet had just ganged up on them with knives. Which makes their audience feel unjustly accused, which makes them hostile, which gives the person actual good reason to feel attacked... and so the cycle of hurt continues.

You know the games I play And the words I say When I want my own way You know the lies I tell When you've gone through hell And I say I can't stay You know how hard it can be To keep believing in me When everything and everyone Becomes my enemy, and when There's nothing more you can do I'm gonna blame it on you – It's not the way I wanna be I only hope that in the end You will see: It's the Opheliac in me... (“Opheliac”, 2006 🎵)

And YES, it is extremely regrettable to have this as a trigger, when you're a public figure and you're bound to receive more negative feedback than the average citizen. “It's what she signed up for”, “it comes with the territory” and all that jazz. I really don't think EA was unaware of that fact when she decided to become a musician, share her personal life, and form an intense parasocial bond with her audience. But maybe she underestimated how hard it would be to process and recover from.
Just because you expect something unpleasant to happen, doesn't mean your psyche will be ready to handle it when it does – or that you'll pick the best and most effective strategy to deal with it.

A MADHOUSE UNDER MARTIAL LAW: MARCHING INTO THE FORUM WARS

There are two sides to every story... except for this one! (“If I Burn”, 2012 🎵)

You may have noted the military imagery in EA's “Make a Fucking Choice” response post – “resign your post in the Asylum Army”! What do psychiatry and the military have in common? They're both institutions of top-down social control. 🔍 EA's mixed metaphor may be a bit clunky, but it did foreshadow the evolution of the Asylum – in terms of aesthetics and power dynamics – in the years that followed the FantineDormouse incident and the release of The Book.
EA's next big release after the Asylum book came in 2012. It was a new album, an outline of the soon-to-be Asylum musical, called Fight Like a Girl (FLAG for short). As the name suggests, the main mood was bellicose. Incidentally, in the interim years, EA's communication style generally became noticeably more combative, incendiary, and (within her own spaces) controlling.📝 You remember those quirky word filters on the forum, that would change “fan” to “muffin” and “bra” to “teacup holder”? They kind of took on a Nineteen-Eighty-Four-burlesque flavor when you realized that one filter automatically changed “Fischkopf” to “Liddell” - and that circumventing the rule to address her totally real last name would get you banned, as would any discussion of her family. (“Wikipedia, random internet sites and heresay are not credible sources.” - Mod reminder of forum rules, 2010.)
Also, you try sustaining a serious, grown-up conversation among concerned fans about how Emilie Autumn should “take ratsponsibility for her mistakes out of ratspect for her muffins”. Thus, the official Asylum forum kept a tight grip on overt criticism of EA's claims and actions.

The Emilie Autumn forum is a dystopian hell. Truth be told, when I decided to leave you could not do anything but gush about Emilie. Otherwise all of her extremist arse kissing fans will be down your throat, ripping you apart in seconds, if you so much as questioned her behaviour. So much for freedom of opinion, let alone the idea of creating a harmonious community for ‘outcasts’. Hahaha. (2014 🐀)

The word filter thing really wasn't a big deal – I'm just pointing it out as one goofy expression of EA's need to control the narrative and rhetoric, which became especially noticeable in those post-book, pre-FLAG years. By that point, EA's fuse had been shortened by near on half a decade of non-stop touring / recording / writing / promoting / adjusting to the pressure and demands of an ever-growing fanbase, while also dealing with a horrorshow of personal turmoil and health issues behind the scenes. In other words: she was done taking any shit, in any form, or humoring anyone's ridiculous feedback regarding anything.
To be fair, it was never her forte to begin with. Will it come as a shock if I tell you that EA doesn't have the greatest track record for successful collaborative work? Let's do a quick-cut montage!
EA's very first corporate sponsor was her mother's “Enchant Clothing & Costume” online store 🔍; she went on to claim that her mother was dead. She sessioned for Billy Corgan, that went super well. 🎵 She liked Courtney Love for a minute, but that didn't work out because she felt that Courtney only valued her for her pee. 📝 (It probably didn't help that in early 2006, while EA was recording her post-break-up-tell-all album about Corgan, C-Love was recording her post-rehab-redemption album with Corgan. 🔍 Either way, EA didn't seem to like Courtney anymore after that. Courtney likes her, though! 📝) The one artist EA has ever approached for a duet (and by approached, I mean she recorded a demo and threw the CD on stage when he played Chicago in 2004) was, of all people, Morrissey. That never came to pass, thank mercy 🔍 – this fandom has suffered enough. In 2005, EA recorded some haunting vocals and violins for a potential collab with the frontman of Attrition. When, three years later, they were used on one track 🎵 of Attrition's All Mine Enemies Whisper, she alleged 📝 that the recordings had been obtained from her under the false pretense of a different project, then hideously altered to sound “out of tune”, and used without her permission. She enlisted her fans to boycott the album and the band, and threatened legal action. Meanwhile, on LiveJournal and Attrition's message boards, band associates were appalled: according to them, EA had been aware of the project's nature from the start... and had been completely unreachable, even through her label, during the months of its development. (Besides, Attrition is a semi-obscure English darkwave band from the 80s, whose micro-distributed albums don't even have their own Wikipedia pages... so I wonder what EA was hoping to get out of that theoretical lawsuit. These people own nothing but vintage gain pedals!) The song “Cold Hard Cash” 🎤 by Angelspit (who contributed a remix to one of her EPs in 2008) may or may not be an EA diss track. 🐀 Back when indie jewelry brand RockLove (which now has licensing deals with Disney, Marvel, and DC) was still someone's bedroom project, their first drop was an EA-inspired collection 🔍, which appears in many early Opheliac photoshoots. The partnership was terminated on bad terms, for unclear reasons; the RockLove owner shared in a statement that EA had “drunk the cool-aid” of Trisol Guy's shady business practices, and that the two of them had been spamming her with “crazed angry message[s]” for days.
Why am I talking about this? Because it was precisely one such ill-fated business partnership that triggered the Great Asylum Secession.
One fine day of spring 2010, the owner of vegan make-up brand Aromaleigh popped onto the Asylum forum to announce that they were cutting ties with EA, with damning receipts of copy-pasted emails (lost to time). Basically, the brand had been sponsoring her for half a decade, and while Aromaleigh had been actively promoting her music and tours, EA hadn't exactly been returning the favor. (Indeed, the extent of EA's sponcon seemed to have been a banner link to their website on her front page, and a single “random drunken endorsement” LiveJournal post that kind of reads like satire📝, from 2005.)
EA responded by banning the owner's account, deleting the thread, and posting this flippant statement a few days later:

Dearest Plague Rats, To be honest, I have no idea of what the hell happened with Aromaleigh, and I don't care to find out – the whole drama is a complete mystery to me, as I've been away for months touring and have not been in contact with anyone. All I know is that I've been promoting the company for ages and have not asked them for anything in years. (...) Please focus on more interesting things. I am. (“Save the Drama...” forum post, March 2010)

Posts questioning her good faith in the conflict were deleted from the forum. Shortly thereafter, citing how prolific and labor-intensive the Asylum forum had grown, EA shut down all non-EA related subforums – which, among many other topics, included a pretty active thread about Aromaleigh products.
So one Plague Rat decided to create a separate, members-only forum 📝, where users could recreate some of the now-defunct off-topic threads... and also freely voice their critical opinions of EA's behavior without fear of backlash from mods or rabid stans. Thus, “The Reform” was born. (Reform [n]: amendment of what is defective, vicious, corrupt, or depraved.)
For a few weeks, the two-state solution seemed to work fine. And then word spread among forum mods and other diehard fans that there was this horrid other forum, where obsessive haters gathered to spew disgusting lies and vitriol about EA... and soon enough, it was bedlam in the Asylum.
Any explicit mention of the Reform was forbidden on the Asylum forum. Suspicion of participation in the Reform would get you banned. The party line was that The Reform was the enemy 🐀 – even though a number of people were active on both forums, because they liked freedom of expression almost as much as they liked EA. Double agents would lurk on the forum and report back with snark material; sycophants would infiltrate the Reform to identify traitors – much to the amusement of the “haters”, who mocked them and their ilk for “licking EA's pink sparkly boots”. There was no containing the seething, or the sass, among Asylum ranks.
Pretty soon, the insubordination spread to Tumblr. There was the “Ask the Reform” Q&A blog, where questioning fans could interact with “Rebel Rats”, get more details on past drama, and make up their own minds about the people EA called bullies.
And then, there were the “confession blogs”, which published anonymous submissions about EA, positive, negative or neutral, with little censorship. Finally, you didn't even have to pick a throw-away username on a private forum to voice your hottest / strangest / most controversial EA takes. Fans could vent, rant, lament, wonder, shitpost to their heart's content, anonymously. Obviously, given the context of frustration and censorship in the fandom, a lot of the first waves of confessions were EXTREMELY negative.
EA's acolyte Veronica managed to get the first one shut down. If memory serves, she misunderstood the confession blog format, and may have believed that all the posts on “Emilie Autumn Confessions” came from one or a small group of individuals. She was genuinely devastated, and wrote the blog admin to let them know that they were a terrible person who said terrible things. The admin was mortified, apologized profusely and deleted the blog of their own initiative. (Which goes to show that the concept did not come from cruel and malicious anti-fans, as detractors often claimed.)
But a new blog sprung up almost immediately, with a different mod team, and did not surrender. And much like in EA's own book, once the Plague Rats found out that they possessed the gift of speech... well, they really took to it.
Established in 2011 and passed on through generation after generation of mod teams to the present day, Wayward Victorian Confessions would turn out to be the longest-lived institution in the EA fandom. For over a decade now, through all the bleakest nights and dankest debacles of the Asylum, and despite its initial reputation as a troll den, WVC has acted as a kind of neutral ground and vox populi for the active fanbase and anti-fanbase. (The last nominally-active EA fansite to date, She Fights Like a Girl, is actually an offshoot of WVC: one of the old admins created it as a database to answer “frequently asked questions” about EA.)
Wayward Victorian Confessions has now outlived every other EA platform, official and unofficial. Were it not for the continued existence of the “troll den”, what little fan community survives in 2024 would be non-existent, plain and simple. To quote from late 20th century Canadian philosophy: isn't it ironic?

I feel like [WVC] is the only place I feel any of that old Asylum community kind of feeling I felt before EA got so focused on the book. It sucks that it’s so full of unhappiness, and I wish she hadn’t poisoned the sanctuary she claimed to have built. It’s just kind of fallen apart, like a crumbling building. (🐀 2016)

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS

• How old are you? What's your gender? Give us a general description of yourself.
I am 24, female
• Is there a medical diagnosis that may impact your mental stability somehow?
I have been suffering from anxiety all my life.
• Describe your upbringing. Did it have any kind of religious or structured influence? How did you respond to it?
My family was fairly religious and I did not mind it all that much because I loved listening to all the myths and stories but I wouldn't call myself religious. In fact, I would describe myself as an atheist or an agnostic but my family doesn't care all that much. Since, I belonged to an Asian family there was always this immense pressure to perform and be the best at everything as failure was not an option. Even though my dad had no money he always earned money for us somehow to make sure we lived as comfortably as possible. Our mother on the other hand used to straight up emotionally (sometimes even physically) abuse us to make sure we made our dad proud because of everything that he has been through. Our father suffered from a heart attack when I was 8 and thankfully survived but since then, the stakes have been always high to earn money as quickly as possible to take care of my family, me being the eldest and all.
• What do you do as a job or as a career (if you have one)? Do you like it? Why or why not?
I am a medical student almost done with my under graduation and I partly chose this career due to pressure from my parents and since I was relatively good at science in school, I eventually came to fall in love with it. Although I don't like helping the humanity part all that much, I do love, love the subjects and came to appreciate the art of medicine and the thrill of a diagnosis and the vast amount of knowledge it requires to just be good at a surface level.
• If you had to spend an entire weekend by yourself, how would you feel? Would you feel lonely or refreshed?
I would feel absolutely amazing and recharged.
• What kinds of activities do you prefer? Do you like, and are you good at sports? Do you enjoy any other outdoor or indoor activities?
I love reading- I used to enjoy fiction and fantasy a lot when I was a kid but now I want to read about philosophy and the universe and the meaning of it all. I am relatively good at sports and I played badminton professionally and I absolutely love swimming. I prefer indoor activities to outdoor ones as I feel like I just get drained from all the stimulation.
• How curious are you? Do you have more ideas then you can execute? What are your curiosities about? What are your ideas about - is it environmental or conceptual, and can you please elaborate?
I would definitely describe myself as curious as I really want to learn how things work and what they mean and why do they work the way they do and I keep wondering how the human mind often creates or reinvents things that have always existed or perhaps didn't. I wish I had the time and energy to learn more about everything. I often find myself thinking about what I need to do in a day and how to do it efficiently when I am under pressure but if I were to let my mind roam freely then I find myself having various opinions on random things or concepts or people's behaviors.
• Would you enjoy taking on a leadership position? Do you think you would be good at it? What would your leadership style be?
Even though I do not like taking up leadership positions, there have been incidences in the past which might have implied I would be good at it and the reason is because I always, always kept my colleagues well being a priority and made sure I stood up for them when needed and appreciated the sense of camaraderie and the feeling that the work that everyone put into mattered and benefited the group as a whole.
• Are you coordinated? Why do you feel as if you are or are not? Do you enjoy working with your hands in some form? Describe your activity?
I always find myself having a difficult time to catch on to things where hands are required. Its not that I am clumsy but I find myself staring at my hands clueless what to do, despite being repeatedly told to use them a certain way. But once I get the hang of it I do enjoy it because I get the feeling that I mastered something that I find difficult.
• Are you artistic? If yes, describe your art? If you are not particular artistic but can appreciate art please likewise describe what forums of art you enjoy. Please explain your answer.
I am not artistic, however, I appreciate art and the purpose it serves. Be it music, ''art'' art, literature, sculptures, architecture of ancient ruins etc., they always have something to say about the human nature and progression of mankind and I like how they make you question in what instance and circumstance an artist came to the said idea and how they executed them. I specifically enjoy art forms that paint a picture about the past and all the lives humans have lived because they, in a way, make you question about the future as to how the humans will be/progress.
• What's your opinion about the past, present, and future? How do you deal with them?
The past, I think, is important to find answers because I believe that sometimes that is where clues lie to certain puzzles but other than that it is quite annoying when people dwell on the past, be it myself, or others. Pardon me for sounding pretentious but the present is quite overrated but calming, the future, on the other hand, I think leaves a little blank in my head because I don't know if I have to think and worry about my future or the humanity's. But I do find it comforting to think that in the end, nothing matters haha.
• How do you act when others request your help to do something (anything)? If you would decide to help them, why would you do so?
I immediately help only if I think I should. If I suspect any ill intention or an ulterior motive then I refuse immediately as I have low tolerance for bs. I came to learn that kindness is important for the society to function but it comes at a high cost and I help a lot of people minimally but if they require a lot of my time and energy then usually its a big no unless it benefits me as well or its my loved ones or those I think deserve- then I try and give all of it.
• Do you need logical consistency in your life?
Yes and no.
• How important is efficiency and productivity to you?
They're very important to me because that's how you get ahead in life, however, its quite exhausting. I used to beat myself up if I did not finish a task on time and now I am not as harsh on myself.
• Do you control others, even if indirectly? How and why do you do that?
NOOO, I hate when people try to control others as everybody is subjected to their own actions and emotions.
• What are your hobbies? Why do you like them?
I just draw up a random article about a random thing online and read about it haha. Other than that I really have no energy to keep up with the various things I am interested in. If I do have the time and energy I would like to swim, learn a language watch a tv show and read a a book on the universe/ neuroscience/ philosophy and teach myself physics and math because I suck at them. And I love trying food at various restaurants.
• What is your learning style? What kind of learning environments do you struggle with most? Why do you like/struggle with these learning styles? Do you prefer classes involving memorization, logic, creativity, or your physical senses?
When I learn about something I tend to obsessively get stuck at a point and research about it in depth unless I knew everything about it. I just get obsessed with the details and go nowhere which is why I know the most random things in depth and nothing else. I absolutely suck at thinking logically and often find myself having ''brain fog'' if anything even remotely requires analytical thinking. I cannot get over this brain fog unless I put it on paper to make sense of things slowly. I am quite good at memorizing things, average at creative thinking. Whenever I learn something I like to interpret it myself rather than having someone break it down for me and often prefer diagram/ models/ pictures to text.
• How good are you at strategizing? Do you easily break up projects into manageable tasks? Or do you have a tendency to wing projects and improvise as you go?
I see how strategizing can be efficient but its exhausting to plan and execute so I wing it as I go. I hate rigid schedules because there is no room for improvisation!
• What are your aspirations in life, professionally and personally?
I want to create/ invent something and contribute something to the world and make use of my existence. It can be a machine, a drug, a theory- anything. Still waiting for that "aha" moment haha. It doesn't necessarily have to be revolutionary but if it contributes to something then my existence will be meaningful.
• What are your fears? What makes you uncomfortable? What do you hate? Why?
I fear losing my dog. Eff humans but my dog is the most precious thing to me in the world. Also fear getting Alzheimer's and losing my sense of self or being dependent on someone for the rest of my life. I hate people who are narrow minded, unempathetic, manipulative, have no sense of right or wrong and those who harm animals. And those who follow the crowd without using their brain. And financial instability.
• What do the "highs" in your life look like?
A high would be a peaceful morning and a productive day.
• What do the "lows" in your life look like?
Lows are being stuck in a state of anxiety, stress, burnout and being financially unstable.
• How attached are you to reality? Do you daydream often, or do you pay attention to what's around you? If you do daydream, are you aware of your surroundings while you do so?
I am often present in the reality and daydream rarely.
• Imagine you are alone in a blank, empty room. There is nothing for you to do and no one to talk to. What do you think about?
I will think about.....all the things I would do if I get out of that room. I would also enjoy the quite and peace if its for a short time.
• How long do you take to make an important decision? And do you change your mind once you've made it?
I am very decisive and opiniated and also quite stubborn about it.
• How long do you take to process your emotions? How important are emotions in your life?
I tend to quickly process my emotions without thinking and act on them- only if I am at home or in front of my family. Emotions are important to me even though I try not to get them the best of me.
• Do you ever catch yourself agreeing with others just to appease them and keep the conversation going? How often? Why?
Yes but if it is happening too often and I don't like it/them, I just leave.
• Do you break rules often? Do you think authority should be challenged, or that they know better? If you do break rules, why?
As much as I detest authority, I still follow the rules for the sake of it. I would love to overthrow everything that is corrupted if I have the power, energy and the opportunity.

Hopefully this guide can serve as an exciting primer for people who know nothing about Gnosticism, but it's meant to delight and entertain even those who already gnow. I wrote it as the opener for an upcoming Gnostic novella, a malicious post-Sethian fantasia coming out in June.
*
Everyone has a body, a soul, and a spirit. The body rots and the soul kills itself, but the spirit is particular, peculiar, special. The spirit is the yolk in our self’s egg. It is the reality amid this dream. It is our vivifying cosmic light, holy and normally immortal, and in fact did not originate in our puny human selves but was borrowed from God and trapped inside our body’s prison, our soul’s hole. Yet our spicule of divine light is not safe. If we don’t arrange its heavenly escape through gnosis—that is, through secret knowledge of spiritual mysteries—then when we die, we vanish forever, our sharp sparks of holy spirit pulled down guttering into oblivion along with the material that cages us.
Or so an ancient Gnostic might have explained to a willing Catholic, circa 250 CE. A few midnight meetings later, he might let slip that the Trinity is slightly more extended than certain naïve believers imagine, and that our bodies are patterned on the Cosmic Man. I imagine his eyes flicking from side to side, before he unwraps a bundle of scrolls, pushing aside The Archangelic Book of Moses the Prophet in favor of a painstakingly detailed diagram illustrating the 365 angels of the solar year and their one-to-one correspondence to the parts of the human body—and incidentally, he says, did you know that there is a soul of hair, a soul of bone, a soul of skin? A psychical body that overlies our physical body? He’s started smiling, slowly putting down his inhibitions, for the Catholic has been plying him with date wine, and anyway the Gnostic is just so relieved to have found a friend, a fellow traveler fascinated in secret knowledge, in true salvation, in escaping their hostile world… Unfortunately, the brotherly-faced Catholic is planning to denounce him first thing tomorrow, and his valuable scrolls will be destroyed, and on some level the Gnostic senses it and ends up nearly whispering his secrets, implicitly pleading. Adam was androgynous, you see. The Holy Spirit is the Triple Male. Material is evil. Material is the portion of corruption nailed to our spirits. Like a satanic Jesus of darkness it suffers from our purity. We have been fettered with forgetfulness and deafened by death. Also: maybe not everyone has spirit. Only some do; the other humans are just creations. And as for the fellow called God, well he uh. Has a few dark secrets... “Oh, don’t look so uptight,” the Gnostic might say, anxiously chuckling: “Remember, I’m a Christian too!”
And he’d be right. Back in his day, the Church hadn’t entirely cornered power, clamped down on all other doctrines, and crushed the mindbending diversity of early Christianities in the Wild Wild Near-East. All around our Gnostic, there fumed and flowered a largely unpruned, rampant garden of sects and types and lifestyles, whose swarms of heaven-hunting believers spread out into hundreds of groups, used dozens of gospels, and disagreed on the most basic elements of doctrine, their beliefs resembling one another yet differing like the dialects of a diverging spiritual language. Within this ferment already shadowed by the upraised boot of the Church, the groups we refer to as the Christian Gnostics—actually Sethians, Valentinians, Thomasites, Cainites, Ophites, Carpocratians, Borborites, and many others—merely represented particularly spicy and syncretic Christians, a sort of semi-exclusive and avant-garde R&D tendency, their adepts intent on hidden knowledge, personal enlightenment, and the occasional rapturous ascent. Many believed in Jesuses, in an unfolded Trinity, in a higher baptism… it’s just that they also happened to mistrust the Abrahamic God and his world; to differ on the meaning and status of Jesus; to draw ideas from Platonism, Neopythagoreanism, Zoroastrianism, and possibly their dreams; and to ground salvation not in the problem of sin but on the pursuit of gnosis, their writers regularly soaring into metaphysical flights of rhetoric that portrayed our world as a cosmic mirage, an intoxicating nightmare from which the inspirited seeker must only awake.
Against such mystics, the Church had every advantage. It had party loyalty, centralized discipline, and a soberer, slightly more realist Christianity, with a message aimed at everyone and not just the self-selected few. It had simplicity, organization, and ruthlessness, grace and very sharp knives. The Church Fathers would put the Gnostics to great use, in part defining their own orthodoxy through the expulsion of Gnosticism, and the destruction of its texts… which is a shame, for many eccentric, beautiful, unique and surprising ideas must have disappeared forever into graves and clerical fires. Before the Church’s iron gate whanged shut and the flames ignited, the Gnostics were carting around wheelbarrowfuls of secret books, glittery kaleidoscopic treasuries of scripture—treatises, cosmogonies, incantations, prophecies, apocalypses, some of which were masterpieces of mystical rhetoric, offered original answers to notorious theological conundrums, or upended mainstream Abrahamic stories and embroidered them with conceptual rhinestones. Flip through the fraction of texts that’ve survived—scriptures like The Tripartite Tractate, The Secret Book of John, The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, Eugnostos the Blessed, Pistis Sophia, or The Gospel of Judas—and you’ll meet the female Holy Spirit, Judas as a double agent working for the side in white, the snake in Eden as a hero bringing the gift of enlightenment, and Jesus as the Word laughing on the cross because his real body, his spiritual body, is uncrucifiable. You’ll hear the cross itself speak. You’ll be treated to ritual glossolalia and cryptic hints at a baptism called the Five Seals. You’ll read prayers for secret power, lyrical visions of cosmic churches, of the abolition of illusion and the death of death, of how Error, with power and in beauty, made a substitute for Truth. You will be told that humans ate of two trees, the Tree of Enlightened Insight, and the Tree of Life, which cursed our spirits to forget eternity: now we “have been bound with dimensions, times, and seasons, and fate is master of all.”
But the most audacious and churchshaking of all Gnostic myths—the myths that brought the Church Fathers’ meteors down upon their heads, the myths that finally sent our hypothetical Catholic shouting into the cold desert night, cursing our Gnostic to the Devil—have survived in great detail and in many forms. I alluded to these already: I mean the shocking creation stories which claimed that the Jews and Christians had all the details upside-down, backward and darkly, that the Abrahamic God was not what naïve Abrahamites believed, that Genesis told only half the story, and that the Question of Evil, that perennial puzzler and atheist-maker, had the simplest answer imaginable.
See, many Gnostics split the Abrahamic God in two.
They had an upper God of unmitigated goodness, the great invisible spirit, the transcendent Middle Platonic God, the God of Jesus and of Paul, you know him: he’s the ineffable, unknowable, taciturn and enigmatic Father of Justice, to be kneeled under with utmost humility. This omnipotent self-originator was the first maker and the source of all spirit, and he created through thought, forming ideas which solidified into autonomous beings. First he emanated the rest of the Trinity—at least in some texts—but then he branched like a cosmic river into a flowing family tree of divine attributes, emanations both separate and a part of him, plural and one, grooving interlocked in a higher-dimensional bliss of mutual adoration. This perfect Father—especially in the myths of Jewish Gnostics called Sethians—had no direct role in the creation of evil or our world, and bore absolutely no responsibility for our suffering.
No, evil and our world only appeared when the youngest emanation, called Wisdom, or Sophia, struck out on her own and committed a catastrophic spiritual crime. The nature of the crime varies from text to text, but usually she attempted to create by herself, without her partner, or to comprehend the upper God—either way, she violated the cosmic order, acting in presumption and deficiency, out of unspeakable pride. And from her pride was born a monster.
This was the lower God, an evil deity called Yaldabaoth or the Demiurge, a mid-powered craftsman-God adopted from Platonism but mutated by Sethians into an insecure, fucked-up loser. This cack-handed cretin woke up alone in darkness, concluded that he had made himself, and then—since he was ultimately a cracked mirror of the great invisible creator—set about slapping our unreal world together, making it from shadows and dreams and other spare illusions. As he worked, he unconsciously copied heavenly forms and hierarchies… and did a terrible job. He might have been evil, he might have created a million styles of suffering, but Yaldabaoth was not at all a Christian Satan, not some diabolically intelligent heavy-metal pain-lord looming over his earthly hellscape; no, this moody, jealous punisher, this embodied sacrifice-sniffer, this amateurish meddler roving up and down and flinging lightning bolts at his own people, demanding ceaseless slaughter and sacrifice, was the God of the Old Testament, revealed not just as a murderous jerk but as a dumb, talentless hack, his mediocre world like a child’s drawing blotched with red-crayon scribbles of blood, a moldy, stinking parody of all goodness and worth.
Worse, Yaldabaoth suffered under his own inferiority and lashed out when he felt challenged. When we humans threatened to surpass him by enlightened insight, he shackled us to fate and locked us into death, so that we would forget our greatness which made him feel so subpar. Imagine: billions of people have died in the mostly ghastly conceivable ways, all because our gnosis wounded his ego. A petty tyrant writ cosmically large, he would have been pathetic, even pitiable, if he weren’t the showrunner of our lives, the petulant orchestrator of all pain, bitchily yanking at the puppet strings of the theater of torture that we think of as our world—that colossal junkyard of illusions where people reel around confused by death, dazzled by materiality, blinded by the daily phantasmagoria of horrors, having abandoned their inner wells of living light, though their flesh-buried sparks of spirit are ever tantalized by the rapturous fragrance of the All, though their darkened minds always sense on some level that they do not belong here, that it is possible to wake up from this nightmare, that reality is not real, existence does not exist, and to be is not to be.
We must picture our early Catholic, in the moments before his noisy flight, staring with nauseated horror at the Gnostic. That bloodhound of enlightenment hasn’t looked up in a while, retelling his creation story with awe and trembling, mesmerized and moved all over again by this heady doctrine which contains the solution to his suffering, the explanation for his pain, for his fears and feelings about the world, about being watched, toyed with, persecuted, about being misled and betrayed and hated, about truth being concealed and difficult to find, about the somnolence of the masses. The demonic pains in his gut, the death of his infant daughter, the idiots in charge everywhere at all times, the staggeringly high victory-rate of the forces of darkness, the godawful, unforgivable suffering of innocents—all this finally made sense. Our Gnostic found an elegant answer to the Question of Evil, and had the Churchites been able to bear it, they might have saved themselves millennia of defensive oratory on the perennially red-eyed and heart-rending question of why innocents suffer. Ask the Catholic why a good God made evil, and you’ll get that familiar rigmarole about how we are granted free will in order to be tested, to sort good from evil and place our salvation in our own hands; ask a darkened luminary like Dostoevsky, if you want to be informed that we need to suffer to be able to choose Jesus, and if necessary the poor must starve and die. All those blameless children who get beaten, diddled, napalmed? They’re collateral damage in the great sorting of souls, victim of someone else’s wrong choice, destroyed by a design some call intelligent. But why, precisely, did a good God have to make evil? Why cancer, why brain parasites? Why boil us in the tar pit of time? The Gnostic shrugs sadly, expansively, with thick maroon smudges under his eyes, and, idly rotating a lamp he’s staring into, with little lights dancing in his pupils, reveals the truest thing he knows: that innocents bleed, the rapacious rule, and our lives are carnage incarnated, because our world is a psychotic prison made from pride and pain, a ceaseless cycle of suffering dreamed down by a colossal lion-headed wanker. Our world was created by a counterfeit, a ravener and a ravisher, a violent and childish dumb-ass, and we may confirm the bad news with this insight from the Gospel of Phillip:
“God is a man-eater, and so humans are sacrificed to him.”

[FIRST][LAST]
After Action Report - Venlil Colonial Defense Force
Subject : Captain Farva
A gentle giggle rose from the foot of my bed. I curl up in my blankets at first not willing to be woken by the kids; Whatever they were up to; my mind still foggy from morning dreariness. I heard chief Donu exchanging excitedly with someone not far away in engineering speak, my tired brain could not parse. The tones of synthetic beeps, and electrical humming slowly entered my awareness. I raised my paw to wipe the morning dew from my eyes but I felt some kind of resistance to my paw. I sit up confused, I am not in my bedroom, or my quarters aboard my ship.
I am on a soft bed, with a soft blanket made of a finely woven material draped off my form. Around me is a curtain wall hung off of a curved metal pole which encompasses the entire bed, and I am flanked on both sides by medical equipment. Boxy screens display what I assume to be my vital signs accompanied by a strange blocky alien script. Inspecting my arm I notice an IV drip is inserted into the vein. Feeling a fading headache I reach up to my forehead where I feel a bandage covering a tender wound. Where Did I….
A sharp meep escapes my mouth. I am on the predator ship!
I quickly begin to tear at the IV line, not wanting whatever poisons the predators are feeding me to further enter my body. The room goes quiet, the curtain wall is disturbed, I focus on tearing away the bandage, panicking my coordination falters but I almost have it out when a paw reaches out to stop me. A cream colored venlil has rushed to my bed frantically batting at my arms in an attempt to stop me from saving myself.
“Captain, please let me help. I don't want you to hurt yourself!”
Not thinking, in full stampede mode I back hand the interloper with my paw.
A startle meep escapes her lips.
The IV is ripped out with the sudden motion.
Orange Blood begins to drip from the improperly removed IV.
This site further raises my heart rate.
The Venlil Recovers and I recognize her.
“Nurse Fila, What are you doing? what's going on?!”
“Farva you need to calm down, your going to be alright let me look at that arm”
“NO!”
I pulled my injured arm away. Jumping up to stand on the bed. Why was Fila working with the predators? What had they injected into my body?
“What are they holding over you! Why are you working with the predators! Where's Nyan?!”
“Captain Farva please calm down, These predators are different, they don't want to hurt us, you need to believe me”
It must have been some mind altering drug, these predators clearly have her under their spell! I needed to get out of here. I couldn't force her to come with me. I needed to escape and regroup, and pray to whatever gods will listen that I could get off this ship somehow.
I bolted from the bed crashing through the curtains, they did not move out of the way fast enough and my mass caused the curtain rods to be hoisted from their housings. I collapsed upon the floor, my movement hindered by the tangled mass of predatory linens. I struggled against the vile curtain entrapment. I had to use my claws to tear my way free of them. I looked up, predatory growls of surprise, and startled meeps echoed out from all around me.
My peripheral vision was filled with images of both predator and prey alike, I was surrounded on all sides. Nurse Fila was behind me stunned by my sudden actions. Donu looked towards me with concern, and I looked to the far end of the room to see Nyan, In the clutches of a blond haired predator. Digging her claws into his young flesh.
Donu gets up gesturing with her tail in a placating motion. “Easy now Farva, don’t do anything rash!” Donu speaks.
They have her too!
I bolt past her and the massive predator standing next to her. I go to grab Nyan, but he is pulled from my reach! The large predator turns her body to shield me from her catch.
“Hey easy now!” It barks, holding Nyan away from me.
Nyan reaches his paw out past the predator. A horrified look in his eyes.
With only the frantic strength a mother could conjure, I grasp his outstretched paw and pull him from the predator's grasp. With him once again in my arms I see the door to the pen we are in begin to open. Wasting no time, I bolt full sprint from the door. Only to be met by a large black mass. A tall impenetrable wall of muscle, cloaked in foot to shoulder black artificial pelts. Holding a colorful pink box, no doubt gaining that color from being caked in the blood of innocent prey animals. I raise my paw not holding Nyan to swipe at him, to rip my way past him. But before I can make contact my arm is grabbed by the predator's meaty digits. It holds me tight just below the paw where the wound from the ripped out IV sits. Blood dripped from the wound, no doubt triggering its bloodlust. I drop Nyan to free my other paw, I go to swipe the predator to free my arm but again I am stopped. I look to my right to see Donu restraining my arm.
“Donu let go!” I scream. “You're not of your own mind!”
“My mind is fine thank you!” She replies.
I turn to kick her away, striking her twice with quick kicks. Desperately trying to free myself from her deranged clutches. I wind up to kick a third time only for Nyan to wrap his whole body around my legs.
“Nyan Stop” I cry, my heart beating at a million light years per hour.
“Please…Don't hurt Teal’c and Donu” Nyan pleads.
I frantically wiggle my body desperately trying to regain autonomy from my traitorous captors.
“Im going to sedate her” proclaims my former ship nurse Fila.
Grabbing a Needle she stalks towards me, eager and willing to deliver me into the jaws of her captors.
“That will not be necessary” says the large predator holding my arm. He sets his package upon a nearby bed, and grabs my other arm from Donu, and then easily flips me around. And holds my arms behind my head, he then proceeds to kick my legs out from under me and forces me to the ground in a vice-like headlock.
“BE CALM CAPTAIN FARVA” It bellows “Further resistance will only cause more harm to yourself, and more worry from your crew, listen to them”
“Captain please just relax your safe, if they wanted to hurt you they could have a long time ago” Donu almost seems to try and trick me to the predator's side. But I see her glancing nervously towards the cut on my arms. Deep down I think she knows what that means. Nyan also pleads with me to listen. It's at this I begin to tear up at the hopelessness of it all. I wail out in despair frantically thrashing to free myself from the predator's death grip but to no avail.
I sit here once again, bested by predators, having failed those I love, but instead of rotting in a cattle pen or in the belly of an Arxurs stomach. They lie in a different kind of pen, their minds’ no longer theirs, as they fall victim to the predator's spell. Brainwashed to serve as the perfect compliant cattle.
Nurse Fila approaches a needle in her hand.
“I'm going to sedate her I need to look at that wound”
“Hold up a second” speaks the blond predator, she seems to be calming down.
The truth is I have no will left to fight, I have been bested time and again, there is only sorrow left and self pity. I only wish for a swift end now. I don't wish to live with the weight of this long string of failures weighing on my mind any longer. I go limp in the predator's arms.
“Please just… make it quick predator” I manage to say, sobbing making it hard to talk as I get out the words between snuffling breaths.
“It's okay Farva, please don't be sad” Nyan pleads as he clings tightly to my waist.
The predator holding me growls quietly into my ear. “I am going to release you now, do not attempt to harm nurse Fila as she is trying to help you now, do you understand?”. I tilt my ears in the affirmative, nothing happens for a moment until Donu signals to the predator who I guess whose name is Teal’c that I responded in the affirmative. My arms are slowly brought to my side. My left arm is released but not the wounded right one. Teal’c displaying some knowledge in medical etiquette seems to be intentionally applying pressure to the wound to prevent bleeding, I am led back to the bed.
Nurse Fila is about to attempt to fix my wound but is stopped by the blond predator.
“Allow me, this should go a lot more smoothly with this.” The blond predator produces a strange golden metal device, it appears like a strange wiry gauntlet, with metal claws and a strange crystal in the center. It emits a strange pulsing sound that I cringe at, but I am held firm by nurse fila, I can't look away as the strange glow it emits passes over my arms. The curtain of despair lifts for a moment, replaced by incredulousness as before my eyes the wounded artery in my arms miraculously seals itself, as elegantly as a flight suit being zipped up. My arm is left feeling slightly warm which soon fades, any sign of the wound is gone.
Fila speaks in an incredulous tone.
“It is endlessly baffling how your medical bay is stocked with simple alcohol based disinfectants and primitive bandages and sutures. Like something I'd see in a primitive yotul field hospital, while simultaneously containing healing tools so advanced they would make the finest Zurulian theoretical medical engineers sell their own tail.”
The blond predator lets out a high pitched broken chortle, which my translator pings as laughter. “I don’t know what a Zurulian is but compared to what we've seen this is nothing, this is a miniature version of the same technology used in a Goa'uld sarcophagus, which can reanimate dead tissue, bringing people back to life even after complete brain death.”
“Fascinating” Donu replied “what is the nature of this radiation”
“That technology itself is actually derivative of an ancient healing device created by our distant primordial ancestors the Alterans, which emitted subspace based healing radiation. We currently have the original device back in our home dimension being reverse engineered back in area 51” Spoke a third predator, who was standing up against the far wall.
He seemed to be holding onto himself quite fiercely, perhaps he struggled to hold in his bloodlust, unlike the two predators currently at my side.
“For predators they have such wondrous technology Farva” Donu says as she takes my paw and massages it gently in an attempt to ease my anxiety. “I almost wouldn't believe it if not for what they have shown us so far. Tell me, do you know how they got us off of our ship?”
A wave of realization washed over me as I sat dumbfounded in the bed. How did they get us off this ship? My brain had been in nonstop flight mode since the battle. I had been so occupied with survival I never stopped to contextualize my mere presence, on this ship, in one piece, why had we all seemingly awoken in this ship's hangar bay. No wait we didn't awaken, most of us were standing. Maybe we were drugged and removed, with no memory of the lost time. But that couldn’t be right. I was looking at the countdown to the core explosion. It had hit zero. I saw the flash myself.
“I was on the bridge holding Nyan in my arms, but after that I remember being in that hangar bay, with Nyan, in the exact same position.”
“The humans have a technology that allows them to break down matter at the atomic level, transfer it via an electromagnetic molecular confinement beam, and reassemble it at a different location completely remotely!” Donu excitedly proclaimed.
“You were teleported directly from the bridge to our ships hangar bay with your crew, and Donu to our infirmary due to her severe radiation poisoning.” Commented the blond predator.
Nyan finished crawling up the bed and snuggled into my side. “They fixed Donu, Samantha fixed her with her healing glove!” Nyan excitedly brayed, his tail wagging uncontrollably.
My stomach dropped, how had I forgotten, how did I let that slip my mind, Donu was subjected to at least 3.6 standard units of gamma radiation. Her presence here was a miracle. I hugged her tightly, my guilt for my actions only increased, how could I neglect the damage done to one of my oldest friends. Was I so predator diseased that I forgot to think of my herd?
The predator whose name was Samantha spoke ”Yeh sorry it took us so long, we cut it a lot closer than we wanted, but we had to adjust our transporter lock to account for the radiation flooding the ship, the levels experienced were harmless for the most part, but enough to cause problems.”
The fear chemicals were slowly draining from my mind, my head became clearer as I started to consider the actions of these predators so far. They had offered to help my ship while risking their own vessel, they had tried for peace before throwing themselves into battle, they had little reason to help us and little reason to try and take our technology as their capabilities seem to surpass ours in many ways so far.
I looked towards the blond haired predator, towards Samantha.
“Why did you help us? What do you hope to gain?”
She responded ”Well now we would like to maybe get some intel about this local region of space, we are not from around here and frankly we could do with some help securing some parts. But with that in mind we didn't really expect anything out of you when we first got your hail. We helped because you were in trouble, and your situation sounded dire.”
“And I'm just supposed to believe that! Prey ships would be waging pros and cons before even thinking about helping another ship under attack, especially with not knowing anything at all about the other ships capabilities”
Donu squeezed my paw and interjected. "These humans aren’t like normal predators, they are pack predators, they are very social, and even appear to feel genuine empathy, they even eat plants, they have been feeding us from their own reserves!”
“How is that possible?” I ask, having never heard of such a thing.
“Well where we come from” Samantah responded ”Omnivorous life is extremely common, not just on our home planet but nearly every one of the thousands of habitable planets we have visited contain omnivorous life in some form or another, It is an incredibly beneficial evolutionary trait.”
“Thousands! How can that be, our scientist have never encountered such a thing”
“That's the thing, they're not from this galaxy Farva, they're not even from this dimension!”
Donu gets into explaining the technical aspects of the Daedalus's faithful journey to our dimension, while Nyan, an always hungry growing boy, runs off during her explanation, to approach the large predator known as Teal’c.
“Can I have another donut?” he asks, pointing to the box that I now realize is not covered in blood but instead merely painted a gaudy pink.
“You may, but only after you have completed your grooming rituals, it is important for little ones such as yourself to learn and maintain proper hygiene practices” Teal’c spoke, his growls almost seeming to take up a fatherly aura.
He looks disappointed slightly but then his ears and tail perks up as he runs behind Samantha and out of sight, he remerges with a hairbrush and plops himself down on the predator's lap. To which she responds by snarling at him intensely.
“Donu” I shriek, interrupting the third predator's speech on the volatile nature of fourth dimensional space. Shocked at how quickly the predator could go from civility to volatility so rapidly. I was quickly calmed by Donu and Fila assuring me that this was merely an odd habit of the humans. The upturned teeth baring signaled happiness to them. Samantha made it clear to me that since her jaw was not clenched it did not indicate aggression. Her explanation sounded dubious, but after further observation, her following actions did not seem to indicate she wanted to harm the boy. Nyan offers her the brush once he sees that I am finished panicking.
She gives and odd closed mouth smile. "You have an almost PHD level knowledge of physics! don't tell me you don't know how to brush your own fur”
His tail gives a meek wag. ”I like when you do it, you have such nice flat nails and warm fingers!”
He makes his eyes go wide like a pup pleading for attention. The predator’s resolve immediately falters. ”Awh how could I say no to such a cute little angel”.
Samantha begins to help the boy detangle his fur, running her long grasping appendages through his fur in combination with the brush to gently pull apart the knots. He’s already clean from the grime that was present on him from when we were back on the heavily damaged ship, speaking of which I gesture to nurse Kila.
“Kila, how is the crew? How are they holding up? why aren't they here?”
“17 survivors including yourself, the humans have set up a triage center in their hangar bay, keeping the crew together and trying to give them some space, their stable but many of them are bedridden. They're quite scared naturally but,“ nurse Kila gives a look towards the humans “but I think we are going to be alright.”
“So what happens now?” I asked, “you aren't from this dimension and you said you were having drive problems, can you fix those? What are your plans for this dimension?”
The third predator stalked out from his isolated corner to address the room in a posture that emphasized the obvious restraint that was required to contain his instincts around us. “Hi ummm.. My name is Doctor Rodney Mckay, I think I can help with that question, simply put, our drive system uses a specialized quantum subspace field generator to warp 4th dimensional space in a way that allows us to track and catalog dimensional eddies as we call them, and track their specific frequencies which allow us to…….”
------- one long boring explanation later ------
“Ah So I see, you came to this dimension by mistake and need a replacement part that you cannot manufacture yourself to return home, but you think we might be able to manufacture a replacement with our industry?” I asked for clarification from Rodney.
“I discussed with your chief engineer earlier, we should be able to reproduce the part we need at what Donu described as a hyper fabricator, the meta materials available in your dimension you use for warp travel should be sufficient to recreate the part we need”
“In exchange I believe we can help you with your little arxur problem.” Spoke Samantha, running her grasping appendages through the fur of a contented Nyan, who was happily munching away at the strange circular Staryu-like treat the human Teal'c had presented him. Samantha proclaiming it to be sourced from his personal stash.
I was taken back by the revelation that they wanted to offer further assistance, when the predators first mentioned their damaged drive system, I thought they might try to leverage our place as rescued survivors as a means to get access to the part they needed to repair their damaged vessel. But now they were offering further assistance in exchange?
“I don’t understand, you've already done so much? Why would you help us more and risk more damage to your vessel?”
“Well if you want the reason we are going to put on paper, “Samantha said, ”it's to gather intel about a potential threat, and to ensure trust and cooperation of the locals to better expedite the procurement of mission critical drive components. If you want our real reason, its that no one deserves what has been done to you, we can't stay because we have responsibilities in our home dimension, but we don't see why we can’t help you while we are here.”
“So wait, are you proposing what I think you're proposing?”
“I am, from what we learned from your crew the arxur take a large portion of their abductees as cattle, we can track your subspace trails quite quickly and we think we have a good chance of hunting down the arxur transport ships.”
Nyan angled his head to look at both me and the human. Hope in his eyes, the idea of getting my family back would normally seem like an impossible dream, but here I was being comforted by predators, offering to risk their lives for a very lopsided trade in our favor. An ember of hope for the first time in many claws went alight in my chest.
I looked to Donu, who while trying to hide it, looked forlornly in Nyans direction. He was so happy to hear about a rescue plan and excited by all the predators' incredible technology, but while my family was young and fertile enough to be taken as cattle and potentially rescued. I had little doubt that if his family wasn't eaten, or killed in the bombing of the colony, the arxur would have no reason to hold a couple of such advanced age as cattle.
While I myself was a meek prey and a hopeless failure of a military officer, these Humans, despite obviously being fierce predators, had shown off an odd compassion. If anyone could; stand up to the arxur, and hunt them in return it was them.
I would help them anyway I could, they were unfamiliar with our foe, but they have shown themselves to be quite adaptable so far. Working together, we just maybe had a chance at making up for my failures. To set things right, and to save innocent prey from a fate worse than death.
“I think I may have to take you up on your offer kind predator”
Officer Report - Captain Caldwell
CLEARANCE LEVEL 5
Our interim chief engineer Dr.Mckay has successfully clamped open the 4th dimensional hole in space ; as he calls it; so we are clear to jump through this dimension freely without losing our path back to our home dimension. While my first impulse would be to jump to Earth, Unfortunately it seems that this dimension’s earth cold war went hot and it is currently a bombed out waste land. That being said carter and Mckay have struck a deal with the captain of the destroyed venlil defense frigate, in exchange for aiding in the rescue of captured civilians, they are willing to grant us access to the advanced manufacturing equipment needed to repair our Quantum drive.
While the antagonistic cannibalistic arxur are certainly an intimidating foe, they are not invincible and our ship stacks up favorably against theirs when specialized techniques are employed. The problem they cause for us is more unique. Carnivores are rare in this dimension and seemingly more so are omnivores. The Herbivore species known as the venlil are quite afraid of us, having dealt with these arxur for so long, and also due to a seemingly quite intense biological fear response, have been very wary to deal with us. Fortunately due to our admittedly unusually charismatic crew, and their admirable diplomatic efforts, we seem to have gotten them to calm down a lot since we initially transported them onto our ship. I am going to check up on the venlil crew and captain in the Medbay now, as they will be the most essential venlil to our efforts going forward.
As I walk in it seems that captain Farva is fast asleep, while Rodney appears to be using a Donut to explain the workings of a stargate to the aliens engineers.
“Okay so the stargate, you see this donut, imagine it's about 10 venlil tall, and made of metal” Rodney picks up another donut and hands it to the Child named Nyan. ”Okay first off don't eat that, secondly imagine you are a ancient alien race, and you want to get to point A to point B as fast as possible. Ftl isn’t quite fast enough so what if you could instead skip the trip and skip to the end. The stargate network allowed the ancient alternans to simply walk from planet to planet” Rodney used his finger to gesture from donut to donut in his explanation of the stargates, speaking about their functions as well as their dangers, mentioning some notable accidents associated with their use, like unwanted time travel, stellar poisoning and dimension hopping, the ladder being a large part of why we were here in this dimension to begin with. Most concerningly however, the venlil Nyan took a bite out of the donut when rodney finished his explanation.
Samantha was working quietly with nurse Fila and looked up from some chemical diagrams when she noticed I had entered the room. I asked if I could have a word, and took Her, Rodney, and Teal'c aside to have a meeting with them. We left the room due to the venlil’s exceptional hearing, as we had previously discovered when various medics made some inappropriate comments on how the venlil were “cute enough to eat '' thinking they were out of earshot.
Having taken them aside I spoke up. “I have already told this to Shepard and our medical staff in the hangar bay, and I would like to congratulate you on your remarkable progress on bridging the gap with the venlil. Going from shoot on sight in the hangar bay to literally eating out of your hands in a matter of hours represents some major diplomatic prowess.”
“Thank you captain” Samantha Said.
“There behavior is indeed most unusual” followed Teal’c
“But seemingly quite understandable given what they have been through with the wraith, Sorry! Arxur, Freudian slip.” chimed rodney.
“I would love to look at the biosphere of one of their planets, their ecology seems preposterous judging by the way they describe it. But they are a space faring species so they presumably know what they are talking about.” added Samantha.
“I myself am curious based on what you reported general, their dimension is quite odd but I suppose ours would be weird to them as well, but we have responsibilities back home.” I responded curtly. “I do have a question for you all though, The Venlil are a herbivorous species with intense emotional reactions and societal values pertaining to the consumption of meat, including animal products correct?”
Samantha answered ”We have been avoiding the subject of meat consumption as much as possible, focusing on our plant based foods for the venlil’s comfort, and they have been happy to keep that topic to a minimum after the initial introductions, but I don't believe they would respond well to the idea of consumption of…..” Samantha trails off with a worried look. “Oh god wait, please don’t tell me”
Teal’c looks confused, Rodney facepalms.
“You do know that donuts have eggs in them? Don't you.”

Grey’s Anatomy Narration
Season Three
Episode One: Time Has Come Today
Meredith Grey
In the O.R., time loses all meaning. In the midst of sutures and saving lives, the clock ceases to matter. 15 minutes, 15 hours…inside the O.R., the best surgeons make time fly. Outside the O.R., however, time takes pleasure in kicking our asses. For even the strongest of us, it seems to play tricks - slowing down, hovering…until it freezes…leaving us stuck in a moment, unable to move in one direction or the other.
Time flies. Time waits for no man. Time heals all wounds. All any of us wants is more time…time to stand up…time to grow up…time to let go…time.
Episode Two: I Am a Tree
Meredith Grey
At any given moment, the brain has 14 billion neurons firing at a speed of 450 miles per hour. We don’t have control over most of them. When we get a chill - goose bumps, when we get excited - adrenaline. The body naturally follows its impulses, which I think is part of what makes it so hard to control ours. Of course, sometimes we have impulses we would rather not control…that we later wish we had.
The body is a slave to its impulses. But the thing that makes us human…is what we can control. After the storm…after the rush…after the heat of the moment has passed…we can cool off and clean up the messes we’ve made. We can try to let go of what was…and then again…
Episode Three: Sometimes a Fantasy
Meredith Grey
Surgeons usually fantasize about wild and improbable surgeries - someone collapses in a restaurant, we slice them open with a butter knife, replace a valve with a hollowed-out stick of carrot. But every now and then, some other kind of fantasy slips in. Most of our fantasies dissolve when we wake, banished to the back of our mind. But sometimes, we’re sure…if we try hard enough…we can live the dream.
The fantasy is simple…pleasure is good…and twice as much pleasure is better…that pain is bad…and no pain is better.
But the reality is different. The reality is that pain is there to tell us something. And there’s only so much pleasure we can take without getting a stomachache. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe some fantasies are only supposed to live in our dreams.
Episode Four: What I am
Meredith Grey
At some point during surgical residency, most interns get a sense of who they are as doctors and the kinds of surgeons they’re going to become. If you ask them, they’ll tell you - they’re going to be general surgeons…orthopedic surgeons…neurosurgeons…distinctions which do more than describe their areas of expertise. They help define who they are. Because outside the operating room, not only do most surgeons have no idea who they are, they’re afraid to find out.
Episode Five: Oh, the Guilt
Meredith Grey
First do no harm - as doctors, we pledge to live by this oath. But harm happens…and then guilt happens. And there’s no oath for how to deal with that.
Guilt never goes anywhere on its own. It bring its friends doubt and insecurity.
First do no harm - easier said than done. We can take all the oaths in the world, but the fact is…most of us do harm all the time.
Sometimes even when we’re trying to help…we do more harm than good…and the guilt rears its ugly head. What you do with that guilt is up to you.
We’re left with a choice…either let the guilt throw you back into the behavior that got you into trouble in the first place or…learn from the guilt and do your best to move on.
Episode Six: Let the Angels Commit
Meredith Grey
To make it…really make it…as a surgeon…it takes major commitment. We have to be willing to pick up that scalpel and make a cut that may or may not do more damage than good. It’s all about being committed…because if we’re not…we have no business picking up that scalpel in the first place.
There are times when even the best of us have trouble with commitment. And we may be surprised by the commitments we’re willing to let slip out of our grasp. Commitments are complicated. We may surprise ourselves by the commitments we’re willing to make. True commitment takes effort…and sacrifice. Which is why sometimes…we have to learn the hard way to choose out commitments very carefully.
Episode Seven: Where the Boys Are
Meredith Grey
As surgeons, we’re trained to look for disease. Sometimes the problem’s easily detected. Most of the time, you need to go step-by-step, first probing the surface, looking for any sign of trouble…a mole or a lesion or an unwelcome lump.
Most of the time, we can’t tell what’s wrong with somebody by just looking at them. After all, they can look perfectly fine on the outside while their insides tell us a whole other story.
Not all wounds are superficial. Most wounds run deeper than we can imagine. You can’t see them with the naked eye. And then there are the wounds that take us by surprise.
The trick with any kind of wound or disease is to dig down and find the real source of the injury. And once you’ve found it…try like hell to heal that sucker.
Episode Eight: Staring at the Sun
Meredith Grey
Many people don’t know that the human eye has a blind spot in its field of vision. Theres a part of the world that we are literally blind to. The problem is, sometimes our blind spots shield us from things that really shouldn’t be ignored. Sometimes our blind spots keep our life bright and shiny.
Episode Nine: From a Whisper to a Scream
Cristina Yang
As doctors…we know everybody’s secrets - their medical histories…sexual histories…confidential information that is as essential to a surgeon as a 10-blade…and every bit as dangerous. We keep secrets. We have to. But not all secrets can be kept.
In some ways, betrayal is inevitable. When our bodies betray us, surgery is often the key to recovery. When we betray each other…when we betray each other, the path to recovery is less clear.
We do whatever it takes to rebuild the trust that was lost. And then there are some wounds, some betrayals that are so deep, so profound…that there’s no way to repair what was lost. And when that happens…there’s nothing left to do but wait.
Episode Ten: Don’t Stand So Close to Me
Meredith Grey
At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, all we really want is to be close to somebody…so this thing where we all keep our distance and pretend not to care about each other - it’s usually a load of bull.
So we pick and choose who we want to remain close to. And once we’ve chosen those people…we tend to stick close by…no matter how much we hurt them.
The people that are still with you at the end of the day…those are the ones worth keeping. And sure, sometimes close can be too close…but sometimes that invasion of personal space…it can be exactly what you need.
Episode Eleven: Six Days: Part 1
[No narration]
Episode Twelve: Six Days: Part 2
[No narration]
Episode Thirteen: Great Expectations
Meredith Grey
No one believes their life will turn out just kind of okay. We all think we’re going to be great. And from the day we decide to be surgeons, we are filled with expectation - expectations of the trails we will blaze, the people we will help, the difference we will make…great expectations of who we will be, where we will go. And then we get there.
We all think we’re going to be great. And we feel a little bit robbed when our expectations aren’t met. But sometimes, our expectations sell us short. Sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the unexpected. You gotta wonder why we cling to our expectations because the expected is just what keeps us steady, standing…still. The expected’s just the beginning. The unexpected…is what changes our lives.
Episode Fourteen: Wishin’ and Hopin’
Meredith Grey
As surgeons, we live in a world of worst-case scenarios. We cut ourselves off from hoping for the best because too many times, the best doesn’t happen. But every now and then, something extraordinary occurs…and suddenly…best-case scenarios seem possible. And every now and then, something amazing happens…and against our better judgement…we start to have hope.
As doctors, we’re trained to give our patients just the facts. But what our patients really want to know is, will the pain ever go away? Will I feel better? Am I cured? What our patients really want to know is…is there hope? But inevitably, there are times when you find yourself in the worst-case scenario…when the patient’s body has betrayed them and all the science we have to offer has failed them. When the worst-case scenario comes true, clinging to hope is all we’ve got left.
Episode Fifteen: Walk on Water
Meredith Grey
Disappearances happen in science - disease can suddenly fade away, tumors go missing. We open someone up to discover the cancer is gone. It’s unexplained, it’s rare, but it happens. We call it misdiagnosis…say we never saw it in the first place…any explanation but the truth…that life is full of vanishing acts. If something that we didn’t know we had disappears, do we miss it?
Episode Sixteen: Drowning on Dry Land
Meredith Grey
Like I said…disappearances happen - pains go phantom…blood stops running…and people - people fade away.
There’s more I have to say…so much more. But…I’ve disappeared.
Episode Seventeen: Some Kind of Miracle
Meredith Grey
There are medical miracles. Being worshippers at the altar of science, we don’t like to believe miracles exist. But they do. Things happen. We can’t explain them, we can’t control them…but they do happen.
Miracles do happen in medicine. They happen every day. Just not always when we need them to happen.
At the end of a day like this, a day when so many prayers are answered and so many aren’t…we take our miracles where we find them. We reach across the gap…and sometimes…against all odds…against all logic…we touch.
Episode Eighteen: Scars and Souvenirs
Meredith Grey
People have scars in all sorts of unexpected places, like secret road maps of their personal histories, diagrams of all their old wounds. Most our wounds heal, leaving nothing behind but a scar. But some of them don’t.
Some wounds we carry with us everywhere, and though the cut’s long gone…the pain still lingers.
What’s worse, new wounds, which are so horribly painful…or old wounds that should’ve healed years ago and never did?
Maybe our old wounds teach us something. They remind us of where we’ve been and what we’ve overcome. They teach us lessons about what to avoid in the future. That’s what we like to think. But that’s not the way it is, is it? Some things we just have to learn over, and over, and over again.
Episode Nineteen: My Favorite Mistake
Meredith Grey
Surgeons always have a plan…where to cut, where to clamp, where to stitch. But even with the best plans…complications can arise, things can go wrong…and suddenly you’re caught with your pants down.
The thing about plans is, they don’t take into account the unexpected. So when we’re thrown a curveball whether it’s in the O.R. or in life…we have to improvise. Of course, some of us are better at it than others. Some of us just have to move on to plan B…and make the best of it.
And sometimes…what we want…is exactly what we need. But sometimes…sometimes what we need is a new plan.
Episode Twenty: Time After Time
Meredith Grey
A patient’s history is as important as their symptoms. It’s what helps us decide if heartburn’s a heart attack, if a headache’s a tumor. Sometimes patients will try to rewrite their own histories. They’ll claim they don’t smoke or forget to mention certain drugs, which, in surgery can be the kiss of death. We can ignore it all we want…but our history…eventually always comes back to haunt us.
Some people believe that without history, our lives amount to nothing. At some point, we all have to choose. Do we fall back on what we know? Or do we step forward to something new? It’s hard not to be haunted by our past. Our history is what shapes us, what guides us.
Our history resurfaces time after time after time. So we have to remember…sometimes the most important history is the history we’re making today.
Episode Twenty-One: Desire
Meredith Grey
As interns, we know what we want - to become surgeons…and we’ll do anything to get there. Suffer through killer exams, endure 100-hour weeks, stand for hours on end in operating rooms…you name it, we’ll do it. The tough part, though, is reconciling this huge thing we want - to be surgeons - with everything else we want.
Too often, the thing you want most is the one thing you can’t have. Desire leaves us heartbroken…it wears us out. Desire can wreck your life. But as tough as wanting something can be…the people who suffer the most…are those who don’t know what they want.
Episode Twenty-Two: The Other Side of This Life: Part 1
Meredith Grey
The dream is this - that we’ll finally be happy when we reach our goals. Find the guy, finish our internship - that’s the dream. Then we get there. And if we’re human, we immediately start dreaming of something else. Because if this is the dream…then we’d like to wake up…now, please.
Episode Twenty-Three: The Other Side of This Life: Part 2
Meredith Grey
At some point, maybe we accept the dream has become a nightmare. We tell ourselves the reality is better. We convince ourselves it’s better that we never dream at all. But the strongest of us, the most determine of us, we hold on to the dream. Or we find ourselves faced with a fresh dream we never considered. We awake to find ourselves…against all odds…feeling hopeful. And if we’re lucky, we realize…in the face of everything, in the face of life…the true dream…is being able to dream at all.
Episode Twenty-Four: Testing 1-2-3
Meredith Grey
A surgeon’s education never ends. Every patient, every symptom, every operation…is a test, a chance for us to demonstrate how much we know…and how much more we have to learn.
Episode Twenty-Five: Didn’t We Almost Have it All?
Richard Webber
Being chief is about responsibility. Every single surgical patient in the hospital is your patient, whether you’re the one who cut them open or not. The scalpel stops with you. You need to be able to look at a family…and tell them your team did everything they could to save someone’s child…their husband…their wife. You get caught up…taking care of other people’s families. And responsibility, it makes you…you take care of other people’s families…and you sacrifice your own.

Hi and thank you to all of you - your posts, comments, insights played a huge part in my success today as I passed my PMP exam with AT in all the domains.
I want to give it back to this community by sharing my own preparation and exam experience. Please do not compare this to your own preparation as I feel everyone has their own perception of 'comfort' and 'confidence' when it comes to exam preparations.
Background:
5 years in the construction industry/management consulting - managing capital projects. This helped me a little bit in familiarizing with Traditional concepts of the exam during my preparation. I am currently in a position where I am supporting PMO service to a client, which again helped a little bit. I had little to no knowledge of Agile before preparing for this exam.
Study Resource and Tips:

1. Andrew Ramdayal's (AR) Udemy Course - https://www.udemy.com/course/pmp-certification-exam-prep-course-pmbok-6th-edition/ Most of my knowledge for the PMP exam content came from this course. I went through the course at 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x depending upon my level of comfort of the topic. I took notes as needed. I do not recommend printing Andrew's resource sheets that he has tagged with his course items/chapters as I felt most of it can be covered using your own hand-written notes (or atleast I know I learn faster that way). His Mindset Videos are EXCELLENT. Highly Recommend.
   
2. Andrew Ramdayal's TIA Simualtor - https://tiaexams.com/product/pmp-exam-simulator-course/ Bought this after I was done with AR's Udemy course to test out my knowledge. In all honestly, these simulators are great for preparations and I would highly recommend taking these mocks tests.
   
3. PMI Study Hall - Bought this because of all the reddit posts/comments recommending the Study Hall mock tests. I absolutely recommend this. If there was anything that came close to the real exam it was the Study Hall Mock Test. This prepared me the most for D-Day from a exam question type/length/wording perspective.
   
4. 200 Agile Questions PMP Questions and Answers by David McLachlan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNIHysh2ZW4&t=20967s Great resource. Once you have finished Agile section on AR's Udemy Course (or any other instructor's course) - I'd recommend watching this video at 1.5x to revise your Agile knowledge and understanding. In all fairness, I only watched upto 170 questions and I believe there are some really really great questions in his videos.
   
5. PMBOK VI Edition and Agile Knowledge Book - I read the books once. Did it significantly improve my understanding? - No.
   

Study Routine and Mock Scores:
I was studying everyday (I planned it out on Excel and tried to stick with it mostly) with a full time job that required anywhere from 40-50 hours/week commitment. On weekends, I studied for over 6 hours easily.
Started watching AR's videos on Oct 12, 2022
Finished watching AR's videos on Oct 21, 2022
Took AR's Course Exam on Oct 22, 2022 - Score 85%
For the next week - Oct 23 - Oct28
TIA Mock 1 - 69%
TIA Mock 2 - 69%
TIA Mock 3 - 77%
TIA Mock 4 - 86%
TIA Mock 5 - 80%
TIA Mock 6 - 75%
OVERALL - 76%
Kept revising some key concepts from my handwritten notes.
Oct 29, 2022
Study Hall Mock 1 - 73% (Moderate - All Correct, Difficult - Mostly Correct, Expert - Got only a couple correct)
Didn't take the 2nd mock test.
Took 2 Study Hall Mini Quizzes - Scored 33% and 57%
Oct 30, 2022 - Nov 2, 2022
Was at a client location, so could barely revise anything and only watched David McLachlan's 200 Agile Questions and AR's Mindset Videos whenever I could.
Nov 3, 2022 - D-Day! Woke up with a mild headache as I flew redeye back home to take the exam. [O DO NOT RECOMMEND TRAVELLING OR ANY BIG TIRING ACTIVITY THE DAY BEFORE]
Exam:
Reached the testing center 40 mins before the exam, they allowed me to start the exam before the time, I just wanted to get it over it at this point. Started the exam, felt like I was taking the Study Hall mock test to be honest. The first 60 questions I dont think I had much difficulty with. The 60-120 is where I struggled and 120-180 was probably the easiest. Finished the exam with 30 mins remaining.
0 questions on SPI/CPI/EV calculation
0 questions on Org Structure
0 questions on Risk Management/Response Type (Avoid, Accept, Transfer, Mitigate)
0 questions on network diagram/float calculations
0 questions on conflict resolutions (smoothing, withdrawing,............)
A ton of questions on Agile Situations (Mindset id the key!)
2 drag and drops - 1 on agile roles and 1 on - parkinson's law, student syndrome (took me by surprise, had no idea and I completely guessed it)
8 - multiple choice questions (choose 2, choose 3)
Exam and General Tips:

1. Time Management is the key here. I marked on the sheet of paper that they gave, the time I was finishing up the 60 questions mark. This always kept me in check with time remaining and how many questions have I completed/remaining and what my velocity (see what I did there ;]) should look like for the rest of the exam. The timer starts at 230 and countdown till you reach Q60 and then the screen to review your first 60 questions comes on, the timer DOESNT STOP while you are reviewing so manage time accordingly if you have a ton of questions to review (hopefully not). Then you get a break for 10 mins. Your exam starts at Q61 and so does the timer from where you left it. Q120 - same review screen, the timer is still going on while you review and then you get another break for 10 mins. The exam then starts at Q121 and goes upto Q180, you get to review your last section.
   
2. Please utilize the breaks during the exam. It really helped me to just step out, drink water, eat a cookie, use the restroom. Do whatever helps you remain calm.
   
3. Please hold yourself accountable to a study plan and stick to it. This will help you oriented towards taking the exam in a given timeframe and will set you up for success.
   
4. I don't think memorizing the 49 process will do you any good. Understanding the process, its inputs, its tools and the output is way more valuable and important than just remembering the processes. I remember all 49 by heart (I did it just for the sake of it but realized it was redundant as I was getting the grasp of how different process interact anyway) and it didn't really help anywhere today on the exam.
   
5. Watch the AR mindset videos. Watch the AR mindset videos. Watch the AR mindset videos.
   
6. Review ALL the questions you get incorrect on TIA, Study Hall or whatever mock exam you end up taking. It is essential to understand the WHY? behind the correct answer and almost everytime the correct answer had something to do with mindset. This will help you fill any gaps in your understanding.
   

Good luck to all of you! I hope each and everyone of you succeed. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
#pmp #projectmanagement #project

Overview

Hello folks. I am from the BTech 2020 batch and just recently completed my academics. I wanted to write an honest opinion thread (and a rant) from a student's perspective for my experiences at DA, which might help other folks in better navigating their college life. This is a thread where I would like to share my Academic Experiences.
Before proceeding, just wanted to give a background. We joined DA in November 2020 (late; since it was the Covid year) and had almost our first 4 semesters in online mode. Also, the administration did change the BTech curriculum a bit after our batch, mostly by rearranging the courses and removing a few. Overall those changes are great in my opinion.
Disclaimer: This post doesn't aim to demean any of the professors or degrade the academic domain of courses. This is an opinion thread of a student's experiences.

Semester - 1

1. Basic Electronic Circuits: It's an extension to the Electronic circuits (AC/DC, transistors, etc.) which we studied in 12th. The course would be helpful in the future courses of EL in better understanding the circuits. But, apart from that, it would serve no use if you are going to pursue a software career.
   1. Professors: The professors (Srimanta Mandal and Anjan Ghosh) are boring, and whatever they teach you in class would completely help in acing the exam. You have to study by yourself and do some practice.
   2. Assignments: Straight from the textbooks which they recommend. You can easily find solutions on the internet.
   3. Grading: Gave decent grades.
2. Calculus: One of the first mathematics course. again an extension of the calculus you studied in 12th, so a bit easy to catch up and learn. The course provides a solid foundation in advance calculus problems and would become helpful in some courses of data science or machine learning.
   1. Professors: Nabin Sahu is a great professor. Has knowledge and solves doubts too. You should just remain a sincere student in class. If you all as a batch irritate him frequently, then mark my words, he would give you shit grades. That wasn't the case with us, but with the juniors batch. He gave decent grades. But Manoj Raut is a bad prof, doesn't know how to teach, would just say random shit in class which doesn't make sense to you. So stay away.
   2. Assignments: Same as BEC. straight from textbooks. find solutions on the internet.
   3. Grading: Good. Don't disturb Nabin Sahu much and he would give good grades. If you dare to disturb him in the class, be prepared for his wrath :)
3. Engineering Design Workshop: Honestly have zero idea why this course exists. They would teach you AutoCAD, some mechanical tools and concepts, and would give you a project at the end of the course. In offline, the project part is a bit interesting. But the rest of the course is just useless to say the least.
   1. Professor: Anil Roy a senior psycho professor takes the course. Beware of his Dissociative identity disorder (DID). On some days he would be chill and would crack jokes in the class. but when he gets triggered (and trust me it's quite hard to predict what triggers him) he will ensure that it's unbearable to attend the lecture.
   2. Assignments: He gives the same assignments every year. Probably ask your seniors for it.
   3. Grading: If you are girl student, he would treat you softly by default and you have a good chance to score better grades, just by buttering. I know this sounds very sexist, but the prof himself is a sexist person. For the guys, just be sincere if you want good grades. Otherwise he does a decent grading.
4. Language and Literature: I really enjoyed the course. It's the first humanities course you would study in the college. We had a very great prof, Shweta Garg, who made the course interesting to go through. You would have multiple different readings and class discussions. See humanities courses have polarizing opinions. Some like it, some don't. My advice: They help you improve your communication skills a lot (which is crucial for the outside/corporate world) and give you different perspectives to look at life. So I like them (most of).
   1. Professor: Shweta Garg is a nice professor to have discussions with in class. But sadly she left the institute a year back. But I have heard the new professor, Amishal Modi, is also very chill and teaches the course in an interesting manner.
   2. Assignments: These are something where you might have to give efforts as they are based sometimes on the readings and classroom discussions. The group project is also very interesting exercise.
   3. Grading: Good grading. Take care of your exams, and participate in classroom discussions. that would help.
5. Introduction to Programming (and its Lab): The course teaches C language starting from the basics. If you learnt it in your 10th/12th, it would give you an edge. But if not, the course teaches you from scratch. It is very helpful in building the foundation for learning programming. For the exams, slides are 60-70%. And you can read the Let Us C book for added knowledge.
   1. Professors: Manish Khare and Bakul Gohel would teach simultaneously. Both are good profs. Bakul sir has better knowledge imo, Manish sir would bore you out with his teaching. But you can navigate this course by yourself too without attending lectures, with the help of youtube, peers, TAs.
   2. Assignments: Good assignments. would recommend to do them yourself rather than copying. It would help you polish your skills.
   3. Grading: Good grading. You can score well with efforts in exam and assignments.

Semester - 2

1. Approaches to Indian Society: A humanities course. The lectures were boring for me. But the project was interesting. The readings which they provide are a great read.
   1. Professor: Bharani Kollipara is a very chill professor. In the final presentation too, he won't ask scathing questions, instead discuss different aspects of the group project.
   2. Assignments: Same what I told before. you might have to do them by yourself as they are reading based.
   3. Grading: Chill. Just ace your presentation and exam (exam is not fairly easy too).
2. Data Structures (and Lab): A very helpful course in building the foundations for programming. The profs are very strict. But I will suggest if you really put in your time in this course, it would definitely help you while preparing for your placements (as you would have understood the basics of DSA). Also in the Lab, they would teach you Object Oriented Programming, which would also be a solid foundation for your placement prep.
   1. Professor: V Sunitha is an extremely strict professor. She doesn't teach properly and the classes are quite boring. Instead you can learn through youtube. But the attendance part makes it necessary to attend the lectures.
   2. Assignments: I will suggest to do them yourselves. the lab work too.
   3. Grading: If you want good grades, just remain a sincere student in her class. If you as a batch create nuisance, she won't give good grades.
3. Discrete Mathematics: Mathematics course. It's also helpful in your future courses. I didn't focus on the course during my time. and later whenever the concepts from this came, I had to go and revise/refresh that topic. But you would have to do self study more, because the profs don't teach much in detail. Tutorials and exams are moderate, and for solving them, you need to study things apart from the classroom teachings.
   1. Professor: Rahul Muthu is a chill prof, but understanding what he teaches in the class is difficult. Not all can grasp what he is teaching. Manish Gupta also teaches in other section and it's easier to understand.
   2. Assignments: Can be solved with the help of internet. some of them are textbook problems only.
   3. Grading: depends on the prof's mood and the class. If your batch makes nuisance, they would be strict on the grading.
4. Digital Logic Design: It's all about gates and Logic design. Now the course is a bit tweaked and the syllabus is modified somewhat. The course is fairly easy to understand.
   1. Professor: Vinay Palaparthy can be considered one of the chillest profs in DA. Just attend the lectures and he would tell you 90% of the question paper :) If not, you can just attend the lectures before the exam too. He has good knowledge, but also knows that BTech guys here are less interested in EL courses. so he has a very chill vibe.
   2. Assignments: Quite easy to solve.
   3. Grading: Chill. Vinay sir means chill grading policy.
5. Introduction to Communication Systems: It was the first CT course for our batch. But, now according to the new curriculum this course is shifted to 4th sem. 50-60% of the curriculum is really interesting, but as soon as you hear the words Fourier Transformation (one of the most dreadful topics :) ) things start to go above your head. I am not saying impossible, but you might have to give some time digesting those concepts. Overall, it introduces some great topics, which are overall helpful in further CT courses.
   1. Professor: "No-nonsense person" - A perfect definition to suit professor Yash Vasavada. That guy has a ton of knowledge in very diverse domains. But, you know, sometimes people feel bored in his lectures because of his slow pace in teaching. I particularly liked the coursework, so remained engaged in the lectures.
   2. Assignments: One peculiar thing about Prof vasavada, is he would give assignments which require your effort. MATLAB is your companion here.
   3. Grading: If you give good presentation, your chances of getting better grades increases. The exams are somewhat moderate to tough.

Semester - 3

1. Design and Analysis of Algorithms: The other half to make your fundamentals of DSA strong. The course introduces you to the basics of algorithms. You will learn sorting, searching, tree/graph traversals, etc. Most of the times, the profs rush through the end topics which is a downside because the tree and graph traversals are quite important to learn for DSA, CP, placements, etc. So, once you get a good grip of the concepts, start solving "basic" questions on DSA platforms like Leetcode, Hackerrank, etc.
   1. Professor: The teaching profs of this course keep changing generally. We had Supantha Pandit who is a chill prof. But, the classes are boring to attend.
   2. Assignments: Again I would say, do them by yourself - don't copy. That would help for your own benefit.
   3. Grading - Depends on prof, but in general it's chill.
2. Electromagnetic Theory: An extension to the EMT which you studied in 12th. Don't know why this course exists and how it helps. It would be helpful for a very small set of students who want to pursue the electronics domain (maybe).
   1. Professor: We had Mukesh Tiwari and Arnab Ray. Both have an amazing set of knowledge in this domain. I was in Mukesh Tiwari's section. He teaches very well and it's easier to grasp the concepts compared to other courses' profs.
   2. Assignments: Since we were in the online mode, our tutorials were chill. Mostly textbook questions, which you can find solutions online.
   3. Grading: Decent.
3. Groups and Linear Algebra: The third mathematics course. I personally like algebra, and this was an extension of the 12th class algebra, so I really enjoyed the course. (Honestly, I didn't study at all for this course during the sem, and got to know about the course content only during exam time, so have a bit of regret). Again this course would be helpful indirectly in understanding some programming concepts (you can trust me on this).
   1. Professor: Aditya Tatu and Rahul Muthu were the profs. Aditya Tatu teaches well and we used to see his lecture's recording only for the exams. Rahul sir's lectures didn't make much sense for me personally.
   2. Assignments: Easy to moderate. Many of them textbook questions but some unique ones.
   3. Grading: Decent (but this opinion differs batch to batch). For exams, you would have to study the concepts in better detail (Gajendra Purohit's YT playlist is a gem for this).
4. Signals and Systems: A CT course. Comparatively an easy one I can say. As it is more logical and a bit less theoretical. Don't know where it helps apart from future CT courses.
   1. Professor: We had Rajib Lochan Das, but I don't think he is now in the institute.
   2. Assignments: mostly Textbook questions, some different.
   3. Grading: We had a decent grading. But greatly depends on the prof.
5. Computer Organization: I think in the recent curriculum this course is merged with that Digital Logic Design one. So only some portions of what we studied would come for you. It is a decent course. Gives an overview of the kernel and assembly language coding.
   1. Professor: We had prof Amit Bhatt, but he is currently not a part of the institute. He had good subject matter knowledge.
   2. Assignments: mostly easy ones.
   3. Grading: we had a chill one, but depends on who the prof is.
6. Science, Technology, and Society: The only HM course I hated. The curriculum wasn't interesting enough for me. I didn't even understood what the readings tried to convey, what the project meant and what the professor wanted as an outcome from the project, and many things.
   1. Professor: Shefali Jha was a bit boring (personal opinion, other people might differ). She is a feminist kinda person and favours girls a bit more. even talks more with them in class discussions.
   2. Grading: If you can impress the prof in presentation then you would get good grades. Also class interactions matter.

Semester - 4

1. Probability, Statistics, Information Theory: The last mathematics course. It's an extension of the Probability and Statistics of 11-12th. The course is really good, and is helpful. From the perspective of placements too, the course is helpful, since many companies ask MCQs on these.
   1. Professor: We had the OG Gagan Garg. A chill and humorous prof. But now, he also has left the institute. Madhukant Sharma who teaches now, is a bit terrible prof. So take care of his grading policy.
   2. Assignments: Mostly textbook questions.
   3. Grading: Depends on prof. Madhukant has a stricter one. Exams were fairly straightforward for us, mostly similar to tutorial ques. But, you might have to confirm with the current batches.
2. Analog Communication and Transmission Line Theory: A CT course. Mostly theoretical. somewhat boring too.
   1. Professor: Deepak Ghodgaonkar teaches this. He would give you textbook snippet PDFs and just mug up those sections by heart, because he would just ask those same things as it is in the paper. Just pour out jo tumne ratta mara. :)
   2. Grading: Reiterating the above point. If you can mug up things, remember them precisely word to word, you can score in exams.
3. Analog Circuits: An EL course. Extension of the BEL course of 1st sem. Don't know where this course helps apart from EL electives. Learning electronic circuits was tough thing for me, so try to learn that out.
   1. Professor: Rutu Parekh is a chill and amazing person. If you are a gujju and can do great vaato, you have chances of getting good grades.
   2. Assignments: moderate.
   3. Grading: Exams would majorly determine your grades.
4. Systems Software: A course similar to Operating Systems but a more foundational one. You would learn Linux, Threading, etc. I really liked the course and found it helpful too later in different aspects.
   1. Professor: Amit Mankodi is an amazing prof with great knowledge and good teaching style. You just have to just catch his speed of teaching, as he covers a lot in each lecture. I would say, he is the most systematic prof, as he keeps the lectures, code files and many other things organized pretty well.
   2. Assignments: Quite intuitive and interesting to solve. Would suggest not to copy and do them yourselves.
   3. Grading: The exams are on the tougher side. And hence it is a bit difficult to get 9/10.
5. Environmental Studies: Another HM course but termed as an SC course. Prof Vasavada teaches a lot and provides excessive content against the lower number of credits the course has. A fairly easy course to go through. But have to mug up a lot of content for exams.
   1. Professor: Yash Vasavada is quite dedicated in teaching the course. But at some time, it becomes exhausting with the detailed content.
   2. Assignments: Not many. Majorly a group project.
   3. Grading: If you put up a great presentation, chances of receiving good grades are high.
6. Engineered Materials: I won't say anything about this course, since it has been removed now. Can write a complete thread ranting about Anil Roy, but don't want to waste my time. If at all this course comes up as an elective, my advice, don't take it. The course has nothing to offer, neither the prof.

Semester - 5

1. Digital Communications: Another CT course. It's not completely theoretical and somewhat interesting. Personally I found Digital part to be more easy to grasp than the Analog part. But still a lot of mugging up of theory and derivations of formulae.
   1. Professor: Deepak Ghodgaonkar and Abhishek Jindal. Deepak Ghodgaonkar literally just reads out paragraphs from the textbook snips and doesn't teach anything. Jindal sir does teach some concepts. He seems a chill prof, but is slightly cunning so beware in your interactions.
   2. Grading: As mentioned earlier, Deepak sir would make a purely theoretical paper, straight from the textbook snippets. On the other hand, Jindal sir would give more practical (solving problems) type questions. So be prepared to do a mix of both. They generally divide in either of these manner: Each prof makes paper of each insem or they both make 50-50 percent of the paper. The grading is based on exams mostly.
2. Principle of Economics: Really interesting course from the name. I also enjoyed it a fair part. It covers many fundamental topics and that was the best part. Finance folks would enjoy the curriculum.
   1. Professor: We had both new profs - Cyril Jos and Gaurav Kumar Singh. Gaurav sir was chill as hell in class, he would just go past his ppt and explain things (along with saying "Right" 100-200 times in a lecture :) ). Cyril sir just whiz past through his ppt and covers a ton of topics in every lecture and you can't grasp everything for sure. And it really becomes a pain in the ass when going through those 500-600 pages PPTs during insem prep.
   2. Grading: We had a really chill grading done. But further batches faced stricter policies, so ask your immediate seniors for better knowledge.
3. Database Management Systems: An important course as it covers SQL. PostgreSQL and PgAdmin would be your buddies. The course would cover for almost 60-70% placement prep for you, so would suggest to learn properly. The profs are mid. So you might have to learn some things yourselves too. Overall a very helpful course.
   1. Professor: (Different profs take the course from batch-to-batch) We had Minal Bhise and Rachit Chhaya. Minal Bhise is a typical old atrocious bitch professor. She doesn't know how to teach much. Rachit sir on the other hand is a chill prof and teaches well too.
   2. Assignment: I would suggest to do them yourselves, considering the importance of the course. Most of the lab work, they would ask you to complete in lab only.
   3. Grading: Shit grading policy. Minal Bhise, being the senior prof, dictated the grading policy and gave good grades to very few people.
4. Embedded Hardware Design: Ohh man. What should I say. Our batch had its worst nightmare in this course. Initial two months both the profs didn't teach much and most of the lectures got cancelled. And then the prof just had some mood swings at the end of the course and awarded shittiest grades we ever saw. The course project (programming elevator) was same for each group, yet he was disappointed from everyone.
   1. Professor: We had Biswajit Mishra and Vinay Palaparthy. Just stay away from Biswajit as far as you can. If someone can give competition to Anil Roy, it's Biswajit. Vinay sir was really chill and infact he did give some hints also about the question paper during lectures. But Biswajit decided on the grading part (again because he was a senior prof). BUT, if you have Tapas Kumar Maiti as prof, it would be somewhat chill course (Our juniors had him).
   2. Assignments: If you get that elevator project, do it somewhat properly, to save your grades.
   3. Grading: Biswajit dictated the grading and gave really bad grades. He even changed the policy in the middle of the semester.
5. Computer Networks: Somewhat important course as it covers a fundamental domain of Computer Science - Networks. I really enjoyed the lectures and the course in general. The prof was good, exams were also not that difficult and provided good set of knowledge. Some companies do ask CN in their tests/interviews, so this would become helpful for sure.
   1. Professor: PS Kalyan Sasidhar is a great prof. Has subject knowledge, knows hows to teach, and doesn't have any nakhre.
   2. Assignments: Easy ones. Would suggest doing them by yourselves, as there is a lab viva too.
   3. Grading: Chill policy. If you are above average, you would get >=8 for sure.
6. (ELECTIVE) Optimization: I took Opti, some people took other courses too. Won't say this is the best option or so, you can take a course as per your interest. But one important thing - Take optimization as elective only and only if Manish Kumar is the prof. If Manoj Raut is teaching, stay away. The course is very chill teaches 3 main important formulae/methods which are the only things you need to learn. The only skill which you require is good maths (Not advance, but good at subtraction, addition, multiplication, division) and patience.
   1. Professor: Manish Kumar teaches well. You can attend the lectures and would just have to revise the formulae before exams and you are all set. DONT GO IF THERE IS MANOJ RAUT teaching the course. If some other prof, then ask around, before taking.
   2. Assignments: Chill.
   3. Grading: Our seniors had chill grading. Our was moderate. But, you need to ensure that your calculations are precise and proper in exams, because those are very statistical and long calculations spanning 2-3 pages.

Semester - 6

1. Software Engineering: My first impressions were that most of the course content is not at all helpful. When you attend the lectures, you think, why am I studying this (though being an IT course). But later I realised the profs are bad at teaching. The concepts taught and asked in exams are in general helpful in real world (Class Diagrams, and all those diagrams, Agile, etc.) But, they don't even focus on such aspects. Believe it or not, the slides go beyond 800 when you read them for your exams, but doesn't have even 10% helpful information in there.
   1. Professor: Saurabh Tiwari and Manish Khare. Saurabh sir still teaches somewhat better but is very strict. He catches people who sneak out of the lectures in between (yes it's happened in our batch couple of times). Manish Khare doesn't know anything. Neither his slides nor he himself makes any sense in general.
   2. Project: I would suggest you to contribute in the group project of this course. They ask you to develop a full fledged software application in group. Pick a team (frontend/backend doesn't matter) and learn atleast one new language/technology. The project and your skill would be a great add to your resume.
   3. Grading: Moderate to decent.
2. (ELECTIVE) Econometric Data Analysis with R: A new course at our time so I took it. If you like Data Analysis, this is a good course. It would teach you great stuff. Gaurav Kumar Singh is a mid prof. You will understand a few things, but would have to learn other concepts by yourself. Many good concepts of Probability and Statistics are covered in this.
   1. Professor: Gaurav Kumar Singh has a background of Economics and Data Analysis so he has good knowledge. But his teaching is just decent not good. But a really nice and chill prof.
   2. Assignments: Easy to moderate. If you are interested in Data Analysis field, would suggest to do them yourselves.
   3. Grading: Moderate. He did somewhat stricter grading. But that was also because less people attending his lectures and he didn't like that.
3. (ELECTIVE) Human Computer Interaction: I really don't know how the Deans and other senior members approved this to be a full fledged course. The course content is so minimal, and chill, every year, the seats fill up and the registrations of this course exceed the limit. I am not demeaning the domain, but I think there are more things which could fit in. If you like designing or want to go in UI/UX, this course would help. Anyways, it's a win-win situation for you, if you get this elective. It's very chill and you literally have a lot of high chance of scoring a 10 pointer very easily.
   1. Professor: P S Kalyan Sasidhar, as mentioned earlier, is a chill no-nonsense prof. He passionately teaches the course.
   2. Assignments: Actually the assignments are really interesting as it requires you to think in a different approach. The prof has designed them really well.
   3. Grading: Chill. You can easily get good grades >=8.
4. (ELECTIVE) Operating Systems: Another important course from placements perspective. Also a very foundational course for Computer Science in general. I really enjoyed this one too as the prof (also read below more about the prof) as good knowledge of subject matter and taught really well. You can attend all the lectures and 70-80% prep for your exams are done. Threads, Locks, Semaphores, Memory management etc are the concepts you would learn.
   1. Professor: Take the course if Prof Anish Mathuria is taking (even sem). Don't take it, if Sanjay Srivastava is taking (odd sem). Sanjay sir does very strict grading.
   2. Assignments: Easy to Moderate.
   3. Grading: Moderate. You can score good grades. If you don't attend the lectures, then also the slides and practice questions of Anish sir would help you out.
5. (ELECTIVE) Indian Cinema: This was being offered for the first time and I took the course. One of my best decisions. If you like films, want to learn about the history of Bollywood, and some concepts about art in films, take this course. The prof arranges weekly streaming of films where we see a new film from different genres, different decades, different languages (Indian still). Don't expect to see mainstream Bollywood. But, if you are film connoisseur, you would enjoy the course. Engage in class discussions too.
   1. Professor: Jenson Joseph is a really nice prof. He has subject domain knowledge and teaches well too. Discussions with him are also interesting in lectures.
   2. Assignments: Very few.
   3. Grading: We had a very chill grading. Take care of your presentation, make a good one, put in efforts. And if you attended the lectures, your exams would also go well. If he remembers your name/face (in a good manner, good student) you would get good grades.
6. (ELECTIVE) Cloud Computing: Would introduce you to the cloud and its subdomains. The prof would teach you about Azure and other concepts. Some placement companies do have Cloud Computing knowledge as requirements, so this might help. Not a deal breaker course, but a chill one.
   1. Professor: Lavneet Singh is a chill prof, has subject domain knowledge and teaches well.
   2. Assignments: Moderate. Some are tough too.
   3. Grading: Decent. You can easily get >=7.
7. (ELECTIVE) Exploratory Data Analysis: Ideally, this is an introductory course for the MSc DS students. But is open for BTech folks too. Gopinath Panda is a very chill prof and the course also is like a breeze of air (very chill). If you like Data Analysis, take this.
   1. Professor: Gopinath Panda is a chill prof. I don't know if he has a background in this domain, but teaches decently.
   2. Grading: Very Chill. Just do your project well and submit lab assignments timely. All set.

Semester - 7

1. (ELECTIVE) Information Retrieval: This elective requires higher CGPA to take, because it is actually intended for MTech ML Students, but is opened for BTech. This was a gem of course as it challenged me and I felt rewarded going through each assignment/project/exam as I learned something new. This course lies in the domain of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and towards the end, you also get an overview of how LLM works. There is a bit of steep learning curve, but attending the lectures would help. We had a very nice professor taking the course, and he explained things very well. If you prior knowledge of Machine Learning (Neural Networks) it helps in the later part of the course.
   1. Professor: Sandip Modha is a really great prof. He has a good knowledge in the subject domain and is passionate in teaching. But he was a visiting faculty, and generally Prof Prasenjit Majumder takes the course. But you can have him as well too, as he is also a good prof.
   2. Assignments: Moderate to Difficult. Google Colab would be your buddy. If you really want to learn, do the assignment by yourselves. Or if you are using chatGPT, know what the code does.
   3. Grading: Put efforts in the group project. The presentation would help you get good grades, if your project is good. Remain around or above average in exams for >=9, otherwise expect around 8 grade.
2. (ELECTIVE) Big Data Processing: This course introduces you to NoSQL databases. Overall it's really helpful because in modern software applications, NoSQL databases are present. You need to put efforts in learning the concepts as the Prof doesn't teach that well. I really liked the course along with the project as it was really interesting to learn and easy to understand. The course is very logical and intuitive to understand. But, The latter part of the course becomes more theoretical where DynamoDB comes up, so you would have to mug those up for exams.
   1. Professor: P M Jat is a nice chill prof. He teaches decently, but puts attendance policy, so you have to attend the lectures. He would randomly pin point people in class and ask questions from previous lectures. But doesn't have much nakhre.
   2. Assignments: Easy to Moderate.
   3. Grading: Put efforts in the project, if you ace that, then chances of good grades are high. The exams are mostly objective and some subjective.
3. (ELECTIVE) Introduction to Modern Algebra: Funny story: Out of more than 100 students registered for this course, only 5 people attended the lectures. Reason being, its content is very similar to the Groups and Linear Algebra course, so it was quite easy to go through this course. The prof might change the curriculum a bit in future. But until then, take this course up, it would be easy to go through.
   1. Professor: Sudip Bera is a new prof. He initially provided lecture notes as well as typed latex notes. But when students didn't attend his lectures (obviously because he was providing such neat and tidy notes) he stopped giving those. Still a chill prof.
   2. Grading: It was very dicey to score in exams, as they were the only grading component. He gave 25 mark question paper, with just 5 questions, each 5 marks. If you get something wrong in one question, no partial marks awarded. So you either get 5 or 0 for a question. But, if you have prepared decently, you can get a 7/8 (and that's only what normal students aim in 7th sem).
4. (ELECTIVE) Human Behaviour Management: Another weird HM course. Although it was quite chill to pass through, I personally didn't like the prof. Nandini Banerjee is a strange feminist prof who would just victim card females (out of no context). The course didn't require much effort as such. Attend lectures, interact with the prof, put your logical opinions, and put some efforts in project.
   1. Professor: Nandini Banerjee is a counsellor on campus, but I would refrain someone to go to her for any kind of counselling (trust me have heard many other people's accounts too and all of them have bad experiences). She has very less subject knowledge, discusses random topics in the classroom, and would give a mix of slides assembled from various sources. Don't worry hearing all this, you can still take the course, if you don't want much load in your 7th sem. It's not that bad too.
   2. Assignments: Some book readings and other group activities.
   3. Grading: Put in efforts in your presentation. Do a skit in it. Just impress the prof, so you atleast get a 7. Then perform good in exams and make it 8/9.
5. (ELECTIVE) Detection and Estimation Theory: Just don't take this course. Srimanta Mandal is the prof and doesn't teach quite well, makes the course boring. If I have to summarize in one line, "He teaches plain rice in lectures, and asks Hyderabadi Biryani with Curd Raita in exams". Staying away from this course would be in the best of your interest.

In the intricate world of medical device manufacturing, every label tells a story. It’s not just about slapping on some stickers; it’s a meticulous dance between safety, regulation, and effective communication. Let me take you on a journey through the key considerations for labeling medical devices effectively.
Once upon a time, in the bustling corridors of healthcare innovation, regulatory compliance stood tall as the guardian of patient safety. Agencies like the FDA in the U.S. and the European Commission in the EU set forth stringent requirements, demanding labels to be more than just ink on paper. They dictated the content, format, language, symbols, and even the placement of labels, ensuring every word and symbol spoke volumes about the device’s safety and efficacy.
But it wasn’t just about ticking regulatory boxes. No, labels had to speak directly to the hearts of healthcare professionals and end-users alike. Safety information took center stage, boldly warning of potential hazards, precautions, contraindications, and adverse reactions. Clear, concise language and universally recognized symbols became the lingua franca, bridging gaps of understanding across diverse user groups.
Each label became a beacon of identity in the vast sea of medical devices. Device identification wasn’t just about names and numbers; it was about traceability and recall. From serial numbers to manufacturing details, and even barcodes or RFID tags, every label carried the weight of accountability and trust.
Instructions for use weren’t mere afterthoughts; they were lifelines. From assembly to operation, maintenance, and disposal, these instructions were the guiding light for users navigating the complexities of modern healthcare. Clear, logically organized instructions supplemented with diagrams or illustrations became the cornerstone of usability.
But in the global marketplace, linguistic diversity reigned supreme. Multilingual labeling wasn’t just a courtesy; it was a necessity. Labels spoke in one language and many, accommodating users with varying proficiency levels and ensuring comprehension and compliance across borders.
And amidst this whirlwind of regulation and communication, one anchor remained steadfast: Labeling Medical Devices. Like a lighthouse in the storm, MakroCare stood as a beacon of expertise, guiding manufacturers through regulatory requirements and optimizing labeling strategies for success.
In the ever-evolving landscape of medical device manufacturing, effective labeling isn’t just about sticking labels; it’s about telling stories of safety, compliance, and usability. So, the next time you peel back the label on a medical device, remember, that it’s more than just ink on paper — it’s a narrative of care, precision, and trust.

My nesting partner Amanda (f) and I (m) have been together for getting close to a decade. For a few different reasons a long time went by where neither of us were looking for other partners, so it's just been us for a hot minute. We've been trying to reconnect with old friends and make new ones this past year, and in the past month one of those connections lead to a dating relationship for me with Cate (f). In some of our processing conversations that Amanda and I have had to transition from hypothetical to being an "active" poly couple, Amanda realized that she's been feeling stuck in her life and not totally sure who she is these days. She wants to do some exploring to figure out what she wants next for herself beyond just being part of our relationship.
This feels good and healthy to me and seems like it would be so even if I hadn't started dating Cate. I want Amanda to be the best version of herself she can be. But it's also spooky because I've been in relationships where "I need to find myself" meant starting a slow-breakup. She's offered me assurances that she wants to pursue some of her passions and that in most cases if it's something I'm also interested in I'm welcome to join in some of those things, and that helps. She has also reassured me that while there are no guarantees in life, she can't imagine a life that she wouldn't want to be sharing with me. I realize there are no guarantees in relationships, so I'm sitting with my nerves and embracing them for now while I encourage her to figure out what makes her heart happy in this new season of life.
The advice I'm looking for is what others here found to be good, healthy ways to cross the bridge from a heavily interconnected couple with just one shared world to having slightly less of a 100% Venn diagram overlap but still having a deep connection. I want to encourage and enable her to find what makes her happy, participate in some of those things where they are things we might both be passionate about or find enriching, and give her space to be her own person while not feeling like I'm just fully letting her go or being fully let go myself. It's an odd emotional space to be in after so long only dating each other and I want to navigate it as best I can for both of us.

PART ONE THOUSAND AND EIGHT
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Sunday
We materialised in a shop-front alcove, with a solid concrete wall to my right and a panelled wooden display wall behind glass to my left.
“Keep going,” Rubin said in my ear.
Not sure why he was being so insistent, I nevertheless strode forward as if I knew where I was going, and in just a few steps, the presence of multiple lanes of New York City traffic swept over me. Four lanes, all facing the same way, meant we were on one of the main arterial streets like Fifth Ave or Park Ave. ‘Zara’, a clothes boutique on the other side of the street did nothing to narrow the field any for me.
Not that it mattered. My point with this deductive reasoning was that neither of those streets had curbside parking.
Yet, sure enough, Dad's SUV was on the other side of the sidewalk in the closest lane of traffic, waiting for the lights to change. “Get in, quick!” Rubin ordered.
This wouldn’t be the first time I jumped into an illegal ‘traffic-light-parked’ car, and I raced for the back door, swinging it open and diving inside just as the lights changed. The door ‘magically’ shut itself behind me as I straightened up in my seat and took in Kulon behind the wheel and Gerry in the seat to my right.
“Hey, Angel,” I said, leaning forward to give her a quick kiss. “Missed you.”
“How’d it go with—er—your uncle?” Gerry asked, struggling with the normality of me having met with her god.
“Wanna put your seatbelt on back there, Sam?” Kulon chuckled, glancing at me in the rearview mirror as we moved forward across the intersection.
“It went better than I thought,” I admitted, then grinned. “I even got a really cool old-school bomber jacket out of it.” I saw her cringe and giggled evilly. “And you can’t hate on it, because it was literally a present from God himself.”
She clenched her hands into loose fists and pressed the heels of her palms to her temple. “I-I can’t even…” she finally stammered, and my giggle morphed into a full-blown cackle.
“I’ll show you when we get home. I don’t think you’ll hate it. It’s really nice and super authentic.” I then turned my attention to Kulon. “And dude! That has got to be soooo handy,” I said, gesturing back to where I’d jumped in the car. I was blown away by how easily it would be to catch people like that, just by realm-stepping the second a car was held up at lights. No guesswork. Not even coordinates. Just knowing.
“It has its moments,” Kulon agreed. “So, are we heading home?”
“Yes, please. The guys want to go out to Angus’ place to play some more ball this afternoon, but if I don’t get some home time in with Gerry between now and then, I won’t be going anywhere.”
The trip back to the apartment was quick, with Rubin vanishing as fast as he appeared once we had the building in sight. And with him on hand to pull back the guys any time we needed them, Kulon and Quent both stayed with the car and drove away together once Gerry and I were inside.
Of course, my luck just wasn’t playing nice with me today, for I knew the second I set foot in the apartment and saw Dad rise purposefully from his chair just inside the living room that having fun-time with Gerry wasn’t in my immediate future.
“I need a word with you, Sam,” he said, stepping between the sofa and the coffee table to give Gerry access to the rest of the apartment (with Dad standing in the doorway, it was as if it had been walled off).
“Daaaad,” I moaned, not really caring at this point what he wanted. After the morning I’d had, I needed some real Robbie-food and an hour or four in bed with my girl … minimum!
“Now, Sam.” His tone changed when he looked at Gerry and added, “We won’t be long, sweetheart.”
Not that it mattered. His initial bark had taken all my attention, and I felt my heart clench in my chest, wondering what else I’d done wrong. Not even Uncle YHWH had yelled at me, and I’d accidentally screwed with a couple of his worshippers. I couldn’t think of anything to warrant that, and as I processed the possibilities and came up blank, I barely felt Geraldine’s kiss to my cheek. “I’ll go and do some light reading in the bedroom,” she said, slipping out of my arms and making her way past Dad with a nod.
A few seconds later, I heard our bedroom door open and close, and I looked at Dad like he’d kicked a puppy. “Was that really necessary?”
“Would I have done it if it wasn’t?” Dad countered, and I had to remember who I was talking to. Between my run-in with Tucker’s people and my conversation with Uncle YHWH, I was being bolder than I had any right to be.
I forced myself to relax. “Sorry. It’s been a rough morning already.” I rubbed my chest again because, contrary to what anyone says, being tasered sucked, even if I did heal from it almost instantly.
Dad immediately frowned. “What happened? I thought you were visiting Gerry’s father for breakfast.”
“We were … I mean we did.” So much else had happened, and I didn’t feel like going into all of it. And since he was standing to one side, I headed into the kitchen, dropping my shoulder low to avoid his half-hearted grab on my way through.
I stopped at the plate warmer and was miffed at its empty state. My next port of call was the divine box Robbie called Voila. I remembered him telling me how I had to know what was in there for it to work (that, and how Charlie had scared the crap out of him yesterday morning when she’d told him the box was empty), but this was also Robbie, and he always had what we wanted ready to go. I brought to mind the one thing that would tide me over until lunch. The same thing that had been missing from Tucker’s table.
Just as I’d hoped, when I lifted the lid, an egg-filled baguette with bacon and cheese was waiting for me on a single sandwich plate. “Ye-essss,” I hissed in victory, lifting out the plate and taking the biggest bite I could manage without choking myself. “Thank you, Robbie, wherever you are! I love you!” My words were utterly muffled, but he wasn’t here, so it didn’t matter.
“Their food not to your liking?” Dad asked with an amused smirk.
“The company was challenging,” I answered evasively once I’d chewed enough to swallow. I then went over to the fridge and dug out the jug of freshly squeezed mango juice that I could never get enough of. With both items in my hands now, I was happy.
“Don’t even,” Dad warned when I instinctually lifted the jug to my lips.
“Hmmh?” The sound would’ve been an innocent ‘huh’, except I’d clamped my lips closed like that had never been my plan and put the jug on the island on the way to get a cup. With the dishwasher closer, I opened the door and grabbed one of the glasses from the second shelf. I then nudged the door shut with my shin and slid into Boyd’s seat, dragging the rest of my prizes over to me.
“So, what’s the family crisis?” I asked, pouring myself a drink but keeping the jug within easy reach. Wow, I really do use that word a lot, don’t I? I took a deep swallow to clear my throat, sighed, and then returned for another huge bite of my baguette.
“My youngest brother, Barris, our Mystallian God of the Hunt, has learned about you.”
Oh, for frig’s sake! I lowered the baguette and sat back in Boyd’s chair, my full focus once more on Dad. “Okay,” I answered cautiously, torn between frustration and annoyance. The other word choice that sprang to mind was a sarcastic ‘really’, which would probably require someone picking out an urn for my remains.
Dad shook his head and raised one hand with flared fingers. “It’s nothing bad.” He then pointed at my plate. “Finish your sandwich first.”
My next mouthfuls were maybe a third of the first two, and I might as well have been eating tyre rubber for all the enjoyment I was getting out of it. “How much does he know about me?” I asked between bites.
Dad moved to stand beside me at the corner of the island. “He knows you’ve almost graduated college. He knows there was animosity between your mother and me that’s since been resolved, and he knows about the pregnancy now.”
Now, the baguette felt like a rock in my gut. “Great.”
He slid into Lucas’ seat and curled a hand around my forearm near the elbow, anchoring me in place. “Sam, I said it’s okay. He’s on our side.”
I squinted. A lot of people were making that claim lately and I wasn’t sure I believed it anymore. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Dad met my stare squarely, and I was always amazed at how easily he could do that. “He knows the dangers to your mother, so he’s going to run interference on the family for us until after the babies are born. Despite the fact that it’ll put him in the same crosshairs with the rest of our family as us when they find out he knew, he’s going to do it anyway. He only asks one thing in return.”
I barely restrained my eye-roll. “Of course he does.”
Dad’s face morphed into a dark scowl, and his grip tightened painfully. “You will show your uncle the respect he deserves,” he warned.
I dropped my eyes to his waist; so not up for this. “Yes, sir.”
Dad’s intake for breath was both loud and frustrated. He kicked the leg of the chair I was sitting on for good measure, and when my gaze snapped to his, he was pointing two fingers of his free hand at his own eyes. “That’s right, boy. Right here. Nowhere else. Not there … not there … not way over there.” He pointed to three random locations in the apartment before returning to their original spot before his eyes. “Right here. Always. You get me?”
For some reason, Dr Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham started rolling through my brain, and I was quite proud of myself that I didn’t smirk or even blink. “Yessir.”
He didn’t get any calmer. “Okay …” he finally said, after a few seconds that was—who knew how long for him if he internalised to settle down— “I know we’ve only touched lightly on this before, but I need you to lift your game before we meet with your uncle, starting with stripping the words ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ from your vocabulary. I know your stance on human manners, and I’ve accepted your decision and will support it when it comes up with the others. That said, even the humans hardly ever use those two servitude titles anymore, and you can’t afford to appear weak in front of our family. Okay?”
Dad was compromising. I knew the family wouldn’t agree with my use of manners, but Dad was willing to back that, and to me, it was the more important of the two. “I’ll try,” I said because I couldn’t say for sure if I’d succeed without premonition, and that one wasn’t in my wheelhouse.
Ha, I made a divine funny.
So, why aren’t I laughing?
Probably because I still hadn’t heard what Uncle Barris wanted in exchange for his cooperation. It couldn’t be my head on a pike, as neither of my parents would go for that. But what?
“He wants to meet you, Sam, at a destination of your choosing and he’s agreed not to come here looking for you so long as that request is met. He hasn’t even asked for this address.”
“He’s the god of hunting, Dad. Hunting me down would be a cakewalk for someone like him.”
“True, except he’s promised not to go there unless it’s an emergency. You’re his nephew, Sam. A nephew he knew nothing about until last night. All he wants to do is meet you, and given the circumstances, I don’t think that’s too much to ask, do you?”
“How did he find out?” I asked instead of answering.
Dad’s expression soured. “Helen Portsmith. Apparently, she turned up at his gym last night with her usual spiel; only this time, your uncle put it together correctly and came looking for me for real answers. I told him about you and your mother. I told him our secrets.”
Something about the way he worded that… “As opposed to what?”
“I still haven’t mentioned Robbie or his connection to Yitzak. Nor have I mentioned the true gryps living with us, except for Tiacor, who’s there for your mother.”
I was starting to put this together. “Okay, so when we meet, no mention of Robbie as a cousin, or that he has a food innate, or that Yitzak and Collette know about him.” I got the feeling learning that we had true gryps in the household wouldn’t really amount to much, as they could be anywhere they wanted to be all over the world. It was their world as much as ours.
“Exactly.”
“What about Clefton and Nick? They’ve been here and met us too.”
“Mention them only if you want to get them into trouble for not outing you from the very beginning. Same with Nuncio.”
Well, that’s a hard ‘no’. “Maybe Cuschler?”
Dad scowled again. “There’s no bad blood between us anymore, right?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow warningly.
I sighed. Spoilsport. “Fine. But what about Fisk and the girls … and Najma?” It wasn’t that I’d forgotten my nephew, just that my brother and sisters rolled off the tongue first. “Danika’s been here, and Najma tracked me down at school before everyone else had met me. Even Fisk has popped in from time to time to touch base.”
“Barris knows they knew, and he understands why they’ve kept it quiet. Nothing’s going to happen until the reunion, and even then, maybe nothing if your mother still hasn’t given birth.”
I pushed my half-eaten baguette away and pressed my forehead to the island. “Everybody knows a little bit,” I griped. “How in the world am I meant to keep tabs on who knows what?”
Dad’s grin made me want to kick him the way he’d kicked my chair. “What do you think internalising is for? Remembering whatever we want is literally our jam.”
“I s’pose.” But combing through the details at every turn still seemed like an awful lot of effort, even if that process did seem instantaneous to everyone else. It wasn’t to us.
Dad reached past me and brought back my baguette. “Finish your sandwich. You can go as you are. Your uncle runs a gym downtown, so he’s not exactly at his best either.”
I stared at him in horror. “We’re going right now?”
“Why not now?”
Because I just got back from seeing Uncle YHWH! “I dunno. I mean, it’s too soon, don’t you think?”
I don’t know how else to describe it, but Dad’s expression turned … parental. “And when would a good time be for you with your hugely busy schedule now that school has wrapped up?” he asked like I was an idiot.
I gave a nervous, shrugging roll of my shoulders. “I understand there’s this get-together happening at the end of the year…”
I kinda expected the cuff to the back of my head and tried not to snicker when it happened.
“Don’t be a smartass. Finish your sandwich, and we’ll go. This won’t take long.”
With nothing else for it, I did as I was told, leaving the empty plate and cup on the sink since the dishwasher hadn’t been emptied. “I’m so glad I got a say in this…” I muttered quietly under my breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
I have no idea why I thought we’d at least use the front door to leave. Probably because most people did. But this was Dad, and we were going to meet his brother, and he clearly didn’t want me to have the chance of wriggling out of it.
So without warning, he slapped his hand on my right shoulder and shoved me forward, realm-stepping away with me as I stumbled to keep my footing.
[Next Chapter]
* * *
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!

A few months ago, I caught the typewriter bug, and have seen my collection grow ever since. In these first few months, I've been busy slowly nursing some of the members back to health. This would be explained by the fact I'm more of a tinkerer than a collector, so I've been going for cheap machines in a sorry state rather than sublime examples in tip top shape.
Of course, some of the machines still require a great deal of attention, but I now find myself wanting to use the functional machines, but having nothing to type (or so I thought).
I am a software engineer by day, and spend a lot of time on computers, obviously. And it occurred to me that I could try and "bridge the gap" by reproducing typed work that would have some significance to computing. Alan Turing's name came to mind, as one of the significant figures in the theory of computing. Some of the reports that Turing wrote during WWII have now been declassified by the government, and are available online (albeit not always easy to find), either as digital documents (retyped on computer), or as scans of the original document pulled from the national archives.
I have settled on Turing's Treatise on Enigma, a report of about 150 pages on the cipher machine. What struck me right away is how imperfect the typing was: typos obviously, misplaced spaces, x'ed out words. Being somewhat of a perfectionist, my heart sinks a little every time I mistype something, so seeing all these "mistakes" gave me some sense of relief.
It took me a few trial pages to select my weapon of choice, to match the original as closely as possible, while maintaining a good print quality. I did try some Elite machines, but the report being typed in Pica, things didn't look right (surprisingly to me, I own more Elite machines than Pica). Paper size is the real challenge though: official paper size in the UK at the time was foolscap back in the day, about 8x13 inches, which is now close to unobtainium. A4 will have to do, I guess (unless someone can point me to the right place)
And so the project has started: using an Olivetti Lettera 22, I will try and reproduce the report as closely as I can, including mistakes and hand drawn diagrams. I'm only 2 pages in at this point, but motivated and excited, and can already feel my typing improve.
For those interested in trying it out, here are 2 versions of the document, in varying quality: * https://archive.org/details/hw-25-3 * https://www.archives.gov/files/press/press-releases/2015/images/turing-enigma-treatise.pdf