Some background: I'm a little over 60. I'm an only child., widowed and childless. My father died in 2004.
My mother died February 18 after a year of struggling with stroke, heart failure and pneumonia. I missed getting to say goodbye to her by about 20 minutes. She was everything to me, and I miss her so much. Her birthday, she would have been 89, was late last month. Mother's Day yesterday was very hard. I miss her so so much.
On April 1,my job laid me off. A corporation bought out most of the corporation I worked for and my position was eliminated. I was the seniormost team member, lots of experience and skills and the remaining team couldn't do what I did, and would be overworked taking on my caseload. And yes I think age and disbility discrimination had a lot to do with it.
I am looking for a job. My last employer accepted my request for ADA accomodation to work at home. (I survived a bad car wreck, I walk with a cane, and a lot of walking is just painful). I'm not sure any new employers are interested in that.
I sold my condo I am getting enough money to buy something very modest for cash. And by modest I mean a 'manufactured home' or 'mobile home.' Yes, not many people's idea of 'ideal' housing. But for me - having a paid for little place, small but comfortable, for just me and 2 cats is perfect. Would I rather have a cottage of some sort? Yes. But I can't afford one. And having a paid for house and a paid for car is not a bad thing, you know?
I have found a really cute and well priced home in a clean park in a small city about an hour away. I wll have unemployment coming in soon and I would have enough money left over to pay lot rent, utilities, and food and gasoline and such for awhile.
The thing is - my credit took a dive and these mobile home parks run a check on credit, income, and crime. Let's take those one at a time. First, no criminal history at all. Second, I can say I'm on FMLA leave as a reason for not having May paychecks. (It was true when I was let go so it's lying but only a little). But my credit took a dip because I was paralyzed by my firing and did not pay my mortgage in Aprl. (TBH, I thought about killing myself a lot and I was just trying to leave money for someone to throw me in a cremation oven and rehome my cats.)
I could buy a home but not be allowed to live in a mobile home park because of my credit. I don't know of anything I can do to reverse this. I'm willing to listen to any ideas.
No job - no family - soon no home. This is not a good life. I realize some people have things worse - everyone is always better off than someone else, I suppose. But I have to live my life and it's so lonely and so bleak now. I go to bed (I'm up to 2 unisom, 4 melatonin, 4 tylenol pm now!) and try to stop my brain from going over and over all the ways I'm headed for ruin. But I wake up and my brain tells me that my best days are behind me and I'm going to live with my cats in my car until I just drop them at a shelter, then drive to a gun shop, then, do what I have to do. I don't really want to do that. But there's not much else to do with my crappy life, is there?

Fair Warning, this is going to be a LONG post, but I will try to dilute it as much as possible.
About 12 years ago I left the world of retail (of which I have MANY stories) to begin a career in childcare. Some people prefer different titles, Nanny, Babysitter, Parents' Helper, Childcare Provider, etc. To be honest each of those titles are suitable in different situations.
The first family that I Nannied for went on for about 4 years, and then on again off again for another year. Through this family, I met "Wendy" and her family. Wendy went out of her way to be friendly with me, and would often ask me to babysit her kids (B5 and G1).
At one point, I had moved on to working with another family for a few months. Sadly, that ended due to the parents getting a divorce, and they moved further away.
Wendy found out that I was unemployed and asked that I Nanny for her kids. She was also pregnant with her 3rd at the time. I agreed at a slightly discounted rate because we were "friends". I realized too late that that was a HUGE mistake on my part.
Wendy's live in boyfriend "Cole" also had 3 kids from a previous relationship. B15, G8, and G6 lived with their mother. Yes, am aware of the closeness in age of Wendy and Cole' B5 and his G6. I chose to keep my mouth shut.
Now prepare yourselves for the Rollercoaster of emotions I dealt with with this family.
Initially, both Wendy and Cole were employed. I would come over 5 days a week for 8 to 10 hour days, depending upon whether Wendy got home on time. Here is where my discounted rate bit me in the butt.... $300 a week was still complained about. Wendy asked that I not leave Cole alone with their kids because he basically ignored them and refused to change diapers. I felt pretty icky about that, but agreed. Now I lived 45 minutes away without traffic. I would often leave my house early in anticipation of possible traffic. If I arrived early, I wasn't allowed in until she our alloted time of 7am. I didn't have a key, and would often be left waiting on the porch an extra 15 minutes past our time. If I knew I was too early, I parked around the corner and ate breakfast. Wendy and Cole both got very irritated if I wasn't their door precisely at 7 am. It was a headache that I chose to avoid.
Over the first month, I realized that G2 was emotionally abused by Wendy. She constantly said to or in front of the child how much she hated dealing with the wild child. How she wished G2 was more well behaved like B5. She even wrote unkind things on Facebook, asking someone to take her on the weekend while I was off.
This took a toll on poor G2, obviously. She would get violent with me first thing in the mornings : Hitting, kicking, biting, pulling my hair, throwing things at me, or what ever popped into her mind. Eventually, once Wendy left for work G2 would calm down and become an absolute delight.
When B5 started school, Wendy took a new job that allowed her to work from home at times. Those were not fun days! I asked if I could bring G2 to my house where I have an outdoor play area, a playroom, plenty of kid movies, crafts, books, music, and local playgrounds. At first the car rides were torture with G2 screaming bloody murder for at least half of the 45 minute drive. When she got used to the new routine, those drives became pleasant. Her violent tendencies disappeared when we were spending the days at my home. The drawback was that I also had to drive her home in time to get B5 off the bus.
During school breaks, I also had B5, and if they were visiting G8 and G6. B15 stayed at Wendy's house and just did his own thing. If you thought G2 was torture in toddler form, these two girls would have made Nanny McPhee grow a few more moles, a hunch back, and closed feet.
B5 would get a little bored, being that he was the only boy that was understandable. I purchased an array of boy friendlier toys to entertain him. I already had a lot of girl friendly toys either purchased or gifted from the first family that I had worked with. Of course I had plenty of gender neutral items too.
Wendy and Cole didn't give 2 sh*ts and a shave if the kids watched TV all day, went out to a playground or museum, or were driven 2 hours away, as long as I got them home on time. I easily spent an entire paycheck on activities, gas, food (which they didn't pack), and toys over 2 weeks watching all 4 kids. By the by, when asked for additional money when I did have all 4, Wendy not so politely informed me that the kids are entertain each other, so my job should be easier with all 4.
My husband and I discussed a few times whether I should look for something else. Inevitably the people pleaser in me actually felt guilty even considering it. Yup, I was apparently a glutton for punishment. Gratefully, my income was just extra, for an nice meal out occasionally, gifts for birthdays and holiday, extra hobbies, and basic groceries.
Just before Wendy gave birth to their new baby, she became unemployed. Logically, one would think this was my easy out. NOPE!! I became more of a Mother's Helper / Nanny. At this point Wendy and Cole were beginning to look for a larger house to rent. I did more walk through than I can count. She even asked me to tour a couple without her, and to bring G2 and B5 so she could get her nails done and take a nap. (Seriously, I toured houses on her list without her!)
As we spent more and more time together, I began to learn FAR FAR more about her bedroom life than I could ever desire. G2 and I spent much less time in the peace of my home, and way too much in Wendy's company. G2's behavior began to deteriorate slowly, causing Wendy to lose her temper with her far too easily. This completely broke my heart. I TRIED to redirect them both, and expressed my concern to Wendy. Of course, she then turned her anger towards me.
Wendy would openly discuss her theories about Cole in front of her kids. She claimed that he was cheating on her with his ex because he would shower immediately after seeing her to pick up or drop off the kids. He often made those drives directly after work though. Maybe he was cheating, maybe not. I honestly don't know.
Wendy also enjoyed gossiping about absolutely anybody. The parents of the first family that worked with were having marital issues. This was a favorite topic of hers. Wendy told me about every unkind word her mother uttered in her direction. The apple obviously didn't fall far from the tree here. I was told lots of personal information about people I didn't know. The gossip made me very uncomfortable. I told her that I would prefer we not discuss the lives of people who weren't around to speak on their own behalf. This fell on deaf ears.
I became quite used to her disapproval of my loose fitting jeans and T-shirts. Working with kids, I found my favorite cartoon prints were just as possible with my tiny charges. I NEVER wear makeup or heels because I simply don't want to. My dresses always have leggings under them because it make me feel less vulnerable. I never wear shorts or above the knee skirts/dresses. That's a ME thing, not religious or cultural. I find my "uniform" of choice is ideal for working with kids. Wendy informed me more than once that it embarrassed her to be seen in public with me. She often insisted that I wear something of hers if we had to go anywhere.
My husband enjoys photography, particularly long exposure which is done at night. He has a lot of photography friends of both genders, but his best friend is a female. He also enjoys concerts and kayaking, often with an ex from high school. (He graduated in 1997). I trust my husband and have no problem with him spending time with his friends. Enter Wendy's whispers of accusations. She often "jokingly" accused him of cheating on me with these female friends. I don't enjoy concerts, crowds, or being out late; so I support his doing with people who do. At least I know he with someone if something happens. I have bad knees, which make getting in and out of a kayak difficult. Why should that stop him? Again, I told her that I trust him and that I don't appreciate her accusations joke or not. This annoyed her because she doesn't trust Cole.
I know these are major red flag issues. I know how toxic being subjected to these comments is. I also know how difficult it would be on their kids if I left too soon. I knew they needed someone who wasn't emotionally cruel. I stayed for them.
My husband and I spent 2 of our weekends helping them pack and move to house that ended up 15 minutes from us. We were thanked by words, but that was the extent of the gratitude. Wendy's mother looked after the kids while we helped them move. This was complained about because I was already paid to watch the kids during the week. Insert eye roll here!! Her mom felt my husband should be willing to help them move while I watched the kids on the weekend for no extra pay. Either way, we were doing them a HUGE favor to begin with.
A family that I had briefly Nannied for prior to working for Wendy asked if I could help out every other Saturday. The dad (Nice Guy) traveled a lot for work leaving the Mom (Angelface) home alone with the kids. She just needed a day to run errands, work out, and just have time to herself. Angelface is one of the kindest women on this planet. When I did Nanny for them (2 days a week), she was in tears when she had to let me go. They couldn't justify the outgoing money at the time. She referred me to several friends. I am legitimately friend with this family, and still babysit sporadically.
Through a random discussion, I told Wendy about working with Angelface on every other Saturday. She began to tell me what to charge, how many hours to work, and what days to leave open for her just in case. Insert headache inducing eyerolls!
One Friday, Wendy's cousin arrived for a weekend visit with her baby. Wendy told me that because it was a holiday weekend I would not be needed until Tuesday. I double checked via text, and she confirmed that she and Cole were taking the kids to the beach with her cousin. Monday morning I got a call from a passed off Wendy asking where I am. I reminded her that she had told me that they would not need me. I even took a screen shot of our text. She said that Cole had decided to work Monday anyway so she was alone with HER kids. This pissed me off, so I lied. I told her that I was out of town with my mom and wouldn't be home until 5 or 6 pm. She went on about how much of an inconvenience it was to her, and I should have checked before going out of town. For the second time, I sent her a screenshot of my text verifying that I wasn't needed Monday. She abruptly ended the call saying to just be sure to be on time Tuesday. I had NEVER been late, but opted to mention that as we hung up.
Over time we worked out a new arrangement where I brought now G3 to my house 2 days a week, and we stayed there 3 days a week. I helped with cleaning, errands, helped with the new baby (NB), etc. Mostly, I was Wendy's sounding board. She continued to accuse Cole of cheating, wasting money, and even beating her.
My husband and I offered to let her and the kids stay with us, but she declined. Wendy even told me that since she was so sure Cole was cheating, she was going to find herself a side boyfriend to cheat with. I tried to talk her out of it, to no avail. Sadly, she spoke openly about her new boyfriend in fron of G3. During one of her rants I learned that my pay came from him selling drugs. GULP!!
While cleaning out the couch one day, I came across a loaded gun kept in the couch console thing, along with baggies of pills, "dried plants", and white powder. This completely freaked me out. 2 small children and a soon to be crawling baby sat and played on and around that couch. I STRONGLY considered calling Child Pretective Services and the police. I quickly realized that if I did, they would know it was me. I regret it, but I feared their possible retaliation towards us.
Shortly after finding these thing Cole quit his job. For several months while I worked for them, they were both unemployed. Again, I thought it was an easy out. NOPE AGAIN! For another 3 months, they insisted that they couldn't take care of the house and kids without my help. Very often, I arrived to find now B6 fending for himself for breakfast and getting ready for school. He was told to wake up and unlock the door for me, but they went back to sleep. I was expected to keep the baby from crying, and to keep G3 quiet and entertained until they came downstairs. I often chose to simply take both to my house so we could play naturally. We had a crib, so this wasn't a problem for NB. G3 would just nap on the couch or my bed. When out of school B6 preferred this too. This really should have told Wendy and Cole something about their kids, but of course not.
FINALLY, I was informed after about a year of working for them, they could no longer justify paying me. At this point, I had often considered quitting anyway. I mainly stayed because my heart broke for the kids. However, based on her gossipy and judgmental nature ... not to mention my little 3 day weekend fail; I was concerned about what kind of reference Wendy would provide if I chose to quit.
So in 2019, I found myself happily unemployed. The timing here worked out beautifully because Angelface knew neighbors due to have their first baby in 2020. I ended up working for this lovely family until August of 2023. The mom (Joy) and the Dad (Mr. Cool) were such a relief to my entire mental and physical health. We became friends as well, and over time I told them about Wendy. Between Joy, Angelface, Mr. Cool, Nice Guy, my husband, and family I began to realize just hoe toxic Wendy really was to my mental health. My husband never liked her but understood my feelings towards the kids.
For almost a year Wendy would randomly call or FaceTime me .... more often than not while drunk. She would rave about how much she and the kids missed me. We would get together for a meal, and she had me over for a couple birthday parties for the kids. I found myself almost always being the only sober adult watching the kids as the adults partied. Wendy often went back to her gossiping, trash talking, and "jokes" about my husband spending time with women. She would offer underhanded compliments. "It's so nice to see you wearing a dress instead of those tacky T-shirts." You get the drift. She even INFORMED me that since her neighbor was pregnant I could quit my job with Joy and Mr. Cool. She had told her neighbor that I would work for her now, and since they were next door, I would watch her own kids too. I shut that down saying that I was quite happy working with Joy and Mr. Cool. I even lied about what they paid thinking it would detur her further. NOPE yet again. She said that I should quit anyway so her life would be easier with me around. Once more, I told her that wasn't going to happen.
AT LONG LAST, I am coming to the end of my tortuous endurment with Wendy.
A week later, she called and asked if I had quit yet. I said that I had no intention of leaving an "$800" a week job. (Not even close to that with my 3 day a week job, but she didn't need to know the truth.) She told me to let her know when I quit, then changed the subject towards gossiping about that first family and their problems. I told her that I don't feel comfortable gossiping about people who can't speak for themselves. That pissed her off, so she turned it on me again. She said of course I don't want to talk about them since my husband was cheating on me with 2 different women. I angrily corrected her. She has no reason to think my husband is cheating, and I trust him and our friends. Just because she thinks her boyfriend cheats, and she cheats, that doesn't mean everybody does. She then said we could talk when I calmed down and after I quit my job.
After hanging up, I proceeded to block Wendy on everything! Facebook, phone calls, texting, face timing, Instagram, and even Snapchat (which I hadn't used in over a year). I also blocked her mom, and any body that had been friendly simply because Wendy knew them and wanted me to have their information too. I gave her no warning at all. I was beyond passed off, and refused to be talked out of my very gratifying decision.
I told my husband, family, and friends that was now free of Wendy. Not a single person tried to tell me to make ammends. The only guilt that I feel is towards those poor kids. For once though, I put myself first. Joy and Angelface were both extremely supportive when I told them that I had Ghosted Wendy. Both even mentioned how proud they were of me for FINALLY truly stand-up for myself. They were NOT fans of Wendy!!!
I never ended up quitting my job with Joy and Mr. Cool inorder to babysit Wendy's neighbor. I also continued to babysit for Angelface and Nice Guy.
About 7 or 8 months ago, I ran into Wendy at a playground between our two homes. She was with now G5 and B2. I had Joy and Mr. Cool's daughter with me. I was polite, almost obscenely so. I was friendly towards the kids, who were stand off-ish. I offered to let Little Miss play with them, but they weren't interested. Little Miss wanted to do her own thing, so off we went to play. We left after only 15 minutes because Little Miss said "that lady" is scaring her.
That night, my husband got a Facebook message from Wendy. She described my cruelty towards her kids by ignoring them. She said that it was so hateful that I blocked her on everything after all she had done for us. This message went on and on. My husband left it unread for months before my morbid curiosity caused me to open the silly thing. We never responded, but instead he finally bl9cked her too.
Ok, if you read that bloody novel of a post, you are a ROCK STAR!! I don't have any regrets towards my eventual choice, except towards the kids. It breaks my heart knowing what kind of parents they are enduring. I often regret not calling CPS, but there isn't a shadow of doubt that would have retaliated .... most likely violently.
I did eventually get back in contact with that very first Nanny family. They had indeed broken up, but both are happier and healthier now. I warned them that Wendy enjoyed gossiping and spreading rumors about them. Neither were surprised, and both had broken contact with Wendy long ago. They supported my choice to break ties with her as well. Shocking, right!?!
I no longer work full time for Joy and Mr. Cool, as they wanted Little Miss to get used to being around more kids before starting school. I do still sporadically babysit for them and Angelface and Nice Guy though. The two couples have referred me to several other families in the neighborhood, so I stay pretty busy with much more sane individuals.
Maybe I was an A-Hole, and petty. I'm cool with being thought of that way towards Wendy. At least now, I have much kinder people in my life.

I’m so mad!!!! I’m not sure if I’m more mad with my ex-husband or with myself for falling for his BS yet again!
My ex-husband and I have been divorced for 2 years. He’s 40, I’m 38. We were together since I was 20. We have 5 kids together, and our oldest are teenagers. Our relationship was pretty rocky and very on/off for several years prior to actually following through with the divorce. I feel like we both still loved each other, but we’re incompatible on a day to day basis. I believe he cheated on me. He also never wanted me to work outside of the home. We just had very different ideas of what marriage meant. I don’t feel like we were so different when we were younger, but we grew to be very different. We had actually started the process of separation and divorce once before, but then I got pregnant and during that pregnancy he became the perfect husband. But things eventually fell apart again and we finally realized that we had to get a divorce.
On my birthday in March of this year he came to my house announced with a gift for me. It seemed genuine. We slept together that night. We’ve slept together several times since then. I know it was stupid to do, when I’m already struggling with so many mixed emotions about him and like I’ll never truly get over him. But I didn’t think we were really doing any harm. There was no talk about us getting back together. Neither of us was pretending that it was something other than what it was - sex. That was until he invited me on a vacation, just the two of us. At that point I knew we needed to have a real conversation about what all of this meant. He made it seem like he wanted us to go away and explore the idea of getting back together. That’s what he said. He wanted to talk about “what it would take” for us to try a relationship again. He was talking about therapy and counseling and being a better husband and father.
We never went on the vacation. I hadn’t vetoed it completely, but I told him I needed to think about it some more. This was toward the end of April. So, a matter of just a few weeks ago.
He got me a nice gift for Mother’s Day (not including the gifts our kids got me, which I knew he also paid for) and wrote a very thoughtful message in a card, which he normally doesn’t do. It was sweet. It felt good.
Then last night at around 11:00 pm I was scared half to death when I heard somebody loudly enter my home. When I went downstairs to check what was going on, it was one of our sons. He was supposed to be at his dad’s tonight, and that’s where he came from. He was so upset. It took a good 5-10 minutes to calm him down. He was pacing just looked so angry in a way that he normally never is. He told me that his dad, my ex-husband, is actually engaged to a secret girlfriend he’s had for who knows how long. They’ve been engaged since January! My son saw pictures of my ex-husband and this woman on my ex’s phone. They weren’t nude photos or anything like that, as far as I’m aware. My son asked him who this woman was in all of these photos and my husband told him “Don’t tell your mother, but this is my fiance.” My son said he was so mad he just stormed out of the house.
So, this entire time he’s been sleeping with me, claiming to be single, and inviting me on vacation to discuss getting back together…he’s been secretly engaged? To a woman who he’s never mentioned before and has never introduced to our kids?
I’m blown away! This feels worse than all of the stupid things he did while we were actually married. It almost feels calculated that he’d have all of these pictures of her and the two of them together on his phone and allow our son to use his phone knowing he’d probably see the pictures. I feel like he couldn’t bring himself to sit our kids down like a normal person would to give them this news, so he allowed my son to find these pictures. The fact that he never mentioned a word about this woman and then he was so easily able to say “Don’t tell your mother, but this is my fiance” is so weird.
And guess what? She’s in her 20s. How cliche. How sad.
It’s time like these where it’s very hard to be a good mom, pretending to be the bigger person and take the high road while also not totally burying my husband’s character in front of them. My children are very hurt by this. They feel very betrayed by their dad for not even mentioning that he was dating someone, let alone getting engaged to somebody who he’s never even introduced them to. Throw in the fact that she’s not even 10 years old than some of our kids. They don’t want to talk to him. He’s been blowing up my phone all day and one of my daughter has told me the same. They don’t even know about what was going on between the two of us. I’m not saying they were clueless because we’re dealing with teenagers here, but they don’t know that he invited me on this vacation or anything. Being there for my children, protecting them, and helping them navigate their emotions is my main priority, but I really just want to go crazy and tear him a new one. Trying to remain composed is very difficult.

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⚠️ WARNING: Maasverse Spoilers—Proceed with Caution ⚠️

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Part 1: Characters and Courts
Part 2: World Map, Items, Terms & Other - YOU ARE HERE
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If this is the first post you've landed on, see Part 1 above for an introductory explanation to this two part post.

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UK + IRELAND

PRYTHIAN

A combination of Prydain, the old Welsh name for Britain, and Brython, which translates to “Ancient Britons” from Welsh.

HYBERN

A riff of Hibernia, the Classical Latin name for Ireland.

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Artist of Prythian map: P-dulcis on redbubble

ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN-PARALLEL LOCATIONS

ILLYRIA

The Ancient Greeks used the term Illyria to define a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula. The numerous peoples who populated those areas were known collectively as the Illyrians. The region itself is quite mountainous.

THE MIDDLE

May refer to the Midlands, the central part of England, though geographically the Prythian map places the Middle central to Prythian, not central to England; with the Prythian inclusion of Scotland, the Middle on Prythian maps is located further north than the actual Midlands of England.

UNDER THE MOUNTAIN

A potential nod to the Schiehallion, a cone-shaped mountain often referred to as the center of Scotland. It's name comes from the Gaelic Sìth Chailleann, meaning "fairy hill of the Caledonians." On the southwestern side of the mountain is said to lie the well-concealed Uamh Tom a' Mhòr-fhir, a cave serving as an entrance to the underworld.
As the Schiehallion lies in the middle of Scotland (the Night Court) and not the middle of mainland UK (Prythian), the Sciehallion could instead be representative of Ramiel.

THE WESTERN ISLES

May refer to the Outer Hebrides, also known as the Western Isles, which is an island chain off the west coast of mainland Scotland. They are also sometimes known as Innse Gall, a Gaelic term meaning "islands of the foreigners/strangers" which was originally used by mainland Highlanders when the islands were ruled by the Norse.
ACOTAR role: The Prison is located in the Western Isles.

THE PRISON

Though located in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland rather than the Outer, the Prison may be a nod to Beinn Shiantaidh, which is Scottish Gaelic for "holy mountain." It is located on the western side of the Island of Jura and is the second highest peak of the Paps of Jura.
Fun fact: Pap is of Old Norse origin and means breast.

VALLAHAN

Valhalla is the hall of slain warriors in Norse mythology, located in Asgard, where those who die in combat live in peace under the leadership of the god, Odin. They are said to dwell in Valhalla until the events of Ragnarök, where they will then march out to fight in aid of Odin against the jötnar, a type of being in Germanic mythology.
ACOTAR role: Vallahan is a faerie territory located in the northwest portion of the Continent.

ADRIATA

The Adriatic Sea is located in Southern Europe and separates the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan Peninsula. It contains more than 1,300 islands.

BOG OF OORID

The Oorid Lough is a freshwater lake in the west of Ireland.

CRETEA

Crete is the largest and southernmost island in Greece.
ACOTAR role: Cretea is where Miryam and Drakon's people lived following the War.

LAPPLUND

Lapland is a geographic region in Northern Fennoscandia which covers much of the Nordic countries. It is also a province of Sweden and the largest region of Finland.
ACOTAR role: Lapplund is where the Cauldron was hidden.

ITICA

Ithaca is an island featured in the Odyssey and was the island home of Odysseus. It is also a real island in Greece. The Kathara Monastery is located in Ithaca.
ACOTAR role: Itica is one of three temples where the feet of the Cauldron were hidden.

MONTESERE

Montserrat is a mountain range near Barcelona.
ACOTAR role: Montesere is a fae territory located in the Continent's NW and is considered generally wealthy. They allied with the loyalists in the War.

RAVENNIA

Ravenna is located in Northern Italy and was the capital of the Western Roman Empire.
ACOTAR role: Ravenna is a fae territory on the Continent and allied with the Loyalists during the War.

DUNMERE

Dunmere is a hamlet in Cornwall, England.
ACOTAR role: Dunmere is a town located within the Night Court, between Velaris and the sea.

NEVA

The Neva is the fourth-largest river in Europe and is located in northwestern Russia.
ACOTAR role: Neva is one of the largest human cities on the Continent and is where the Archeron sisters' father travels to trade.

SCYTHIA

The Scythians were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people who migrated from Central Asia to the steppes of modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia.
ACOTAR role: Scythia is one of the territories of the human lands on the Continent, ruled by Queen Vassa. They are said to be a horse loving people.

ROSEHALL

Rosehall is the name of a remote hamlet in the Scottish Highlands.
Fun fact: The 2nd Duke of Westminster acquired the Rosehall estate and his mistress at the time, Coco Chanel, redecorated the interior to her own liking. Winston Churchill, a close friend of the Duke, also visited the estate.
ACOTAR role: Rosehall is mentioned in ACOFAS and is theorized to be the place where Azriel's mother resides.

AFRICA-PARALLEL LOCATIONS

THE BLACK LAND

Black Land translates from Kemet, a popular ancient name for Egypt, which is derived from the color of the fertile black soil along the cultivated area of the Nile valley.
ACOTAR role: The Black Land is a region of the continent where human slaves were ruled over by a High Fae queen. Miryam and Drakon joined the mortals in the War and freed Miryam's people by crossing the desert and eventually the sea.

THE ERYTHRIAN SEA

The Erythraean Sea, originally an Ancient Greek geographical designation, has been used as a name for the Red Sea which lies between Africa and Asia.
ACOTAR role: Drakon used his magic to split the Erythian Sea.

ASIA-PARALLEL LOCATIONS

XIAN

Xi'an is the the most populous city in Northwest China snd the second most popular tourist destination in China.
ACOTAR role: Xian is a Fae territory on the Continent and allied with the Loyalists during the War. A large majority of the Dawn Court is made of Fae from Xian, including Thesan's mother. Feyre remarks that Amren may have molded her mortal body after their peoples.

BHARAT

Bhārat is one of the two principal official short names for the Republic of India.
ACOTAR role: The Archerons lost their fortune when their father's ships sank on the way to Bharat.

RASK

May refer to Rask, a city in Iran, that serves as both capital of its county and district.
ACOTAR role: Rask is a Fae territory on the Continent and allied with the Loyalists during the War.

ADDITIONAL LOCATIONS

VELARIS

Possibly derived from the Latin vēlo*,* meaning "to veil, cover, wrap" along with "to hide, conceal" and "to clothe in." Could also derive from the Latin vēlum, meaning "to veil, curtain" and also indicates a tarpaulin acting as cover for outdoor spaces.

THE WALL

No singular reference, but the presence of a wall separating one race from another, often humans from mythical beings, is rife throughout history, mythology, and fantasy.
One from each category that has loose ties to ACOTAR: (1) Hadrian's Wall, ie the Roman Wall, a defensive fortification of the Roman province of Britannia. It spanned from coast to coast, cutting across the entire width of Northern England. (2) In Norse mythology, the Master Builder asking for the hand of the goddess Freyja as payment for constructing a wall around Asgard to defend the gods. (3) The English village of Wall in Neil Gaiman's Stardust, named after the wall separating the land of Faerie from the mortal realm, highly guarded and cautioned against for mortals seeking to pass through.

THE MOONSTONE PALACE

Romans linked moonstone to the moon goddess Diana (goddess of wild animals and the hunt) and Ancient Greeks linked it to their lunar deities Artemis, Hecate, and Selene.

SIDRA RIVER

Sidra is a name of Latin origin and means "Goddess of the stars" or "like a star."

RAMIEL

Ramiel is a fallen Watcher, a type of Biblical angel, one of the 20 Watchers that rebelled against God by mating with mortal women, therefore creating the Nephilim (Shadowhunters, anyone?). Ramiel means "God has thundered." Ramiel is sometimes conflated with Remiel, also known as Jeremiel, meaning "God shall have mercy," as is listed as one of the seven Holy Angels. He is the archangel of hope and is responsible for divine visions and guiding the souls of the faithful into Heaven.

POOL OF STARLIGHT

No plausible connection found, though there is a famous pool in Greek mythology—a pool Mnemosyne presided over in Hades, counterpart to the river Lethe. Dead souls would drink from Lethe to wipe their past lives from remembrance when reincarnated. Those who drank from Mnemosyne's pool remembered and halted their transmigration of the soul.

ATHELWOOD

Ethel (also aethel) is an Old English word meaning "noble." Athelwood can mean "noblewood."
ACOTAR role: Athelwood is Morrigan's estate located in the Night Court.

GOLLIAN MOUNTAINS

Göll is one of the named Valkyries from Norse mythology. Her name means "tumult," or "noise, battle."
ACOTAR role: The Gollian Mountains are where the Valkyries were slain during the War.

MYRMIDONS

In Ancient Greek mythology, the Myrmidons were an Ancient Greek tribe. In the Iliad, they are the soldiers commanded by Achilles. Myrmidon has also come to mean "a follower or subordinate of a powerful person, typically one who is unscrupulous or carries out orders unquestioningly."
ACOTAR role: The Myrmidons are a set of mountains serving as the border between the Day Court and the Night Court from which the Illyrians migrated.

CESERA

No direct reference found, but may allude to Caesarea, the name of numerous cities and locations throughout the Roman Empire.
ACOTAR role: Cesera is one of three temples where the feet of the Cauldron were hidden.

SANGRAVAH

No direct reference found (and I lost my mind searching for one). Closest I came to was the similarly sounding Angharad, a feminine Welsh name, long associated with Welsh royalty, history, and myth, including Arthurian legend.
ACOTAR role: Sangravah is one of three temples where the feet of the Cauldron were hidden.

GREENFIELD VILLAGE

No direct connection found, though Greenfield is the name of several villages of England.
ACOTAR role: Greenfield village is a neighboring village to where Feyre grew up and where Isaac Hale's wife is from.

WINDHAVEN CAMP

No connection found, though a separate Windhaven also appears in Tower of Dawn in the TOG series. Altun—Windhaven being the rough translation—is located in a three-peaked mountain range and is the home of Sartaq's hearth-mother and family.
Fun fact: Windhaven is the name of a science-fiction novel by George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle following a group of humans who crash-landed on a foreign planet and learned to craft their own wings out of the spaceship wreckage.

THE WOLF'S DEN

No connection found, BUT fun fact: there is a named Wolf's Den castle in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game of Thrones) that now serves as a prison. "All the days were much the same inside the Wolf's Den, and any change was usually for the worse." A Dance with Dragons, Ch 29
ACOTAR role: The Wolf's Den is the name of the worst tavern in Velaris that Nesta is known to frequent.

SILVERSPRING CREEK

No plausible connection found, BUT fun fact: "Silver Springs" is a song written by Stevie Nicks, performed by Fleetwood Mac, and is so strongly ACOTAR-coded even my non-loving playlist-to-book self can't deny it. If you want more bread crumbles that SJM is a Stevie Nicks fan, "Rhiannon" and it's lyric origins have potential ties to the Rhiannon of TOG.
You could be my silver springBlue-green colors flashin'I would be your only dreamYour shinin' autumn ocean crashin'
Time cas t a spell on you*, but you won't forget me*I know I could have loved youBut you would not let me
ACOTAR role: Silverspring Creek is a stream running through Feyre's human village, near where she hunted rabbits.

STRYGA'S CASTLE

No direct reference found, but due to Stryga/the Weaver resembling a female demon akin to a vampire in Slavic mythology (see the Monster section above), it is possible Stryga's former home, before she was confined to her cottage, is reminiscent of Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula and the Transylvanian Castle complete with three vampiric sister brides who entice men with their beauty and charm before proceeding to feed upon them.

The Night Sky

ARKTOS

Arktos, also written Arctus, means "bear" in Ancient Greek. Arktos was a centaur who fought against the Lapith spearmen. The Arktos Megale (aka Ursa Major, the Great Bear) is one of the original 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy who drew on earlier works by Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian astronomers.
ACOTAR role: Arktos is one of the three regarded holy stars (the furthest left star) of the Illyrians and serves as part of the symbol for the Night Court. The echelon of Arktosian is reserved for Illyrians who survive the Blood Right but fail to reach Ramiel.

CARYNTH

May refer to Corinth, an ancient city that was one of the largest and most important of Greece, or Carinthia, the southernmost Austrian state in the Eastern Alps, noted for its mountains and lakes.
ACOTAR role: Carynth is one of the three regarded holy stars (the middle star) of the Illyrians and serves as part of the symbol for the Night Court. The echelon of Carynthian is reserved for Illyrians who scale the summit of Ramiel during the Blood Rite and are considered elite warriors.

ORISTES

Orestes (also spelled Orestes) means "stands on a mountain" and he is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and myths concerning his madness and purification.
ACOTAR role: Orestes is one of the three regarded holy stars (the furthest right star) of the Illyrians and serves as part of the symbol for the Night Court. The echelon of Oristian is reserved for Illyrians who make it to the Ramiel during the Blood Rite but don't reach the top.

Locations not listed: A slew of various more minor locations have not been listed, including the Four Market Squares of Velaris, certain cottages and houses, and even the Ironcrest Illyrian war-camp.
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THE CAULDRON

There are many magical cauldrons present in various mythologies, one being the Pair Dadeni in Welsh mythology, a magical cauldron able to resurrect the dead, and the coire ansic of Irish mythology, the cauldron of the chief god of the Tuatha Dé Danann, which never ran empty.

TRUTH-TELLER

Possibly inspired by Fragarach, an Irish mythological sword known as "The Whisperer" or "The Answerer." It was the sword of Nuada, the first high king; it was said that no one could tell a lie with Fragarach at their throat and that the sword inflicting wounds from which no one could recover.

THE HARP

May refer to the uaithne, the magical harp of the Dagda, the chief god of the Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish mythology. It could control men's emotions and change the seasons.

THE MASK

In Egyptian culture, death masks were designed to guide the spirits of those mummified into the next world.

THE UNKNOWN 4th TROVE ITEM

Seen in a vision by Nesta via Lathys, which we now know to be the Horn, and may refer to the Gjallarhorn of Norse mythology, the sound of which is said to herald the beginning of Ragnarok.

ATARAXIA

Ataraxia, in Ancient Greek philosophy, was a state of calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet, ie tranquility of the mind. It was considered the ideal mental state for soldiers entering battle.
ACOTAR Role: Nesta's Made sword.

GWYDION

Gwydion is a name meaning "born of the trees" and is the given name of Gwydion fab Dôn, a magician, hero, and trickster of Welsh mythology. Caer Wydion, the castle of Gwydion, was the traditional Welsh name for the Milky Way.
ACOTAR role: The Starsword and twin to Truth-Teller.

NARBEN

No direct reference found, though narben in German means "scar."
ACOTAR role: Narben is a lost sword from the Dread Trove.

OUROBOROS MIRROR

The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a serpent or a dragon eating its own tale, first present in ancient Egyptian iconography and the Greek magical tradition, the term itself deriving from Ancient Greek. It has been used frequently and extensively throughout fantasy literature. It often symbolizes the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

BOOK OF BREATHINGS

The Books of Breathing are a set of ancient Egyptian funerary texts that are intended to enable those deceased to continue their existence in the afterlife. It is a simplified form of the Book of the Dead.

VERITAS ORB

Veritas is of Latin origin meaning "truth." It is the name for the Roman virtue of truthfulness and in Roman mythology, Veritas is the Goddess of Truth. Universities and colleges such as Harvard use the term veritas as their motto.

SYMPHONIA

Symphonia is Greek in origin and was used to denote a variety of musical instruments.

AMARANTHA'S NECKLACE AND RING (JURIAN'S FINGER AND EYE)

Jurian's finger bone and eye, kept by Amarantha, are reminiscent of relics and reliquaries, often religious in nature. Relics typically consist of the physical remains or personal affects of a saint and the reliquary is the container that holds them.

FAEBANE

Possibly inspired by wolfsbane (aka aconite or monkshood), a poisonous flower ancient Greeks would poison arrows and bait with to hunt wolves. It is lethal and often fatal and is an oft-used plant and poison within the fantasy genre.
Fun fact: In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet himself was killed with an aconite-laced blade.

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DAEMATI

Potentially a combination of the Greek word dae (to give) and the concept of mati, labeled as "the evil eye" in Greek classical antiquity. Daemati may effectively mean "to give the evil eye."

THE WEAVER'S SONG

The Weaver's song, sung when Feyre was stealing Rhysand's ring from her cottage, is similar to "The Twa Sisters," a traditional murder ballad dating back to mid 17th century England. It tells of two sisters who travel down to a body of water where the older one pushes the younger one in. A harp or a fiddle is then made out of the murdered sister's body, which plays itself and sings about her murder.

I should probably give some background before I start, David is 3 years older than me, around 6'6 I think, not bad looking (fighting the sibling urge to call him an ugly bastard but I'm trying to be accurate here). unlike me he got our mom's red hair which he's always kept almost military short, he's dressed the same way since we're were kids: a colorful button up dress shirt with an ugly sweater vest over top and brown jeans.
"He wouldn't hurt a fly are you insane?" That's what I said through my grief and disbelief when when the familiar voice of my friend from my hometown Garrett Robinson, now Sheriff Robinson I suppose came crackling through my phone speaker to inform me that David was a suspect in my mother's murder.
"I'm sorry Martha, I wish I was better at comfort, and I know he wouldn't, I'm just going to ask you a couple questions and then I'll let you go."
He responded with what sounded more like pity than sympathy in every word. "Go on." I said trying to compose myself, he asked me some very scripted questions that he already knew almost all the answers to, he and David had been inseparable since middle school, people rarely said one of their names without the other, and based on my brother's Christmas cards they were still just as close.
After he hung up I heard nothing about it for the following depressing month, not even some kind of funeral service calling to ask about mom, until my wife shook me awake at around 5am to show me my ringing phone with David's name across the caller ID.
"Ahoy Mort,"
He started immediately when I answered, for the circumstances he sounded so casual, as if we just talked yesterday. (He last called me on my birthday 8 months ago) "I assume you know about Mother?" He asked "I do uhm-" I choked on a sob "Did Garrett and the police figure out who did it?" I asked after composing myself with my wife's help, "I'm afraid not, but Garry did a great job clearing my name, the neighbor's were looking at me pretty nasty for a couple weeks." He paused and breathed down the microphone like he always did between thoughts, "Anywhatsit, I've been doing all the work on the funeral and wanted to invite you and Nance, they're putting her next to Dad at Parkview cemetery next weekend. How are y'all doing by the way?"
"We're fine, and thank you, we'll be there." We talked a little longer about this and that, he apologized for not inviting me sooner and joked that he "had a lot going on" and offered his home to us for as long as we'd be in town.
I spent the morning packing up for my wife and I for the week we'd be spending at David's house and occasionally having a breakdown or 2 and we left for Tennessee at about 3 in the afternoon. I drove for the first few hours in relative silence until it started getting dark. "We should stop at a hotel" I said,
"It's only a few more hours, I'll drive the rest of the way pull over."
I silently thanked God as I was pulled over, I was incredibly tired, "thanks Hun." I said as we passed each other walking around the front of my shitty minivan. Almost immediately as she was behind the wheel she got talkative as was expected after the last few years of being together, "soooo, do you think he did it?" She asked "huh?" I said tiredly "your brother?" She clarified "Nancy!" I snapped at her "okay, okay sorry I asked."
"No it's okay." It wasn't okay, that was inappropriate but I was used to her being tonally blind at this point. "I see why they would maybe look at him for a second, he and Mom never got along-" "Ooo new lore!" she cut me off "Don't call it lore dork this is real life." I snapped "sooorrry grumpypants" she groaned, I stared at her blankly while having my bi-weekly regrets about my marriage, she glanced at me twice before adding "I'm just kidding! Please go on."
And after a few minutes I did, "I was always mom's favorite, she didn't want a boy so she was very hard on Dave." "Sounds like a delightful woman." She responded sarcastically. "She wasn't that bad, I only ever saw her get physical with him once.." "oh my! Once! What an angel!" I was starting to get upset but continued anyway "she was only trying to push him over and she was drunk." Nancy tried not to laugh but failed "good luck with that he's built like a brick shithouse!" Her phrasing made me chuckle but I was still angry, she's not wrong though, he's always been a musclehead even if he hides it well under that dumb Bill Cosby ass wardrobe.
"We're going to be staying at his house I'd rather not entertain the idea that he's a killer." I said staring out the window at nothing "that's because you're no fun." She teased, "I'm with you for your looks." I shot back "and you're a bad liar!" She responded patting me on the shoulder. I fell asleep not long after that, instead of dreams my brain just played old nearly forgotton memories, David constantly getting asked for hugs by men and women all the same when we were in highschool, they would all melt into his arms, he'd always be the one to end the hugs because they never would. Then the only time I ever saw him angry, it was right after James Morris punched me in my junior year, him and Garrett both had James virtually pinned to the bathroom door and the look on David's face was foul as he spoke words I don't remember (I never told either of them I started that fight), then mom trying to push him... He stood stoic staring at her while she shoved in vain, he didn't look angry, just unbelievably hurt.
"Babe... Martha... Cinnabon..." I awoke to my wife shaking me "nm what?" I said as I started waking up. "We're here." She said as my eyes opened to see a worn sign that said 'Welcome to Parkview' "you're gonna have to direct me to the address."

I have a 19 year old son. He’s my oldest. He works full time and goes to school full time at a community college. We’ve been helping him with his car payments and also he’s on our cell phone plan.
I landed a new job a few months ago after being laid off. I’ve finally caught up with my bills but last month was rough. His car payment is due on the 17th of each month. I told him I wouldn’t be able to give him the $250 on the 17th but I was going to get paid that Friday. He got into his feelings and said that he really needed it. I asked him why are you short on money when you don’t pay rent or utilities? And you had enough money to buy a pair of expensive sneakers but you’re asking us to subsidize your life? He said the shoes were a birthday present to himself. I eventually gave him the money as soon as my direct deposit hit.
Last night I needed to go to the store and I asked him if he could drive me. My husband’s RA was flaring up so he couldn’t drive either. I couldn’t drive because I wasn’t feeling well (I’ve been having migraines a lot lately).
My son’s response? He said he doesn’t feel comfortable doing anything for me or his dad anymore because when he really needed the $250 we didn’t come through even though he was aware that I was unemployed for 4 months and that I needed to catch up on MY bills. The bills that keep the lights on, the internet, the mortgage…things that he never had to worry about.
I told him we are no longer helping him with his car payments and he needs to get his own cell phone plan. He said that my response says a lot about the kind of parent/person I am. Whatever the fuck that means. I just felt so disrespected and unappreciated.
We’ve always had a great relationship so I don’t know how $250 could possibly just destroy it. He’s never gone without. He wasn’t abused as a child. We gave him a childhood that I never had (I had a really strict mother and wasn’t allowed to do normal teenager stuff). I don’t remember ever being mean to him or made him feel like he wasn’t valued.
We haven’t spoken since last night. I’m hurt. I don’t have a relationship with my parents because they traumatized me during my childhood. I don’t want it to be that way with my son.
I don’t even know how to approach him after we’ve cooled off. All I know is that no one has ever hurt me like he did on Mother’s Day of all days.

Let me preface with my expectations for Mother’s Day are already basically non-existent. Keep your expectations low are you will never be disappointed right? but yesterday was a new low.
So of course my husband forgot about Mother’s Day until Saturday but still plenty of time.
My oldest daughter no longer lives at home so this only involves my husband and youngest.
He takes her to Walmart Sunday afternoon. Whatever. He texts and asks me if I want hamburgers for dinner. Again sure whatever.
Then later my daughter brings me my gift. She hands me a card and a box of incense. I really do love the incense and it smelled really good.
So I open the card which I also love and I expect to find a gift card (and I mean like a $20 GC) and it is empty.
So I told my daughter how much I loved it and thank you.
When I asked her today if dad helped her or gave her money. She said he told her to pick something out and when she told him I needed something more he apparently said that was good enough.
I nicely ask him a few minutes ago if he had given her a budget and he said yes and she spent it. The card was probably the same cost as the incense honestly. $15 is what I am worth to him as the mother of his children. Money is not an issue for him at all.
Then he proceeds to throw a teenager with no money and no drivers license under the bus and says she should have taken care of it because I am not his mother. How these holidays just make people hate each other. I said who hates anyone? I was just asking if there was a disconnect.
He is now upset with me for saying anything and my daughter to having the audacity to tell him he should be helping with Mother’s Day.
This man gets up and goes to work. Barely does anything else because when asked to help he does it when he feels like it.
I do all the chores. Shopping. Holidays. Birthdays. Finances. Vacations. I work 40 hours a week just like him. He just shows up.
His excuse will be similar when my birthday rolls around
I asked him for a divorce last week but he talked me out of it. I should have just went through with it and that would have been the best Mother’s Day gift I could have ever given to myself.

Did I just miss the signs? Or is this a temporary problem?
I met my wife (Natalie) 8 years ago via dating app. Our courtship was pretty straightforward and I really liked that about her. We communicated well, liked doing some of the same things, and were both comfortable going out of our comfort zones with each other.
This is something I’ve always admired about her, but in recent years—or, really, since we got married—that hasn’t been reserved for me.
Our relationship was very easy to start with. We were doing small things to acknowledge each other. We paid attention to what each other wanted. We often wanted to do the same things and we left a lot of space for each other to have fun with our friends.
The sex has never been great. There were a few times where it was good, but it was mostly pedestrian or outright bad. This was the first time I’d ever experienced anything like this. But it wasn’t a big deal to me at first.
We shared very similar dreams of wanting to get married, having a family, living on the west coast (of the US), and having a life partner to share a life with.
Natalie was also an incredibly considerate girlfriend for a large chunk of our dating life. When I lost my job, she took her lunch break to buy lunch for me at my favorite sandwich spot and dropped it off at my apartment personally. Little things like this made me feel cared for. She wasn’t very good with money, but I was, and I figured we could balance a budget together.
As we got engaged, I was very happy. Sex is a part of a relationship, but it’s not the most important part, I thought. We were having sex once a month at this point. This was doable for me. I have a much higher sex drive than this, but I was happy, and my happiness was more important than sex.
Things got a little weird after we got married though. Suddenly she was much harder to please. Her wedding was her vision. I know very little about weddings, so I was fine with this, but when it came time to choose a song, she didn’t listen to me and picked out a song I didn’t like. She was stressing a lot more about the day than getting married to me. I felt like I was just a guy who could’ve been anybody.
She also began putting me down to coworkers on occasion (which I told her wasn’t ok and she … eventually … stopped). She started having a much harder time at work and when that started, she became more critical of things I did. Then she began being critical of everything. We were having sex maybe once every two months and I was doing the initiating. She began to say stuff that was kind of insulting or a huge turnoff during sex—one particular instance, I thought things were going well, but she asked 7-10 minutes in “when are you going to be done” while I was doing all the work. I tried to have a few earnest talks about it and said “my goal is for both of us to have fun and I’m willing to be more adventurous and do whatever you want to do.” This resulted in her saying “ok,” and then nothing came of it.
But we still shared our goals. We got a house together and started planning for a family.
We got pregnant on the first try.
We had our first child just before the pandemic, which turned out to be pretty damn challenging, but we worked together really well throughout all of it. We were a great team, taking care of the baby and working remotely and doing small things for each other.
We took basically a year off from sex after our first child was born, which I was totally fine with, and I wanted her to feel like she could initiate with me. I tried to make myself as available as possible to her and keep the channels of communication open. I emphasized how important it was for me that she wanted to have sex. When she was ready, she initiated, and we began trying for a second kid (this time we had sex 2 times before getting pregnant).
We had our second child in August 2022 and this is when things started going downhill. The birth was really difficult for her physically. She lost quite a bit of blood.
(Small aside, I had saved enough money for us to get a new car. Her work didn’t pay enough coverage for maternity leave so I said we can either have a new car or you can have a longer maternity leave. Although she kept arguing with me that she wanted both, she relented eventually and chose the longer maternity leave).
The first month was rough. She was unhappy the entire time. It was clear she developed post partum. I was trying to take care of both kids and her emotional needs, but it clearly wasn’t enough. I asked and then later begged her to go to therapy and she refused for several months (I’ve been in therapy for years, fwiw). We got into fights nightly, initiated by her, about things that clearly didn’t matter in the long run—fights about stacking the dishwasher, about how I wasn’t doing enough (I was taking our first born and then our second born to daycare every day, I was doing the dishes and taking out the trash regularly, I was playing with our kids all the time, i was offering to ease whatever load she felt was unbearable). She complained I was on my phone too much and not present when the kids were having independent play time. The last one was annoying, but I agreed to put my phone away more. I tried my best to keep the peace in this time. (Also, if it isn’t obvious enough, we weren’t having sex).
I began walking on eggshells. I tried to remain focused on us trying to get along. It seemed like she was trying harder to fight. There were multiple fights where I brought up an issue as gently as possible and she talked for an hour about some issue she was having with me until I apologized. When I did, she would say thank you and the fight would be over. One time, she recognized the initial thing I brought up and said sorry about that after two hours of talking in circles, but only after I apologized for something first.
I grew very tired of this but tried to keep my head up and told myself this was a temporary problem.
At some point in here, we had a fight that was so brutal, I had a panic attack. I’d never had one before in my life. It felt like all of the frustration and sadness she felt was directed at me in anger and that was the only way she could express it. I can’t tell you how devastating this was. I felt completely trapped. I felt like there was no winning in our relationship for me and that I have to put her feelings first if I want to be happy every once in a while.
Out of the blue, she went to a therapist for a session. (This was seven months after the birth of our second child.) i was relieved and thought this was the start of us getting better.
The next month was good: we were communicating well, we weren’t having sex, but we had a good family dynamic. She wasn’t blaming me for things. This I could live with
Eventually, we got into a fight. It was somewhere toward the end of the month. It wasn’t a terrible one, but it was bad. I went to my therapy session that night and talked to my therapist about how I didn’t realize we hadn’t had a fight in a month. I was strangely happy about it when I realized that. I went home to tell her how nice it was to realize she and I were getting along so well and that therapy seemed to be helping her. Then she got indignant. She said that she’s always been like this and I just haven’t noticed.
I was confused on why we were fighting all of a sudden and she dropped a pretty big bomb on me: she hadn’t been in therapy for a month. She went for one session and stopped.
I had my second ever panic attack right then and there. She said she would go back to therapy only if it was couples.
I cannot emphasize enough how “I just hadn’t noticed” wasn’t the case. I like to give her credit as much as I can. I regularly give her words of affirmation, let her know I love her, buy her flowers on bad days, etc. I’m not saying I’m a perfect partner, but I try to please her as much as I can. I’m a pretty astute observer too. It was like she was living in a different reality.
She began joking, around this time, of having a third kid. I said absolutely not. I had always wanted 3 but I wasn’t willing to go through this again. I asked her to stop joking about it because I was serious. I said things need to get better before I can even think of saying yes to that idea.
(I think maybe her mom talked to her at some point here because she joked like that in front of her mom and I said absolutely not and the joking abruptly stopped.)
The fighting continued. The different realities continued.
As our youngest turned 1, I was unsure why I was in this relationship at all. I had contemplated divorce and even brought it up because I was so tired of all the fighting. This wasn’t the relationship we had dreamed of.
Shortly after our youngest’s first birthday, we got the chance to go on a weekend trip just the two of us, no kids. We took it. It was expensive because that’s what she wanted. We did a whole spa day, at my suggestion. We had nice dinners. We had sex once on that trip. It was fine, but it felt like she wasn’t into it, which, I realized while writing this all out, is how it’s always been. Maybe she’s just never been that into me. Maybe she’s in her own world most of the time and I’m some attaché.
The fighting began cooling off the last few months. She’s still very critical and judgmental. She’s started fewer fights, however. Things were going well until earlier today.
Two weeks ago, she had a week-and-a-half long trip planned with her friends to Palm Springs. When she first asked, I said that’d be asking a lot, but I’m happy to support her if she needs it. She went on that trip and spent nearly our entire tax refund ($3000) on it.
As it stands, our youngest is almost two and our oldest is 4. They’re both wonderful children and I love them very much.
They were a bit of a handful while she was gone. Our kids tend to act out a bit when one of us goes on vacation. This was the case. As I tried to let our children know mama would be back, they struggled with regulating their emotions. She’s taken trips like this in the past and they did the same thing. Usually in those cases though, I’ll make sure I have a weekend trip lined up for me. I don’t have one planned any time soon. I’m too drained to think about it and we have no money.
Then, yesterday, on Mother’s Day, she told me she expects me to take the kids out of the house while she gets to do whatever she wants (which, that’s fair, but I was clearly sick and still recovering from the week and a half she was gone). This was after I had bought her flowers, a gift, and taken her out to dinner the night before for a date night. She spent all of Mother’s Day gardening and didn’t interact with our kids until about an hour before bedtime.
What kept me in the relationship for a long time was that, in spite of the not great sex, we were a great team and we communicated well and my other needs were met. Now it feels like we’re not even a team anymore and I’m the bag man.
I’m really struggling to figure out a few things.

1. What the hell happened?
2. I understand there may be some identity issues—about being a mother and wanting it or not wanting it—as well as just being overwhelmed. But why wasn’t that the case after our first child?
3. Not having sex has stunk and would’ve at least helped in this awful time. Why does she not want to have sex with me?
4. What am I doing in this relationship still?

Does anyone have any idea what’s going on?
TLDR: my wife and I have always gotten along personality-wise (and not sex-wise), but since the birth of our second child 2 years ago, her personality has become a lot more self-interested and ive maybe become too accommodating. Has it always been like this? I’m struggling to understand why I’m in this relationship now.

There is a lot of context needed in this situation so please bare with me. Lately, I (25F) haven’t heard much from a friend who’s been in my life since college, so 7 ish years. We’ll call her B (25F). On our last year of college I got into a very toxic relationship where he wouldn’t let me see friends, go out, etc. if he wasn’t there too. This put a strain on all of my relationships, family included, besides my friendship with B. She was consistently supportive of me and was able to stay my close friend while sharing her grievances, which I made very hard for those around me because when you’re in that kind of relationship, your blind. She ended up moving out of our college town into my hometown after graduation. I wasn’t able to get out of the relationship and move back to my hometown until about a year later. I come to find out that B had been struggling in my hometown and had a hard time making friends or being happy. I was able to move into an awesome apartment with another friend who was actually the one to give me the courage to leave him. This was very exciting to me because I was able to introduce B to the lot of my friends from home that I adore. After that, me and B were both single and drinking a lot, sleeping around somewhat, and staying out late. B meets this guy named A who she fell for instantly. He didn’t want to be serious with her but they hung out constantly. She spent almost every night with him and despite him telling her that he only liked her as a friend and F-buddy, she was in love with him. She would drunk call/text every weekend, and started getting black out drunk a lot. When they broke up things got much worse. She would call me that she lost her car, didn’t remember getting home, even peed on her neighbors door and almost got kicked out of her apartment building for it. She had even threatened to kill herself once or twice. This has taken a severe toll on our friendship. These instances I always dropped everything to help her. I have become exhausted over the years and simply fed up. Fast forward a year and a half or so, two years after my last relationship, the one that was very toxic. I’d since become fed up with the antics so I started going home early when we hung out, distancing myself etc. every so often she’d “sober up” after a mental breakdown, somewhat get back on track, and then black out drunk again waking up at a random guys house. I recently met my now boyfriend about 4 months ago (28M) at my job. This guy really swept me off my feet. We will refer to him as X. It started off very casual but I was clearly very taken. B told me almost immediately after I told her it was getting serious between me and X that a girl she works with used to date X and that he ghosted her after telling her he loved her and that he’d buy her a house, all this really bad stuff. This rubbed me very odd because he seemed very sure about what he wanted out of a relationship and I felt we were on the same page about almost everything. I decided in the end not to bring it up to him, because I didn’t think the mistakes of anyone’s past dating history should affect the present, especially because he didn’t show me any red flags. He eventually shared it with me anyway and that he felt awful about how he acted in past relationships and how he has grown since then. I’d come to find out that this relationship B had told me about was over 4 years ago. She also constantly told me to “be careful” and to “keep a guard up” things like that because she swore he wasn’t a good guy and not the one for me. Note that she, at that point, had never met him and not once told me she was happy for me or seemed excited etc. This is all in the middle of severe mood swings, binge drinking and mental health episodes. She even almost didn’t come to my birthday dinner because she was too hungover and sad, and tried to make the night all about her and was a Debby downer the rest of the evening. B told me that another new work friend of hers that went to high school with X said he was an asshole in high school too, and that I should really rethink this entire thing. My roommate N also went to high school with X and explained to me that B’s work friend was a little off putting growing up, didn’t have many friends and since they went to a very large school, they didn’t even know each other. This was also very odd to me. I told B that these random bits about X’s past are not appreciated and did not affect how I felt about him. After all this I really started distancing myself from B. We hung out here and there, during the day mostly to avoid having to deal with her drinking. She’d come into my work with her new work friends to start their nights off before getting black out with them, buying bags of cocaine even, etc. This past episode was my final straw. She went back to her hometown to visit family and texted me something very cryptic. It was “we need to talk. It’s very important and will have to wait until I get back from my trip, which is in 4 days.” I felt like I maybe did something wrong, and I was concerned so I told her how I felt and she did not respond. After some time I texted again saying that I’m stressed and asked her to explain. She ignored that completely and instead texted to tell me she’s having another mental breakdown and was at the clinic. I told her I am there for her if she needs to talk and what not. She gets back home and we hang out twice and she did not bring up our “little talk”. I finally bit the bullet and confronted her and asked what it was about and she told me “not to worry about it”. I sent her a lengthy text telling her that I am needing to put up boundaries because I found what she did manipulative. I didn’t say the world manipulative explicitly because in the past when she’s been confronted, she shuts down completely and will block you out for weeks on end until you apologize. She ended up apologizing for that and didn’t mean to trigger me, since my toxic ex used to say things like “we need to talk. But it’ll wait til we’re at home” and then I’d freak out until he got home and it would be something stupid, he just wanted me to be stressed out for a while. After this I stopped reaching out. I saw her while I was out with X and friends of his, and we talked for a bit before me and X went home for the night. The next day she texted me “are we still doing something later or na?” And I didn’t recall making any plans so I said so. She just liked the message and I haven’t heard from her since, really. She’s had a really hard time in her life. She lost her mother during her teenage years and I know Mother’s Day is a very hard day for her. I really care about B, but her behavior lately is making me not want to be around her at all. I sent her that I was thinking about her and her mom on Mother’s Day and did not hear back(even though she texted my mom for Mother’s Day). Then I started seeing online that she’s liking posts with the topic “I hate that one friend who drops everyone when they get into a relationship, it’s the most disgusting type of friend”. Multiple posts like that, and I know they’re about me. It made me feel really guilty for not hanging out with B anymore. I ask my other friends if the amount I see X bothers them, and the answer is always no. That I should be able to see my significant other who I’m falling in love with as much as we’d both like to. It’s not like it was with my toxic ex at all. It just seems to me like B is thinking it’s going to be the same way as it was. She’s fully ignoring me now, and even though I’m not reaching out either, I still feel like the asshole. AITA?

NC with my nmom for the past 3 years. Despite the NC, I always feel obligated to send her a text on birthdays/holidays. I usually get a “thanks” or “merry christmas” back and that’s all that happens. This year I worked all day and decided to say eff it and not bother texting her. It is nothing but anxiety-inducing to text her and I felt it has been enough time to relieve myself of this obligation I felt. I got this text this morning:
“You were fed, clothed, taken on amazing adventures & trips, supported in ever aspect of your life, right up to your career today. Most of all you were deeply loved & still are. Momma”
I don’t know how to feel. I was expecting something like this but hoped for radio silence. I don’t feel bad, but I don’t really feel anything. Just looking for support at this time, feel free to vent about your own mothers day experience ❤️

There is a lot of context needed in this situation so please bare with me. Lately, I (25F) haven’t heard much from a friend who’s been in my life since college, so 7 ish years. We’ll call her B (25F). On our last year of college I got into a very toxic relationship where he wouldn’t let me see friends, go out, etc. if he wasn’t there too. This put a strain on all of my relationships, family included, besides my friendship with B. She was consistently supportive of me and was able to stay my close friend while sharing her grievances, which I made very hard for those around me because when you’re in that kind of relationship, your blind. She ended up moving out of our college town into my hometown after graduation. I wasn’t able to get out of the relationship and move back to my hometown until about a year later. I come to find out that B had been struggling in my hometown and had a hard time making friends or being happy. I was able to move into an awesome apartment with another friend who was actually the one to give me the courage to leave him. This was very exciting to me because I was able to introduce B to the lot of my friends from home that I adore. After that, me and B were both single and drinking a lot, sleeping around somewhat, and staying out late. B meets this guy named A who she fell for instantly. He didn’t want to be serious with her but they hung out constantly. She spent almost every night with him and despite him telling her that he only liked her as a friend and F-buddy, she was in love with him. She would drunk call/text every weekend, and started getting black out drunk a lot. When they broke up things got much worse. She would call me that she lost her car, didn’t remember getting home, even peed on her neighbors door and almost got kicked out of her apartment building for it. She had even threatened to kill herself once or twice. This has taken a severe toll on our friendship. These instances I always dropped everything to help her. I have become exhausted over the years and simply fed up. Fast forward a year and a half or so, two years after my last relationship, the one that was very toxic. I’d since become fed up with the antics so I started going home early when we hung out, distancing myself etc. every so often she’d “sober up” after a mental breakdown, somewhat get back on track, and then black out drunk again waking up at a random guys house. I recently met my now boyfriend about 4 months ago (28M) at my job. This guy really swept me off my feet. We will refer to him as X. It started off very casual but I was clearly very taken. B told me almost immediately after I told her it was getting serious between me and X that a girl she works with used to date X and that he ghosted her after telling her he loved her and that he’d buy her a house, all this really bad stuff. This rubbed me very odd because he seemed very sure about what he wanted out of a relationship and I felt we were on the same page about almost everything. I decided in the end not to bring it up to him, because I didn’t think the mistakes of anyone’s past dating history should affect the present, especially because he didn’t show me any red flags. He eventually shared it with me anyway and that he felt awful about how he acted in past relationships and how he has grown since then. I’d come to find out that this relationship B had told me about was over 4 years ago. She also constantly told me to “be careful” and to “keep a guard up” things like that because she swore he wasn’t a good guy and not the one for me. Note that she, at that point, had never met him and not once told me she was happy for me or seemed excited etc. This is all in the middle of severe mood swings, binge drinking and mental health episodes. She even almost didn’t come to my birthday dinner because she was too hungover and sad, and tried to make the night all about her and was a Debby downer the rest of the evening. B told me that another new work friend of hers that went to high school with X said he was an asshole in high school too, and that I should really rethink this entire thing. My roommate N also went to high school with X and explained to me that B’s work friend was a little off putting growing up, didn’t have many friends and since they went to a very large school, they didn’t even know each other. This was also very odd to me. I told B that these random bits about X’s past are not appreciated and did not affect how I felt about him. After all this I really started distancing myself from B. We hung out here and there, during the day mostly to avoid having to deal with her drinking. She’d come into my work with her new work friends to start their nights off before getting black out with them, buying bags of cocaine even, etc. This past episode was my final straw. She went back to her hometown to visit family and texted me something very cryptic. It was “we need to talk. It’s very important and will have to wait until I get back from my trip, which is in 4 days.” I felt like I maybe did something wrong, and I was concerned so I told her how I felt and she did not respond. After some time I texted again saying that I’m stressed and asked her to explain. She ignored that completely and instead texted to tell me she’s having another mental breakdown and was at the clinic. I told her I am there for her if she needs to talk and what not. She gets back home and we hang out twice and she did not bring up our “little talk”. I finally bit the bullet and confronted her and asked what it was about and she told me “not to worry about it”. I sent her a lengthy text telling her that I am needing to put up boundaries because I found what she did manipulative. I didn’t say the world manipulative explicitly because in the past when she’s been confronted, she shuts down completely and will block you out for weeks on end until you apologize. She ended up apologizing for that and didn’t mean to trigger me, since my toxic ex used to say things like “we need to talk. But it’ll wait til we’re at home” and then I’d freak out until he got home and it would be something stupid, he just wanted me to be stressed out for a while. After this I stopped reaching out. I saw her while I was out with X and friends of his, and we talked for a bit before me and X went home for the night. The next day she texted me “are we still doing something later or na?” And I didn’t recall making any plans so I said so. She just liked the message and I haven’t heard from her since, really. She’s had a really hard time in her life. She lost her mother during her teenage years and I know Mother’s Day is a very hard day for her. I really care about B, but her behavior lately is making me not want to be around her at all. I sent her that I was thinking about her and her mom on Mother’s Day and did not hear back(even though she texted my mom for Mother’s Day). Then I started seeing online that she’s liking posts with the topic “I hate that one friend who drops everyone when they get into a relationship, it’s the most disgusting type of friend”. Multiple posts like that, and I know they’re about me. It made me feel really guilty for not hanging out with B anymore. I ask my other friends if the amount I see X bothers them, and the answer is always no. That I should be able to see my significant other who I’m falling in love with as much as we’d both like to. It’s not like it was with my toxic ex at all. It just seems to me like B is thinking it’s going to be the same way as it was. She’s fully ignoring me now, and even though I’m not reaching out either, I still feel like the asshole. AITA?

AITA for feeding my mom the same energy
I (f) have been having problems with my mom lately. She has shown me her true colors, like yelling and calling me and my sister names. For instance, we were at a gas station one time waiting for our dad to come and get us. My mom had a winning lottery card; but the cashier said she didn’t, so she got mad and started yelling at the cashier and making a scene embarrassing my sister and I. When we got into the car, she yelled at me and my sister, calling us punks for not helping her out (nothing we could’ve really done), and she stated that something was wrong with us for not helping her out.
On another occasion she was teaching me how to drive. I will admit that I don’t take criticism well under pressure. I just told her I didn’t want to drive anymore. She asked me why I was such a quitter and gave me a lecture. When I gave her an OK, she called me a bitch and left.
Now this is where everything happens. on Friday last minute my mom told us about a cousin's birthday that’s three hours away so we went to the store and bought some clothes some things I couldn't wear because of some issues to my body and she got mad at me about that and some outfits I didn't like then we go to buy some shoes at first they fit but then when I took the tag off they were loose so I couldn't wear them I tried to wear some heels I had but I can't really walk in them I thought it was better than walking around in some that would slip off any minute but my mom wasn't happy about that she was arguing about how late we are and just told me to stay home and she took my sister and left now since she’s back we haven't talked besides some mothers day stuff but she got mad when I was giving her the same rude energy she gives me and that I didn't say bye to her after a while she told me that while she’s still upset she still loves me and only wants what’s best for me I don't really hold grudges so I wanted to make sure I'm not making a big deal out of anything so, AITA?

I 27 F and my husband 26 M have been married for 4 years. We have 2 beautiful kids and our marriage really does feel perfect. My problem isn’t with the gift itself but the fact I feel ignored. The last few birthdays, anniversary, and Mother’s Day, I was asked what I wanted, each time I have a few ideas on things I’d enjoy or really like to have. Always reasonable things, and each time, he picks the most random things as a gift. Example, my birthday he asked what I wanted, I told him that I’d really like to go do some clothes shopping and have a nice dinner, simple and something we can go do together and have a nice little day out, but instead he decided he wanted to get me something and got me a Snuggie (those blankets with the arms), something I collect, and a book to a series I read. We still had dinner and a night out but we didn’t do anything else which was fine. He put thought into something at least. Now to Mother’s Day, he asked me again, what I really wanted, since he wasn’t going to be home that weekend (travel for work), he said to let him know what I wanted and he would make it happen. I didn’t want much , I said maybe we can order breakfast, and I would hang out with the kids all day, and as a gift I showed him a bracelet with our kids birthstones in it. It wasn’t expensive before anyone asks, and he said okay. That was a few weeks ago, Mother’s Day (yesterday rolled around) and i asked about the bracelet because I was so excited! Only to be told, he got me something else and he knows I’ll love it. Now it hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m not excited about it. A year ago I had seen a coffee mug that stirs itself, and I told him how neat that was.. so technically he listened but that’s not what I had in mind. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. He does do a lot for me and the kids and goes above and beyond to always do things for us. And in his own way he knew I mentioned the cup once and that’s what he remembered, I did bring up the bracelet and he just had said, he didn’t want to order it because it wouldn’t of been there on time. He’s home now and keeps asking how excited I am for my new mug. I need to know, AITAH?

I, just turn 48 on Saturday May 11, (keep note of the day) on my birthdayI leave the restaurant where I was waiting for my family to celebrate my birthday, as I noted, my birthday is May 11, and I'm Mexican, so my birthday in Mexico always fall after mothers day, a big celebration word wide, and here in the USA always fall around mothers day, so it is hard to plan celebrations, so for the 5 years I been planing a trip for my birthday for this reason, but for economic reason this years was no posible. Prior to my birthday I ask my family to see if they want to have dinner with me on my birthday ( this is a family tradition, we always go out to celebrate members birthday) and everyone was ok with the dinner, I have to mention a detail, I live like 35 minutes away from my family, and this weekend a mayor close of the freeway betwen my town and my family town was happening, ( I always travel for celebrations) so if I travel to my family town it will take me 2 hours coming back home so I ask for meet us another city, so they can help me with the commute, and all agree with the traveling. Day of the celebration, reservations was at 5:30, send all the details to them, I got to the restaurant at 5:32, at 5:36 got a text from one of my sisters explaining that she was on her way. Time pass and at 6:05, still nobody of my family where there, I was on a huge table for 12 people waiting. At this time I send a group text tell them that I was leaving and Thank them for their time and to see you later, I did wait another 5 minutes before start my way back home, after 10 minutes of me driving I start getting text from them explaning that it was traffic and they didnt anticipate this ( Remember a mayor freeway was close, it was traffic every where, and they knew this) the first one ( My sister that told me that she was on her way) arrive 45 minutes after the reservation, and the other arrive 50 minutes to and hour late, they were so mad at my for leaving, and even told me if I was not planing to stay why I didnt tell them, to have more patience, even one of my sister confessed that she leave her house at 5:30, the normal travel time without traffic for her will be 35 minutes. So AITA for leaving?

**Name and House:** Beatrice Massey
**Age:** 27
**Cultural Group:** Crownlander
**Appearance:** She has curly brown hair she always keeps tied up, and dark brown eyes. She has plain features and dresses modestly and is of an average height with a pudgy build. She always has dark circles beneath her eyes. Despite her and her brother’s partial Valyrian heritage, they both take strongly after their father’s family.
**Trait:** Steward
**Skill(s):** Administrator (e), Investor (e), Avaricious
**Talent(s):** Language: High Valyrian, History, Geography
**Negative Trait(s):** N/A
**Starting Title(s):** Steward of Stonedance
**Starting Location:** The Hunt

AC
**Name and House:** Arthur Massey
**Age:** 30
**Cultural Group:** Crownlander
**Appearance:** He has thin, straight features with a squared jaw and stubble, with curled brown hair and dark eyes. He stands a modest height with broad shoulders and slim build.
**Trait:** Ruthless
**Skill(s):** Rumourmonger(e), Devious
**Talent(s):** Drinking, Card Games, Sleight of Hand
**Negative Trait(s):** N/A
**Starting Title(s):** Heir of Stonedance
**Starting Location:** The Hunt


Biography

House Massey, along with many neighbouring houses, were quick to join Aegon’s cause and pledge their support during his conquest. Coren Massey, the Lord, had wed a Valyrian woman named Alysanne Belaerys, and had two children by her.
Beatrice was only two years old, and her brother only a boy of five when the Conquest began. Their father and uncle would ride out with their armies to support his cause and would find themselves roosting in his court for the next few years and assisting the construction of King’s Landing. It wouldn’t be until after Aegon’s assassination that her uncle, Triston Massey would take over as Master of Laws.
Tragedy would strike the Massey’s during the Kingswood Hunt, where Triston would fall victim to the attacks by the bandits and would perish.
Coren Massey, her father, would spend much time in King’s Landing, constantly seeking—and failing to secure his brother’s position as Master of Laws. Arthur would spend much time in the new capital as well, though not in court. He would carouse the town, often spending times with other lords and ladies of a similar age, hosting parties or tavern crawls, or hunting expeditions. He established a network of contacts and conversationalists throughout the years there, a gossip-mill that he could turn to his own ends—amongst nobility and smallfolk alike.
Beatrice’s story was much different. As her father and brother left Stonedance to seek greener pastures, much of it resided on her. When she grew up, her family had secured tutors to teach her and her brother skills of administration and governance—though Arthur never took to them, often skipping out on his lessons. Beatrice on the other hand made it her life’s work, studying a variety of subjects. One gift her mother had given her was a tutor from Essos, to teach her the Valyrian tongue both for eventual use in court, and to connect with that part of her heritage.
When she turned ten and seven, she began to take in children from around the Crownlands and a few from lands beyond that, offering to teach them in various disciplines such as arithmetic, history, geography, calligraphy, and literature. This, combined with her duties of running and managing Stonedance, kept her busy and rarely leaving the hold, while her brother, the heir, caroused through life.
At twenty, she was arranged to marry Dorin Sunglass, however the betrothal fell through when he married another—to her relief.
Arthur would sire several bastards, that she would keep track of and it became her responsibility to care for the mother’s left behind and the children he wanted nothing to do with. A cook, a maid, a sailor—Beatrice kept track of them as they came to Stonedance with their children in their arms, offering them gold and a place in the village. Most notably was his fling with Perra Bracken—while the Blackwood’s and Bracken’s geared for war, the two had a tryst in King’s Landing which resulted in a child, Arina. Taken back to Stonedance to raise, Beatrice would tutor her and send letters of progress to Perra, but otherwise both of the parents of the bastard would be uninvolved.

Archetype NPCs

Magnate – Laisa Chyttering
Trader – Evelyne Follard


Family Tree

Coren Massey, Head of House (56)
Alysanne Belaerys (57)
Triston Massey, Uncle – Deceased
Arthur Massey – Brother (30)
- 4 bastards (Calla, Primrose, Roan, Arina)
Beatrice Massey (27)

https://www.familyecho.com/?p=START&c=jx4tc3o73z2l582z&f=703439927850474756

Timeline

1 AC – House Massey is of the first to support Aegon’s Conquest, Coren and Triston, brothers, fight at the Dragonlord’s side to Conqueror Westeros and swear fealty
5 AC – Beatrice begins her studies from tutors acquired by her father from Westeros and beyond.
8 AC – Following the death of the King, Triston Massey is named Master of Laws
14 AC – Arthur makes regular appearances in King’s Landing and begins to make his own circles and share and spread information.
15 AC – Triston Massey perishes in the Kingswood. Coren Massey would move permanently to the court of King’s Landing, vying for a seat on the Small Council, with no luck. In the same year, Beatrice takes his absence and begins to tutor and teach her own students within the lands of Stonedance in a variety of subjects.
18 AC – Beatrice is arranged to marry Dorin Sunglass, though the wedding is called off when he marries another, to her relief, and the chagrin of her family’s. Arina Waters is born.

My son (8) is in the 2nd grade. He was diagnosed with level 1 Autism/ADHD. He is in a class with majority neurotypical kids, although there are a couple other kids who are on the spectrum. I volunteer in his class for a few hours a week, so I see him interact with others. He mostly keeps to himself, although he’s a very outgoing and happy kid. As he gets older, he seems to have a much easier time connecting with adults (the faculty and teachers LOVE him).There a couple kids in the class who seem very interested in him, but he just kind of politely “tolerates” them unless they know exactly what he is interested in. There’s a girl who has a crush on him, and she always asks me to get him to talk to her. She mostly chases him around because he LOVES playing tag. Anyway, he has yet to have a play date with any of his peers. I’ve reached out to the mother of another autistic kid in his class, but I could never get a hold of her or make plans. He’s been invited to birthdays and had kids at his birthdays. I don’t know exactly how to talk to him about making friends or if he is even interested in friends. He has a very hard time discussing his feelings and gets very confused. When he was younger, he was able to connect easier with other kids and even had a couple friends (I think because everything was simpler as far as communication). It seems to be getting harder as he grows. He has never shown sadness or concern over this, so maybe it’s just me projecting. My son is the most joyful, sweet, and gentle kid I could’ve ever hoped for. This summer I just hope we can make some play dates for him. TL;DR: My 8 year old son is level 1 Autistic. He’s stopped showing interest in making friends over time. There’s no close friends or play dates (although he has no problems with any kids either.) He’s obviously a happy kid, but doesn’t really share his emotions (like he never cries - he only cries if he sees someone else really hurt). Can you please share your own experiences as a child in school? Did you have friends? Did you hide how hard it was? Any tips or advice would be appreciated.

So at the beginning of 2023 my Nfather got into a heated argument with my mother, my sister who was home at the time ran upstairs to intervine bc it was so bad, creating a worse situation in which my father took out a knife stabbed the wall and also followed her around the house until she locked herself in her room, cut his arm and smeared blood around the walls, she called the police on him. He was detained for psych evaluation for 5150, we left the house for good after that (my sister and I).
We’ve been living at my aunts ever since, my mom stayed with us for a little while and eventually moved back home to try and ease the situation (and high key she is manipulated to think she can’t afford to leave him).
I’ve been no contact with him since, but he has tried to email me and I just do not reply, no messages or anything on my birthday but as soon as it comes to something financial related he has to send me a message. Recently my car broke down and my mom told me they would help me find a new used car that’s more reliable. I felt a ton of guilt from this big purchase even though I know they have more than enough to afford it. My mom told me I should email him to thank him for helping me get this car, I understood her stance, so I broke that no contact rule.
Now since then he has emailed me more and more with links to articles and job postings talking about how I can get into ____ job and to send him my resume (I was recently laid off and still rely on him financially much to my hatred I am actively trying to find employment to get out from under him). I’ve now blocked him on email so I don’t see these as they stress me out more. All he says is how I cost him too much ($500/month is what he gives me for necessities) but that lingering feeling that I’m such a burden puts me back into fight or flight.
I’m trying to find a job but it feels impossible I’m getting no interviews back, has anyone been through anything similar?

I've read the rules of this sub and think this question fits.
Tldr: do non-white non-high control communities laugh loudly together? Alone? Not just, a polite laugh. A spirited, "raucous" laugh. Bothering people, crying yourself laughing. I wasn't allowed that growing up.
I've noticed especially watching comedians particularly famous in black communities, (background I was raised Mormon and white. I have educated myself but you're always ignorant.) such as Gary Owen, Katt williams that I've been exposed to recently, the laughter is lively. Spirited. I've also noticed while watching Maya Angelou read Still I Rise that laughter is very important to the reading of the poem, both as the reader and an audience participant. Even in a reading by Nikki Minaj at an A&E event that seems quite rich and California, she and the audience knew to laugh at the right time, though a completely different level of spiritedness.
My family is pretty stringent on laughter. My father has a booming laugh but my mother and sister are always shushing him and complaining about the volume. Meanwhile, they have all inherited my grandfather's sneeze, which involves near screaming when you let the sneeze out. I don't see why throwing my back out sneezing is any worse than laughing loudly.
Angelou - https://youtu.be/qviM_GnJbOM Minaj - https://youtu.be/WDfuJIBpXPM
Why do you laugh the way you do? (Regardless of background) Is there cultural context to laughter? Was there a significant impact by Angelou's poem on black communities? I found the concept of laughter and joy as resistance to be very powerful, and I wonder if it was employed or passed down.
White people feel like, polite at shows sometimes? I personally have difficulty regulating my volume and yeah I'd appreciate it if someone lmk I was talking WAY too loud but my girlfriend and family shushes me like. All the time, just for laughing. I see this less among some of the younger audiences I watch, Stavros Halkias and Nate Jackson's crowd work, people seem to let loose a little more. Did I just grow up in a cult so I'm weird lol?

cute kitties! https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.freepik.com%2Ffree-photo%2Fcute-cat-spending-time-indoors_23-2150649137.jpg&tbnid=_8vl2so5PmzvRM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.freepik.com%2Fphotos%2Fcute-cat&docid=_86qyvIoSzztEM&w=417&h=626&itg=1&hl=en-gb&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F3&kgs=0a60f6f2c8479092&shem=abme%2Ctrie
^{^} Sorry for the extensively long link!
My (18F) mother (50F) had been diagnosed professionally with BPD around 20> years ago, before I was even conceived. My mother's mother (my nana, who is contrarily a lovely woman unlike my mother) is uBPD. My grandfather (now deceased, 2 and a half years ago), I suspect strongly of having had uNPD.
My mother has had every little thing in life just given to her from the start. Her father doted over her, all while physically & mentally abusing her mother. It has been repeated countless times that my grandfather treated my mother (his daughter) more like a wife than he did my nana. The man was somewhat powerful with a lot of money. My mum hasn't worked for anything in her entire life except for a couple jobs which she got fired for sleeping with her bosses, and instead of my grandfather teaching her how to stand on her own two feet, he'd constantly just manipulate loopholes to get what either he or she wanted or simply dish out money to her. Things continued to be this way until my grandfather died over 2 years ago. My mother is still in ruins over it to this day, and to be honest it seems as though she misses his money more than him. The two were both slippery, vindictive liars their entire lives and they always managed to get away with it all.
From what I've read and heard, BPD is a disorder that stems from childhood trauma. My mother said that she had a good childhood where she had a good lifestyle, and didn't suffer any major trauma before she got diagnosed. I'm unsure on how exactly she could've developed this disorder, whether it be genetics from her mother, being doted on too much by her eFather, or if she just got unlucky one day and got it?
My mother is honestly such a terrible person and has / is ruining all of her childrens' lives. I just want to know where on earth she got all the audacity from.

So, English is not my first language even though I had studied it for years now, so, any grammatical error, please be excused. I also want to point out a few things up, this story is LONG, as it says on the title, we’ve been together for almost a decade, so there’s a lot of things to patch up, also, I’m not trying to paint him as the bad guy nor myself as the good guy, just trying to let it all out because there’s some details I cannot say to everyone I know, so it’s better for me to just talk about it with internet strangers, also, I don’t know if this place has a limit of characters, so if it has, it’s going to be some parts long.
So, to start this, I (27 F), broke things with my bf (26 M) Alan (Not his real name) after we’ve been together for little less than a decade because I was just so fed up with everything we lived together, not having the strength to even try and give this another go as he wanted us to. A year before meeting him on my last school year I was s*xually Ass*ulted by a man that I met on a park where I used to go dancing, not only that, but he made me believe that I was okay with what happened (I was sixteen and he was 21, here the age of consent is not until the 18th mark), he made me believed that I liked it, and made me believe that no one would ever believe me if I ever decided to report it, so I didn’t, but obviously it got me a pretty bad scar.
I met Alan one year later, his friend group was friends with my friend group, so in school we kinda merged together and he was a good guy, a great guy even, he always had something nice to say about me and he never blamed me for being scared of a group of people so anytime I wanted to buy something on the school market, he did it for me until he tried to make me come across my fear and was just behind me as I was approaching the big group gather on the market trying to make me feel confident enough to buy things by myself, after that we became closer and closer until one day I went with my friend group to recess with his friend group, but he wasn’t there, I asked one of his friends and he told me that he wasn’t feeling right and was still on the classroom, so off I went and looked up for him, we talked for a while and then he thank me for listening to him and not bug him with the “guys don’t cry”, that made us even more close to eachother and we started something, not a relationship, but a situationship from mid July to late November, when I graduated from school (He had one more year to go), on my celebration date, he asked me to be his girlfriend and I said yes, I made him meet my family shortly after and I met his.
He was a part-time gamer, and the first straw was that he believed that I would made him choose between his games or me, but no, I didn’t, even so, I asked him to teach me how to play so we could play together, I was not good, at all, but I was just glad to be on his hobbies, little did I know that would be one of the reasons I broke things off. We had fights and arguments because he was a competitive type of guy on this online games and, because I was bad at them, we usually lost games because of me, it took us a lot of work to find a solution, he had to put down some bars, because it was not healthy, also the first “or else” that he made me aware of, was when I told him that I needed him to express his emotions to me, but he took it as “Show emotions or I’m leaving you” which wasn’t the case, but worked up just fine.
Some years passed and… You remember what I told you about the year before meeting Alan? Well, we couldn’t get intimate in that way and I had to sit him and explained what happened, he was supportive and we didn’t do it after our four year mark, but again, he wasn’t as supportive as I recall, he usually push over it and only stopped moments before I got a flashback of what happened. But that one time that we did it, I remember it well, I started crying out of emotion because I finally overcame my fear, but after we finished, he stood up, we cleaned ourselves and he made me get ready because he didn’t want to be late to a friend’s birthday. Speaking of intimacy, he had a really big drive and I didn’t, but every time I tried to say “no”, he got all frustrated so I started initiating moments after I saw him like that so I could brush that feeling off of him, our intimacy was like that until just months before our breakup.
Now into another thing, I have always work, even when I was still at school, I’ve always worked to get my things, I’m not good at saving money, but I work my butt off, so when he started to gain interest on a particular expensive game, we usually used his mother credit card and the one paying it was me, he said that when he worked he bought things for us, but… This is the thing about it… He only worked 5-6 months in all of our relationship, sure, he went with his father some times to do some work, but he didn’t even saw that money because it went directly to a gaming console for himself, so in years that we’ve been together, he worked 5-6 months and the rest was payed from myself and he still took his time working as a sort of argument against me.
Now, one time, when I was on the university, a random classmate just suddenly kissed me and I was in shock, so in shock that I didn’t kissed him back, nor could I stop him, but when he went for a second one, I backed out and I went to my boyfriend crying because I thought I was cheating on him because someone kissed me and I explained every detail to him, but the guy dropped off from college, so I never saw him again and then, another day, I was in the subway and encounter my ex boyfriend while he was, actually, coming back home after his own studies, I ignored him for the most part, but he actually asked politely to let him talk to me, so we went to a public park and he actually just wanted to say sorry because he cheated on me with his ex girlfriend while he was with me, we didn’t do anything besides me listening to him and giving him the closure he was searching for, we did not stay in contact, I just said to him that it was not something that I keep on mind to this day, but if it made him feel better, I would accept his apology and then we parted ways, everything I did and said I made my boyfriend aware of and he was such in a panic that one of his friends actually went to his house and they talked shit about me because I dared to let my ex ask for my forgiveness. Those are the only two time that I recall I made him feel insecure, two times and that’s it and he wasn’t letting any of those things go any time we got into an argument.
I remember one time we actually parted ways for some days and I kissed a girl, a girl that I have liked for a very long time and only then I figured that she actually liked me back, but I was stupid enough to not go for her, and wait for this guy for us to get back together and I actually told him everything, I know I shouldn’t do it, because it would only made him feel like on the edge, but by that time I felt like it was better to come clean about everything, he knew everything about me, it was only fair that I keep it like that. But then he got jealous everything I said I was talking to her in a friendly way (he never was banned from looking into my phone) and now I understand that his jealousy was not that unfounded, because I kissed this girl while we were separated.
There was numerous times when I wanted to break things with him, but he always managed to made me come back to him, one time we were walking on the sidewalk and I told him how I felt and that I was thinking about breaking up, he got on the ground, took a piece of glass and tried to h*rm himself, but I stopped him and we never talked about it again. Another time I was home, not at work because I was injured and we had a phone fight, not breaking up, but making it subtle, then a couple hours after that I received another phone call from an Unknown number, telling me that he almost threw himself on the subway and, Injured as I was, I went to get him and Uber us to his home.
I had to make two limits for him, I didn’t want him to call me before checking if it was possible for me to talk on the phone, unless it was an emergency, of course. And that I didn’t want him to go to my home unannounced, because he did it too much and he did not respect those boundaries until there was yet another conversation about breaking up and just then, he stopped doing it. He also lied to me one time when he went to the bus stop at freaking 7 am with the excuse of “I just wanted to get some air” and the proceeded to talk to me all the way about his problems and follow me to my workplace, and then he had the audacity to get mad when I told him I couldn’t stay longer because I had to get to work, just when we finally broke off he came clean that he was, obviously, trying to get a hold of me and not “Trying to get some air” as he tried to make me believe. I even started to go to my destinations by other means because I was afraid I would encounter him in every corner that I usually go to.
One of my college friends started a relationship with one of his friends and now that we broke things off, neither of them talk to me, so I am not sure what sort of fairytale he told them in which, he obviously was not in the wrong at all.
I am not asking if I was the AH here, nor asking if I should talk to him again, I am pretty confident That I shouldn’t, I just wanted to vent, thanks for anyone who would read this loooooong story. Cheers.

It was my Covert Narcissistic mother’s birthday. So I sent her a quick email, “Happy Birthday, Mom! 😁🎉🎂” So she wouldn’t came after me about missing her birthday. She replied right away with this poem??, that she wrote me. Here it is….
Do you ne'r tire of the drama
Of the in-ness and the out-ness
the on and the off?
Does your soul not be weary
Your spirit sad
Your hope shatter
Your joy become ever elusive?
When comes the time
To stop
To forget
To live the joy of now
Is there possibility
Or
Is there only pain?