I have written Akaris story (well part of it) on AO3 and have even published extracts of it on here before however I ended up deleting the AO3 due to feeling unsatisfied. Anyways here's a revamped version of her quirk awakening. I hope to re publish on AO3 at some point. Would love to hear some thoughts.
Akaris’ first memory was of the sun. The golden orb shone down on her, enveloping her in what felt like a soft warm hug.
She could see the beams of it through the overhanging tree she was laying beneath with her elder brother, Keigo. Birds twittered in the distance as the blades of grass danced in the small gusts of wind.
Both siblings were breathing heavily as sweat trickled down their skin. Akari rolled over onto her side, so she was facing Keigo
“You… did well.” Keigo said between breaths.
“But you won, you always do” She protested. “Doing well means winning.” She recited in the exact way Ichika, her trainer, would. So far, according to her she was exceeding in her studies and training however she still wasn't doing well enough to train with the same group her brother does.
She lifted her small hand up to wipe the sweat from her brow and block the sun's beams before sitting up.
Keigo sighed, joining her and flapped his red wings in her general direction. The breeze came in small lashes however she treasured each and every one of them.
“You wanna be a hero, right?” Keigo asked.
She nodded enthusiastically. Sure, her quirk hadn't come in yet, however, when it did she was going to use it to save others, like the hero's, not to harm others, like the villains.
“It's not always about winning.” Keigo followed up.
“Ichika says that being a hero means beating the bad guys and saving the good ones” She said. “The only way to do that is to win,” She concluded, stretching her arms above her head and standing up. “Let's go for another lap.”
Keigo sighed, shaking his head.
“We have training later, let's not use our energy now.”
“But K—”
“It's the smarter choice.” He said already heading back to the dormitory buildings.
She jogged to catch up with him before falling into step beside him.
“I'm bored though,” She moaned, “and it takes so long to walk back, can't we do another lap?”
Keigo shook his head before deploying a few of his feathers.
“You like flowers, right?” He asked.
She raised an eyebrow but nodded.
The red feathers shifted before shuffling and arranging themselves into the shape of a flower upon Keigo's command.
“That's so cool!” She exclaimed. Keigos quirk never seemed to amaze her. “Can you do a… unicorn?” She suggested.
Keigo frowned, concentrating on the feathers and arranging them. The outcome made her giggle.
“What?”
“That doesn't look like a unicorn!”
“How you talk badly of my amazing art!” Keigo exclaimed.
“It's really bad!”
“No it's not!”
He shifted the feather again. She giggled.
“It looks like it has a moustache!”
“That's meant to be the mane!”
“Okay, okay, how about we play a game instead, ill make something, you guess what it is.”
The feathers shifted again.
Akari squinted.
They looked all jumbled up and she couldn't decipher what they were meant to represent.
“Come on, you should be able to figure that out!” He exclaimed.
“I'm trying, it's not my fault you're bad at art.”
Keigo spluttered back some response however she was too busy observing the cluster of feathers; she really wanted to figure it out.
At first she hadn't noticed it, however at this point she felt it loud as day. The sensation was something she had never sensed before, it was something that was rooted deep within her; she felt as if a pile of Keigo's feathers had fallen on top of her. She could also feel the air weaving between the red feathers, she almost felt as if she partly was the feathers and as if they were another part of her. It felt nice and refreshing, so she didn't question it.
This connection between her and the feathers only developed the more she focused on them. Before she knew it, it was all she could focus on.
And then, suddenly, the feathers felt like a limb, a limb she could move.
Confused, she did just that, she moved it.
Coincidently, a feather moved.
Her shock knocked her focus away from the feathers and to Keigo, who stared at the group of feathers he called art with narrowed and confused eyes.
“That wasn't me…” He muttered. “That's never happened before.”
She bit her lip and turned back to the feathers.
“I think…” She hesitated and then took a breath. “I think that was me.”

I have written Akaris story (well part of it) on AO3 and have even published extracts of it on here before however I ended up deleting the AO3 due to feeling unsatisfied. Anyways here's a revamped version of her quirk awakening. I hope to re publish on AO3 at some point.
Akaris’ first memory was of the sun. The golden orb shone down on her, enveloping her in what felt like a soft warm hug.
She could see the beams of it through the overhanging tree she was laying beneath with her elder brother, Keigo. Birds twittered in the distance as the blades of grass danced in the small gusts of wind.
Both siblings were breathing heavily as sweat trickled down their skin. Akari rolled over onto her side, so she was facing Keigo
“You… did well.” Keigo said between breaths.
“But you won, you always do” She protested. “Doing well means winning.” She recited in the exact way Ichika, her trainer, would. So far, according to her she was exceeding in her studies and training however she still wasn't doing well enough to train with the same group her brother does.
She lifted her small hand up to wipe the sweat from her brow and block the sun's beams before sitting up.
Keigo sighed, joining her and flapped his red wings in her general direction. The breeze came in small lashes however she treasured each and every one of them.
“You wanna be a hero, right?” Keigo asked.
She nodded enthusiastically. Sure, her quirk hadn't come in yet, however, when it did she was going to use it to save others, like the hero's, not to harm others, like the villains.
“It's not always about winning.” Keigo followed up.
“Ichika says that being a hero means beating the bad guys and saving the good ones” She said. “The only way to do that is to win,” She concluded, stretching her arms above her head and standing up. “Let's go for another lap.”
Keigo sighed, shaking his head.
“We have training later, let's not use our energy now.”
“But K—”
“It's the smarter choice.” He said already heading back to the dormitory buildings.
She jogged to catch up with him before falling into step beside him.
“I'm bored though,” She moaned, “and it takes so long to walk back, can't we do another lap?”
Keigo shook his head before deploying a few of his feathers.
“You like flowers, right?” He asked.
She raised an eyebrow but nodded.
The red feathers shifted before shuffling and arranging themselves into the shape of a flower upon Keigo's command.
“That's so cool!” She exclaimed. Keigos quirk never seemed to amaze her. “Can you do a… unicorn?” She suggested.
Keigo frowned, concentrating on the feathers and arranging them. The outcome made her giggle.
“What?”
“That doesn't look like a unicorn!”
“How you talk badly of my amazing art!” Keigo exclaimed.
“It's really bad!”
“No it's not!”
He shifted the feather again. She giggled.
“It looks like it has a moustache!”
“That's meant to be the mane!”
“Okay, okay, how about we play a game instead, ill make something, you guess what it is.”
The feathers shifted again.
Akari squinted.
They looked all jumbled up and she couldn't decipher what they were meant to represent.
“Come on, you should be able to figure that out!” He exclaimed.
“I'm trying, it's not my fault you're bad at art.”
Keigo spluttered back some response however she was too busy observing the cluster of feathers; she really wanted to figure it out.
At first she hadn't noticed it, however at this point she felt it loud as day. The sensation was something she had never sensed before, it was something that was rooted deep within her; she felt as if a pile of Keigo's feathers had fallen on top of her. She could also feel the air weaving between the red feathers, she almost felt as if she partly was the feathers and as if they were another part of her. It felt nice and refreshing, so she didn't question it.
This connection between her and the feathers only developed the more she focused on them. Before she knew it, it was all she could focus on.
And then, suddenly, the feathers felt like a limb, a limb she could move.
Confused, she did just that, she moved it.
Coincidently, a feather moved.
Her shock knocked her focus away from the feathers and to Keigo, who stared at the group of feathers he called art with narrowed and confused eyes.
“That wasn't me…” He muttered. “That's never happened before.”
She bit her lip and turned back to the feathers.
“I think…” She hesitated and then took a breath. “I think that was me.”

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What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.

What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.

My family and I (24F) found out at the end of last summer, around the beginning of August that my cousin (25F) is actually my sister. Three DNA tests confirmed it. A little back story for you- this has been a “joke” in my dad’s side of the family for my whole life. Mostly coming from him. “What if __ is really your sister? laughs I’m just kidding there’s no way.” Always those types of jokes. I never thought anything about it because she looks SO much like my uncle, but my dad and him look very similar. Also her birthday and my birthday are so close that my dad would’ve had to of cheated on my mom when they FIRST met. Okay. Now to why I thing incest is going on. She started talking to my dad pretty often in August, they did the first test (23 & Me) came back as my half sister. She lived in a different state at that time (August 2023). There’s talk about her trying to plan a trip up to “meet” us all (even though she’s met us all before???) with her fiancé that she had been with for about 6-7 months. Every time it was gonna happen it didn’t. Early September she finds out she’s pregnant. Late September, she finds out she had a miscarriage. She says she needs support bc she has none in the state she’s in. (At that time she lived with her mom and step dad and her two kids, I know her mom, she can be the hovering type but she is VERY OPENLY supportive of her) So she comes to visit for a weekend. They’re at the grocery store (my dad, half sister, my full blood brother, and her fiance) she said she “lost the rest of the baby” now I’ve been lucky enough to never have to experience a miscarriage so I don’t know how that works. She leaves on Sunday. Comes back again the next weekend. Goes home again that Sunday. The next time she came, she didn’t leave. She moved in that quickly. Left her kids with her mom, and said she wanted to build a better life for them. Good for her! After she moves in, the whole house shifted. Mind you, she did move in with her fiancé. There was tension everyday. Arguments way more often than ever in this house not just between her and her finance, but everybody (in the house was:my step-mom, the fiance, my dad, my brother, my half sister, me, my boyfriend, and my 5 kids) They start sitting hip to hip. Not too weird. Then she started following him everywhere. Like to the point where he got up to go to the bathroom, and she followed and stood by the door until he was finished. Then they start holding hands. Openly btw. My step mom confronts that, he says that (we’ll call her A) A, just needs someone, she wants him to make her feel loved, and protected. Whenever they would leave, it was always just them and my brother or just them. Her fiance NEVER went with them ANYWHERE. He started thinking there was someone else because they weren’t having sex, she didn’t want to be around him, wasn’t affectionate, barely talked to him. Weird thing is those same things were happening to my dad and step mom’s relationship of 12 years. December comes, and they’re “staying up so late” they fall asleep on the couch, her head on his lap, or shoulder, him sitting upright. Then it upgrades to them spooning on the couch. Then they start sleeping in my brothers room (he slept in the living room for a while before he started letting them sleep in there, I don’t remember the reason but he is 23). So they start sleeping in my brothers room. So the set up at that point was, my dad and A in one room, my brother in the living room, step mom in what used to be my dad and her room, the fiance on the third floor in what used to be his and A’s room, me and my family in the basement (it’s finished and there’s more room down here). Around Christmas, we find out she’s pregnant. The only people that knew were: me, my boyfriend, my brother and my dad. She didn’t want the fiance to know because she was planning on leaving him in a week from then, and she didn’t want our step mom to know because she didn’t want her to tell the fiance. I thought it was immediately weird, given the sleeping arrangements. So a week goes by, she goes to her old town to get her other daughter (court order—not gonna go into details w/ that) but the fiancé stays home for only the 2nd time. They make these trips every weekend, it was all 3 of them up until about the second week of December ‘23. She breaks up with him, and he comes down to my room, and is bawling. Like, I’ve never seen a man cry like that. He goes on to say that they havent been the same in months, there has to be somebody else she doesn’t love him anymore. We talk with him, try to comfort him, say our goodbyes and then he goes to get some things from our garage. My bf follows him, and the finance ends up saying either: they haven’t had sex at all since the miscarriage in September’23 OR they haven’t had much sex since the miscarriage in September ‘23. So he moves back to his home town, and then they come home on Sunday like they always do. Except this time, they start sleeping in A’s OLD bedroom. The one her and the fiancé shared. Even more privacy. Fast forward to now. They’re still sleeping in that bedroom, she has sex toys in her night stand (I thought she stole a hair claw from me so I went snooping, I know invasion of privacy but she had the EXACT hair claw that I had, and mine was missing), my dad waits on her, gets her food, drinks etc. He’s been to every single baby appointment she’s had (I did confront him abt this because I have 5 kids and he’s NEVER been to ANY of my OBGYN appointments or ultrasounds for them, his reasoning for going with her is that she has nobody up here), he asked my brother if THEY could take over his room again when she’s has the baby which is September. (Which makes the conceived month, December), He stopped making comments to me about wearing a tank top or shorts. He used to say something along the lines of “you look like a hooker” or “put more clothes on” now, nothing. My step-mom got sick and is in a nursing home now, and has been for over a month and he still hasn’t went back to his bedroom. He washes their clothes (in my head, what 48y/o dad would be washing/touching his 25y/o daughter’s bras, and underwear? He’s never done my laundry, and him and my step mom always did their own). I don’t think ITA for thinking these things, but I’m wondering what others would think if they were in this situation I guess.
Edit: I forgot to add, when they started sleeping in my brothers room I went in there to wrap presents for my kids. My dad had a white t shirt on the bed, and I picked it up. As I did that, the shirt unstuck itself. Clearly some “bodily fluids” (don’t know how explicit I can get but yes probably what you’re thinking). I told my brother, he IMMEDIATELY called my dad and confronted him. My dad said that it was indeed that, BUT he was in there alone. (Why are you doing that in your son’s room?) then he asked who knew. Brother told him just him, even though him, my step mom and myself knew. Then my dad said not to tell anybody else. This phone call was on the car radio on their weekend trip to her hometown. Completely fooled my brother, and since then if anything like that is talked about my dad in front of my brother, he gets super defensive IMMEDIATELY.

What am I doing? Dominick Mason asked himself for the hundredth time that night. It was late on a rainy Sunday evening and Dom, a tall, lanky man-boy of twenty-five with a prominent Adam’s apple and too big eyes, stared out the rain-slicked window of the 905. The big bus swayed and jostled as it lumbered down Central Avenue, the movements strangely comforting, conducive to reflection…and self-doubt.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed, and a pit opened up in his stomach. He fumbled it out with long fingers and read the text. Are u almost here
His thumb hovered over the screen, but he did not reply. Part of him wanted to block the number, slink back home with his tail between his legs, and forget the whole thing. He could boot up his PS4 and play Red Dead Redemption or GTA V like always. Safe. Familiar. The thought, however, stirred a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was dread.
Every night, he did the same thing. He came home from work to his tiny prison cell apartment. He had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He played video games until it was time to go to bed. The worst part of the whole night was when he turned off the TV and saw his murky reflection in the screen. Plaid. Scrawny. Disgusting. He hated being locked in that apartment, with its old smells and white walls, but he hated going out even more. At least in his hole, he was safe, like a mouse. No one hurt or lied to him there. No one gave him funny looks. No one rejected him. He was completely safe in his solitude, a wounded animal hiding in its den and licking its wounds.
He was wounded and he knew it.
And he hated himself for it. Hated that he wasn’t stronger or better. Hated that even though he tried so hard, everything he did fell apart…if it even came together in the first place, which it rarely did.
The phone buzzed again.
Just a question mark this time.
His heart began to race and a steely fist slowly closed around his lungs. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and took a deep breath. He pictured himself alone in his little apartment. He loved the image, but he hated it too. Most nights, he didn’t mind being alone. He had to not mind it, because he didn’t have a choice. Some nights…some nights he didn’t want to be alone. Some nights he wanted warmth, he wanted tenderness…some nights, he wanted to be human.
Every so often, Dom would get the urge to find those things. They came less frequently than they did before, but unfortunately, they still came. He would create an account on Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, maybe some of the other sites as well. He would agonize over his stupid intro and his stupid list of hobbies. He would spend hours - literally hours - writing and rewriting them, trying at first to be serious, then light and funny, then cool, then aloof, then vulnerable. He would take the best possible pictures from the best possible angles, then upload them, never lingering over them because he hated the way he looked. He didn’t think he was ugly - mid was more like it - but apparently, he was ugly. Too ugly for love, too ugly even to talk to.
The ugly barnacle. So ugly that everyone died. The end.
All of Dom’s pictures were all selfies, of course. Guys he listened to on YouTube said he needed action shots, shots with friends, shots that showed women he had a life, was valued by those around him, and knew how to have fun. Too bad for him, he had no friends and no one valued him, not even his own mother. On the surface, maybe, but she had hurt him so many times over the years in so many ways that even the most devout son would stop and think.
It had to be selfies.
When his profile was in order - or as much in order as he could get it - he would start to browse. Dom knew his place and never messaged women who were too beautiful. He used to, but they never responded. He eventually began to skip their profiles with a pang of loss and a quiet what if? Now, he barely noticed them. Blonde. Petite. Blue eyes. Maybe she was a cheerleader at one time, maybe she was the type of girl who looked down her nose at guys like him. Maybe she was a sweetheart. In any case, he would never find out, so who cares?
He went for women he could realistically obtain…the type of women he’d dated and hooked up with in the past. Some were attractive in their own way, others were hard to look at, he wasn’t picky; he couldn’t afford to be picky. One woman he saw was a good three hundred pounds. She was nice and he liked her enough, but he lapsed into depression while they were dating and he never messaged her back…not that she made a huge effort to message him. Another was a pre-K teacher in her mid-thirties. Overweight with a big nose, glasses, and a plain face when she wasn’t wearing make-up. He liked her a lot and wanted to be with her, but after a month of weekend hookups, she said she didn’t love him. She told him she wanted a family - three kids, to be exact - but “changed her mind.” No, she didn’t. She just didn’t want those things with him.
Now she was in her late thirties, single, and having regrets.
She still wouldn’t settle for him, though.
Another woman he’d seen recently (six months ago) was fifty, but not unattractive. They texted for weeks, hot and heavy. She outright told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Said all sorts of nasty and sexual things. Their first (and only date) was her coming to his apartment. Instead of tender kisses, loving caresses, and intense emotions, they shared an awkward two hours on his couch. When he tried to hold her hand and put his arm around her, she stiffened. Not much, just a little. She said she “wasn’t ready.” He sat there and watched the flowers he’d gotten her wilt as she talked about her ex for an hour and a half, his arms pointedly crossed. He even leaned as far away from her as humanly possible, trying to communicate with his body language what he didn’t have the guts to communicate with his words: I’m uncomfortable, please leave. He planned to take her to a nice restaurant after they made love. Instead, he ordered something after she finally got the hint and left, eating alone like always.
After her, he deleted his profile (again) and resolved to never bother with dating again. Obviously there was something wrong with him. He saw guys who were uglier and more awkward than him with girlfriends, some actually stunning, but there was something about him in particular, something that repelled women…and men too.
Everyone.
It repelled everyone.
Maybe it was his self-loathing. After all, no one likes a sad sack. But that’s the thing: He was like this because of those experiences. It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg situation. Looking back, he had almost normal confidence at one point. Then all of this happened. The hundreds of messages he sent on the dating apps staying on read, unanswered, like he never sent them at all, like he was garbage unworthy of even a hello. The awkward dates. The occasional “success” that eventually fell apart…sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of them. The one girl who ran away from him when he tried to walk her to her car after a date. They didn’t click, he knew that, but he didn’t say or do anything creepy. Why did she do that? The girls who lead him on, talking about sex and sometimes even love but always had a reason they couldn’t meet.
There were other examples - many others - but it was all the same. Who cared?
Dom wanted to crawl back into his hole and stay there, to stop poking his head out and getting hurt. He wanted it so bad…but he was only human. Deep down, buried beneath layer after layer of scar tissue, there was still hope. Hope for love, for companionship, for acceptance, for intimacy and human touch. It was only an ember now, but even an ember is enough to spark a fire.
Some nights, he wanted to be safe. Other nights, he wanted to take a risk.
And this night was one of the latter.
Be there soon, he texted. He swallowed hard and wetted his lips. His heart was pounding faster and his bowels were loose. He really hoped this worked out. He didn’t think he could handle another rejection. If she turned him down, he’d probably go home and kill himself. Why go on like this?
He’d had that thought before…but he never followed through.
Maybe one day he’d actually shut the fuck up and do it already.
Maybe.
Ok :)
Her name was Heather and she was fat. She was not unattractive in the face and she wore her weight well, not that that mattered - he would take what he could get. They started talking on OKCupid last week and very soon, the conversation became sexual. He didn’t start it, though, she did. She was ahem very excited, she said. He liked to think that she was lonely, desperate, and wanted intimacy - any intimacy - just like him.
That really turned him on.
They agreed to meet, and now here he was, on the bus to her apartment on the other side of the city, hoping against hope that she didn’t hurt him too.
He put the phone away and stared straight ahead. The bus was nearly deserted, save for an old bag lady up front and a few Mexican guys in the back. Lights lined the bus’s roof, providing a cold, impersonal light. Dom took a deep breath and forced his dark emotions away. It was all on him to make this work. He would accept her fat, ugly, poor, and crippled, but he had to work to earn her love. He could do it.
When the bus finally reached his stop, he yanked the cord and got off. There was a plexiglass shelter lit by a single, lonely bulb. Trash littered the ground. Beyond the shelter, a park lay in darkness. Behind him, on the other side of the road, a housing project not unlike his own towered into the sky, lit up like a ship at sail. Dom swallowed his nerves and crossed the street. He found the door that she had directed him to use, and climbed the stairs. He expected trash, graffiti, and winos passed out on every landing. Instead, the stairwell was clean and deserted. His nerves welled as he climbed but he forced them down again. On the ninth floor, he went down the hall, battered on all sides by the stale smells of cooking and the murmur of TVs and voices coming from every apartment.
Dom paused at Apartment 237.
Heather’s.
You got this, he told himself.
And really, he did. Their plan - well, Heather’s, really - was simple and straightforward. She told him that she would leave the door unlocked. He was to come in, go to the bedroom, and she would be waiting for him. She said it was a fantasy of hers.
On some level, he knew all along that the whole setup sounded fishy. Was he being set up to get robbed? Would he walk in and get jumped by a bunch of Crips? He hesitated, but his need for love - and, yes, release - pushed him on.
He opened the door.
Inside, the apartment was small and messy, a living room to the right and a tiny kitchen to the left. The only light on was the one above the stove.
Everything else was in shadows.
Dom’s heart skipped a beat.
This didn’t feel right.
That thought was overpowered by the smell, a sickly sweet odor that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. His stomach twisted and he turned his head slightly to one side, as if to spare his nose. It smelled like something spoiled.
A voice spoke from the darkness, startling him. “I’m in here.”
It was light, airy, and cute.
For the last time, Dom hesitated. Some primal sense told him to turn around and leave…
…but he wanted to be loved.
Dom entered and shut the door behind him.
The smell was stronger. The atmosphere darker.
Ahead, he could barely make out an open doorway in the shadows.
He crossed to it.
The smell was overpowering here and Dom felt like he was going to puke. Any desire he had felt was gone, replaced only by revulsion and claustrophobia. It was cold, he realized, so cold that his teeth chattered.
Okay, fuck this.
He started to turn around, intent on leaving, but a small, white hand reached from the darkness. Icy fingertips brushed his cheek and his heart blasted into his throat.
Then she was there, her body pressing against his and her lips fused with his. The smell, the freezer chill, both stronger than ever.
They were both coming from her.
Her tongue hungrily lashed his own, and she pushed him against the wall. Her hands slipped under his shirt and pressed flat against his chest. They were so cold that he almost cried out.
Dom wanted to push her away, to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he froze up and allowed her to push him onto the bed. Was he too gutless to tell her no, the way he’d been too gutless to tell the woman who went on and on about her ex to shut up and leave? Did he secretly want to go through with this? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. She was on top of him now, straddling him, his legs caged between her ample thighs. She grabbed his hands and pressed them to her bare breasts.
They were as cold as the rest of her.
She leaned down and kissed him again. He hadn’t noticed it before, but her tongue was…dry. Her mouth itself tasted strange. Off.
Heather broke from his lips and peppered kisses on his cheek and forehead, assaulting him with an intimacy that Dom no longer wanted.
Through it all, she was as silent as a tomb. She wasn’t panting or rasping with excitement. In fact, he didn’t think she was even breathing.
She brushed her lips along the exposed curve of his throat, and tingles of revulsion shot down his spine. She found his pulse and kissed it. Trembles of excitement raced through her body and she started to lap his neck like a dog.
Without warning, a fiery pinprick of pain exploded over him and Heather began to shake and pant. Dom cried out and tried to fight her off, but she was too heavy, too much.
With a tiny, mouse-like squeak - a sound of pitiable fear and resignation - Dom blacked out.

PART 3

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

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

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

Things have been busy here so I thought I would catch up on our two latest race adventures.
It's time for another race, so I hook up to the trailer and bring it to work. The Miata has been in the enclosed trailer since I ran it through the Christmas parade, but now it is time to wake it from it's winter slumber and start preparing it for Barber, our 10th 24 Hours of Lemons race.
The car should not need much as we ran nearly flawless at the last race at Road America. We had one spin and the wing mounts broke but that was about it.
I get it to the shop and we hurry up and start in. I already have one bay tied up with the next car we are building (more on that later, it is epic) and can't afford to tie up a second during business hours. Youngest jumps in and rebuilds the entire wing assembly. Manny comes by and drives the car to his place and keeps it there until a few more parts come in. It's a block or two away from the shop, we can nearly see it from the front sidewalk. No plates, no insurance, no problem.
Next we change out the brake pads, front rotors, front brake hoses and rear pads. We also change the timing belt after a debate on exactly how many race hours the old one has. Change the oil and the car is ready to load.
Racerguy comes down and we leave out Thursday night. I am driving a little fast as the website shows the gates close at 9 and our gps says we are expected to get there at 9.01. A quick fuel stop and a brisket sandwich at Buccees off I65 in Alabama and we are rolling on through the night.
Finally we get to Barber Motorsports park in Leeds Alabama. Just before 9pm we get in line and get signed in. The team ahead of us is just realizing they lost a wheel off their enclosed sometime on their tow in. The way I was driving before we stopped for fuel I could have lost the car out the back like in the movie Cars and not noticed. Luckily everything seems to be in one piece, we give everything a check over and drop the trailer and head off to the hotel which is thankfully just across the street from the entrance to the track.
The next morning we are up early. No Gill this race as he has had foot surgery and is out of commission, which means we are sorely missing his cooking skills. So we take advantage of the breakfast at the hotel and head over to the track. After we unload the car we have a discussion which ends with us moving across the paddock to the far side as the side we have had for the last few years is shorter and we can't park the trailer in that area as the new trailer is about ten foot longer than the old open trailer.
After the first of two drivers meetings of the weekend (many tracks do the practice day and hold their own drivers meeting to explain their own rules, then the next day Lemons runs the race and has their drivers meeting) we load a driver in the car and send him out to practice. Rinse and repeat until we have sent all the drivers out for a few laps.
By then it is time for inspections. First off all the tech inspection. They have a big crew this race but our favorite inspector Dale Strimple is there. He's knowledgeable, affable and very popular among all the racers. Every day is also his birthday, a story best told later. He and the other tech people soon pass our car then it's time for BS tech.
We have gone all out this race for our theme. This has been a long time thought of mine, it just took a while to get it enacted. So for context I am a cancer survivor and we are always doing crazy themes to try and draw attention to the importance of early detection in cancer improving your chances. In the past we have done free colonscopy tests with huge antique cameras and motor oil for props which thankfully no one took us up on. Later we have done dinosaurs with the inflatable dino costumes to bring home the point that that "dinosaurs never got checked and now they are extinct" which is also on the side of the car. It was popular, I mean who doesn't like to see a inflatable dinosaur walking around?
Today we have again upped our game. We are taking a scene from one of the funniest movies I have ever seen, Johnny Dangerously. There's a part where Micheal Keaton's character is counseling his younger brother not to have sex until he is married, which is funny in itself because Micheals character is always surrounded by a crowd of ladies who apparently are all competing for his affections. Anyhow he shows his brother this video of all these poor guys who are suffering from poor choices that have caused them to have severely enlarged testicles. Like basketball sized. Watch it sometime, it's hilarious. So we made up special pants to hold some dodgeballs and shirts that said: "mens health is no joke, get checked before you croak!" We got a lot of attention for that and even made the wrap video. Walking in those pants with the dodgeballs was not easy!
The next day it's race day. It could not be a nicer day in Alabama. Temps are great, sun is shining. We get through the drivers meeting and line up the cars. Racerguy is going first, we are trying to balance our drivers so that everyone gets one start or one finish for the weekend. It's fun to finish the race or the day and fun to start as well.
The flag drops and we are off. It was a complete fiasco at the start! Someone oiled down half the track on the pace laps and the track was not ready when they dropped the green. It was an immediate yellow but cars where stacking up and passing then realizing the yellow was out. Race control messed up that one pretty badly. It took another ten minutes to clean the track. Finally it really is time for a start and we go green for real. Racerguy is driving smooth as always and moving up. He brings the car from 87th out of 131 cars there to a respectable 39th when the first incident happens. A car spins and hits our rf wheel. Racerguy didn't think much of it but they flagged him in anyway. While in the penalty box we realize the rf is going flat. I did not see it then but by the time we get the car up to our spot in the paddock the wheel is destroyed. We slap another wheel on and send him back out. We lost nearly all the spots we gained, dropping to 78th on the board. Sucks but it happens.
The rest of his stint goes great and he brings the car back to pit road and we put in Youngest. He is running great and the car is showing no signs of any issues from the earlier contact. He starts making up ground and we get all the way up to 54th. Then I get a radio call. "The car is on fire and stopped running!"
What?!!! I radio back asking if he needs to get out of the car. "I'm trying to decide that" Ok, maybe not such a big fire then? We have to wait for more information and in a few minutes the rollback shows up with him in the car. We have had a wiring fire from the passenger side floorboard where the stock PCM harness is. I immediately think the car is done but after Youngest gets some fresh air he jumps in and cuts all the burnt wires out and patches it all up. Start to finish we are off the track an hour and a half and drop to 90th.
I suit up and take the car out to see if it will run or not. It struggles and will only get up to 45, so I bring it right back in. Youngest thinks he knows exactly what is wrong and jumps in again and patches one more wire. I go out and the car is spot on. I start clicking off laps and trying some things the guys said to do to improve on my lap times. There's a few parts where I just need to be more aggressive and roll through and trust the car more. I pick up about four seconds off my best time and am pretty pleased by that. The car runs flawless for the rest of my stint and I bring it back to pit road for the crew to fuel and driver change. We put Manny in the car and send him out. He's running some fast laps and really pushing the car. All the sudden we realize we do not see the car going by. One of the other teams say our car is in the wall on the front stretch. Manny comes over the radio "I FUBAR'ed it" Great, The front stretch at Barber is one of the places I have noted will bite you pretty hard. I have seen a few Lemons cars get really messed up there including a 63 Valiant last year. I am expecting the worst when the roll back comes by with the car for the second time this day.
It's pretty bad. The nose is knocked sideways, the steering is all out of sorts, a closer look reveals the lf tie rod is broken. The right rear is all messed up, the wheel is pushed so far forward it is into the quarter panel and won't even turn. We put the car up on jack stands and look it over. Not good. But there's glimmers of hope. The radiator is not broke. The engine is still fine. The core of the car seems square. And we have almost an entire Miata in parts in totes in our trailer. Maybe we can fix this. I start dragging out parts and we start changing them. The tie rod on the front is soon changed and we now have both wheels pointing the same direction. Youngest takes the nose off and straightens the brackets that hold it and the splitter in place and adds a whole lot of zip ties.
On the rear it just keeps going and going deeper. We change the knuckle, the lower control arm and the upper. We spend a long time saving the bolt that goes through the lower control arm and knuckle, we do not have another. This one is bent and has questionable threads too. In true lemons never say die fashion we beat it out of the bent parts, straighten it and when we cannot find the correct die to chase the threads we use one that is close and pray it works. It does, but then we get it all back together and realize even with all the parts replaced we still have two inches of rear toe. Just a wee more than the 1/16th we started with.
Turns out the rear subframe is bent, so we all go out and start walking the pits looking to borrow a port a power. This small hydraulic jack comes with rams and other attachments and has a pump attached to a hose so you can jack and bend parts that are bent like ours. We actually end up borrowing two after searching almost every team that is still around. It's getting dark, rain is moving in after midnight and the clock is ticking on the car being done. Is it fixable or is the damage terminal? There are three guys under the car jacking and measuring and I am handing them parts and tools and making a run for food.
In a dramatic fashion, they pull it out. I run for food and they finally announce the car is perfect. I think they worked until nearly midnight, but everything they measured was on the money. It was an amazing effort and a huge comeback. We all fall into an exhausted sleep wondering if the car will drive good tomorrow or did we miss something important.
The next morning dawns and as expected its raining. And colder. I cannot emphasize enough just how wet and cold it was. All day long it rained and I think the temps dropped. Made for a miserable day, pretty sure even a duck would have been unhappy.
I go out first, I had called this stint early on. Sometimes you have to pull the car owner card. It's a two hour stint then a quiet hour then the race resumes.
We gas up the car and I line up. The car seems to drive straight, but it is raining and the track is slippery so who really knows? The car stumbles a bit on accel and I wonder if we outsmarted ourselves with our home made ram air system that sucks air from right below where the left headlight was. It keeps on doing that for a few laps then finally gets better.
Driving in the rain is not without it's challenges. You have to drive very carefully and not push the car too hard. The fun part is the Miata goes straight when you floor it so anytime I get a chance I gas it up and go hard to the next corner where I slow down and ease through it. Soon enough another issue arises. The windshield starts fogging up. It gets real bad on yellow flags where we all slow down then gets better if I have a good run at speed, but there are times a smart person would have pulled off as you cannot see much at all. But most of us aren't real smart. I can't reach the windshield or I would try to wipe it. The temptation is there to loosen the belts and get enough room to reach but even I am not that crazy. I keep the belts tight but do take off one glove and give it a few swipes under a long yellow then hasten to put the gloves back on. There's probably not much chance of a fire in these conditions but no sense chancing it. I've seen pictures of burns from race car incidents and they aren't pretty.
On one corner I make a mistake, I get off line to let a really aggressive car go by. It's the Party Girl car and they are hyper aggressive. If you would think they would wait to pass until you get through a critical part you'd be wrong, they typically will jam their car in wherever they can and go on. Other fast cars are a bit more respectful and do a better job on the give and take. Not wanting to make an issue, I get over and promptly realize there is zero grip outside on this corner and slide through the grass. I go to penalty and explain what happened. The judge asks if I learned anything, I said "Yes, next time to be a jerk" I might not have used that exact wording but I meant it. The same car also was what indirectly caused the wreck the day before, their aggressive driving was what caused Manny to get the red mist when they did the same thing passing him. He over drove the car after that and lost it. Mental note to drive them the same way going forward, we both can be hyper aggressive and see where that leads. We have a few more cars to build in the driveway if need be.
After my two hours are up, I bring the car in and explain about the terrible fogging and vision issue. Manny goes out after the quiet hour and slides off the track for black flag number two. It's just very nasty out there and cars are going off all the time. We fix up a ice scraper with a rag tied to it to give the driver a method of clearing the fog. It's primative but way better than nothing. The drivers report they used it quite a bit the rest of the day. It's just gloomy and the race is going on, but cars are hydroplaning if they get into the water which is starting to pool on parts of the track. The rest of us are watching from inside Manny's car with the heat on, it's gotten that cold and wet.
We are so far behind now we aren't bothering to suit up and go to pit lane. Rather we bring the car up to the pumps, get the driver out and fuel and put the next driver in. It's still raining and not having to get anymore wet than necessary is a plus. Racerguy gets flagged in after he's run about half his stint and he has no idea why. Apparently the cameras show what they thought was contact in the corner, he says he got real close and braked hard to avoid it. The car shows no new signs of contact. The judge tells us one more flag and he's parking us for the rest of the day. Over contact that someone thought they saw on camera that apparently never happened. (I went to look this up on our go pro footage but the chip glitched and we had no footage)
Racerguy goes out and finishes. He reports the same as Manny, the track is getting increasingly treacherous. Very few cars are getting around good, if you have a front wheel drive with skinny tires, today was your day. I saw a escort wagon running laps as fast as us and later the Dodge Caravan passed us.
Youngest goes out and after about 15 minutes I notice the lap counter is not updating. I look outside the trailer and he is in the car, sitting there. We go out and he announces he cannot drive the car anymore, it's sideways all the time. I ask if he wants to load the car and he said yes. I don't object. We race for the fun of it, and at that point none of us were having fun. We loaded in the rain and left before the race was over. Many other teams had already done the same. Some were gone before the day ever started. We have raced in the rain before but this was the worst conditions I have ever seen on the track. Barber is a top notch facility, it was just such a lingering rain and the temps being below 40 made it miserable. The vision and grip levels seemingly got worse as the day went on and the water built up and the temps dropped. We saw a lot of big problems and overcame many. Probably if we were not so exhausted from fixing the car and were in the hunt for anything we might have stayed until the end. As it were, we dropped from 65th to 67th or so. Time to rebuild and get dried out and ready for the next race.

Hello Fellow members...
Let's be real - mornings can be brutal, especially if you're a night owl. You set multiple alarms, hit snooze repeatedly, and still feel like a zombie when you finally roll out of bed. Trust me, I've been there!
On the flip side, maybe you're one of those annoyingly chipper morning larks who could run laps at 5 AM but can barely keep your eyes open after 9 PM. We all have our own unique body clocks, known as chronotypes.
For years, I struggled with the morning battle, dragging myself to the gym before tackling my most important tasks later in the day. But by evening, when I needed all my brain power, my energy and focus were shot. It was a vicious, unproductive cycle.
That's when I discovered the power of understanding my chronotype - my body's natural circadian rhythm that governs sleep patterns, hormone levels, and energy peaks. It was a total game-changer!
I realized I'm more of a morning person, with my sharpest focus and highest energy in those early hours. So I flipped my routine - prioritizing my most important work first thing, and moving my workouts to the evening when the gym was less crowded anyway.
The results were night and day (pun intended). By working in sync with my natural rhythms, I was knocking out high-value tasks by noon, feeling that sweet satisfaction of achievement. And with my evenings freed up, I could hit the gym without rushing.
Understanding your chronotype is a crucial step in optimizing your productivity and time management. For some, that might mean rearranging your schedule to knock out important tasks during your personal prime time. For others, it could be about protecting your peak focus periods and avoiding distractions.
Of course, aligning with your biological clock is just one of many strategies I cover for unlocking extra hours in your week. For those who want to dive deeper into the above, feel free to check the video I created for increasing motivation and gaining and extra day a week by tweaking your habits. The video is timestamped to where I talk about the Chronotype aspect : https://youtu.be/m2KGDTkJ1Jk?si=_DPjI47R3ZnOfJPK&t=823 . The video also dives into batching similar tasks, cutting mindless social media scrolling, intentional multitasking during "no-brainer" activities, and time blocking for intense focus sessions.
But figuring out whether you're a morning lark, night owl, or something in between can be the first step in a total productivity transformation. It's all about self-knowledge and intentionally designing your days to work for you, not against you.
So if you're constantly struggling to wake up or stay awake, it might be time to look at your chronotype. Once I cracked that code, it was like the foggy haze lifted - my days flowed better, I accomplished more, and I actually had time for the things that mattered most.
Have any of you found that listening to your body clock made a difference in your energy, focus, and productivity? I'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments!

This past week I went on what I thought would’ve been a vacation and the time of my life. My friends and I had planned a trip for my birthday for months now. We said we would go to Nashville to celebrate and some have never been. It was myself, my boyfriend Lenny, my two best friends Amanda and Lindsey and my boyfriends cousin Marcus along with his girlfriend Jasmine. For slight backstory, I had just had the worst week of my life. My grandmother had passed away a day before our trip but I knew she was having major complications about a week before. I decided that I would still go with my “friends” to celebrate my birthday and to clear my mind. All of my friends knew what I was going through as well.
We arrive to our rental home for the weekend and my friends as well as my boyfriend surprised me with birthday decorations. We then eat dinner and go out to downtown. We go to a couple of bars, have a couple of drinks and when we enter this one bar, Lenny’s cousin and his girlfriend get into an argument and walk out of the bar. We then felt obligated to check in on them, and when we walked out of the bar they were screaming at each other on the side of the road. Lenny and I agreed to let them hash it out and we took Amanda and Lindsey to grab a bite. At this point the vibes are killed for the night and we Uber back to the rental.
When we get to the rental Marcus and Jasmine are still arguing with each other and Jasmine comes into my room to ask Lenny if he can talk to Marcus. Lenny goes outside to talk to Marcus. They chat for about an hour and then we go sleep. Next morning, everything was normal. We brushed the entire situation under the rug for the trips sake.
We went shopping and then grabbed dinner and it was a great time. Then we went back to the rental to get ready to go back out to downtown, and we are pregaming. We go to a couple of bars and we’re having a ton of fun. We then found this club in one of the bars and we’re dancing having a ton of fun until Marcus says he has to go to the bathroom. He goes to the bathroom and is gone for what felt like 30 mins. We kept asking Jasmine if he was okay or if she had texted him. She then went to text him and he said he left the bar because we had left him. She responded saying we may have shifted over because it was crowded but we were still at the club. We then leave to check on him again and he was on the side of the road again and Jasmine and Marcus are arguing again. At this point Amanda is fed up and walks over to them to tell them to hash it out for the sake of my birthday. Jasmine is screaming at Marcus and Marcus walks away. Then Amanda is telling Jasmine to stop yelling at him and Jasmine says she’s going to try to find him.
She leaves and Amanda walks back knowing at this point I’m visibly upset. She tries to get me to go into another bar but then Jasmine is calling Lindsey saying Marcus called her to say he got arrested. When in fact he didn’t. She then asks Lindsey to go find her and Lindsey is not in a sober state of mind. She is absolutely wasted. Amanda and I kept saying no. Amanda is pulling on her and eventually had to take her phone away from her. Lindsey then begins sobbing in the middle of the road saying we can’t leave our friends. We kept trying to assure her that we weren’t and that she could not go and try to find Jasmine on her own. She continues sobbing, Jasmine finds us in the same spot that she left us in. Lenny then says to Jasmine “you two need to go back to the rental” he then tells them a spot to get a Uber and Amanda and Lenny try to take me to another bar to try to salvage the night. 30 mins roll around and we check Lindsey’s location just to make sure they got back okay. They are sitting in a park and haven’t left.
We then make our way to them and as we show up Marcus walks over and gets in my face saying I was talking shit about them. Lenny then gets upset and says “what the fuck are you talking about”. I then get into his face and tell him that I wasn’t talking shit, and that I said it was ridiculous that we’re on vacation and they’re fighting. He continues bickering with me up until I told him this would’ve never happened if he wasn’t a problem. Lindsey is still sobbing. Jasmine is yelling at him still. He walked away again. Amanda, Lenny and I then order an Uber and said if they don’t get in they can figure it out. They ended up joining us and it was silent the entire ride back. While Jasmine and Marcus were at the park, Jasmine ended up smashing her phone and kept using Lindsey’s as well. We get back and Marcus and Jasmine continue arguing. At this point Lenny and I are in our room and I’m upset because at this point I would’ve rather stayed home and Jasmine comes into our room and says that she apologizes and that they were going to leave. They then pack up all their belongings and load up their car. And Marcus is in the living room sobbing and refusing to leave. Eventually Jasmine comes back into our room and wants to clear the air: she said Lindsey told her that I wanted to leave them and they can go fuck themselves. I then told her I never said that and that we sat in Lindsey’s face for 20 mins telling her we weren’t leaving. She then apologized again.
Next morning rolls around, Marcus gave me a genuine apology for getting in my face and ruining the night. I move on but still asked for space as at this point I only wanted to be around Lenny and Amanda. Lenny, Amanda and I go out to lunch leaving Jasmine, Marcus and Lindsey back. We come back from lunch and nap, at this point it’s 6pm and Lindsey had not apologized to me in all day. She then walks into my room and said she wanted to “apologize” and that she was too drunk but never said that I wanted to leave them. We bickered a bit over those details and then as she got up she said “well I hope you can get over it since it’s the last day on the trip”. I then tried my best to sweep it under the rug but as I was getting ready Lindsey Marcus and Jasmine were throwing back shots and completely forgot that we had a birthday cake for me. I had asked Lenny and Amanda not to say anything to see if they were being genuine.
We leave to go to this private event that we all bought tickets for. It was above a food court. Since Jasmine smashed her phone, her ticket was on there and she no longer had access to it. She said her and Marcus were going to go talk to customer service to see if they can get in and then grab food. Lenny, Amanda, Lindsey and I then grab food and it is super awkward. Lindsey then says “I think I’m still hungry. I’m going to do a lap around”. She then walks away from us as we finish eating. We start making our way to the event and Lenny texts Marcus saying we’re on our way to the event. They ignored our message and never showed. They left the area and went to another baclub and posted a picture. At this point it is my birthday and they ditched us. We go back to the rental and they are there. When Amanda Lenny and I walked in they were giggling and then they saw us and their faces went pale and it was silent. Amanda Lenny and I are packing up our things as we planned on leaving the next morning early. We had found out by Lenny’s brother got a call from Marcus. Marcus lied about the events that happened the last day and told him it was our fault and that they felt obligated to do the things I wanted to when they didn’t want to do them. As I was very open and asking everyone if they had suggestions on what we should do or where to go.
Even now they have not texted me. They didn’t wish me a happy birthday. They didn’t feel apologetic about ruining an entire weekend. Am I the asshole for cutting Lindsey, Marcus and Jasmine off completely even if some are family?

I have a wall that has 2 columns/pillars? I am not sure what they are called. I will show some of the furniture we have used and the new piece (going lighter) we bought and want there but not sure what to do around it..have talked about ship lap, floating shelves. Even slat wall with shelves. Want to not have a shelving unit on the other side of tv but maybe straight shelves on the wall for that space..

I’m sorry if this doesn’t fit, I just don’t really know what other sub to ask.. I’m talking about my experience soon to people I know but my fears of what happened to me not being valid enough to be “assault” is holding me back. So I figured internet strangers would be able to give me their un-biased opinion?
Two weeks after my bf broke up with me last year, a mutual friend (of 3 yrs) invited me over to his apartment. Our circle is all artists so I assumed we’d be doing art! I also wanted to socialize to get my mind off things. My ex was uncomfortable with it and warned me that it sounded weird because I was going over when the roommate would be gone, we never hung out with him before, and my ex had never been to the apt despite knowing him for over 8-9 years.
I went anyway.. for the first hour we just looked at his sketchbooks and collectibles. I talk shit about fighting men so he challenged me to wrestle him off his feet. I’m 5’ and was like 130lbs, he’s maybe 5’9/10 and easily over 200lbs. I blocked out how it went but I saw how strong he was and he was able to overpower me if he tried. We went to his art room/bedroom and he wanted to draw something on me. He body paints and wants to tattoo so I was like, cool how about my arm? But he wanted to do my hip, requiring me to unbutton my pants. Weirded out but “whatever I’m wearing high-waisted pants anyway”… he enjoyed pulling my legs to get me lower on the bed though.
He draws, yada yada. Eventually we’re both sitting on his bed because that’s the only other chair. I don’t remember a lot of in between moments now so idk how it happened but eventually we’re both laying down side by side talking. I was touching his hair because he said he liked that it tickeled. He then pulled me on top straddling him. I ended up sitting like this for a long time because he was holding me by my wrists and pulling me into a hug or back down on his lap anytime I tried to move off him. I could see what he was after so I told him no and “I can’t” repeatedly. He’d play dumb and say things like “I’m just hugging you haha” or “can’t what?”. I used my ex as an excuse saying I couldn’t do something like that to him, only to get a “do what? We’re just hugging! :)” At one point he bounced his hips and I could feel his crotch under me which made me very uncomfortable. And again he’s huge compared to me size wise and I worried that if he wanted to, I’d be alone and overpowered in his apartment.
Then at some point I laid back down off him finally. In my head I was rationalizing “okay so I know he’s had a thing for me for a while, we’re cuddling that’s not bad it’s okay”. But he ended up putting his face between my legs (pants on) for some reason. I cannot remember why. He was tickling me because he realized that a specific part of my inner thigh got a reaction out of me. I shoved his hands few times because being tickled will actually make me violent. He made jokes about “let’s undo some of these buttons” and saw how far he could push his luck undoing my pants one by one. Which was too far but I didn’t know how else to handle it. He got maybe three and wouldn’t let me button them back for a while. I think I tried and he undid them again. He had his hands on my abdomen under my shirt and just barely grazed my boob at one point.
I can’t even remember how it all went but after 4 hours I said I had to go home. Almost immediately he got so awkward. I felt like I did something wrong based on his demeanor, like he was mad. He gave me a hug and asked if we could kiss. My will was literally worn down during the visit so I did kiss him. While gathering my things he asked what was in my bag and I said art supplies. This made him start getting more awkward and even apologetic. He said if he’d known I had art supplies we could have drawn. I left in my Lyft and after going home to my room to change, kinda burst into tears. Couldn’t even figure out why at first. He messaged me one time that night asking if we could hang out again but I just told him with my new job I’d need to look at my schedule first. And that was the last time we spoke.
Thank you for reading all this. It’s my first time writing it out. I have been told I minimize things that happen to me and I’ve been sexually assaulted before and after this by different guys too. They were worse so I know those incidents “count” for lack of a better word. And while I felt violated, I wasn’t penetrated yknow? So is it just groping? I’m having a hard time…

this is work of my imagination. People, places and acts are not real
Brother and I wake up early this morning with Daddy because it's Mother's Day. We help Daddy make Mommy a breakfast tray to take to bed. Daddy carries it upstairs and we follow.
Mommy is just sitting up in bed when we walk in "Oh my babies! How sweet! Thank you, honey." AS Daddy sets the tray down over lap. Brother and I crawl into bed on the other side and snuggle while Mommy eats. She's naked and we can see her tits swollen and leaking but Daddy said we had to be extra good today.
As Mommy finishes her breakfast, Daddy removes the tray and I say, "Happy Mommies Day! What do you want to do today, Mommy? Daddy said we have to be extra good and do whatever you want" I giggle.
"Oh thank you, my babies. I thought we could at least start out with you two draining my my breasts. They're starting to get a little sore" She giggles as Brother and I scramble over her to each latch onto her hard nipples. She's wraps an arm around each of us and kisses the tops of our heads.
"Greg, honey, I want us all to be together today. Would you like to fuck me while our babies nurse?" She asks Daddy.
"Of course, my love." Daddy gets naked and crawls up between Mommies legs work his hard cock in his hand. He strokes himself while he fingers Mommy to make sure she's wet. Jaxson starts to hump her leg and I reach down to help Daddy by rubbing her clit.
Daddy shoves his cock into her and starts pounding while Mommy holds us to her bouncing tits. I move my fingers from her clit to my own and rub while I nurse, watching Daddy fuck her. It doesn't take long for all of us to cum together. Daddy pulls out and pumps onto Mommy's stomach while Jaxson smears his on her leg and I squirt on the bed. Jaxson and I lick up Daddies cum to clean up Mommy. I lick Mommy's pussy clean while Jaxson licks off Daddy's soft cock.
Daddy takes the breakfast tray downstairs and Mommy asks us to come shower with her.

I pulled up to the Lake Mart gas station convenience store and parked near the entrance in front of the ice machine. It wasn’t a parking spot but I have a small car, a Miata, so I figured no one would mind, plus I would just be in and out real quick - all I needed was a pack of smokes and two white Monster energy drinks. I flung open the door and got out with ease since I had the top down(when the top is up it’s like crawling into a coffin which is kinda cozy in its own way but still hard to get in and out of). I was wearing cheap, black Amazon sweatpants and crocs and a very expensive beige long sleeve V cut sweater. It was a mismatch of the highest order but I didn’t give a shit. “That ain’t a parking spot buddy!” I hear coming from the Ford F-250 filling up with poor-grade 87 unleaded at the pump, the truck isn’t even a manly diesel. I glare at him and yell back: “How’s the ride in that thing? Probably bounces you around a lot on these roads and reminds you of riding your boyfriend.” A very overweight shit kicker type of fella walks around from the side of the F-250. His boots were covered in dried mud along with his Carrhart overalls. It wasn’t fresh mud but definitely from the previous week’s worth of laboring somewhere horrible. “What did you say to me!?” He bellowed. There was some sort of food stain on the front of his T-shirt, possibly mayonnaise or some other condiment. Strange tho since it was only 7:00AM so he clearly wore the shirt the day or days before. “Oh, sorry.” I said to him after seeing his size. “I didn’t realize you were so big, you must be more of a doggy style power bottom type.” “What the fuck does that mean?” he said to me. “It means you’re too fucking fat to be on top of your boyfriend. He rails you from behind.” “Oh that’s it you fuck!” he yelled and started to run at me. Oh shit I thought, I really let my mouth get me into a situation for no real reason. But actually, no fuck this guy, he started it by telling me I can’t park in front of the ice machine. That’s clearly a violation of the Bill of Rights and flagrant treading on me. He was fairly fast for a fat guy but I knew I was faster and had more endurance. I stood there at first near the front of my Miata and he was running full speed and as he closed the distance he stretched his arms out with the intention of grabbing me(to probably try and make out with me). At the last second I strafed to the right behind the safety of the front left panel of my car. Him being inertia laden, was unable to change direction in time to grab me. His arms flailed to his left at me but missed by a wide margin, He contorted his body in trying to grab me in such a way it forced his legs to cross with the next stride and he tripped over his own feet, took two awkward stumbles and ate shit on the asphalt parking lot, landing on his right shoulder before tumbling over himself and into the ice machine. “Dude you just ate shit!” I said to him pointing and laughing. “You’re probably used to it though when you eat your boyfriend’s ass every night.” “You fucking goddamn…” He said as he got to one knee. “Oh no, don’t propose to me, I’m already in a committed relationship…with your mom.” I replied. He finally got to his feet and despite it being only 50 feet that he ran, he was already wheezing. He reached to his right pocket and pulled out a small pocket knife, maybe 3 inches long only but long enough to do some serious damage, then charged at me again. I ran to the rear of my car and put the car between me and him, he tried to slash at me across the trunk but I easily dodged it as he came up feet short. He started chasing me again and I ran to the front of my car and as he ran up to me again, I ran to the rear of my car like a toddler playing “you can’t catch me”. I started laughing at this thought and each time he ran a pass at me I said that to him. “You can’t catch me big fella! You can’t catch me!” I didn’t have to put forth too much effort but I could tell it was taking its toll on him. He had the stubbornness of a retarded mule and refused to give up to save some sense of pride and honor. We played this game for maybe five complete laps around my car before he realized he had no chance of getting to me. He paused for a moment to decide what to do next to save face and not look like such a fat bitch then it donned on him. “You little fuck.” The sweat was pouring down his forehead. “You got a spare tire in the trunk of this shitbox rice burning beanermobile?” He said and eye’d up my right front tire and pulled his arm back. There wasn’t much I could do so as he began to lunge his arm forward to puncture my tire, I let out the loudest and highest pitch rape scream I could make. It was an ear piercing banshee scream and it must have startled him because he missed the tire and hit the fender causing his sweaty hand to slip from the grip and violently slide down the grip and onto the blade of his knife cutting a large gash in his fingers and palm. “FUCKKKKK!” he screamed, still clutching the knife. The Indian clerk that owned and operated the store must have been alerted by my banshee scream and came rushing out the door. “What going on here!?” he yelled, looking concerned and confused. He saw I was standing there and recognized me immediately. I had to be one of the biggest spenders at the store, buying at least a pack of smokes a day and two energy drinks like clockwork and very often getting food for lunch and always paid cash which they loved. They liked me and knew me as well as you’d know a frequent customer. He saw the fat fella was holding a knife but also bleeding. “He chased me and tried to slash my tire.” I said and the clerk nodded and believed me. “That’s not a parking spot!” the big fella said. “He park there every day, never cause any problem. You buddy, you not welcome here. Go now, leave or I call the police!” The big fella glared at me holding his bleeding palm with his other hand now to apply pressure. I didn’t say a word, I just grinned at the big fella and he turned around and went back to his truck, got in and drove off, peeling out with one wheel as he left. I went inside and the clerk apologized to me for the behavior of the big fella even though it wasn’t his fault obviously. I assured him it wasn’t an issue and got my normal supplies and left. I got in my car and hit the vape(I won’t smoke in the car), started the engine and put on some Tool. My adrenaline was still high so I took a deep breath, hit the vape again, and started the engine then pulled out of my personal parking spot. I pulled out onto the road, looking both ways first but not paying attention to the vehicle far down the road and started my short drive home. It was one complete Tool song for the round trip if I drove like a sane person and I causally accelerated. I hadn’t made it a mile before I noticed a F-250 in my rear view mirror growing in size rapidly. It was the big fella and he was going to run me down in a way that wouldn’t exhaust or embarrass him. “Oh fuck” I said and took another vape hit then downshifted into 3rd gear and put the pedal to the floor. The Miata’s engine woke from its slumber and quickly ran the RPM’s up to 6000, putting me back in my seat the entire time. I shifted into 4th and floored it again. The road was awful and full of potholes but the sporty nimbleness of the Miata made avoiding the major potholes and bumps a fun exercise in technical driving. The big fella had a huge run up on me however and was still closing the distance on me even though I was speeding along at close to 90 miles per hour. Either he was an idiot or didn’t know the roads or likely both but as I glanced in the rearview mirror I could see the truck take hit after hit from the potholes. It lurched and bounced each time but the venerable American truck took each hit in stride and held its ground with me. I was doing 105 MPH now on a shitty backcountry road in a 45MPH zone and the F-250’s speed limiter likely kicked in at that speed so I maintained 105 as we approached the curves. I was nervous because I had only one option and that was to navigate a downhill S-turn meant for 35MPH at 105MPH while avoiding potholes that would tear off one of my tires. If I slowed down any, this maniac behind me could plow into me or give me the Pitt Maneuver and spin me out which would inevitably lead to a rollover where I definitely would die. “Fuck it” I said, grabbed another gear and started pulling away from the F-250. There was another option that just came to me ¼ mile from the S-turn and immediately opted for it. Despite the pain of sacrificing it, I lobbed a full 16oz can of white Monster out of the top of my car like a hand grenade. It crashed into the truck’s grill and penetrated through the grill and into the radiator like an armor piercing anti-tank cannon shell. A plume of steam erupted from the truck and I let off the throttle only to see him start gaining ground. I put it to the floor again and clenched my asshole as I was seconds away from barreling down upon the S-turn. I could see far enough ahead that there was no oncoming traffic so I steered as far left as I could to get the best angle entering the turn. The car’s lane detection warning system beeped at me and I told it to fuck off, I was racing for my life here. I tracked into the turn, apexed in the corner and tracked back out into the next turn. I felt myself get lighter when I entered the turn because it was downhill but the Miata stayed true and glued to the road like a Formula 1 car. In the first part of the S-turn, I had to keep the center line in the center of my car because of the massive canyons in the asphalt on the right tire track that Penn Dot hadn’t addressed in several years. There were more potholes but they were minor and at this speed the car glided over them. I had made it halfway through the S-turn and now steered left again and apexed perfectly in the outward curve and accelerated out of it. The next stretch had mild curves that I wasn’t worried about and I got back in my proper lane, now about to check my mirror to see what the big fella’s fate was. I heard the tires squeal as he tried to slow down to make the first curve of the S-turn. He knew nothing of racing despite having decals on his back window of some local hayseed race car driver. When he braked in the middle of the turn, all the weight shifted forward and he lost all rear grip. Combining that with trying to steer right, caused the rear end of the truck to slide out from behind him and he spun 90 degrees. The left front tire caught the canyon pothole and sent the truck into a barrel roll down the hill. I watched it all in my mirror and I slammed on my breaks. The truck barrel rolled at least a half dozen times before hitting the left side guard rail and bounced into the middle of the road. Steam was billowing from the front of the truck and I could see all the airbags had deployed. I pulled the e-brake, did a half turn to slow down and stop, smoke seethed from my tires and when the car came to a halt in the middle of the road, I put on my 4-ways. I then heard a woman yell to me from the nearby house. “Oh my god!” She yelled. “Are you okay!” She saw the smoke and must have thought there was a fire or something coming from my car. “Yeah I’m fine, but that fella probably isn’t” I said motioning to the heap of metal that used to be a F-250. “I saw the whole thing! I was getting my mail when I heard an engine revving”, the woman said, “Why were you going so fast!? Racing?” She was accusatory and slightly distressed or even angry. I turned my head away from the wreck and looked at her. She was in her late 20s, blonde hair, large and possibly fake breasts, blue eyes and wearing the cutest and most sensual peach colored sundress. If she had makeup on it was minor at most and her face held the natural beauty of an entire Miss Universe contest. “I was racing for my life. The guy is a lunatic, he tried to stab me at the gas station then started chasing me. I knew he couldn’t handle that turn but I knew my car could. Looks like I was right.” I said to her. She looked at me seemingly satisfied with my response but asked, “Why did he try to stab you?” “Because I called him gay.” She laughed and smiled thinking I was joking and was about to say something else when we both heard the big fella yell for help. “We prob should check on him” I said and took a deep hit from my vape exhaling more white vapor than was coming from the wrecked truck. A car pulled up and the driver asked if anyone called 911, I said no and he started dialing. “I’m Michelle”, she said and extended her left hand to me to help me out of the car. She presented her left hand palm down so I could clearly see that she didn’t have a wedding ring. I took her hand and got out of the car then released her hand. It was just a short moment but it lasted for decades. I felt an electricity in her touch, the softness of her skin but the strength and firmness of an unyielding woman who was not unsure of herself. She was breeding stock and with each step she took, her breasts bounced slightly and jiggled revealing that they were indeed real and without a doubt perfect. “I’ve never seen anyone drive that fast through that turn before.” she continued. There’s at least a dozen wrecks here a year from people doing the speed limit and you were going how fast?” “105” I replied. “Maybe 110 when I finally hit the brakes.” “You’re insane.” She said and smiled, then adjusted her sundress, undoing one of her buttons revealing a little bit more cleavage. Her nipples were perky and nearly penetrated the fabric. “Its hot this morning…What kind of car is that? It looks German.” “It’s a Miata. Its basically a super car. It has 180hp but don’t let that fool you, the car only weighs a little more than 2200 pounds. Okay, so you've got to understand why the Mazda Miata is such a big deal—it's not just a car; it's a whole vibe! Picture this: It's super lightweight, right? That makes it incredibly fun to drive; it’s like it's practically gliding along the road. And it's got this perfectly balanced rear-wheel drive, so it handles like a dream, especially on curves. Seriously, it's like dancing... but with a car!” I paused for a few moments to catch my breath then added “Plus, it’s affordable, which is crazy considering how sporty it is. It’s like the everyman’s sports car. You can actually own a roadster without breaking the bank!” “Oh well, that’s nice I guess.” She said and continued, “I have to go now actually, I need to…like do some…chores…I mean get ready for work. Bye.” She buttoned up her sundress then ran off back to her driveway. “Are you a fucking idiot?” I heard the big fella yell. I watched as Michelle sprinted up her driveway, not looking back once even though sirens were blaring and the firetrucks and ambulances had arrived. “You had her melting in your hand and you sperged out like a retard about your car? What the hell is wrong with you? I don’t even want to kick your ass anymore, that was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

Hi there, been in commercial insurance uw for 14 years now, primarily WC and about 1.5 years of writing package lines as well. I’ve worked in various premium bands, prefer the complexity of larger accounts and have built my best agent relationships in that space. Only worked on the carrier side. Ready to make a move and have 2 offers on the table, pay is essentially the same. First is WC exclusively with an MGA that has a program and market availability, all size accounts, and agency relationship growth in my region is key because they are unknown down here. The second is a unique opportunity to move into a commercial contract surety UW role with a small yet established carrier company that is growing. An old friend recommended me to them and this landed in my lap very unexpectedly. They want to train me in surety, and everything I’ve read online indicates this is a fabulous specialty. The organization is super flat, I would report directly to the CUO and President. Relationship management is very important here as well. Thinking long term here and it seems like Surety might be the best direction. Any thoughts or insight would be appreciated!

hey guys, so i’ve been stalking this subreddit for weeks because as of tomorrow i’ll be 1 week post-spinal fusion (yay!). i’ve been diagnosed since i was 8 years old, and im 19F and finally got my severe curve fixed. basically i’ve had plenty of questions running through my brain as i toss and turn all night, EVERY NIGHT due to the post operative pain. but here are just some random/“stupid” questions i’ve had if anybody would be so kind and willing to share their experiences as i transition into living with my spinal fusion.

1. did you need to update your driver’s license/passport if you gained height after the surgery? did you ever run into problems with your ID or can i get away with it until they expire? 1A. on that same note of ID, i travel a lot because i go to school out of state. will i go off in airport security? idc if i do (i think it would be rather silly🤭) but out of curiosity.
   
2. what did you do to stop experiencing nausea when taking your medications? and how did you increase your appetite so you CAN take your meds?
   
3. when did you take your first shower post-op and post-hospital?
   
4. for my side sleepers: i haven’t been able to comfortably sleep on my side since i’ve been home and sleeping on my back is a nightmare. how do you handle sleeping and what optimizes your comfort?
   
5. when does the pain get better in general?😭 i’m so over the restless nights and going from my couch to my bed to my couch like 7 times every night 😵‍💫😵‍💫 but i’ve been taking laps around my neighborhood and slowly taking longer ones once a day + im always using the stairs in my house. will more movement actually decrease the pain?
   
6. slightly NSFW, but i am a young woman in college and i don’t plan on stopping throwing it back (whether it be on the dance floor at a party w/ my girls or elsewhere🌚) so for anybody who’s had experience with adult activities post-fusion, will i be able to do what i could do before in terms of bending/rotating? (i also have specific questions so if you’d be willing to PM me abt mobility in that regard, i’d rly appreciate it bc it’s been making me anxious😭).
   
7. do you regret getting the surgery? what’s improved since you got it, what’s changed, what’s been surprisingly still the same? feel free to ramble.
   

SORRY FOR THE LONG POST!!!! but id appreciate any and all feedback and i will be reading all of it so thank you if you contribute!! 🤞🏾

Hi there, greetings from Austria. Hope you guys can help me out finding a suitable Laptop! A bit of a backstory:
I just recently bought myself a HP Victus 16 s-0475ng gaming laptop. I am using it with original hardware, except a 4TB Samsung SSD. But, my laptop obviously got shipped with a faulty GPU, and even after sending it in and getting returned after a repair, it is not fixed. They just replaced the supposedly faulty SSD I sent it in with, and shipped it back to me with a new one. The laptop originally showed graphical artifacts, ingame as well as out of games, especially often when connected via HDMI to an external TV - that issue strangely stopped happening. But bluescreens happened too, when the external TV was connected and the event log entries point to the GPU as source („Resetting TDR“, source: nvlddmkm). Basically the GPU driver giving up and having to reset, as far as I understand. And THAT issue persists and makes the laptop unusable to me.
So, now I am in the process of returning the laptop to the seller, but am unsure if I want to replace it - or buy a different model altogether. My experience with HP support was.. awful. They told me that because I bought the laptop a month AND TWO DAYS AGO, they’re not able to just send me a brand new Victus as replacement, EVEN THOUGH they didn’t even go through the usual 1st level Support troubleshooting steps with me, but just accepted my description + video and recognized that it was a hardware issue. Still, no full replacement possible. If I didn’t try and troubleshoot the issue myself first (worked IT Support for ~10yrs), and reported the problem below that imaginary „1 month mark“, they would’ve just replaced my model - which is frustrating to say the least.
Now, on to my laptop needs:
Budget: 1-1.5k€
Country: Austria
Screen Size: at least 16“
Display: At least 120Hz, good brightness, 2K resolution preferred
Thermals: umm.. good ones? It shouldn’t burn my lap when I’m using it to play.. Binding of Isaac for example.
Fan Sound: The lower, the better. In idle/„non gaming mode“, while only using MS Office apps for work, I shouldn’t hear a fan basically. While gaming noticeable Fan Sound is to be expected within that price range, in my opinion?
Build Quality: Very important. I want the laptop to last at least 3-4 years without issues. Maybe do a battery replacement, SSD or RAM upgrade if possible, but besides that it should generally last that long without build quality issues.
Audio Quality: Not an audiophile. Decent speaker quality is good enough, I should be able to watch a show or movie with them as well as game without issues. Don’t expect Hi-Fi Sound within that price range.
Camera: OK camera. Good enough to use for standard virtual work conferencing.
Weight: Can be a bit on the heaviebulkier side. Laptop will not be transported around beyond my home that much. It will mostly stay at home and getting moved around there.
Main purpose of Laptop: Gaming & Media Center, „MS Office“ type of work
Most demanding games: Diablo 4, Cyberpunk 2077. should be able to run current games with at least 60 FPS.
Battery life: A bit better than the Victus would be appreciated. Since the laptop is not getting moved around that much, it’s not the highest priority though. The Victus, on battery while gaming, lasted only around 30-60 minutes max. 2 hours would be better (obviously).
Other notes: Laptop doesn’t have to look like a Gaming Laptop, but keyboard lighting is a must for use in dark lit rooms. And yes, I know, the Victus doesn’t have that - but it was on sale, so I accepted that.

Pilot Reeda: “Human Dave, why is there a film series named ‘Alien?’”
Human Dave, Captain, Doctor, Quartermaster, and Pilot Reeda are seated on the comfortable couches in the cargo hold, with the Aflarrians milling around in front of the group, and Hope seated on Captain’s lap.
Doctor has a large bowl of popcorn in her lap, and occasionally tosses a piece towards the Aflarrians, who all patiently wait their turn to leap up and catch the offered snack.
Human Dave turns to face Pilot Reeda, who decided to show up at the last moment before the movie selection process could begin, and ponders her question for a moment.
Human Dave: “Well, that particular film series was made a very long time ago. Back when we thought that life on other worlds was a myth.”
PR: “The title seems offensive.”
HD: “I assure you that it’s not. The creatures in that film series were so different; so completely alien to us that it ended up traumatising every generation of human that ever saw it.”
PR: “That hardly changes things, Human Dave. How can a species be trusted when they name things with such carelessness?”
HD: “Was there no time in the entirety of Watrin history where your people didn’t believe there was anyone else out there in the universe?”
PR: “... that is beside the point.”
Alien Captain: “It would seem as though Pilot Reeda simply wishes to argue with you, Human Dave.”
Quartermaster: “I concur. I believe she is attempting to hide her nervousness at joining us by engaging in a verbal argument with Human Dave. The argument has little to no merit, and I believe that Pilot Reeda also knows this, but refuses to back down.”
PR: “Would the peanut gallery please shut up?”
AC: “What is a ‘peanut gallery?’”
HD: “She means the audience to any event. It’s an old reference to when humans used to attend theatre plays, and the people who sat in the cheap seats basically ate peanuts while the play was going on.”
QM: “What is a peanut?”
Alien Doctor: “Another Terran-based snack, but it would not be safe for Cradelians to eat them, due to the presence of certain chemicals contained within. They would wreak havoc on our digestive systems, and possibly cause death if ingested in excess.”
HD: “Well, the same could be said for anything grown on Terra. Or, anything in general. You eat too much of anything, and it’ll eventually be bad for you.”
AD: “This is true.”
PR: “Doesn’t change the fact that you have put such a title onto one of your forms of media.”
HD: “Does that mean you want to watch it?”
PR: “...”
HD: “Does anyone have any issues with Reeda’s choice? It is a horror genre movie, and it’s not even a technicality like with Jaws. Lots of people die in this one, and quite graphically, if I recall correctly.”
AD: “More graphically than Jaws?”
HD: “Actually, in some ways, yes. Xenomorphs have a very interesting life cycle, and they’re very aggressive, even for a fictional species.”
AD: “Xeno... morph?”
HD: “Yeah. Actually, Doctor, I think you’d really like the movies, from a medical practitioner’s perspective. They reproduce by... actually, I think it’d be better if you watch it yourself. Don’t want to spoil any of it. Plus, I’d like to see your unfiltered and unadulterated reaction to the film itself.”
AD: “You are not filling me with confidence after hearing that, Human Dave.”
HD: “Aw, come on. You liked Jaws, so you should be good with gore.”
QM: “THERE IS GORE?!”
HD: “Well, no more than expected, I think. It’s a bit graphic, but it shouldn’t be too bad.”
PR: “How many humans die in this film?”
HD: “... only you would ask that. A lot of them. There aren’t many in the movie, mind you, but a lot of them die.”
AC: “Why do you insist on showing us the worst imagery of your species, Human Dave?”
HD: “Hey, I didn’t choose this one. If anyone’s to blame, it’s Reeda. And she just wants to see people die.”
PR: “Humans. I wish to see humans die.”
HD: “... imagining them all with my face, are you?”
PR: “Yes.”
HD: “... that’s very hurtful, Reeda’Tila-Lasoran.”
PR: “Fuck you, human!”
HD: “There we go. That passive-aggressive crap you were just using really doesn’t suit you.”
Pilot Reeda glares at the human sitting on the other side of the cargo bay.
PR: “If I want your opinion, human, I’ll fucking well ask for it!”
HD: “... okay, that’s taking the banter a little too far now.”
Human Dave stands up, and makes his way over to Pilot Reeda, who is clearly trying to ignore the approaching human.
HD: “Are you okay? You’re not usually this angry.”
PR: “I’m fine. Just put the damn movie on.”
HD: “... one thing I have learned in my life is that when someone says they’re fine, it actually means they’re not fine. Reeda, talk to me. What’s wrong?”
PR: “Nothing is wrong! I came here because you requested it of me. But I can very easily leave, Human Dave!”
AC: “That is not necessary, Pilot Reeda. Human Dave, please put the movie on. I am intrigued by what you have described, but would appreciate some more information regarding the premise.”
Human Dave eyes Pilot Reeda curiously for a moment, before returning to his seat, and taking a breath.
HD: “Well, it’s about a crew of humans in stasis investigating a distress signal, and having to contend with not only political plots, but an actual living organism in what was previously a cold, dead universe.”
AC: “I do not understand. Surely there would be life in some form or another in this fictional universe? Are we to believe that there is no native flora or fauna on any planet that humans visit?”
HD: “I think it was heavily implied that the planets they visited were barren for some reason or another. To be fair, back when the movies were made, the space program was still in its infancy, and the idea of trying to find a planet that would be suitable for humans was appealing, but we had to face the inevitable reality that finding a Goldilock’s world suitable for us was quite a tall ask.”
QM: “Goldilock’s world? I am unfamiliar with this term.”
HD: “It’s a reference to an old bedtime story that human tell their children. Basically, it refers to the need to find a world that is neither too hot, nor too cold to support human life. A similar life lesson is taught in the bedtime story, which is where we get the name.”
QM: “Curious. We do not have such a custom amongst Cradelians. At least, I am unaware of such customs among Cradelians, as I only have experience with my own family. Captain, is this the same for your own family?”
AC: “I am unaware of such a custom as well, Quartermaster. Doctor?”
AD: “As far as I am aware, it is not a part of Cradelian culture, as Cradelians do not require much sleep, nor have any issues achieving sleep. So, I am in agreement with Captain and Quartermaster. May I ask what the purpose of a bedtime story is, Human Dave?”
HD: “Sure. Humans, especially children, have way too much energy when they’re young. That sort of flags as they get older, but they’re always full of energy when they’re little. A bedtime story is sometimes necessary for them to receive some sort of stimulation while winding down in preparation for sleep.”
Human Dave looks thoughtful for a moment, before continuing his train of thought.
HD: “I think I touched on this a while back, but kids need routines sometimes, and sleep happens to be something different for everyone. Some kids need quiet to sleep, and some kids need something to amuse themselves while winding down. Stories seem to work for a lot of kids, since sometimes, the sounds of their parents’ voices is soothing to them, and gets them ready for sleep. The story itself doesn’t really matter, aside from personal preference; it’s more listening to something monotonous is calming enough to make them sleep.”
AD: “Most strange. Cradelians can simply close their eyes, and rest for the allotted time necessary for recovery.”
HD: “... I think every human would be very envious of you Cradelians if they found out about that. Sleep doesn’t come easy as humans get older. And quality of sleep declines as well. Not to mention dreams and stuff.”
AC: “Dreams? What are dreams?”
Human Dave’s eyes widen dramatically, as he stares at Captain, then turns his head to look at Doctor and Quartermaster, who have similar incomprehensible expressions on their faces.
HD: “... you guys don’t dream?”
AD: “We do not, Human Dave. I am aware of your nightmares where you relive your fears and traumas, but it is not something Cradelians experience.”
AC: “Humans relive frightening experiences when they sleep?”
Captain looks at Human Dave with a mixture of pity and understanding, to which Human Dave stands up and begins pacing.
HD: “Please don’t look at me like that, Captain. The very reason I don’t talk about it is because I don’t want people looking at me like that. But I’m fine. I hardly dream about anything that I’ve gone through, anyway.”
QM: “Human Dave, did you not just say that when people say that they are fine, that they are, in fact, not fine?”
HD: “Oh, nice. Using my own words against me.”
QM: “Is there unresolved trauma for you, Human Dave? I have seen it debilitate most every person I have treated in my previous role as Medic, but I have not had the pleasure of seeing how it affects the human mind, so I am uncertain if your current defensiveness is a result of us attempting to be understanding, but unable to, since we do not understand humans as well as another would, or if it is a reflection on your current mental state.”
HD: “How did this turn around onto me? I’m alright. I’m seeing a therapist for my own issues, so I’d appreciate it if you guys would just drop it.”
AD: “... very well. However, if you do need someone to speak with, the doors to Medbay are open to all.”
Doctor noticeably turns her head to look at Pilot Reeda, who nods imperceptibly before looking away.
HD: “Okay, hopefully, now that we’re done discussing my many, many issues, can we watch the horror movie?”
...
Silence rings throughout the cargo hold as the end credits roll.
Three Cradelians, and one Klofi-Watrin, sit in mute horror at the movie they just watched.
PR: “... I take it back. I take it all back. The title is fitting. Very fitting. I apologise for ever doubting you, Human Dave.”
HD: “I don’t blame you, Reeda. I had the exact same expression on my face the first time I saw it, too.”
AC: “What exactly did you just make us watch, Human Dave?”
HD: “Arguably, one of the best science fiction horror movies ever made by humans.”
AD: “I am both very disturbed and confused, Human Dave. Why is the life cycle of this species so superfluous? Why is there a need to have those things attach themselves to the faces of humans? Other than implantation of the embryo into a host species? Would it not be easier for the fully developed creature to simply implant the embryo on its own?”
HD: “Well,--”
AD: “In addition, why did it take so long for humans to detect the distress/warning signal from the ship on the planet, and why did they not deactivate it when they were on board? Would this not cause an repeat of this exact scenario if another ship were to pick up the signal?”
HD: “That’s actually—”
AD: “And, probably the biggest question I have is, how did the alien creature grow to such a size in only a matter of hours? It did not show the creature consuming any biological matter, and I have concerns as to how such a creature would eat to make up for its lack of food to fuel such a rapid growth in mere hours from the form from which it emerged from the chest of that particular human. Does it eat through the smaller jaw inside its mouth? Or is the purpose of that jaw merely as a weapon?”
HD: “So, it’s—”
AD: “In fact, is the creature itself some form of sentient bioweapon? It does not appear capable of communication, and if it were capable of such, how would it communicate? I observed no evidence of a tongue, nor any higher thought processes other than to kill its prey, but the hunting process itself was flawed. It did not hunt for food, as far as I observed; it killed for the sake of killing.”
HD: “...”
AD: “It would serve no purpose as a bioweapon, as it appears to be completely uncontrollable, and acts solely on instinct. And if more of those... egg things... were dropped onto a planet, it would be overrun by those creatures, and become a nest of sorts for the creatures, which have proven to be immensely difficult to kill. How would anyone take control of a planet covered in these creatures?”
HD: “If you would let me answer, Doctor?
Doctor pauses for a moment, before a faint dusting of blue appears on her face.
AD: “I apologise, Human Dave. It appears that I have allowed myself to become far too invested in the narrative of the movie.”
HD: “That’s alright. In regards to the life cycle, I don’t actually know why it’s like that. I always guessed it was just to keep the embryos safe, in case the fully grown one got hurt or something.”
AC: “What could hurt something like that? It seemed even more an apex predator than humans do.”
HD: “Well, most living organisms are weak to fire, and in the sequels, that gets touched on, but, just as an aside, fire seems to be the best method for most predators. So, if you get cornered, that’s what you should use to get away.”
QM: “Did the creature survive being blasted by the engines?”
HD: “... I mean, maybe? It’s left ambiguous, I think, because not much can survive the vacuum of space, and if it free-falls into the atmosphere of the planet they just left, it’d probably burn up on re-entry.”
AD: “They did not touch upon the large, dead creature that had appeared on the other ship, either.”
HD: “The Space Jockeys weren’t the focus of the film. Actually, until the expanded media, they weren’t even acknowledged as a major part of the narrative; I think they were just there to serve as evidence of an advanced civilisation that had the eggs in stasis, rather than actually giving them an active role in the story.”
AC: “’Space Jockeys?’”
HD: “The term ‘Space Jockeys’ cropped up during production of the film, but where they got it, I’m not sure. They have a species name, but it was a weird one that I don’t quite remember. This movie was actually one of the reasons that humans were sceptical about the Galactic Community in the beginning, because if this was something that we could think up, then how bad could it actually be out here?”
AD: “I can wholeheartedly assure you, Human Dave, that there is nothing like this in the galaxy. If there were, there would be no Galactic Community, since it would not survive against such a lifeform.”
HD: “Thank God for that, at least. What else did you ask again?”
AC: “The distress signal, and whether they are bioweapons, Human Dave.”
HD: “Couldn’t tell you about the distress signal, since I don’t think it was deactivated either, but you sort of hit the nail on the head with the bioweapon theory.”
AD: “... nail on the head?”
QM: “A crude form of building by driving pieces of metal into other materials to bind them together, Doctor.”
AD: “I am aware of what a nail is Quartermaster. I am confused by the turn of phrase Human Dave used.”
HD: “I meant to say that you managed to guess correctly the first time around. The Xenomorphs were released as a bioweapon, but quickly got out of control once they establish a foothold on any planet.”
AD: “Is there any hope of reclaiming the planet once a foothold is established?”
HD: “Short of glassing the planet, no. Once a Xenomorph infestation starts, it’s almost impossible to reclaim the planet without it.”
AC: “I was originally of the impression that such a method would be too much, but after having seen this movie, and imagining a planet of them, I am in agreement.”
PR: “Me too. I don’t think even an army of Stana-Watrin would be able to stand against just one, let alone a planet of them.”
AD: “At least the movie ended on a somewhat happy note. And with the death of the creature. I do not condone violence, but in this case, I believe it was warranted.”
HD: “Well, buckle up, because there are three more movies in the franchise after this one.”
AC: “... what?”
...
News Announcer: “And, in other news, the unexplained communications breakdown in the Taurus Sector has been the focus of many.
There have been many calls for investigation, and a petition for Terran High Command to send a warship to investigate has accumulated several hundred-thousand signatures.
In addition to this, many have expressed a desire to volunteer to be part of the investigative team, stating concerns that their family members are among those no longer communicating.
Terran High Command has released a statement; proclaiming that they are sending their flagship, the TSF Trailblazer, to head the investigation, as the lack of communication has reached the week-long mark.
All ships are advised not to enter the Taurus Sector until investigations have concluded, as per the statement released by Terran High Command.
“We do not wish for civilian interference, as such a thing may interfere with the investigation that has yet to commence. We ask for patience and understanding in this trying time, as we intend not to abandon our distant brethren, and discover exactly why a breakdown in communications has occurred,” a spokesperson for Terran High Command stated earlier today.
The TSF Trailblazer, humanity’s flagship, helmed by one Commander Nathaniel Beckett, a decorated war hero, and Designated Voice for Humanity, will be sent within the next few days to perform the investigation, alongside members of the UECA, that will assist in the investigation.
(What the Hell is the UECA?)
More on this story as it unfolds.”
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