This is going to be a long post about my sister. For the past 2 years my sister has been ruining her life. When she turned 16 she started dating this guy we'll call Caleb. Caleb was a toxic piece of shit and put his hands on her, gave her bruises etc. We told her to break up with him and press charges she did break up with him but did not press charges.
About 2 months pass and she says she's dating a new guy which is funny enough also named Caleb. We didn't think anything of it really. But she never really brings him around, shows us pictures anything. Well eventually she gets in a little fender bender with another car on the road, and on the insurance has the last name of her first toxic piece of boyfriend, she lied and said she wanted us to give him another chance and that there's good in him, well considering she had been lying to us for 10 months while also having a huge attitude the entire time, anytime anyone asks her to do anything or even interact with her she just goes off the handle for no reason.
Anyway, my Mom BLEW up. This was 2 weeks before she turned 18 and she had been talking alot of shit up to it saying how when she turns 18 she's gonna be outta here, that she can't wait to leave this household where we never support her (for dating Caleb) and that she can make it on her own and have her own apartment etc. My mom told her to pack her shit and leave then, and she left and moved in with Caleb's mother.
This is where she just went downhill, she started hanging out with people that ran car takeovers, caught multiple charges for speeding, alcohol possession, disturbing the peace etc. She was hanging out with people that were doing meth, coke and popping pills and apparently gangs, though I don't believe that. She got random tattoos just because someone asked her to, maxed out credit cards and eventually lost her car when it stopped working. This is when its shown that Caleb never even wanted her and has been cheating on her with another girl, and now that her car is gone he doesn't want my sister around. So she ended up moving back in home but we told her this shit can NOT follow you and that lifestyle ends if she comes back, she said ok.
Well she still had her nasty attitude, if you talked to her she would just blow up because she was busy, or she'll do it when she feels like it or she doesn't care how you feel about how she does something etc. Just being a general unpleasant person. We told her nope you need to go to therapy or figure out something to work on your anger issues and mental issues, cause she's diagnosed bipolar and with bpd. Well she did get into therapy but did not want to take medicine. She ended up a few months later having a mental breakdown where I ended up taking her to the mental health emergency room.
It. Was. Miserable. Anytime a nurse talked to her she would try to tell them how to do their job, was harrassing them saying she's been here for 30 minutes and she feels like she's not prioritizing her etc. When the psychiatrist finally comes and gets her, she comes back immediately 2 minutes later saying that the psychiatrist is a bitch and she's not going to let her speak to her like that and I need to come in there right now or she's going to go off. So I go in there and she's saying the psychiatrist is saying that she can't have her phone back in voluntary confinement and she's saying that it's illegal to take my phone and that I need it as an anxiety tool and the psychiatrist was explaining hippa and stuff and she was trying to explain how hippa works to the doctor!! So she ended up declining voluntary confinement because she couldn't keep her phone. We ended up just getting prescribed Remeron and Ativan as a rescue.
We ended up going home and I made sure she took the medicine for the first 3 days, but then after that she stopped. Just stopped taking it and this is how she always is with any medicine, any medicine she gets prescribed she either doesn't take it, looks up the side effects and convinces herself she is feeling it, literally psyching herself out. She told me multiple times how she just doesn't take medicine she gets prescribed because she doesn't trust whats in it, but she'll go to a smoke shop and buy any random non regulated pre roll right off the shelf and put that in her body no problem.
Well she started complaining that Caleb was trying to contact her again through abunch of random phone numbers, making new numbers or emails whatever just to contact her. This was because she was talking to the person Caleb was cheating on her with talking shit about him and she was telling him. She called the cops the first time because he said he was outside the house. She called them again because she said he was outside her bedroom window with a weapon looking in at her window (checked the cameras, nothing). She ended up going to get a restraining order took out on him
We told her either stop talking to this person, or move out. She said okay she'll stop... but a week and a half later she comes in my room panicing saying call the cops that Caleb is threatening her and she can't because she's ON THE PHONE WITH HIM, AND ON A FACETIME CALL WITH THE EX AND SOME RANDOM PERSON. I called the police for her, and they showed up. This whole time my sister is egging him on, saying she doesn't care and that she can do what she wants because freedom of speech. He says gonna come to our house and get us (Me and my Mother) to tell us what's going on then. She says no you won't and surprise surprise, the crazy dude shows. About 10 minutes after the cops did, my sister was talking to them this entire time and when he rolled up, she ran inside crying saying he was gonna kill her.
Well the cops just ended up talking to him for a little bit and he ended up leaving, but me and my mom are so done. She won't get help, she won't take medicine, she can't hold down a job because of her attitude, she's gone through 7 jobs since she was 16, and it's always because her managers supposedly target her, even though the things she tells us are very.. normal workplace things. She lies about everything, she lied and told us she would stop talking to Caleb, she lied and said she would stop talking to her ex, she lied and said she would take her medicine this time (stopped after day 3), she lies and lies and lies.
What can I do to help her at this point? She ended up leaving to calm down at a friends and came back for a bit to get come stuff and we ended up arguing. She saying she wishes she never met caleb, all her problems are because of him, and that we never support her through it. I told her I literally took her to mental health emergency 2 weeks ago, she says that doesn't have to do with Caleb. She just said all her problems are because of him? I said we told you to stop talking to Tiffany and you didn't. "Well, it's because me and her were both abused by Caleb, she's the only person in the world that knows my Trauma I need her", so she admits to her lying. She went to the magistrates office after the cops left and had her friends clip together audio recording of Caleb saying he was going to kill her or harm her in some way and put out charges on him, so she falsified charges.
I don't know how else to help her. We told her we're evicting her but I really want to believe there's some other way. Because of her lifestyle, I've fully accepted that I'm probably going to get a call within the next 10 years saying she died in some way. But I don't want my sister to die, I want to help her in some way. What should I do?

As the world faded away into nothing but a dark void, Tom felt the only mildly familiar sensation of magic flowing like a gentle stream. It wasn’t much of a draw, but it was certainly noticeable.
“Right, best make this quick then,” he tried thinking to himself, feeling the flow peak as he did.
“Who is this? Make what quick?” an ethereal sounding female voice replied. It did sound a bit like how he remembered Joelina sounding. Though she did not exactly sound calm.
“Uhm… Hello? Anyone there?”
“Yes hello. Who is this? What must be done quick? Answer me at once!”
“It’s Tom… Is that you, Joelina?”
“Yes of course it is! Stupid dragons taking ages, I have questions for you! So many questiiioooonssss...”
“Yeah I figured that… Fire away I suppose.” Tom replied a little uncertainly as to just what he might be in for.
“Firstly! Did you read the letters?”
“I did yeah…”
“Disregard them, I have learned much since they were written! So much more yes, cursed blessed knowledge…”
“So you do know we have gone to space then?”
“What? No, I re-experienced the memory you had of the movie about the moon mission. It was evident on the second watching that it was trickery of the eye! Spaceflight is but a myth!”
“Riiight.”
“Then how have your kind visited space? And what of the gods above!? it was evident that the woman with the crystals was but a fraud!” Joelina explained with all the calm and restraint of a shoppingmall Karen
“Well the rockets to the moon, that did happen.” Tom attempted, doing his best to remain calm and diplomatic. “The movie you saw was probably a recreation… Tell me, did things go wrong on that trip but they made it home anyway?”
“Yes, do you know of what I speak? Ahr what am I proclaiming! of course you do it is your own memories, how could I forget.”
“Yea…, you watched a movie about Apollo 13 I think. Good movie, and that all happened too. Like for real happened”
“I see…” Joelina replied, sounding rather unstable. “And what of the gods?”
“We ain’t got any. Well not in space at least.”
“Impossible!”
“No, quite possible. Many still believe in gods though, but let’s not get into that too much. It’s a right old mess.”
“No, you must tell me what happened to the gods? Have they left you?”
“Well some think so, but no. I just think it all works a bit different for us. They might be a little more hands off.”
“But the churches… and these religious warriors you did battle with,” the inquisitor all but muttered to herself, sounding like she was struggling to put pieces together. “Do Jesus and Islam fight for power then? no no, they would have long since lost the battles to the ancient gods of war the teachers spoke of… though why they were always naked eludes me yeeees…”
“No, again we don’t really have gods just floating around... Could we please talk about something else? Or is that all you wanted to know?” Tom tried, hoping he really didn’t have to dive deeper into that particular subject.
“No no don’t you dare cut me off! I have seen what you talked of, nuclear fire and missiles, ships of the oceans and planes soaring in the skies. But is it not all fake? Surely it must be! It must be? It must be…”
“I don’t know what you saw… but we have ships sailing around. If you’ve ever seen flying ships like you have here then that’s fake I can assure you of that. We do have airships, but they look more like really big long balloons.”
“But we could make such vessels, or someone could from times past. If you can visit the moon then surely you can make a ship for the skies!”
“No no, we ain’t got grav oil. Or dragon essence as I guess it’s called. That means no anti gravity, and that means weight is a very very big problem for anything you wanna make fly. Planes and helicopters are how we fly. Remember how I flew to Afghanistan on a big ass plane? Or when I learned to parachute later?”
“What is parachute? is it the ham from your times doing, vacationing? what has dried meat products got to do with flying machines of battle!”
“Wooo easy now easy. I guess you didn’t get that far yet. Uhm. It’s a cloth kite you dangle from and then glide to the ground. Very good fun.”
“A cloth kite used to fly?... such strange inventions. Wait was there not a movie of with something of that nature? yeeee… there was a song. I liked that song… something something brains upon his chute. Yeesss…”
“Yeah… You’ll know it when you see it. I have one actually.” Tom clarified trying not to get too weirded out.
“You must demonstrate on a suitable occasion.”
“Yeah… I do have a question too though,” Tom replied, letting silence reign for a short time. “...Your last letter was in Danish.”
“Oh, uhm yes. I- I was having some difficulty separating what was real and what was not… I still am. Do not tell Glazz, she musten know the truth yet. She seeks to limit my excursions.”
“You’ve ended up like I did, have you?”
“No no no, the effects do indeed recede as expected, everything is in good order… But I had to know more. So so much moooore.”
“Maybe you should cool it a bit. You never know when a brain snaps. Or how,” Tom tried, confident his advice would be ignored.
“There is not time!”
“And why is that? How is it going in our beloved Inquisition?”
“Mind your tongue, human! Things are progressing, but so are our enemies. Infiltrators have been caught, traitors within our ranks are making their moves. The reemergence of Rashan, attacks on mines, keeps and a daring heist attempt at a Royal Guard fortress! The game is afoot, we cannot delay.”
“You can’t overreach yourself either. Weren’t you supposed to be winning over the rest of the inquisition right about now? Can’t do that as a gibbering mess.”
There was silence for a while more after that. “Glazz sent you a letter? What did it say?! You may not keep secrets from me- wait not… I should confiscate her arm… she cannot write with her left. Yes far better plan, avoid upsetting him. And fill her pen with invisible ink. Yes very good.”
“No, it’s just obvious to any idiot. But what about winter, won’t things slow down?”
“They should, yet as autumn progresses it has only been picking up. I hope they too are running out of time… But time for what? I must know what they are planning. They might be behind schedule. But what SCHEDULE! sorry…”
“Well you’re not gonna find the answer to that in my memories, now are you?”
“You were sent by someone. You are here for a purpose. I must know this purpose. It will help me understand. The puzzle is large and much of the box kept from me.”
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m here to help you guys get in gear. That’s a decades to centuries long sorta problem, not a couple of years. Sounds like this war will be in the couple of years category.”
“Then why now? Why did you arrive now?!”
“Shitty luck? Sounds like 10 years ago would have been a lot better… Oh on that note, did you hear? We found something down below.”
“No, Paulin would have told me.”Joelina dismissed, he could almost feel her turning her snout up and away from him.
“Well we opened the vault like 3 days ago,” Tom replied, quite surprised Paulin hadn’t said anything. “Wait yeah she can send you messages, no? She sent the message about what we wanted to buy too, didn’t she?... How did she do that by the way? Why didn’t you just have her ask me questions?”
“That is not for you to know, and this is not for her.”
“Really? More secrets still? Come on, tell me or I’ll let you think flying whales exist.”
“I know those are not real. If they were, you would have harvested them long ago! likely for some deranged snack… or facial decoration.”
“True, but you get the idea,” Tom persisted, feeling like this was something worth pushing for. Why would Paulin not have let her precious Joelina know?
“Very well. This does not leave your mind… In the name of, what was it called… camaraderie. Paulin is in possession of joined paper. Messages may be written down and read by anyone with similarly joined paper. Unsecured. Originally believed to be fore love letters… dastardly studs and wenches using perfectly good magic for such trivialness… simply tie the message to a rock and throw it though the window. Most peasants cannot even afford glass” Joelina trailed off, seemingly zoning out once more.
“You have magical paper that can relay written information… and you don’t fucking use it!?” Tom explaimed, not quite believing what he was hearing.
“No, we do not know how to make freshly bonded paper… only more linked to all other paper in existence…” Joelina agreed. He could almost feel her looking at the floor in shame. “But it is not as if you are infallible, why did you not bring one of these radios?”
“I uhm…”
“Why didn’t you?!”
“I forgot,” Tom admitted, thinking back to his packing days. Of all the things that could have proven useful, that one might have been his biggest blunder.
“For the love of all that is holy! You are our saviour?!” Joelina scolded, understandably so, but still.
“Hey I never claimed to be smart!”
“I have lived your dreams. That is a lie! You very much claim to be smart!”
“Fuck off, I know you are just a scared little insecure girl.”
“She died 30 years ago!”
“Well I haven’t gotten to that bit yet!”
“What in the devils do you mean?” Joelina questioned calming right down in a fraction of a second.
“I’ve only had like three proper dreams about you… wait no, not like that,” Tom blurted out as it clicked just how wrong that sounded. Joelina didn’t seem to care in the slightest though.
“Three? That is it!?” going right back to outrage.
“Yeah… Wait, how many have you had?” Tom questioned. He rather wanted to know just how much she might know about him in addition to the memories she had already picked through when inside his head.
“Several a day!” the inquisitor exclaimed in reply.
“Okay, I can see how that would drive someone a bit mad.”
“I am not going mad!”
“Did Glazz say the same thing?” Tom questioned, quite certain he was striking a nerve.
There was no reply for quite some time, Tom feeling the headache growing as things grew tranquil once more. He could feel his breath. It was rapid, and his heart was pounding. He probably shouldn’t do this for much longer. Thus he endeavored to break the silence.
“You probably should listen to her you know.”
“No! These matters are above her station!”
“Hasn’t she been in the Inquisition longer than you?”
“She has yes. But she is no inquisitor. She is a body guard.”
“Seems like she is a wee bit more than that,” Tom pushed on. He didn’t yet know how those two came to stick together, but it was clear they had been working together for decades by now. All the way since she was assigned to Harvik
“Mind your own matters, human.”
“Very well, don’t think I can keep this up anyway.”
“We have barely been chatting! Where do the dogs come from?!”
“Selective breeding for thousands of years. But I’m gonna go. Take a break, do what Glazz says… even if Jacky hates her.”
Yet more silence followed that, though it was brief and Joelina was the first to speak again.
“Fine! In the interest of cooperation I shall let you rest. Wear the earring at all times, I shall be contacting you again soon.”
“I think I’m gonna be the judge of that. I’ll put it on when I feel like it.”
“You will do as I say!”
“You need a nap and a bit to calm down. I’ll give you three days. Around noon. See yah… How do I get this thing off?”
“I’m not telling you,” Joelina grumped like a little girl. She really didn’t seem quite like herself at all today. She had been the spitting image of restraint and arrogance before. The arrogance was still there, but the restraint had certainly gone.
“Come on, do I just try to cut off the magic or is that a bad idea?”
“If you answer a question I might answer.”
“Right then… Gimme gimme gimme aaaa-”
“JUST CUT IT! Farewell!” she called out loud enough Tom’s head pulsed and then there was blissful silence once more.
“Hehe. That did the trick, right concentrate on that funny feeling aaan-”
__________________________________________________________________________________
After dinner had been rounded up, Dakota had given a brief address as to some of the news received. There wasn’t much that hadn’t already made the rounds at the tables during the dinner itself. The war had been expanding, recruitment had started in full in the cities, and if not for the rather special situation at Bizmati they could have expected their banners to get called by spring.
Rumors had it that the kingdom was preparing itself for counterstrikes the following spring, which meant training through the winter for many volunteers.
“And a lot of not so volunteers,” Fengi muttered as Dakota carried on with the address.
“You can say that twice. At least the street rats might get something to eat and a place to sleep,” Tirox the trader escort added.
“I suppose that is true. Not a bad deal in winter time… I might even have taken it.”
“But we must instead keep our minds on our home,” Dakota carried on, talking to the whole hall. “There can be no mistake, we will be a target. We will be ready. They are getting bolder by the day it seems. It is not impossible they may attempt to take our keep before the winter comes. Or perhaps they will be waiting for spring. It is equally clear their forces are spread thin. We will weather such assaults, I have no doubt. But we must keep training. We must keep vigil. We cannot afford to be surprised or outmatched. I know you will all do your best. And tonight, we have no less than 4 dragons here. So breathe easy, have your snacks and your drinks. If the weather holds soon we will be finished with the warehouse and then we may make final preparations for winter. It is sure to be an interesting one for once.”
The hall replied with a half-discordant cheer, not overly enthusiastic unlike what Dakota had likely envisioned. The talk of them possibly getting attacked even before the snow came wasn’t really that encouraging. But Dakota tended to speak her mind, and she was probably right. Bizmati keep would be a damn tough nut to crack. And to Dakota’s credit she did seem to recognize she hadn’t really managed to rile them up.
“Didn’t you hear me?” she tried again in a slightly more humorous tone. “Eat, drink, and have fun! And put those tables together, don’t want you brooding in your corners.”
That did get a bit more of a reaction, as well as some good humored chuckles. People started getting up and set about moving the tables closer together.
It was a little rude to split up their guests in the same way as they normally did. Saph carried one of the benches over to the new spot, glancing around for any sign of Maiko, but there was no sign of him anywhere.
Feeling a little miffed, she sat down with the others as Ray came back with one of the small kegs of cider looking very excited. “We should have a taste, right?”
“Oh yes please!” Pho called out, Essy giving her a slight slap on the wrist.
“This one is only for those who paid for it. You will have to do with whatever you bought. Or the ale I’m sure they intend to serve.”
“Aww man. Not even a sip?”
“Okay, maybe a sip,” Essy relented. “Oh, I should get Koko his gift.”
“You got him a gift?” Saph questioned with mirth in her voice.
“Of course, that is what people do for each other… you did get Maiko something, right?”
Saph felt her expression slip a little as she prepared to disappoint their chief people person. “No, not really…”
“All that money and you didn’t get him shit? That’s cold girl,” Pho laughed, clearly finding it hilarious.
“Oh shut up, not as if I got something for Unkai either,” Fengi added, springing to Sapphire’s defence, though it seemed like the delivery had Fengi second guessing herself as well.
Esmeralda did look a little saddened by the news, but she was far too nice to say anything. Tirox however had no such filter.
“Oh don’t worry about it, just gotta go with a different sort of gift.” The diminutive guard laughed heartily at his joke. Udanti found it quite funny as well, and Pho certainly loved it. Bo just shook her head a little and went back to a small puzzle of some sort she had been working on, on and off, for most of the dinner by now.
“So uhm… One mug each?” Ray questioned, having been left hanging at the keg.
“Oh yes sorry, just the one, this stuff is expensive,” Saph replied, holding out her mug, Ray pushing it back down.
“One moment.” And she produced a wooden mallet and one of the metal taps. It looked like one of Raulf’s, so it was probably old as faded dragonscales.
Ray gingerly placed it against the cork and raised the mallet as the table fell silent in anticipation.
With a whack the tap went in clean with hardly a drop spilled, and Ray breathed a visible sigh of relief. “Right there we go.”
There was a quick round of cheers from the table, and Ray started pouring servings.
“Oh got yours open, have you?” the voice of Balethon came as the guard came walking up to the table, mug in hand and lizard on shoulder. “You all know we are gonna have to work out who got the better stuff, right?”
“Oh does it always have to be a competition with you, Balethon?” Saph questioned. She had just wanted to enjoy the cider.
“Look who is talking… And yeah of course we do! Just think of the bragging rights.”
Ray didn’t look too thrilled, nor did any of the girls who had actually paid for the keg. The rest of the table seemed to think it was a brilliant idea, even as Balethon’s voice carried and heads started to turn as people started to mingle between the now closely together tables.
“I’ll be the independent adjudicator!” Tirox declared, not receiving much attention as the full mugs started to get passed around. “Oh come on. I’ll be fair!”
“Shut it pipsqueak, you’ll end up taking 10 rounds of tastings before you make up your mind,” Udanti scolded, though in good humor.
“I might…” the guy relented, looking to Balethon. “Ey, by the way. Did you teach the brainlet any tricks?”
“Sure, Skitters can do a few things.”
“Aside from chasing the food?”
“You know what I think he might yeah,” Balethon replied sarcastically, gently tapping the static lizard twice on the head. The lizard didn’t do much save skitter about on his shoulder to face Balethon’s head, one eye pointing in whichever direction.
‘That thing just looks so dumb,’ Saph thought to herself as Ray handed her a mug. “Oh thank you.”
“Okay, Skitters. Up,” Balethon went, raising a claw into the air as if he wanted the lizard to jump. Or perhaps stand up. “Up… come on.”
There was no reaction from the lizard aside from it jerking to the left a bit, possibly having spotted a fly or something.
“Weeeell obedience might need some work,” Udanti chuckled. “Have you tried with some food in your hand?”
“Sure, then he just tries to eat the hand. Come on, Skitters. Up!” Balethon tried again, doing the gesture once more. And this time the little lizard jumped into the air. The little legs stretched out, taking its pitiful excuse for wings with it, and it half-fell half-glided to the floor where it hit with all the grace of a 6 year old on his first lesson. The slightly fat lizard bounced once, then rolled over twice before coming to a stop, looking around confused.
“Aaayyy! That’s a good boi,” Balethon went, going to pick it up again before someone stepped on it or it ran off under the tables. “And now you get a treat.” True to his word Skitters was fed a small piece of something or other which it seemed quite happy to snap up.
Fengi leaned in to whisper to Saph. “Was that the trick or did it just get sick of staying there?”
“I have no idea,” Saph replied, holding up her mug. “Cheers though.”
“Cheers,” Fengi replied as they clinked mugs.
“Oh hang on now, wait for me,” Essy protested as Ray finished pouring her mug and started on her own, looking to the girls as she questioned “Oh, also what about Jacky? Should we wait for her?”
“Who knows how long that will take?” Fengi replied, holding her mug impatiently.
“I’m sure she won’t mind. She is with Tom. We’ll let him have a mug as well,” Essy added with a reassuring nod, looking up to the high table. “Oh but we are missing Lin!”
“Oh right yeah she paid too… I can’t remember, did Edita chip in?”
“I don’t think so,” Sapphire replied, shaking her head as Essy got up to go fetch Linkosta. Balethon decided to take her place, a big grin on his face.
“So what else is going on over here?”
“Oh not much, hellooo little guy,” Pho went, trying to give skitters a scritching. In exchange he tried to eat her finger. “Oh… I mean I guess it doesn’t hurt.”
“Oh yeah, he can’t hurt a fly… well he can, but nothing more.”
“Shame he won’t get any bigger either,” Udanti added, nodding sagely. “Would have made a good rat hunter.”
“Nah… toe hunter though. Also where is the ale at?”
“Oh Raulf and Wiperna are getting ale and some of the bubble beer.”
“What is bubble beer?” Udanti questioned, tilting her head.
“Oh you’ll love it,” Saph interjected, waiting patiently as she saw Essy and Linkosta returning to the table out of the corner of her eye. “It’s an ale but it’s all fizzy.”
“Riiight… I’ve heard of fizzy beers before.”
“Oh yes, but this one is so much more fizzy.”
“It’s light and almost springlike.”
“Light ale? You mean for kids?”
“No no no. Just trust us it’s good.”
“Right right, I trust you,” the archer replied, looking to Essy and Linkosta, who seemed to be looking for a place to sit. “Should we not just put two end to end rather than this scrunching up business?”
“Yeah we should… Right get the craftsman table over here then. We don’t wanna have to smell the guards,” Saph called out, holding up her mug.
“Hey! That was uncalled for,” Balethon protested as Ray passed a mug to Linkosta. The girls all raised their mugs and had a sip, not willing to wait any longer. They all smacked their chops a little, looking down at the golden liquid. It was slightly fizzy too… and it tasted like the brew of the gods themselves. Ray was looking at them all visibly tense with anticipation and perhaps a twinge of fear.
“Ray… You have not disappointed,” Saph declared, nodding her approval, a smile creeping onto her face once more.
“Oh this is the best drink I think I’ve ever had,” Fengi added, taking another gentle sip.
Ray looked visibly relieved, her expression changing to one of ecstasy as she too took a sip herself. “Oh it’s even better than I remember. I’m glad you liked it.”
“Like it?! I love it!” Fengi cheers, Essy giving an appreciative nod to Ray before looking to Lin.
“Sooo?”
“It’s very good… Do you think we could try and cool it down a little? Imagine this cold.”
“It is often served cold, yes,” Ray confirmed, nodding her assent.
“I’ll go get the powder!” Saph called out, getting up. “I have got to try that.”
__________________________________________________________________________________
The strange ethereal world that had seemed so all-consuming started to quickly fade. Holes grew as light and reality started seeping in, sounds and noise starting to build around him. “Oom-Tom… Tom, are you okay?” came the familiar voice of Jacky as his eyes shot open and he blinked a few times as he returned to reality proper.
“Yeah yeah, I’m here… That is trippy, but hey, I think it worked.”
“How many fingers?” Jacky questioned, holding up her hand.
“4. Clear as day.”
“Pheeew. Okay look around, anything strange?”
Tom obeyed, sitting up a bit straighter and glancing about the room. “Nnnnn, nope all good. Just like last time I used one of these.”
“Right, good. Now what did she say?”
“Oh a bunch of stuff… mostly we chatted a bit about how she’s going a touch mad. Even Glazz thinks she’s falling apart at the seams apparently. She was also not happy I wanted a break.”
“Oh don’t tell me you have to do this every day from now on?”
“I said she had 3 days to get ready to try again. Hopefully she’ll have her case worked out by then.”
“Here’s to hoping… also how is your head? Does it hurt?”
“A bit, it’ll go away I’m sure.”
“Right,” Jacky replied, looking at him skeptically. “If it gets worse, tell me. But dinner was served a while ago I think. And I’m hungry.”
“Me too, let’s go.”
__________________________________________________________________________________
Well then, Joelina got her chat. She seems fine... I am sure she will continue to be a steadfast ally, within the walls of the inquisition for many weeks to co- I mean years, definetly years.
As always I hope you enjoyed the chapter, if not you know who to blame. I promise I won't cry to much if you tell me what was wrong... I promise.
Not really any news, other than fuck me I'm a busy boi, luckily I found the time to keep up with the writing yet, hopefully things will quet down soon so I can get back to begin a bit further ahead.
Untill next time, take care
Wiki and Art Gallery If you can't remember who someone is, want to read any of the side stories of fanfiction, or you just wanna watch some of the cool art that's been made for the story. Patreon If you want to help get more cool shit made consider joining the Patreon, you also get chapters two weeks ahead of time. HoH Subreddit if you want more stories from the HoH universe or are interested in writing something for this funny little world. Discord if you wanna have a chat about the story or just hang out First Previous

"Children learn to correlate consequences with their own actions. This is true of all of us, no matter what species we are. Adulthood is universally defined by maturity, and maturity is defined by nature as appropriate behavior to ensure your species' survival. If we apply this wisdom to the stage of evolution of a species, the culture and conservative capacity of intelligent creatures, then we can see it on that scale also. A species is like a child while they liberally explore their surroundings, learning the best behavior by trying everything, through the Trial of Errors. Then they mature and adopt appropriate behavior, avoiding doing things that work against their species, as individuals and as a whole. We can apply this pattern to the history of all alien races among us here today. This also includes the humans. I testify to this, as one who remains traveling alongside them and seeing each era of their ascended history. As the representative of the will of the Frendsikeel, as attorney to the cause of human endeavors and as their one follower in this galaxy, I say the humans are very cool." The alien sea otter with the boney shells covering her body spoke somehow in a human voice, having perfected the use of her translator so that it was indistinguishable from human speech.
There was applause among the limited audience of aliens at the application hearing for membership, each in their own way of signaling immediate approval. If the Cave Gods agreed, the Combine would be added to the councils of the Cave Gods And Friends Association. It was the dawn of a new and wonderful age for the humans.
The alien attorney visibly shuddered as an equally smoothly articulated translation started, and in a voice all-too-familiar. Osowl Fitten, Attorney-to-the-Humans, heard her nemesis from across the vast distances of both space and time. She was the Sunder representative, Supreme Prosecutor (of the humans) Eshka Layenna. The reptilian alien slithered out with a stylized collar to hide her frill and colorful paint on her face to look more appealing to the human eye. Indeed, the humans felt their eyes drawn to the masterful and ancient alien, who specialized in charm and glamor.
"Beautiful denizens of Rhema, world of art and music, esteemed guru, priests and patrons of the arts, lend to me your native attention. I will speak for you, and worry not what decision is made behind my back, by our wise leaders, the benevolent Cave Gods. They have heard the song of human laughter, recognized the absolution of human mistakes, graced the humans with thousands of years of benefits and gifts simply because they admire the beauty of the human soul. Is beauty not important? I would not stand in the way of beauty. We all know it is the first component of harmony, and we all know harmony is the first component of peace and we also know that peacefulness is necessary for love. And what meaning is there, that is greater than love?" Eshka Layenna spoke with passion in her human sounding voice, translated from a skillful use of her own vowels in order to inflect such sincere emotion. The attorney for the humans worried, for she had sparred with this particular individual alien half a dozen times throughout the centuries, and clearly they were both on the same course through the stars, sleeping for decades at a time in order to extend the usefulness of their respective careers.
The prosecutor skillfully explained that humans were beautiful in the ears of the blind leadership who had overlooked the capacity that humans had for, in their own word: violence.
Osowl Fitten sat quiet during her turn to speak in rebuttal. She could not quickly speak without thinking, it was not the way of her species and she was especially slow to decide what she wanted to say. In the silence one of the humans coughed expectantly, it was meant to prompt her, and she knew so. It was in all things, their little violences, and she had started to find it beautiful.
"Violence is the appropriate behavior when humans utilize it. They are equally capable of restraint and sometimes their violence is directed purely against the storm. Humans respond to all violence, they endure it and survive, they fight back, they commit violence for gain, even sometimes because they want to commit violence, with no further motivation. The Sunder administration has long sought to prosecute the humans because of this, and they are here today, to do this. I approve of this because it is the appropriate behavior. I would like to point out that the Sunder have invented many consequences to inflict on humans, and I must point out that to the human, those are called weapons and the Sunder have become hypocrites. On this day the Sunder are here to prevent the humans from becoming their equal, which is the appropriate behavior for the Sunder, because they anticipate that humans are dangerous, a known threat. They would list off all the times they have tried to blame humans for tragic events, or simply point out that humans were involved in a disproportionate amount of such tragic events, at the very least. And yes, humans are dangerous. Does not each new member bring a gift to the association? The Blue Light Watchers brought the gift of honest music, such as nobody had ever heard. Who among us was not moved by their music? The humans have brought a gift, and I foresee, the Dream Time, that this gift shall prove to be the greatest gift of all."
"What gift would that be?" Eshka Layenna spoke out of turn, amid gasps and gestures of outrageous surprise. Osowl refused to engage her opponent informally and ceased speaking until the Cave Gods had politely reminded the respected and venerable serpent of the absolute procedure of the courtroom, and begged her to behave appropriately. Then Osowl spoke, carefully avoiding addressing the question, while answering it anyway:
"When the Dream Time goes into darkness, and the galaxy can be crossed in an instant by the mere thought of terror, and there is no trade besides violence with this spreading nightmare from outside, that is when the greatest gift of all shall shine upon the threshold." Osowl Fitten turned off her translator and captions and spoke only in her own language. For a moment the court felt confused by this deliberate action, before the significance of it began to sink in. Even the scarred and brutal human Admiral Jinar they had allowed into the proceedings looked deeply moved, her eyes watering, as though she personally understood both the words and the power behind them.
"I have no further arguments, Wise Ones. The prosecution rests." Eshka Layenna said with strange reverence, abandoning her entire cause suddenly.
"This then, is the final enactment of all our discussions, and there are no further actors. Let the humans say then, what is decided here today." The Cave Gods spoke in rehearsed unison.
The humans cheered. They had just become members of the Cave Gods And Friends Association, and the humans were now officially equal to all the coolest aliens throughout the galaxy.
When the courtroom had emptied there were still two creatures sitting there. Osowl Fitten stared for a moment at the human, gradually recognizing her.
"You are Jinar. How so? Humans do not use Star Sleep or live such profoundly long life spans. But I am sure, somehow you are she." Osowl Fitten said at last.
"I am now Admiral Jinar, of the Combine Unified Forces. We are currently disbanded, but I still think they are coming, and we should be preparing for them. Now that we have a say in things, I'd like to get started on that." Admiral Jinar told Osowl Fitten, coldly speaking business.
"Are you not pleased that humans are now recognized as equals to the Cave Gods themselves? In the association, all species have an equal vote." Osowl Fitten twitched her whiskers in a personal greeting, hoping to see Jinar's mood change.
Jinar relaxed and smiled just a little bit. Somehow sitting there trying to interpret the whisker twitches of the Frendsikeel made her feel like a little girl again. It was just a moment, but it reminded her of her own resolve of character. She had felt a kind of personal hell for most of her life, regretting something she had done while she was very young, but worried it somehow defined her. When she had defeated the scout, something had changed, she had realized she was merely playing a role, and the universe was calling the shots.
"Maybe it was better to have gods. The thought that we are responsible for the course is somehow terrifying." Jinar said in plain, soldier-like way of speaking.
"This is humor." Osowl gestured that she found it mildly amusing.
"Do you think they are out there? You're my attorney, I kinda care what you think." Jinar grinned a little, realizing she could communicate very easily with the alien. It was like Osowl just understood everything. It was reassuring to be fully understood and also approved of at the same time.
"It is not a coincidence that I chose this world for Summoning. Allow me to show you what inspires so much art, why this world is a melting pot of artists from seven alien species who all come here for inspiration." Osowl Fitten paused and found a small box held for her by a servo.
"What is it?" Jinar wondered.
"It is a gift." Osowl seemed perplexed. She was trying to assess the correct way to receive such a gift. It was meant as a statement of many different meanings, what was known as a cruciform. Osowl realized it was in the form of clothing, a colorful sash. She wrapped it over one shoulder, wearing it as a kind of toga.
"What for?" Jinar asked.
"It is complicated. I will wear this, to show my admiration and to accept the insult. It is a sign of deep friendship, but one forged through a necessary rivalry, for we are not without the other. My opponent, perhaps she says farewell."
"No, she says she wishes to be your companion still - to continue to argue with you. We shall Star Sleep beside each other and visit the same places. I do not want to be alone and I do not want this to end. It is what is best for each. Ave." The Sunder spoke from the shaded curtains, slithering out dramatically.
"I accept this. I would not wish to be without you. I understand the duality of our arguments the same way you do. Come with me, and we shall visit distant stars and foreign worlds." Osowl Fitten said without hesitation.
From there, the three women went to the attraction of Rhema that Osowl had chosen as a backdrop for the human inclusion in the association.
"Of this moment, we suspend ourselves, for the brace, my dears." Osowl hissed in Sunder and made her new friend laugh with an emote.
Eshka Layenna stopped and suddenly slithered around Jinar with serpentine swiftness. "Is she with us, equal one?" In plain English, another idiom but this as a joke of some kind by Eshka Layenna. She donned a purple garland and wrapped part of it gently around Jinar, the exact movement dancelike and affectionate. She flicked out her snake tongue absently in her self-satisfaction and then turned and wrapped part of the boa around Osowl, who groaned in mock reluctance to the amicable game.
"So we walk together?" Jinar asked.
"Precisely. Unless there is a place we must do something else?" Eshka gestured to the colonial canteen.
"They serve alcohol here?" Jinar felt no resistance as she walked towards the bar with her old lady alien friends in tow, the fragile feathered tether wrapped loosely around all of them.
"Drinks. You may take your toxic beverage." Osowl complained.
"I insist. I know you got something you'll imbibe." Jinar grinned.
At the bar the servo identified them and guessed they wanted alcohol. Osowl was served a thimble of it and a proper shotglass with the colonial guard stamp half scratched off of it was put down for the lady in uniform.
"That's pretty strong. Can I have more?"
"No." The servo said, and took the shotglass and wiped it out with a wash towel.
"Actually, I'm good. That's a pretty nice buzz." Jinar grinned.
"It is precise, madam." The servo said with a little bit of an attitude.
"I'll have mine - not." Osowl said.
"Is that right, are you afraid you'll seem ridiculous? I assure you your friends won't notice your inability to change your eye color while intoxicated. If it helps, you can wear a mood medallion. Would her Gentleness wish her mood medallion?" The servo had split personalities, and was suddenly all cool while talking to Osowl.
"Very much so, Jehosephet." Osowl accepted the medallion with a quickness that conveyed a gleeful shift in her feelings about the bar. Once her medallion was worn and shining, looking exactly like flax colored eyes, she gladly accepted the drink with no further inhibitions. She took the thimble and insufflated it and exhaled what sounded like a drunken wheezing.
"You party hard." Jinar complimented Osowl.
"Yes, this is the celebration I am in for." Osowl seemed to be gagging in her translator and took it off to fumble with the delicate settings.
Jinar laughed, noting that her eyes were flaxen with tints of green and yellow while her medallion showed bright red frustration and embarrassment.
"I cannot drink alcohol, so I shall wear the hat." Eshka Layenna leaned on the bar and the servo placed a massive crown of supreme derpiness on her, some kind of cartoon creature vaguely resembling a Sunder. It looked insane. Jinar laughed so hard she fell over and landed on her butt.
"Okay, so now that none of us may have her pride before the others, now what?" Osowl sounded normal, but her medallion was a glimmering pink, showing she was aware she was being deceptive in some way, as her voice betrayed none of her sloppiness in communicating. It somehow made her seem more hilarious to Jinar, as she could tell Osowl was drunk.
"I am worried that if we stay we'll be seen this way by those who admire and respect us and it will somehow diminish our reputations." Eshka Layenna stated.
"That's part of the fun. But anyhow, we're on a mission. Let's go to this place." Jinar agreed.
"I am afraid our jovial antics won't last beyond the threshold." Osowl cringed as she realized she had spoke a word that meant the same as Threshold, the prophecy of her people.
"What's the matter?" Jinar's voice drained of laughter and she adopted gradual concern, as Osowl hesitated to answer.
"Let us go first, and bid this moment to memory." Osowl insisted.
They departed, leaving their festive garments behind.
There was no landscape to explore, but rather spires of habitats above radiated pools of slag. They flew in a saucer, hovering at different speeds and angles against the natural gravity of Rhema. After a while the saucer had found a break in the low gray-orange clouds that obscured the world below the observational habitats.
"What is the significance of this wasteland?" Jinar asked slowly, not really wanting to hear the answer - already knowing what such an answer would be. The rhetorical nature of her voice was greeted by merciful silence.
The three sisters, each from a distant corner of the galaxy, born in different ages, and different species, stared out at the desolation and they each recognized the same measure of it, for it was the limit of suffering.
Osowl knew her friends understood. She herself had adjusted to her existence, the last of her people. It still hurt to come home.

A poem I found on the internet maybe in sometime in 2000-2010, its a continuation/analys of the age old question "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck".
I'm aware of the Monkey Island continuation... "A woodchuck could chuck no amount of wood since a woodchuck can't chuck wood... But if a woodchuck could chuck and would chuck..." and so on. But that's only 5 lines.
And what I'm looking for isn't that, this went on for a solid page. I believe it went into more abstract things like economics... It read like an essay, but was so full of rhymes and wordplay that it could also be considered a poem. It was quite funny.
I though it would be easy to find... but no.

My mom started dating this guy officially ending of October; I (17F) met him in November at her bday party, he seemed fine, and she was happy everything was okay. In November, we were asked to leave the house we were living at, so we moved; however, my mom decided to move relatively far ( where he is from). She claimed it wasn’t because of him and that she just got a good deal on a good house. The house is really nice, but you’re telling me you couldn’t find anything closer? Anyway, he ended up moving in with us the first week of January ( we moved in end of December). Everything was fine, he was funny. I liked him, and so did my brother (14M). I thought it was a little too soon, but I moved on. The only thing that bothered me was that he constantly is asking me about my love life, him and my mom because my brother is dating around and I am not. So that made me kinda annoyed at them because stop bringing this up. They both have also made small comments on my weight, I don’t like it when my mom does it so him doing it is like wtf. He has said this like “ you gotta hit the gym to find a boyfriend” ( I am literally average weight) In March, they were suddenly engaged which was a shock ( as they had only known each other for 5 months). I tried not to think of it because if my mom was happy, I was happy. But I was still uncomfortable. idk why because he has never done anything to me. The wedding happened on Saturday it was amazing, his family had flown in from his native country, and everything was fine. For a little bit of context for this next part, My mom had 2 sisters, Kylie (28) and gabriella (18) ( fake names, btw). They were both bridesmaids. Kylie went with her longterm boyfriend, and Gabriella went with my mom’s fiances friend Marco. On the wedding night, my mom was giving speeches and calling people up to give a piece of cake; first, she called me and my brother, then she called her fiance’s mom and dad, and then she called my grandma and my aunt Kylie but not Gabriella, I looked over at her, and she was shocked that she wasn’t called. After this, Gabriella came up to me complaining, saying that she went up to my mom and said, “Why didn’t you call me up?” she said it was because Gabriella made Marco leave” Obviously, I am confused, so I asked Gabriella what happened and she said that she was dancing and he grabbed her arm and said come here, she doesn’t like physical contact in general so she said that having this guy ( who had made it clear in the past that he wanted to get with her) touch her, she obviously was spoked and said no then left. Apparently, this bruised his ego, and he left; I assume he told my mom’s fiance, and then my mom’s fiance told my mom. This morning I woke up to my mom’s finance absolutely shitting on my mom’s family, saying he hated my mom’s sister’s that they were snobs and inconsiderate and full of themselves; I’m in shock. Later in the day, my mom approached me and said, “ Kylie and Gabriella were so mean to my husband’s family at the wedding. They were being rude, and they are so full of themselves.” I am confused because they wouldn’t do that, Gabriella is extremely shy and wasn’t even near them. I go into my room and leave the conversation. An hour later, they talk about it again, and he is Livid, saying, “How dare they treat my family like this? I don’t like them, don’t wanna see them, especially the younger one; Marco had a reason to leave the wedding. She is so full of herself.” My mom then continues by saying, “They aren’t my sisters by heart, only blood.” Apparently, there is a video of Kylie being rude ( the video is of her looking at them). She is a really judgy person, but in the video, she is just looking around, and she naturally has a resting bitch face. Anyway, my mom is trying to get me to be mad at my aunts, and she wants to confront Kylie and Gabriella. I am really, really mad at this situation. I want my mom to be happy, but she’s letting a guy we barely know determine her feelings about her family. For reference, he has never made an effort to know her sisters, and now he is coming here shiting on my family like he owns the place when no one knows him. I feel like he’s ruining the family dynamic, and this will change how the rest of our lives turn out. My mom brings this random guy into our lives and just expects us to accept the fact that they are getting married, it takes a while to get used to it. If my mom cuts ties with her family because of him shes gonna be alone because I will not be “ on her side”. So AITAH for feeling this way?

Demographics

• Gender: female
• Race/Ethnicity: asian
• Residence: suburban?? kinda urban?? idk
• Income Bracket: enough to not qualify for financial aid
• Type of School: non-feeder private
• Hooks: n/a

Intended Major(s): applied math/math/compsci (cs for public schools)
Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 97.23/100 (school does not do weighted)
• Rank (or percentile): top 6% (school does not disclose rankings besides val, t6, t10)
• of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.

full ib diploma student
HL: math aa, physics, english A literature, economics
SL: compsci, chinese A sl
Standardized Testing

• SAT I: 1570 one take in 10th, 780M & 790R&W
• ACT: didn't take
• AP: NONE!!!! (i have a 5 on AP chinese but i took it in 8th grade so idk??)

Extracurriculars/Activities
if u know me pretend like u never saw this thanks. also not ranked in order of importance + very vague

1. tax volunteering thing where i got a bunch of tax certifications and helped ppl do their taxes for free
2. highly prestigious math camp (one of PROMYS, SUMaC, Ross)
3. applied mathematics research paper i published
4. fbla, president of my chapter
5. paid research at local university during pandemic where i modeled spread of covid using math stuff
6. USACO gold
7. research symposium
8. varsity tennis
9. concertmaster of school orchestra
10. speech and debate

Awards/Honors
List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

1. various research awards at different competitions
2. national merit semifinalist
3. fbla national champion for very competitive presentation event
4. some violin awards
5. i forgot what else but i had 5

Letters of Recommendation
lit teacher: 8/10, my favorite teacher ever, really improved my writing so much + def one of the better students in her class. shes also really experienced at writing so im pretty sure the letter was good. minus 2 points bc i haven't read it and also hella people asked her to write one so im not sure how much time she could allocate to writing my letter
math teacher: 7/10, really funny dude and i participated a lot in his class + he knew about my extracurriculars in math and how much i love the subject. also same rec letter he wrote which got me into the math camp so it was probably good???
Interviews
i had interviews for most schools that gave interviews (harvard, yale, princeton, etc). i'm good at talking to adults so most of them went well. only notable bad one was dartmouth where the guy started talking about israel palestine and used it as an example for why my research wasn't significant.
Essays
def the weakest part of my application. nothing really special about them and they aren't reflective of my writing ability. probably 5/10 or 6/10.
Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)
Acceptances:

• ut austin (ea, turing scholars/csb honors)
• rice (rd)
• uwash (ea)
• columbia (rd)
• uchicago (rd, technically i got waitlisted and then offered a transfer option for 2025 so ill count that as an acceptance)

Waitlists:

• yale (rd)
• mit (rd)
• brown (rd)
• upenn (rd)
• dartmouth (rd)
• umich (ea)
• gtech (ea)
• northwestern (rd)
• vanderbilt (rd)
• ucsd (rd)

Rejections:

• harvard (rd)
• princeton (rd)
• stanford (rea deferred REJECTED ON MY BIRTHDAY)
• cornell (rd)
• caltech (rd)
• duke (rd)
• uc berkeley (rd)
• ucla (rd)
• usc (rd)

Additional Information:
ik i can't really complain about ended up at an ivy but columbia wasn't really a school i'd considered in the past. i kinda just applied for the sake of applying. i was honestly super close to choosing ut austin and i feel a little bit of regret that i didn't.
wishing all the juniors this upcoming cycle the best of luck!!!

I was scrolling through the sub's top posts to see if any other secrets had been discovered and I was surprised to find one of the top posts was saying they preferred WoL's systems to SoL. No disrespect to that poster or the devs, but I just wanted to make a quick post about why I feel EXACTLY opposite.
For both WoL and SoL, the fun of the game is the humor, not the mechanics. They are silly, they're fun, they've got neat puzzles and ridiculous dialogue and outlandish items. The gameplay, imo, is just there to give structure to the writing. The puzzles are decent, the combat is serviceable, and that's all they need to be, honestly.
However, WoL's systems felt like a chore, act 3 (regions G and H) have an enormous amount of extremely dull backtracking, and 2 of the 3 main story arcs (the cows and El Vibrato) are EXTREMELY missable. SoL fixed nearly all of this.
First of all, the combat mechanics in SoL just work better. They're still not great, but WoL was the most "make the numbers go bigger" game in the history of "make the numbers go bigger" games. Elemental attacks had nearly no impact on gameplay, sleaze and stench are used extremely sparingly, it almost felt senseless to even include them. Combine that with M-stats serving as both offense and defense, and every fight is just a competition of "is my M-stat big enough, or do I need to make my M-stat more bigger?" This isn't a critique of WoL really--like I said, it was serviceable, and what mattered was that summoning a bean golem wearing a mobster hat was funny. But the switch from a %-age based damage resistance armor system to a numbers based damage threshold armor system, the actual incorporation of different damage types, and the (low) hard caps on M-stats made the combat much more tactical. Now, you actually have to consider the damage type of your weapon. You can look at which enemies are going to attack which allies and consider who you want to attack, and with what.
Likewise, having equipment slots be more specialized in their function was a great choice. Rings provide special effects or buffs to combat abilities, hats and accessories provide specific stat buffs, shoes are ordered from the Ministry of Silly Walks. Now, instead of choosing to use melee or pistol based on which of your enemy's stats are lower (muscle or moxie), you use the weapon that is best for your character's stats, and you can uses special items to transform other weapons into melee/ranged/magic weapons if you like, which is funny (just add gun parts to a baseball bat, simple as!).
And the skill checks are great, they did the right thing replacing a single speech skill with "a speech skill, and also your 3 M-stats."
Backtracking is way less tedious because shadow enemies in previous chapters get harder as the game progresses AND there's more content in each region worth visiting everyday (cats, stores, fishing, the odd boon here and there). In WoL, there is an El Vibrato monolith in Shaggy Dog cave that is revealed only when you get an object in region H. Who is going back to Shaggy Dog Cave after you've been to region H? Who is going back to the snake pit, where there is a time portal, after you've been to region H? The only way to see that late game content is to revisit sites you have no reason to revisit after the game has already effectively ended, with nothing but fights which you can easily oneshot to pad out your journey through empty sites you've already seen.
Finally, imo the puzzles are better in SoL. I was surprised how many people didn't like the Longerfellow puzzle--the game gives you the hint about the Cabin Boy Standard Format in the basement, and the cabin boy's name is left in a note on the outhouse. It was a good, clever little puzzle imo. I really like the puzzle from the house of the dolls as well, it was satisfying to solve the last "she does everything twice" by figuring out the names of all the different dolls. The only puzzle I thought was kind of ridiculous was Mudhenge, and even there SoL gives you a pretty strong hint by saying "A phrase so nice, you've heard it twice," strongly hinting that there's some significance to the code you've received. Meanwhile, WoL has the Military Cemetery INSANE puzzle, the impossible "fivepiles" solution at the West Pole, and even a puzzle at Reboot Hill that I thought was pretty tricky and definitely required a pencil and paper, as well as both safecrackin' and lockpickin'. Oh yeah, and since you can only start with either Safecrackin' or Lockpickin' (not both), that's even more tedious backtracking once you buy the other skillbook at Breadwood. Just to open some safes or locked doors! At least in SoL, the locations of Shadow gates mostly make sense, they're mostly in locations that make you say "huh, I wonder if a shadow gate opens there--yep, it does."
And the companions and familiars are better too. Being able to mix and match mid playthrough is just so nice, and the vignettes are silly and fun.
Again, this isn't to throw shade at WoL. I was just surprised because when I picked up SoL, I was expecting the mechanics to feel as slapdash as the did in WoL, and I was surprised by just how much better they were. My first thought was "oh, neat, they actually made the game side of the game much better, not just the humor." So I was surprised to see the top post here expressing the opposite opinion. I thought WoL was fun as an adventure, but not that great as a game, and SoL just feels like a step up in every way.
Finally, just because I saw some people say it felt unfinished--I kind of agree. I've run into a couple weird bugs, almost all of them in The Big Moist, that just feel like they should have been patched out (Inspector Legrade came back to life in my first playthrough???). It's a shame because The Big Moist's quests are my favorite in the game. But compared with the ending of WoL, which ramps up to Frisco, lingers on for a weirdly long time after Frisco without much interesting gameplay to pad it out (backtracking...), and whose cow quest is extremely missable, SoL is just so many miles ahead.'

KEEP GOING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWXgojWut_o
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9 hours away from now

So I was reading this fanfic where Hiccup and Toothless are arguing in dragon language because Hiccup was being self-deprecating. Toothless gives this epic speech about how he despite being the strongest dragon in the nest had stood aside and done nothing while the queen killed his nestmates and forced them to starve, but Hiccup, despite his lack of strength refused to do nothing and managed to kill her. And then Hiccup just goes "You kill Queen. I sat on you" and maybe it's not that funny and it may be the sleep deprivation but I've been laughing at this for a minute straight.

Me and Lila always carved dozens of jack o’ lanterns every October, so they’d absolutely saturate our lawn on Halloween night. It was our thing. But looking back on it, now that I’ve lost her, I just feel bad for the pumpkins. I almost relate to them, somehow. The way they were carved up, had everything of substance inside of them torn out, and left as hollow, rotting shells with forced smiles.
Needless to say, I didn’t cope with her death well. I didn’t want to cope with it. I wanted the world to drown in the black sludge of my grief. I loathed the people I saw going about their lives, unaware that the world had already ended the moment Lila died. The Earth shouldn’t keep spinning. Life shouldn’t go on. Not without her.
Even my relatives bringing me along on a trip to Kauai only made it worse. The most gorgeous place on Earth, and it made me sick with hatred. Nothing that beautiful deserved to exist if Lila wasn’t ever going to get to see it. It wasn’t fair.
I thought I’d never enjoy or care about anything again. Then I discovered media preservation.
It started with taking some of Lila’s old VHS tapes to a video repair place to fix some issues with the footage before it’s digitized. The job fascinated me. In a universe based on entropy, where everything inevitably fades away and is forgotten… restoring something lost is like snatching it from the jaws of death, right? Like flipping the bird to the universe and its so-called ‘natural order’. People die, but information doesn’t have to.
Now, it doesn’t matter how small — be it some god-awful plug-and-play licensed game, or a cereal commercial from 80’s — it’s my mission to recover it in as high a quality as I’m able, and make sure it’s freely available online for as long as possible.
A couple weeks ago, I came across a big haul. Four boxes of old VHS tapes offered up on E-Bay for dirt cheap. Most of the tapes were just recordings of Cheers episodes already preserved in higher qualities, but one Maxell E-240 caught my interest.
First of all, I’d never seen one so melted. Sure, sometimes they were left in an attic too long, and the colors and audio start to degrade. But this one looked like it had survived a house fire. It was covered in soot and the smell of smoke, and had the overall shape of a chocolate bar left out in the sun a little too long.
Second was the label, which read in neat sharpie: ᴇᴘɪꜱᴏᴅᴇ 4,679,329 ᴍᴀʀ 8 2035.
The casing was so disfigured, I had to bust it apart just pull out the tapes and respool them in a fresh cassette. I tried to iron out the creases in the tape as best I could, but I had no illusions about it accomplishing much — the mylar surface had been irreparably warped in places by whatever fire had half-melted the thing.
Imagine my despair at the sight of that dreaded ‘ɴᴏ ꜱɪɢɴᴀʟ’. I could clearly see the tape wasn’t blank, yet no amount of adjusting the tracking or trying different TVs or VCRs accomplished anything. Just as I was about to give up, though, the thing just suddenly started playing properly at the exact instant the clock struck 3 AM, as if it had only now decided to work. My all-nighter had paid off.
I didn’t dwell on the fact that this ‘miracle fix’ had been impossible. If I’d had any sense, I’d have torn the horrid thing out of my VCR and buried it beneath holy ground. Instead, fool I was, I sat down and watched.
At first, the thing seemed unwatchable. The audio was so distorted that the show’s theme song emerged as a low, crackling, staticky wail that made my head throb, and the logo was completely indistinguishable through the flickering and interference. I thought it was a lost cause for a moment. But then a figure appeared and cleared away the static, like Noah parting the Red Sea.
It was the sight of the show’s host that hooked me. He was just… perfect. Perfect in every way. I knew it just looking at him. Infinitely handsome and likable and charismatic, and he always said the exact perfect thing. The only issue is, I don’t remember a single thing about him now, in the same way you can’t remember a dream that seemed so clear to you while you were experiencing it. He just appears in my memory as this abstract blur in a sharp suit. Yet at the time, I was awestruck, even before he said a single word.
I can’t even remember a word he said. It was like he was speaking another language, one I felt as opposed to heard. I’ll try and transcribe it as best I can into words, but know that it’s only a pathetic imitation.
“... for another night of laughs, prizes, and fun for the whole family, with your host, #####!” I noticed that the audio and visual distortion seemed to suddenly intensify the instant he said his name, rendering it completely illegible. Idiot I was, I figured that was a coincidence. “Tonight is a night of celebration, folks, because thanks to the support of loyal viewers like you, we have just been approved for, get this: two hundred thousand more seasons!”
The “live studio audience” went wild with applause. I put that in scare quotes because, as far as I could tell, besides the host, the studio seemed completely empty. As if he was standing on a plain white stage that extended outwards into infinite darkness on all sides.
“For those just joining us, the game here is simple…” He explained that this was some sort of a trivia show. Every time a guest got an answer wrong, it brought them a little closer to some sort of unspecified ‘punishment’. And if they got it right? He smirked. “Well, they get to delay the inevitable.”
I wondered what he meant by ‘inevitable’. I didn’t have to wonder long.
The host gestured to a curtain that hadn’t been there moments ago, which raised to reveal a middle-aged man. You know the type — bushy mustache, gray hair, round-rimmed glasses. Kind of guy you’d have doing your plumbing. He couldn’t look any more out of place stood up and restrained in that — what the hell is that?
I recognized that metal coffin-looking thing from a medieval torture museum I went to once. The iron maiden. The lid hung open, countless long, needle-like blades poking inwards, threaten to poke a million new holes in him if it was shut.
His situation was not lost on him. “Where… where am I? What the hell is this!?”
“Oh, lucky guess!” The host ‘joked’. More canned laughter. “I know you always loved watching those trivia shows, Malcolm? Weren’t you always sitting there, grinding your teeth, seething that it wasn’t fair? That you should be the one up on stage, winning big?”
The man paused. Even he seemed mesmerized by the unreal perfection of the host before him. “I… this is a… game show?”
“All you have to do is answer a few questions! Think you can handle that, Malcolm?” He pulled out a cue card without waiting for an answer. “And our first question! What were you doing the night of February 18th, 1998?”
The man seemed baffled. “Just… sat on my couch watching the NFL, I think? I’m not sure how I’m supposed to remember —“
He let out a startled squeal as a horrid buzzer sounded. On cue, the lid slid a third of the way closed, making him flinch. “Oooh, I’m afraid that’s the wrong answer, Frank! But you know what? I’ll give you one more chance. What were you —“
“Following a girl home!” The man cried out. “F-from the bar. There, are you happy?”
“Cor-rect!” The canned audience began cheering! “Such honesty! Now, our second question: just what were you carrying while you followed her?”
He hesitated for a little too long. And then the buzzer sounded again, and the lid slid so near to closing that its blades began poking uncomfortably against his skin. He tried to press himself against the back of the maiden as well as his restraints would allow. “Jesus! Okay! A knife, a knife!”
“Awww, if only you’d said that just a second earlier!” Another big question. “Our third question: why, Malcolm? Why did you do it?”
That set Malcolm off. He started thrashing, clawing, screaming. “Let me out of this thing, you maniac! You can’t do this to me! Do you know who I am? Is this some sort of sick joke? My lawyers will have your head for this, you—“
And then the buzzer. All of a sudden, the lid slammed shut full-force, and the man was utterly silenced save for an unnatural, drawn-out wheeze. “Another wrong answer, Malcolm! I’m afraid I was looking for: ‘because if I can’t have her, no one can’!”
I admit it. I laughed. Out of shock more than anything. How was this allowed on TV? I took it as some sort of dark comedy show, and it was kind of satisfying to see that freaky character get his comeuppance. Still, there was something unnerving to me, seeing the man’s eyes through the openings in the maiden. Wide and red and terrified. They just looked a little… too real.
But the maiden disappeared as quickly as it came, before I could dwell on it too much. “Oh, envy! Definitely one of my favorite sins.” More laughter. “Stay tuned, folks! We’ve still got a night of fun and games in store for you! But first… how’s about a word from our sponsors?”
Cut to a corporate logo which I again couldn't recognize.
“This segment was made possible by Buer Health, which has recently announced a brilliant new initiative to protect our citizens from skin cancer by removing their skin completely.”
The camera cut to a massive industrial building, resembling a solid concrete cube around 50 meters in width and height. Its surface bore arcane symbols etched using carvings of wailing, tormented faces. The host would occasionally be rendered inaudible by a deafening metallic scraping from within, though he didn’t seem to notice. The only protrusion from the building’s cubic shape was a single smokestack, belching a scarlet red smoke into the atmosphere. A queue of gaunt figures waited at the entrance, herded and coerced by their grim overseers, and there were no words to describe the procession of scarlet ghouls limping out the building’s other end.
“Owing to the nonlinearity of time, the brand new Grand Skinpeeling Machine has spontaneously appeared several years before construction deadlines, and indeed, before it was even conceived of by anyone in our timeline. People have rushed all the way from Malebolge just to try this miracle of technology out on opening day, and so far, the reviews have been stellar!”
He shoved his microphone in the face of a shambling thing that could only scarcely be called a human. Tatters of flesh clung to its exposed musculature, blowing in the wind. Its eyes were the only hint of color in that sea of bloody red, and they were wide, white and terrified. The thing screamed and wailed for as long as it could before the last tendons connecting its jaw to its face snapped, and it was left to choke and gurgle.
“An amazing wail! The results speak for themselves, folks. The Grand Skinpeeling Machine is a hit!”
So far, I was still laughing along and having a good time. The sight of the next ‘guest’, however, started making me nervous.
It was an old lady.
She couldn’t be a day younger than sixty, the sort of sweet elderly woman who in a just world would be cooking chocolate chip cookies for her grandchildren in a comfy cottage somewhere. But here she was, tied to a metal chair, eyes wide, shaking like a leaf. Unlike the last contestant, she seemed to know exactly what was happening.
“In exchange for our loving endorsement, they’ve agreed to loan us one of their star employees. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for: the Liqisma!”
Something slunk from the darkness far behind her — or perhaps it’d be more apt to say that the darkness birthed it whole-cloth. It was like a living shadow, and it took my eyes a moment to register what I was even seeing.
How do I even begin describing this creature? I could say it looked almost human, or at least like something that may have been human long ago. Or I could start with its skin, which was all black and shiny as latex and seemingly smooth on first glance, but if you looked closer you’d realize it was covered in a million tiny reptilian scales, almost like a shark. Its head was a bald man’s, utterly devoid of any distinguishing features, like the basic stock template for a human being. It was notable only for a complete lack of pupils and irises, its eyes a pure white.
Its body defied basic biology in so many key ways, I had to stare it at for what felt like an eternity just to wrap my mind around its physiology. It was at least five or six meters long, by my estimate, composed of multiple human torsos stacked one on top of the other like segments of a centipede, each melding with the ones around it at the waist and shoulders. Each torso sported a pair of short, stubby arms that propelled it with terrifying grace. It ended with a pair of human legs, perpetually bent on their knees, beneath a ‘tail’ that looked more like its coccyx was poking free from its body.
The old last could clearly hear it, and kept futilely trying to turn her head around enough to get a peek at what stood behind her. I mouthed uselessly, don’t. You don’t want to know.
“Glad you could join us again, Miss Wethersby! Judging by our ratings last week, you seemed to have been a fan favorite!”
Her voice was so soft, I could barely hear it below the static. “Oh, God. Please, why won’t you people let me go? I’ve told you, I’ve never done anything, never hurt anybody. There must be some sort of—”
He waved a hand over her, and it seemed to forcefully snap her mouth shut. “Please, Miss Wethersby, save your breath for our questions!” Another cue card. “Your first question, my friend: where did you and your husband buy your first home?”
She had to think about it for a long time. Eventually, she cried out, “Alabama! Tuscaloosa, Alabama!”
“Ding ding ding! Why, you’re already doing better than our first contestant! Next question: what breed of dog was your childhood pet?”
She had a pained look on her face as she thought. Eventually, a timer started ticking down. It wasn’t visible, so it wasn’t clear how much time she had left exactly, but the sound it made got more shrill and high-pitched with every second. “Miss Wethersby, need I remind you that we have a time limit on this show?”
A tear ran down her cheek. “I… I keep telling you people, I don’t know. I have dementia, I can’t remember, please—”
That buzzer again. “I’m afraid that was the wrong answer! Liqisma?” The old lady shuddered at the sounds of hundreds of feet drawing a little closer to her. “Now, your first grandchild. What did he look like? What color were his eyes? His hair?”
She was crying harder now, like it hurt her that she couldn’t remember something so dear to her. “I told you I can’t remember! Why are you doing this to me!?”
“If you don’t remember them, why would they remember you?” The host mocked as the buzzer sounded, and the beast drew a little closer. “Really, do you believe they still even think about you? Or do you think they’re glad that the old bag of bones isn’t there sucking up their inheritance?”
This went on for… God, it could have been an hour. I was glued to the screen all the while, frozen with terror, praying for this nightmare to just end, for her to make it out okay somehow. He poured over every little detail of the life she lived and the people she loved, delighting in how little of it she could still recall.
And the thing grew closer, and closer… until she finally felt multiple pairs of hands resting upon her shoulders. The thing was looming over her now, and a long, black tongue a few feet in length emerged from its mouth and ran trails of dark saliva over the back of her head. She looked broken down, eyes raw from crying, and I could tell by the dampness of her dress that she’d wet herself.
“Now, Miss Wethersby, our time here has been fun, but I do believe it is time for our final question. Tell me, what is the name… of your only son?”
She couldn’t even answer anymore. She just stared ahead, like her mind was a million miles away. He cackled as the buzzer sounded one final time, and threw his cue cards aside. “Thank you for playing, Miss Wethersby. Better luck next time.”
I would say the thing unhinged its jaw like a snake, but that’d be an understatement. The way the thing’s face malformed and wrinkled and stretched as it opened its maw, it no longer looked even remotely human. Its jaws must have parted at least thirty centimeters apart, revealing a second, pharyngeal pair of jaws that lashed out and gripped the woman’s skull, pulling her headlong into that darkness.
I could hear bones crunching and snapping as its throat constricted down around her body, peristaltic muscles compacting her into a meat slurry, bit by bit. Yet she just wouldn’t die. Even as her skull and upper body were already crushed and compacted, organs and muscles pressed into mulch, she still kicked her legs, twitched her fingers, let out a gurgling that must have been some attempt at screaming. She was squirming even as the beast snapped its jaw shut around the last of her, condemning her to whatever torments awaited her inside the creature.
And all the while, that horrible laughter. “Don’t worry, folks! She’ll be back next week! And the next. And the next…”
Needless to say, I wasn’t having fun anymore. In fact, I had to turn away and fight the urge to throw up. I stood, about to turn the TV off and —
“Ah, ah, ah! Don’t touch that dial, now!” I froze. There was something chilling about the way he said that, staring right into the screen as if reacting to what I was doing. I hated that grin on his face. “The real show is just beginning.”
And with the barely restrained excitement of a child on Christmas morning, he yanked back another curtain, and I recognized everything.
I recognized that crappy bootleg knockoff Always Sunny in Philadelphia jacket that was so gaudy and terrible it instantly became her favorite thing in her wardrobe. I recognized those subtle hints of slight acne she disguised as fake freckles. I recognized the way her gray eyes would remind me of those overcast mornings at the beach at Hilton Head and pointing out all the cannonball jellyfish washed up on the sands. I recognized that tattoo of the name ʀᴏᴄᴋʏ, how I’d held her all night long as she cried into my shirt after her childhood cat had died.
It was Lila.
I shuddered, gasped, fell from my seat as if I’d been punched in the stomach and the air had been knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be real. I was dreaming right now. I must be. I just had to wake up.
But I couldn’t wake up. Nothing I could do dispelled the sight of her curled up in that… that thing. That bronze statue of a bull, horns jutting on either side of a head that roaring silently up at the heavens, all while the love of my life was locked in its hollowed out belly, visible only through a pane of glass. I could hear her cry out in shock at where she’d found herself, and every whimper felt like it drove a knife through my chest.
The host soaked in the moment. It was ecstasy for him, the suffering of it all. He stared dead into the camera like he was looking right at me as she called, “What is this? Where am I?”
“Why, I have good news, my dear Lila! You’re exactly where every American dreams of being: you’re on TV.” He pointed to the camera. “And we have a very special guest in the audience tonight. Your very own beloved Jackson!”
I shuddered, hearing my own name ooze from his fetid lips. His façade of perfection was slipping, and there was something so profoundly ugly beneath it. Her eyes snapped to the camera, confused, despairing. “Jackson? Baby? What — what’s happening? What is this?”
I don’t know, I thought, gripping the sides of the TV so hard my knuckles turned white, but I’m going to get you out of there, baby. I’m going to find whoever did this and I’m going to bury them all so far beneath that studio that they’ll never-
“I’m afraid Jackson hasn’t joined us quite yet, my dear. But if you truly love him, surely you’ll give him a show to remember, won’t you?” He taunted her. “All I want, after all, is to ask you a few questions! In fact, I’ll offer you a special deal: get even a single answer right, and I’ll let you go free! But get one wrong and, well…”
On cue, a fire was lit beneath her. Small, smoldering for now, but she whimpered as she noticed the heat. We both realized in that instant what this was. By now, I was screaming things I can’t repeat here, and slamming my hands against the TV screen as if I could reach through and save her.
She bit her lip and acquiesced. Not like she had any room to argue. The host grinned and readied a cue card. “Your first question: where are you, Lila?”
“I… I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”
“You do know, Lila. You know exactly where you are.” He smirked at her. “Here’s a free hint: what’s the last thing you remember, before you woke up here?
She thought about it… and choked back a sob, visibly shaking as the realization slowly settled in. “But… but why? I… I…”
The horrible wail of the buzzer cut her off. “Oooh, too bad! I’m afraid you’ve run out of time!”
Seemingly as if on its own, the fire doubled in size. Sparks licked the belly of the bronze bull, and began to ever-so-slowly heat the surface. She pawed around in the tight confines, searching for any reprieve from the scalding heat all around her as the metal grew hot like it’d been left out in the sun on a summer’s day. “Please! Oh, God, let me out of this thing! It hurts! It hurts!”
The host seemed to breathe in her pain as if stealing a moment’s indulgence. “Now that there is no doubt about where you are, my dear, let us proceed to the second question.” He switched to his next card. “Did you believe in God, in the end?”
“O-of course!” She pled her case as if she was being tried in court. “My entire life… every day I gave to the poor, helped the sick, did whatever I could to honor Hi-“
“I’m afraid you misunderstood my question. I asked, did you believe in him at the end? The very moment your pitiful little life was snuffed out?”
“I always believed! I’d never forsake Him!”
“Yes, yes, I know. You lived a good and holy life, didn’t you?” He cackled. “But what of the very end? You and your little husband were so excited to deliver your first little baby boy. But o, tragedy! It all went wrong, didn’t it? Your precious little boy didn’t make it through childbirth… and you followed closely behind.”
“That whole business with the botched pregnancy, it was… what do you call it? Ah, yes. A ‘test of faith’. And I’m afraid you failed. In your final moments, you watched the light fade from your child’s eyes, and you assumed — wisely, in my humble opinion — that no ‘kind’ and ‘loving’ God would allow something like that to happen.” He laughed. “Funny how after a lifetime of dutiful service, all it takes is one little mistake at the end… to bring you here. To us.”
I’d never seen such depths of despair in a person’s eyes. Such emptiness. Like with every word, he’d been scooping out another piece of her until she was hollow. And then that buzzer roared again, more shrill than ever, and I could barely see her little window through the smoke and flames. The belly of the bull was turning orange in places, and I could hear her flesh start to sizzle like meat on a grill. There are no words for the noises she made. No words at all.
“And our last, final question,” he continued. “What were your last words to your poor, beloved Jackson?”
“I love you!” I called out the answer. Bloody fingerprints stained the TV screen from my slamming my hands against it, as I screamed the answer over and over. “I love you, I love you, I love you!” At some point, I forgot that there was ever a question. I was just screaming it at her as if hoping that she could hear it, that it could bring her a modicum of comfort in that place.
The buzzer sounded again. I couldn't bring myself to look. All I could hear was the roaring of the bull, and the steam rising from its bronze nostrils.
The curtain fell. Silence drowned the sound. The host dropped all pretense that he hadn’t been speaking directly to me. “Now, Jackson. You just might be one of my new favorite audience members this show had ever had. I know this must have been hard for you. But if you’ll just stay tuned, I have one more show I know you’re certain to love!”
I didn’t bother to touch the remote. After all, nothing could be worse than what I’d just seen, right?
Wrong. Horror wracked me as the curtain rose, and I saw the man chained to a chair. I pulled away like a caveman witnessing fire, cringing and stuttering, face wet with sweat. It was the sort of fear that worked its way into your bones like a bad chill, that left you shaking, teeth chattering.
It was me.
An older me, sure. But not by much. Ten years, maybe. A gaunt and hollow version of me, one twisted by ten years of depression and hard drugs. But it was unmistakable.
His eyes widened as he recognized the host. “Oh — oh God, God please no! It can’t be — oh Christ, let me out of this chair, you —“
“Come, now! We wouldn’t want to use the lord’s name in vain, would we? I mean, that would be a sin!” The host laid a hand on the other me’s shoulder. “It may have been a few years since you watched our program, but I’m sure you remember the rules, don’t you, old friend?”
The other me was wordless, on the verge of hyperventilating, just as I was. The host was giddy with delight. “Now! Our first and only question is one I’m sure our viewer will be very interested in: what sins, exactly, do you think landed you here?”
The other me tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat. I could see it in his eyes. The years of self-destruction, the bitter hopelessness, the whirlpool of nihilism and vice and decay. The suffocating depths of a man. The darkness. How could he put it into words?
The sound of the buzzer was like a pig’s squeal. “Mmm, I’m afraid that our viewer is going to have to figure that out for himself! In the meantime, your punishment? Well, we wouldn’t want to spoil anything…”
The curtains slowly began to fall just as a couple other of those black, grotesque monstrosities emerged from the darkness. The curtain covered them all before I could get a good look at their obscene, twisted, asymmetrical figures. All I could hear was the crunching, the sound of skin tearing like paper, the screaming that went on for longer and louder than a human throat or vocal chords could endure.
The image and audio were beginning to distort, glitch, burn away. The tapes were physically melting as they played. My VCR was starting to overheat, sparks pouring from its front panel. The host voice jumped around in tone, his voice fading into the static blur as the tapes bubbled and boiled and distorted. “But, my friends, I’m afraid that concludes tonight’s episode of our show! So, with a final farewell to our dear, beloved viewer, Jackson…”
Just before the image melted away, the camera seemed to jump forward until his face filled the screen, his eyes piercing into mine as he cackled in that singsong voice.
“See you sooooon~”

FYI, this is a story COLLECTION. Lots of standalones technically. So, you can basically start to read at any chapter, no pre-read of the other chapters needed technically (other than maybe getting better descriptions of characters than: Adam Vir=human, Krill=antlike alien, Sunny=tall alien, Conn=telepathic alien). The numbers are (mostly) only for organization of posts and continuity.
OC Written by Charlie Stastarrfallknightrise,
Typed up and then posted here by me.
Proofreading and language check for some chapters by u/Finbar9800 u/BakeGullible9975 u/Didnotseemecomein and u/medium_jock
Future Lore and fact check done by me.
The plot thickens!
Previous First [Next](link)
Want to find a specific one, see the whole list or check fanart?
Here is the link to the master-post.
The Rundi pilot maneuvered his ship around a chunk of space debris, cutting low as he watched the slow and leisurely path of the rocket as it began on its trajectory towards the moon. Radar was almost impossible to use in the deadly debris field these humans called an orbit, so it was up to his eyes to make out any incoming hostiles.
They circled low and then wide around the slow-moving rocket, keeping their distance while also keeping an eye out. It was easy enough, as the drone was covered in cameras and sensors, which allowed them to see from almost every angle. A human might have been better at this, but right now they were the only ones they could trust.
[…]
A green folder rested atop the lectern as the President of the UN gave her halting, and to the chairwoman it seemed, unenthusiastic speech. The humans down below didn't seem to notice, making her wonder if she was simply imagining things, though a part of her said that was not the case.
She had been suspicious of the UN president from the very beginning, the very beginning when she was given power after the first launch of the enterprise, and they had been forced to deal with her during treaty negotiations. At every step there seemed to be some sort of obstacle, something wrong, some reason that the humans could just not accept. It went on behind closed doors and in quiet whispered conversations. But luckily for them, people like Adam Vir and Admiral Kelly had been there to smooth things over between the two factions.
The chairwoman knew better than most, that there were only a few humans in the galaxy holding everything together.
And the last thing she wanted was bad relations, or to go to war with this species. It would be a nightmare.
She shifted in her seat as she listened to the speech. The valley below her still had traces of smoke let off by burning so much fossil fuel at once. She imagined that such a stunt wasn't entirely great for the atmosphere of the planet, though as far as she knew humans tended to run on sustainable clean energy these days.
The Chairwoman stepped down from the little podium and into the back where she could not be seen, leaning in so she could hear the words whispered from her assistant,
"The drones are deployed, and so far we have not met any resistance.”
She nodded slowly,
"Good work, keep an eye out."
[…]
The UN president felt her fingers digging into the soft paper of the green folder. The red one was lying discarded under the lectern, and she was having trouble concentrating, forcing herself to remember that this wasn't over. She glanced into the crowd, expecting to see that strange white face staring up at her from the throng of people, but there was nothing.
Had she seen it as in her imagination, or did she really see an alien face staring back at her?
She glanced upwards, towards where the rocket had vanished, only half paying attention to the practiced words that dribbled from her mouth. She finished her speech and the people below clapped and cheered heartily, though she didn't much feel like clapping with them.
She turned on her heel and walked down to the back of the stage to where her entourage was waiting for her. Admiral Massie was sitting on one end and Admiral Kelly was sitting at the other, the two of them doing their damndest to ignore each other at all costs.
She sat down next to Admiral Massie, arms crossed over her chest as he leaned in to speak with her.
"That didn't exactly go as planned."
He muttered softly.
"It will if your men are ready."
She snapped back, her palms cold and sweaty.
Admiral Massie nodded,
"Of course, they should come out when they reach the densest part of the debris field, that way we can make it look like some unexpected collision."
He glanced towards the lectern,
"So I would keep a hold of that red folder of yours."
On the other set of chairs, Admiral Kelly was giving them a sidelong glance. Everyone knew that she was in Admiral Vir's camp, licking his boots at every opportunity. It would be within their best interest to keep silent when she was around.
The UN president leaned back in her seat,
"You should be on your way, Admiral. We will have time to talk later."
He stood and nodded slowly,
"Of course madame president."
He turned to walk away, catching the eye of Admiral Kelly as he stepped past. The two of them didn't much like each other, though as the head of the OGI (Office of Galactic intelligence) Admiral Massie had enough pull to keep Kelly in her place.
The UN president turned her head away. Not wanting to draw attention to herself.
[…]
Admiral Kelly glanced over at the UN president as Admiral Massie passed by. There was something about those two spending time together that she didn't like. Granted it was more than likely the two of them were having some sweaty, wrinkly liaisons out of hours which she didn't really want to think about, but if that was the case then he could easily be pressing his planetary isolationist views off on her.
Kelly did not think highly of the UN presidency. Right now, it seemed mostly concerned with power and political favors with the people, rather than doing the right thing. Plus, she found the president herself to be superficially charming, but easily manipulated by the wrong people. Fear mongering worked the best on her, which is why she worried about Massie and his effect on her to begin with.
She found herself digging her nails into her palms as she thought about it.
”Please help us.”
Admiral Kelly shot up in her seat looking around as she tried to find the source of the noise, or the voice. She turned in her seat expecting to find someone whispering in her ear, but there was nothing. She pressed at the implant along the side of her neck wondering if someone had called her and she just hadn't noticed?
”Look up.”
Jolted again, lifting her eyes towards the sky and the burning sun. She threw up a hand to block her vision, and as she did, she thought she saw a shape floating there against the backdrop of the sun.
She squinted hard trying to make it out but was having trouble.
”Now look into the crowd.”
She turned her head down, still not sure where the sound could be coming from, but as she looked into the crowd, she saw a strange sight. One of the people was wearing a dark hoodie, and was turned away from the direction which the rest of the crowd was facing. Their hood was pulled low, but ever so subtly, they lifted their head to reveal a porcelain white face, with large dark eyes.
Admiral Kelly went very still as she stared at the starborn.
“Not a starborn, a halfbreed. My name is Eris, I am Admiral Vir's... daughter”
Oh... oh, yes she had heard about the starborn hybrid from one of his reports.
"What do you want."
She mouthed quietly.
“We need your help, the UN president is planning to have Admiral Vir Killed, and Admiral Massie is on his way to make the order, please, you have to do something."
Admiral Kelly jolted to her feet, very quickly glancing at the UN president in shock and horror before she was able to capture her emotions. The UN president looked up to her sudden movement, and Admiral Kelly had to fight to keep her face neutral as the woman looked up at her.
"Are you feeling well Admiral?”
She could feel the sweat dripping down her face and the nape of her neck, but she remained as calm as possible as she took a deep breath,
"I... Am suddenly very dizzy. I think it's the heat."
"You should sit down, have someone bring you some water."
The woman said, her voice calm and clear as if she hadn't just ordered the murder of Adam Vir.
"No I... I think I need to walk for a minute and find some shade. You will excuse me?"
The UN president shrugged and turned back to staring at the sky, giving Admiral Kelly time to step forward and hurry after General Massi's retreating figure.
[…]
General Massie stepped into mission control and walked down the blank empty corridors. No one was here, they were all either in the control room or out celebrating the successful launch. It had been a sight to see, two-thousand-year-old technology working for one more time, but personally General Massie saw it as completely obsolete and a useless waste of government capital.
That was something they could have been using to help fortify earth's defense nexus. Out of all the useless things Admiral Vir had supported, at least he had agreed that they needed SOME form of defense against extraterrestrial attack.
General Massie made a face…
Though he wouldn't doubt Admiral Vir would have been totally fine leaving their planet with its pants down in order to let those Xenos fuck them over.
Everyone and their dog knew that Admiral Vir preferred alien cock over his own kind.
The thought made Admiral Massie cringe.
It was a well-kept secret among the UNSC, but the man wasn't nearly as secretive as he liked to think he was. Rumors of his infatuation with the stupid blue beetle alien had reached command almost as soon as it began. The only reason they didn't allow it to leak was that it would make the UNSC look bad to the rest of earth.
And Jupiter how he hated that man.
Stupid, juvenile egotistical xeno fucker!
Today was the day all of that came to an end!
He cut right, just before the doors to mission control and walked down two more hallways, finally opening a small side door into, what might have looked from the outside, like an equipment closet. He stepped over a mop and bucket and sat down at an old console, which he fired up with the flick of a button.
"Flight 1 this is Earth 1 over."
"Roger earth one this if slight one, in position over."
He turned on the screen, giving himself time to look the radar over, as twenty dots appeared on screen. Those were twenty Thunderhawks they had slowly appropriated over the intervening year.
With a place as big as the universe to cover, it was pretty easy to lose a few jets in the shuffle. He could see them now, illuminated as little green dots on his screen, hiding in the debris.
"Flight one this is Earth one, Operation “After Apollo” is go. Now remember boys and girls, make it look like an accident. Over."
*"Roger that Earth one. Over and out."
[…]
"You TRAITOR!"
Admiral Massie spun in his seat, eyes wide and wild as Admiral Kelly stood in the doorway. She could feel her skin growing hot with absolute rage as she stalked forward over the open floor. In one hand she held up the small recording device Conn had handed to her outside the building, and on it held proof of this man's order. On the screen behind him twenty little dots burst to life.
She was too late.
The man slowly got to his feet as Kelly aimed her handgun at him, her grip steady, her aim true.
"Call off your dogs."
She snarled,
Admiral Massie slowly lifted his hands, before slowly leaning forward in his seat towards the intercom button. She stepped forward, watching him intently as he leaned over the console pressing down on the button.
"Flight one this is earth one..."
Her eyes flickered up to the screen waiting to see them pause.
But before she knew what was happening an elbow came up striking her on the hand and causing the gun to spin out of her grip. Admiral Massie turned and tackled her to the floor, his nearly 300 lb body crushing her to the floor.
The wind was knocked out of her and she gasped as he struggled to pin her to the ground.
Her hat had flown off and her bun became undone as he drew back a fist to punch her. She was able to block it with her forearms as he raged and went for her face. The blows rained down on her from above with an onslaught of power she wasn't expecting but should have.
She took another gasping breath, and then with a surge of adrenaline she bucked, throwing him forward where she grabbed one of his arms and bucked again, forcing him to his side and onto his back. Still gripping his arm, she threw herself sideways, throwing her legs over his chest and struggling with his arm to pull it flat.
He kicked and grabbed at her legs with his other hand painfully gripping her calves as his nails dug into her skin and drew blood. The pain was incredible, but she finally got his arm down tucked tight to her chest, her legs across his chest, and then she jerked her hips sharply upward.
Admiral Massie screamed as his elbow snapped backwards.
She let go of him and scrambled towards the console, but at the last moment he grabbed her by the foot and hauled her back to the ground, one arm hanging limp and useless at his side. He clawed at her with one hand, and she rolled onto her back, kicking up at his face with her boot catching him square in the chin.
He staggered back as she crawled to the console and reached to adjust the frequency, ready to call in lunar support.
There was a sharp click behind her, and she froze, turning in her seat to find Admiral Massie standing behind her gun held in his good hand.
Blood leaked from his nose and down onto the front of his uniform, staining the grey fabric red,
"Nice try, Kelly."
[…]
Donovan Red waited, spinning slowly as he watched the progress of the distant rocket. Inside his helmet his breathing was cold and calm as, ranging all around him, his other men and women waited as well. Their ships had been outfitted with proper weapons as they had ridden here in the cargo hold of the Omen. The group of them weren't soldiers or trained fighter pilots, so he didn't imagine this would be easy, but it was going to have to do.
"Red, this is Apollo 11 do you copy?”
"Yeah Cinderella, I copy."
"See anything?"
"Nope not a..."
He paused,
"Wait..."
There was something, something he thought he saw detach itself from another piece of space junk,
"Hold that thought Apollo."
He detached from his own bit of space junk and inched forward.
A thunderhawk? What would one of those be doing here?
It began to accelerate.
He accelerated after it.
Up ahead the rocket was growing larger and larger in his view.
“Thunderhawk has made lock.”
The cool female voice said from his console.
"Oh shit, Admiral r-“
He didn't have time to finish his sentence as a small ball-like-silver ship came pelting down from nowhere, blasting the Thunderhawk in the wing with a sharp burst of laser fire. It's wing exploded and it went careening in the opposite direction as the silver ball whizzed past.
"What the fuck!?"
He turned to fly after it, but was stopped.
"Red, this is Wendy, stand down that's a Rundi UAV."
"Rundi? I thought it was the Rundi we were worried about!?”
He called in confusion.
"Yeah, but that thunderhawk had locked in on Apollo 11. It looks like the Rundi are helping."
He grunted and cursed under his breath,
"Boys and girls, if you see a silver ball stand down, those are on our side."
Just then another Thunderhawk shot over his head. He cursed again and pulled himself into a sharp upward turn cutting after the Thunderhawk and locking on. His lock cut off their attempts to shoot down the rocket, and they were forced to dive under as he followed after. He followed, spinning right and left around debris as the Thunderhawk attempted to escape.
It cut upward, just in time for a bright pink jet with graffiti words on the side to shoot out of nowhere.
The Thunderhawk exploded in a cloud of debris as Wendy roared by.
"Good shot, girl!”
He said over his radio.
"Thanks boss. Now let’s give them hell!"
[…]
Admiral Vir floated before the console, knuckles white and unable to do anything. A silent explosion flashed in his vision to the right as quickly as it had begun. Richards and Chavez started with wide eyes and dropped mouths.
"Admiral what the hell is going on!?”
Adam took a deep breath,
"It seems as if we are under attack."
The two of them exchanged glances,
"From who? What the fuck!?!"
Adam turned where he stood to look at the two of them,
"I am sorry I got you two into this mess, but the isolationists have been gunning for me for a few months now, and it seems as if now things have come to a head.”
"What are we going to do!"
"Radio Houston."
Chavez hurried to do as ordered, but when she did, they heard only static,
"Shit... Something is jamming our coms."
Adam took a deep breath,
"Well I guess all we have is Donovan to protect us. Lets' hope they do it right."
[…]
Admiral Massie laughed,
"You're as dumb as you look Kelly."
She stood, slowly wiping blood from her cheek as she turned to look down the barrel of the gun. Her own gun.
She didn't generally tend to agree with Massie, but this time he did have a point. Surprisingly though she was very calm,
"You aren't going to get away with this."
She glanced over to where the little silver recording device lay in the shadows under one of the chairs.
Massie was too amped to notice.
"Doesn't matter. I will have done my duty to my planet and my people, saving them from alien lovers like you and that bastard Vir."
"Whose Idea was this, the President or yours?"
She held her hands out to the side.
"Do you think that dipshit was smart enough to come up with a plan like mine?"
Kelly raised an eyebrow,
"Is it wise to incriminate your friends along with you?"
"That bitch? Heh, I could care less. And if I am going down, she is going down with me. The president may think it was all her idea, but it was mine all along, she was following my orders, whether she believes it or not, and once Adam Vir and YOU are dead, then it doesn't matter what we did, because diplomatic relations will dissolve, and it will be all over."
He lifted the gun to her face,
"Goodbye Kelly."
She remained very still as the shadow fell over him from behind,
"May I say one last thing?”
He paused.
"Turn around."
"Very funny!”
He lifted the gun again and pulled the trigger.
There was a sharp crack and thud as metal hit metal. Kelly flinched and held up her hands, but opened her eye after a moment as no pain came.
Admiral Massie lay on the floor face down.
Kelly reached down quickly to grab her gun, looking up to where Sunny was standing in the doorway holding her pearlescent white spear. Behind her floated the starborn Conn and the hybrid.
She took a deep breath,
"Great timing you three.”
Sunny nodded,
"Anytime."
Admiral Kelly turned and lunged for the comms, switching the frequency to the lunar station only to find she couldn't get through,
"Damn it."
She cursed, turning to look at Sunny and the others,
"I was too late, the ships have already been deployed."
She paused and looked down, grabbing the recording device from off the floor tossing it to the hybrid who caught it with some difficulty,
"Run that to one of the media outlets, convince them it is important and leak it as soon as you can. We don't want her to have time to cover her own ass."
Eris nodded and shot off in the other direction.
Sunny knelt down to help her restrain Admiral Massie.
Just then the sound of feet came thundering up the hall and they looked up to see the Chairwoman of the GA and her assistants skid around a corner. Sunny's eyes narrowed as she crouched low leveling her spear.
"Did you catch him?"
The Chairwoman asked,
"No thanks to you."
Sunny snarled, but the chairwoman waved her off,
"I lost contact with my drones, but they should be out helping to protect Admiral Vir. I am sorry I couldn't do more, but it was all I could do not to show my hand too early."
Admiral Kelly stood slowly,
"You knew about this?"
The charwoman shook her head,
"Not this specifically, but I have been trying to find the source of the assassination attempts on Admiral Vir's life. I've had discreet escorts on him for the past few months while I tried getting in contact with my people in the criminal underworld and I called the hit on him with those pirates, knowing who Captain Kell was, hoping that he could get more information out of the pirates that I could."
Sunny stared at her rage flickering across her face,
"You called a hit on him!"
The charwoman did not seem perturbed,
"Those pirates couldn't have... How do the humans say... Hit their way out of a paper bag. I have been attempting to come in contact with the leader of the anti-alliance for the past few months. I have been trying to convince them I am on their side, and that was part of my ruse, as well as knowing Admiral Vir was captain Kell. During my investigation it became clear that someone within the UN was involved though I couldn't have said who."
"And why should we believe you aren't just covering your own ass?”
The chairwoman hissed,
”Do you really think I want to make an enemy out of the strongest species in the galaxy!? Not on your life! I am not stupid. Besides, I owe Admiral Vir my life. I admit I have done some irreparable things in order to keep the alliance going, but those moves were calculated, and Vir was always protected.”
[…]
One of the silver UAV's exploded and Red had to dodge to the side to avoid the flying debris. He cut right and then left keeping as fast as he could possibly go as he cut up through the chunks of metal and locked onto the back of a Thunderhawk. There was a sharp click and then a silent explosion which he rolled out of the way to avoid. He had sent one of his men off to make contact with earths forces for backup.
They were good, but these men and women were made for combat, and despite their best work only four out of twenty of them had been destroyed, and their numbers were dwindling fast. He cut right before one of the Thunderhawk’s, forcing it to turn away from the rocket and cut down in another direction. He could only imagine the fear of those inside the rocket as they watched helplessly at the fight raging on around them.
He spun down and under, cutting off another Thunderhawk coming in the opposite direction.
There was no way they were going to keep up with this for long.
Their only chance was earths forces reacting quickly.
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Want to find a specific one, see the whole list or check fanart?
Here is the link to the master-post.
Intro post by me
OC-whole collection
Patreon of the author
Thanks for reading! As you saw in the title, this is a cross posted story written by starrfallknightrise and I'll just upload some of it here for you guys, if you are interested and want to read ahead, the original story-collection can be found on tumblr or wattpad to read for free. (link above this text under "OC:..." ) It is the Empyrean Iris story collection by starfallknightrise. Also, if you want to know more about the story collection i made an intro post about it, so feel free to check that out to see what other great characters to look forward to! (Link also above this text). I have no affiliations to the author; just thought I’d share some of the great stories you might enjoy a lot!
Obviously, I have Charlie’s permission to post this and for the people already knowing the stories, or starting to read them: If you follow the link and check out the story you will see some differences. I made some small (non-artistic) changes, mainly correcting writing mistakes, pronoun correction and some small additional info here and there of things which were not thought of/forgotten or even were added/changed in later stories (like the “USS->UNSC” prefix of Stabby, Chalar=/->Sunny etc). As well as some "biggemajor" changes in descriptions and info’s for the same stringency/continuity reason. That can be explained by the story collection being, well a story collection at the start with many standalone-stories just starring the same people, but later on it gets more to a stringent storyline with backstories and throwbacks. (For example Adam Vir has some HEAVY scars over his body, following his bones, which were not really talked about up till half the collection, where it says it covers his whole body and you find out via backflash that he had them the whole time and how he got them, they just weren't mentioned before. However, I would think a doctor would at least see these scars before that, especially since he gets analyzed, treated and goes shirtless/in T-shirts in some stories). So TLDR: Writing and some descriptions are slightly changed, with full OK from the author, since he himself did not bother to correct these things before.

Oh my God was this list hard to rank 😅 I took about I would say at least 15 hours of my time into this and all of that was just to rank them at a certain level without much to say. First off we have about 8 Tiers from F,D,C,B,A,S,SS, and Premium though I barely put much into their. Remember this is just an opinion so don't take too harshly if your favorite episode isn't high on my list. For some episodes I may not say much or anything since this was too long originally.
F Tier, these are my least favorite episodes and most likely I have a vendetta against them in some way that made it hard for me to like them

1. S2 Ep 8 Nebraska- I hate Lori and I think this episode expresses it, most definitely a vendetta. I didn't exactly like the stuff with Hershel and recovering though it was okay, but lori made some questionable decisions to go off on her own to look for Rick even though she should know he's fine seriously. She wrecks a car and then barely dies from a walker, mind you she is pregnant and shouldn't do these things easily my least favorite episode.
   
2. S10 Ep 21 Diverged- I honestly forget this episode so much since it has nothing truly interesting or important to the story
   
3. S7 Ep 6 Swear- this episode feels slow paced and dull due to oceanside being not seen well for me and I feel like Tara put on the best performance she could for it.
   
4. S8 Ep 2 The Damned- this episode to me was just a lot of action and in the walking dead I don't want that. We see a couple of characters die (including Francine 🪦 I absolutely loved her character and hate how she died here :[ mindless) Erics death started here, but it just wasn't impactful enough.
   
5. S3 Ep 11 I Ain't a Judas- Andrea is a boring character in the show and I hate her in this episode. The focus should've been on the prison honestly and maybe If she killed the Governor I would've understood her more.
   
6. S10 Ep 20 Splinter- if most of the episode was real I would've loved it, but they weren't...
   
7. S3 Ep 5 Say the Word- Andrea just isnt much good in this episode and Rick going crazy wasn't a fun idea to me.
   
8. S8 Ep 3 Monsters- aside from the one fight with Rick I really didn't care much for it again for the fighting and having Morales return and die felt out of place.
   
9. S2 Ep 2 Bloodletting- the group searching for Sophia was okay for a concept, but this episode was okay and went slow paced for me until the end.
   

D Tier, moving on these episodes were for me mostly just forgettable or boring so I won't say much except they weren't all bad

1. S1 Ep 3 Tell it to the frogs- first off S1 won't be all high because I'm ranking EVERY episode, but this one felt slow in pace more as well compared to the last two. Shane was a badass though.
   
2. S11 Ep 3 Hunted- Forgettable... Not much to say.
   
3. S5 Ep 11 The Distance- Forgot entirely this was an episode, after rewatch still don't like it except for Aaron.
   
4. S2 Ep 9 Trigger finger- It was a bit better than Nebraska, mostly cause of the Randel scenes.
   
5. S7 Ep 14 The Other Side- Sasha somewhat makes a noble decision.
   

163-162. S11 Episodes 22 following 21- 22 had the Warden being uninteresting as a villain and 21 was boring as can be which is why they sit besides each other.

1. S8 Ep 7 Time for After- I don't like the plans they have to deviate from Rick and him going to Jadis again feels like a horrible decision on his part.
   
2. S9 Ep 8 Evolution- The ambience is the best part, though I hated Jesus' s death as it felt like a bad sendoff.
   

C Tier, These are a bunch of boring and hard to follow episodes that have some highs that keep it out of former tiers.

1. S2 Ep 1 What lies Ahead- I liked the RV scene with Andrea, but what follows is dull.
   
2. S11 Ep 4- The pope is somewhat average.
   
3. S7 Ep 12 Say Yes- The carnival was a nice scenery for TWD, but they had too many fake outs with the walker "shooting" at them and the deer fake out.
   
4. S9 Ep 7 Stradivarius- The Search for Eugene feels tiring to follow what's happening and I ended up watching the episodes once and never again because of it.
   
5. S2 Ep 4 Cherokee Rose- Watching the episode is fun because of the well, though I feel like it was stupid as an idea as the group should have more common sense before doing something dumb.
   
6. S2 Ep 3 Save The Last One- Shane was horrifying, but the rest was dull.
   
7. S8 Ep 14 Still gotta mean something- Rick felt unnecessarly cold hearted in this episode killing off the Saviors that helped him which I didn't like, though Jared got a well deserved death.
   
8. S4 Ep 9 After -It was okay watching Carl try to scavenge while Rick was injured and I liked the scene with his shoe being lost.
   
9. S7 Ep 5 Go Getters- the episode itself wasn't bad yet I never really enjoyed it too much aside from Maggie being a badass and the ending was pretty good.
   
10. S4 Ep 10 Inamtes- Inmates was a pretty well rounded episodes showing off some of the group which I liked seeing Tyreese the most.
    
11. S8 Ep 6 The King, The Widow, and Rick- the episode was pretty lackluster for me and I didn't really appeal to seeing the garbage people much in this or everyone going to attack the saviors which was a dumb move to do. Ezekiel was probably the most fun of the episode.
    
12. S3 Ep 16 Welcome to the Tombs- the finale for season 3 has always been horrible as it barely gives tension between the Governor and Ricks group, it just felt unfitting for a finale.
    
13. S11 Ep 8 For blood- it was a okay Mid Season finale to say the least (sorry, 1/3 season finale). I did like some of the parts in it with Maggie which is why it sits higher than others.
    
14. S5 Ep 7 Crossed- I thoroughly enjoyed the chase scene between the three officers and Ricks group, but that was about it.
    
15. S4 Ep 13 Alone- I liked watching the parts of the group split up, except for Maggie, Bob, and Sasha as they felt very uneventful to me. What makes this episode better had to be the part about Daryl and Beth with the ending of the introduction to Joe's group.
    
16. S7 Ep 10 New Best Friends- a lot of these parts I forgot about in this episode when it came to the Kingdom though after rewatching it I enjoyed those parts more than the Garbage people. I just honestly think Jadis's group is uninteresting and makes for no substance.
    
17. S10 Ep 15 The Tower- I sometimes forget about this episode and it's premise with Beta, but I think it holds up enough for a weird one and The stuff with princess was okay.
    
18. S9 Ep 3 Warning signs- I think the episode was okay, I just didn't like Season 9 A that much...
    

B tier, now we get to the episodes I could watch again in the past 6 months or binge through without skipping

1. S11 Ep 2 Acheron Part 2- this was close to being put into C tier since I really hated some parts about it like how they left Gage to die and still had to fight off dozens of walking regardless. The group in the first two episodes seem to switch off and on from good to bad.
   
2. S7 Ep 4 Service- for some reason people hate this episode and I can't see why except for the fact it mainly deals with Negan at Alexandria; in my opinion it was him and a couple other characters who saved season 7 and 8 for me.
   
3. S10 Ep 3 Ghosts- I forget the episode...
   
4. S10 Ep 7 Open Your Eyes- I thought the episode was fine as I don't hate Siddiq and all, though I liked and hated the ending as I loved the twist of Dante and hated that Siddiq had to die so early on.
   
5. S6 Ep 7 Heads Up- I didn't like the twist of Glenn and all, but I liked the suspicion with Carol and Morgan as well as the Ending being dramatic.
   
6. S8 Ep 11 Dead or Alive- it's not good to know when you remember an episode due to bad things. Daryl has been making more off decisions for the character and Tara seems to be completely Reckless now making me hate her moving forward.
   
7. S4 Ep 4 Indifference- The Scenes with Carol and Rick we're amusing with crude Humour as well as some more tense scenes in my opinion and I hated/liked when Rick told Carol she couldn't come back.
   
8. S3 Ep 6 Hounded- honestly I would've rather put this episode a little bit higher due to Merle (probably my favorite charcater which contributes to a lot of episodes being higher) being a badass while fighting Michonne and pulling out puns as well. The reason it doesn't get higher is still due to Rick and the phone situation being uneventful.
   
9. S11 Ep 9 No Other Way- Alden dies in this episode which I should've seen coming that sucks. The ending feels misleading a bit though everything else in the middle is pretty great.
   
10. S11 Ep 5 Out of the Ashes- literally the only reason I put this here was due to Lance so deal with it!
    
11. S4 Ep 11 Claimed- Rick had a pretty solid pair of scenes with the Claimers and I liked watching Glenn and Tara (Surprisingly).
    
12. S10 Ep 13 What We Become- I thought the flashbacks/hallucinations we're pretty good, but aside from that this episode was just mediocre.
    
13. S9 Ep 4 The Obliged- I liked watching Daryl and Rick fight each other over different views on how everything should be and the ending I thought was pretty suspenseful as well as the saviors and oceanside.
    
14. S11 Ep 15 Trust- Lance feels exactly like the Governor in some of these episodes which is what I like about him, and from here I start to enjoy Princess maybe because Mercer is around more xd.
    
15. S10 Ep 17 Home Sweet Home- I thought Maggie was a good enough concept for an episode with the reapers, though it didn't hit that hard watching again. It still Is most definitely better than the other 3 episodes of S10 part C but enough for A Tier.
    

A Tier, after this point complaints may start to stop, but that doesn't mean entirely. These episodes I enjoy watching over and over again with some good tension and comedy as well.

1. S1 Ep 5 Wildfire- For the episodes Jim was in I liked him and learning his backstory as well so this was a pretty fun episode.
   
2. S4 Ep 15 Us- the stuff with Abraham and their group was pretty wholesome to me and I liked Joe for the time being in here seeing how he is pretty fair to be honest giving things where they are due and trust to Daryl.
   
3. S6 Ep 11 Knots Untie- I somewhat feel like the episode drags due to there being too much at hilltop, but it is a new community so I can't truly argue. I remember enjoyably when Rick stopped the assassination attempt.
   
4. S8 Ep 9 Honor- the beginning with Carl I thought was good to showcase the events that unfolded before the decimation and Carl's death hit hard.
   
5. S5 Ep 4 Slabtown- I personally don't mind the hospital arc too much, yet it won't get all of it's episodes too high of course. I liked watching Noah and Beth converse and I thought this was a new era for the walking dead.
   
6. 10 Ep 1 Lines we Cross- the part with the Satellite was amusing to watch as it was a big change to see and I like that about the walking dead on occasions.
   
7. S9 Ep 6 Who are you now?- I liked learning of Luke's Group (you heard me, Luke's Group) and what they have been like learning of some of their past.
   
8. S10 Ep 8 The World Before- I liked mostly just watching two scenes, the beginning with Dante and Gabriel and Dante. I loved the fact no one even considered a Whisperer living amongst them and how he did some much devious stuff was mind boggling and amazing to watch. When Gabriel talks about forgiveness to Dante and kills him shows me how Gabriel has changed the past seasons.
   
9. S7 Ep 9 Rock in the Road- Rick gives off a good speech to Ezekiel and I liked seeing him and Morgan reunite again. The stuff with Gabriel wasn't too bad either.
   
10. S3 Ep 9 The Suicide King- the Governor finally seems to be starting to let things of him slip which I love to see. I also enjoyed watching Merle with Daryl as well too.
    
11. S11 Ep 11 Rouge element- I thought that the twist of Steph was pretty good and I don't mind the episode being a bit long and tedious for it's reveal.
    
12. S11 Ep 23 Family- I loved the fact Lydia got bit just because it shows us that people can still get bit and survive. It shows to me that in the finale no one could be truly safe even though Luke gets bit and still dies.
    
13. S11 Ep 17 Lockdown- Saving Sebastian was okay ig.
    
14. S8 Ep 10 The Lost and The Plunderers- Simon's character I think was made perfectly as he is a hotheaded person who is all about power and showing that off. Killing most of the Garbage people was terrifying to watch and showed how Negan could be more merciful than others.
    
15. S1 Ep 1 Days Gone Bye- I think for the pilot it did it's job well and showed off enough of what the show could be. Of course this doesn't mean it was all good but as pilots go it was pretty solid.
    
16. S11 Ep 1 Acheron Part 1- The only reason I put it this high was for the interrogation scenes especially when it came down to Ezekiel. Him and Mercer are honestly a great pair and I love his ending to the show as it's fitting.
    
17. S5 Ep 10 Them- after losing most of the group it seems like a fitting episode of despair and plays it perfectly.
    
18. S5 Ep 12 Remember- the first shown scenes of Alexandria was pretty good and I liked the interviews scene too. We also saw a lot of new character introductions.
    
19. S11 Ep 6 On The Inside- The ferals was a nice touch of horror that I never knew I could need. Making the people with the ferals Virgil and Connie made the most perfect sense as well.
    
20. S6 Ep 13 Not Tomorrow Yet- this episode shows off how our group is seeming to be the bad guys starting to kill people in their sleep. I like how Glenn and Heath have their first kills and show how they are changing.
    
21. S7 Ep 1 The day will come when you won't be- I like the title as it references Doctor Jenner, but for the episode I liked Negan and that's mostly it. Seeing two people die was horrible to me, but necessary and since I don't rank episodes for being bad due to deaths I can still rank them high.
    
22. S6 Ep 16 Last Day on Earth- Simon has a good introduction and I like them trying to get from point A to B, but what stands out to me most is probably Abraham and Eugene with his speech about him
    
23. S7 Ep 15 Something they need- Sasha was probably the highlight of the episode for me and I liked them and Negan's interactions. It Is a good effort to show that they aren't all monsters and I like seeing Eugene as well.
    
24. S3 Ep 7 When the Dead come knocking- Glenn and his interrogation with Merle was amazing and I liked seeing Glenn's true will shine.
    
25. S8 Ep 12 The Key- I don't like this episode much honestly if it wasn't for Negan and Ricks Speech as well as Simon and his deviousness.
    
26. S8 Ep 1 Mercy- the beginning I had to move up due to some good portions of it like Rick and Negan. I also liked the ending a lot even though I watched the trailer a lot and knew of Gabriel and Negan's interactions.
    
27. S9 Ep 1 a New Beginning- wow two series beginnings next to each other... Yeah it's weird but they weren't exactly S Tier Material. The beginning with them trying to get a horse accessory was great tension to watch and I already love Ricks Beard.
    
28. S10 Ep 18 Find me- okay so maybe I exaggerated My feeling towards Season 10 C a bit since I like some of the episodes a bit and others worse. The reason I put this here is mostly good plot lines and that was it.
    

Around here I wanted to say the reason for some episodes ranking higher is due to the fact the others are horrible and some of these have redeeming qualities. It's hard to put over 150 episodes ranked from horrible to greatness and know the points of interest.

1. S3 Ep 3 Walk With Me- Merle brings joy to me seeing him again and I love him from here on out. I like how the Governor seems to be innocent enough until the big reveal with the militia which is amazingly put.
   
2. S10 Ep 9 Squeeze- I hate Squeeze... There i said it. The cave sucks honestly and Id rather not watch it again because of that, but Negan is the only saving grace for this episode and if it wasn't for him I would never watch this episode again.
   
3. S8 Ep 13 Do Not Send Us Astray- Simon attacking the Hilltop was the most great action of this season that I never minded and it felt terrifying after Tobin's fate was sealed.
   
4. S3 Ep 12 Clear- I had to move it from S Tier, but nevertheless a great episode. Morgan's return was done perfectly and I felt like his character did a full 180 after this. Michonne and Carl's side story was also good.
   
5. S2 Ep 12 Better Anglels- Shane and Ricks final confrontation was amazingly executed and loved the difference from the Comics with Rick killing shane and Carl shooting his reanimated self; Shane and Randel was also good too.
   
6. S4 Ep 12 Still- Daryl and Beth make sense to pair together and I like seeing how we get a bit more back story to his character. They feel like the most perfect example to put for a mismatched pair.
   
7. S6 Ep Thank You- The journey with Glenn's group trying to get back was amusing to see even though the dumpster ending wasnt really the best, still horrible to see.
   
8. S10 Ep 4 Silence the Whisperers- Negan and Lydia have a good bond and I like how Negan defends her even though I hate how no one believes Lydia that Negan protected her.
   
9. S8 Ep 4 Some Guy- I still love watching Ezekiel and the Kingdom so I enjoy this episode and how he feels defeated the whole time. Jerry is the best bodyguard in my opinion as well as it is shown and Shivas death is heartbreaking.
   
10. S5 Ep 8 Coda- The reason I put this soo high was due to Rick and Bob. I did like the ending a bit even though I feel like Beth's death could've been avoided.
    
11. S3 Ep 14 Prey- originally this episode was C Tier for me, but I re-watched it and put it this high due to the Governor being a literal psycho and I love this side of him.
    
12. S11 Ep 20 What's been Lost- Lance felt underutilized as soon as he died, I really wished they could've made a difference with his exit on the show.
    
13. S8 Ep 8 How it's gotta be- Forgot about Natanias death.
    
14. S11 Ep 7 Promises Broken- Negan and Maggie had a good talk together about before.
    
15. S10 Ep 6 Bonds- Okay.. XD.
    
16. S6 Ep 10 The Next world- I thought the stuff with Rick, Daryl, and Jesus was goofy, but great.
    
17. S11 Ep 19 Varient- I do like the idea of evolving walkers though I feel like it was a bit late in the show.
    
18. S3 Ep 13 Arrow on the Doorstep- the meeting was just terrific to watch as the Governor is so sinister inside it with Milton and Hershel having a good talk as well with Martinez and Daryl having a good show off time. Merle and Glenn have some good times too.
    
19. S9 Ep 2 The Bridge- The log scene was amazing and Aaron had a good scene with the amputation.
    

S Tier, These episodes are some of my favorite to watch with a good glass of Tea and some snacks.

1. S7 Ep 7 Sing me a song- Negan and Carl were fun to watch as well as some more insight on the sanctuary as Daryl breaks free. Negan and Carl also Bond.
   
2. S10 Ep 10 Stalker- Daryl VS Alpha!!!
   
3. S11 Ep 16 Acts of God- Lance is very horrifying as to what his next move is and Leah's stuff was good.
   
4. S3 Ep 8 Made to suffer- it was a great Mid season finale as I enjoyed the fight with the Governor and Rick as well as the ending with Merle and Daryl.
   
5. S2 Ep 6 Secrets- Glenn has to deal with hiding multiple people's secrets and I feel like the comedy is pure gold here.
   
6. S1 Ep 2 Guts- The rooftops scenes were great as well as the parts where they wear guys to avoid the walkers, it always felt like a sense of panic in this episode.
   
7. S9 Ep 9 Adaptation- the introduction to Alpha was simple enough and I feel like it's a good episode.
   
8. S11 Ep 10 New Haunts
   
9. S11 Ep 12 The Lucky Ones- Carol finally feels a little bit like she's back to her old self in this community with Lance and their deals.
   
10. S4 Ep 1 30 days without and Accident- probably my second favorite of the beginning episodes as it demonstrates exactly how the group has got along since the recent events. Has a good story with the shopping market and the roof caving in was awesome.
    
11. S3 Ep 10 Home- this episode shows how Merle and Daryl are far apart which I can still keep watching Merle and be entertained as well as the fight scene at the end with the Governor being cocky as can be.
    
12. S9 Ep 16 The Storm- snow is a new but simple thing that I like along with Negan Earning trust with Michonne.
    
13. S10 Ep 2 We are the End of the World- Gamma saving Alpha is one of my favorite scenes of how it shows Alphas power towards the group and influence on it's people.
    
14. S6 Ep 8 Start to Finish- The walls coming down had an interesting story as well as many like the Wolf getting loose and Diana having a badass/amazing exit.
    
15. S9 Ep 11 Bounty- The Movie Theatre scene was pretty good as well as Alpha with and Lydia.
    
16. S5 Ep 2 Strangers- The uneasy feeling of Gabriel is pretty good to show the groups trust and I like how the ending is played out with the reveals.
    
17. S11 Ep 13 Warlords- The Complex is a pretty good place to see and I like seeing the evolution of Negan and Aaron.
    
18. S9 Ep 15 The Calm Before- The highlight is the end with the pikes though it made sense for the lesser characters. I hated seeing Henry and Enid die (Not with Tara).
    
19. S10 Ep 11 Morning Star- The start of the battle is ingenius with the tree sap fire scene and it makes for a suspenseful ending to the episode to come.
    
20. S9 Ep 5 What come After- The episode is meant to be a sendoff for Rick so I'll rank it about everything else instead. I did enjoy some of the sequences with Hershel and I loved seeing Shane again. He really puts perspective on some episodes like Season 5 which makes me enjoy watching those episodes more as well as Shane. Ricks exit was also done is a pretty good way.
    
21. S7 Ep 13 Bury me Here- I liked watching Morgan slowing go back into insanity which I believe is due to PTSD of some sort. The episode feels really well done and I like the ending to it with Richard Dying and Carol being told everything.
    
22. S9 Ep 12 Guardians- Alpha is great to watch in this episode and the way she kills the two whispering who challenge them is great!
    
23. S8 Ep 5 The Big scary U- the main focus is Negan and Gabriel which is an amazing talk between then two before settling their differences. I also like the unease at the sanctuary through betrayal.
    
24. S11 Ep 14 The Rotten core- the whole episode is one of If not my personal favorite to watch for the complex alone being a nice setting. I enjoy every bit of this episode as well as the side deal with Sebastian and how Mercer is revealed to be a pretty nice guy.
    
25. S5 Ep 15 Try- The whole episode feels like a decent into madness for Rick seeing everyone against him. I like how he goes into protective cop mode and try to defend the ones he lives as well as his speech at the end.
    
26. S11 Ep 18 A New Deal- The whole episode is average, but the ending just feels amazing to rewatch.
    
27. S2 Ep 11 Judge, Jury, Executioner- I personally like Dale a lot so I love this episode. It really shows how the group is starting to turn as they believe to do what is best for the group and not morals. Dales death is also very heartfelt to watch and showed off the walkers dangerousness.
    
28. S10 Ep 14 Look At The Flowers- Negan and Daryl make a good pair to watch though I enjoyed watching Beta and him struggling to get back on track after Alphas death and I love him so much more for this episode.
    
29. S5 Ep 5 Self Help- Daryl and Carol at the moments have some good episodes together so it's not surprise I'd love this episode. With Noah in the episode as well it feels like a amazing show of how the characters (Carol and Daryl) have changed morally.
    
30. S6 Ep 13 The Same Boat- Carol has been shown to be ruthless, but this episode shows her true colors as how she doesn't want this to be her life anymore.
    
31. S5 Ep 13 Forget- the episode itself has many great minisodes it felt like which was fantastic.
    

50 and 49. S4 Ep 6 Live Bait and 7 Dead Weight- I put these both here due to the fact of me loving the equally. The 6th episode feels like a showcase of how the Governor gets broken entirely and starts to get built back up positively showing what could have been and for a time it feels beautiful to me. The 7th though shows how some things can mess with his mind and make him go back to being a psychopath that kills everyone he sees.

1. S8 Ep 16 Wraith- The ending to season 8 was pretty eventful for the battles begin as Eugene saved everyone's asses from a cool trick with the bullets. I am happy that Rick decided to save Negan and I love the episode except for the ending being off-putting with Maggie.
   
2. S6 Ep 9 No way Out- The Wolf has a pretty interesting end that I enjoyed to see and aside from the the entire eoisode is the best part. You never feel that sense of boring to it as the action is nonstop great.
   
3. S5 Ep 5 Now- I liked small bits and pieces of this episode mostly revolving around Diana and her role starting to change. If she survived I don't doubt I would've loved to see her go through more of an arc.
   
4. S7 Ep 11 Hostiles and Calamities- I can see the hate for this episode, though I love it myself. Eugene in my opinion is at his best here and I love watching him here with Negan and their interactions. It was also great how Dwight had framed the doctor.
   
5. S5 Ep 6 Consumed- Abraham was one of my favorite characters not just for jokes but for this episode. His backstory is heartbreaking to learn about and relatable. When he falls down after beating Eugene in defeat I can feel his pain with him.
   
6. S9 Ep 13 Chokepoint- Daryl VS Beta!!!
   

SS Tier, after this point there is no bad things that the episodes could have drag it's down. These ones are my person favorites.
Around this time I also realized that it seems my numbers on the side aren't matching so I'm fixing it from here so skip 42- 38. Idk what happened but I messed up somewhere and went to fix it but couldn't find the problem.

1. S2 Ep 13 Besides the Dying Fire- The walkers attacking the farm was a great scene just as much as the Democracy speech was from Rick, though Lori is horrible to Rick in this episode. Also Rick tells the group "we're all infected"
   
2. S4 Ep 2 Infected- I love the scene where Patrick reanimates and the morning fight they have in the prison. So much stuff happens at once. The ending was Great with Tyreese and. The pig scene was sad to watch.
   
3. S6 Ep 6 Always Accountable- One time when I like Sasha is this episode with Abraham. Where to begin; The Rocket launcher scene was great, Abraham is great with quips, Daryl with Dwight is a good scene and I love the ending as well.
   
4. S6 Ep 14 Twice as Far- The Denise speech wasnt too bad and the death was great. I enjoyed Abraham and Eugene; I think my favorite scenes was with Abraham and Eugene with another one of his speechs towards him which was funny and heartfelt.
   
5. S4 Ep 16 A- The best part is when Joe's group comes along and how Rick bites out his throat signifying that he and Shane are now alike. I also like when Rick and Daryl talk as well as Rick figuring out this olace kidnaps people.
   
6. S2 Ep 7 Pretty Much dead Already- Shane is what I love about this episode, he and Dale had a really funny encounter and I feel like Shane makes me laugh and be serious at the same time with each scenes. I also like how Rick is more accepting towards Hershel.
   
7. S10 Ep 16 A Certain Doom- Beta was good in this episode and had some great parts, but the fights wee great especially the scene with the Music. Betas death felt odd, but that doesn't lower the episode.
   
8. S4 Ep 14 The Grove- I mean do I really have to explain? Carol is a savage here and I love when they finally talk about Karen and Davids death here. Nothing in this episode is a low note.
   
9. S2 Ep 5 Chupacabra- I love everything about Daryl's scenes in this that show how he is a badass and capable of holding his own. Also love his Hallucinations.
   
10. S11 Ep 24 Rest In Peace- certainly wasn't the best finale, but I felt like it did well enough for the episode. It tied up most loose ends for the show given its runtime and I feel like it is fitting enough.
    
11. S2 Ep 10 18 Miles Out- my favorite of Season 2 has Shane and Rick have the best battle I have seen even more than The Governor and Rick or Negan and Rick. This battle utilizes both of their strengths and weaknesses with some things that have never been done in the show much more like using your blood to attract walkers to other places. It was an amazing episode all in all.
    
12. S1 Ep 6 TS-19- idk what it is but I love watching this episode over and over again and I love it the more I watch it. It is probably because I like Doctor Jenner a bit more in each watching of his tragic backstory with his wife.
    
13. S9 Ep 14 Scars- The flahsback was an amazing one that told us something vital to the story about how they don't trust people coming in anymore. What Daryl and especially Michonne went through is tragic.
    
14. S5 Ep 3 Four Walls a roof- this episode is perfect for a number of reasons like Bob and his antics or Savage Rick, this was a turning point for the walking dead and this is where Rick gets some of his roots.
    
15. S1 Ep 4 Vatos- even though I love TS-19 I love Vatos more. This is unique to some episodes where you see a group just like Ricks that is trying to survive and this is where we realize the world is bigger than we thought still.
    
16. S7 Ep 16 The first day of the rest of your Life- The battle was amazing and I feel like this was the best it was going to get for the coming seasons, but season 9 and 10 surprised me.
    
17. S10 Ep 5 What it always Is- Negan with the Kid is the highlight I think, I could've honestly seen this going farther, if it wasn't for the former savior. I feel like this was fitting for an entire episode of, but we diverged a bit.
    
18. S4 Ep 3 Isolation- Hershel and Tyreese are the highlights for me with Tyreese going berserk and Hershel being a kind soul. This is a staple episode for why Season 4 is amazing and why Hershel is what made season 4 great.
    
19. S6 Ep 4 Here's not Here- I love learning about Eastman and Morgan in this one off. I love how it is somewhat told in the first person narrative to the Wolf and how Morgan changed back to who he was. Eastman shows how he and Morgan are pretty similar and why he should be like him.
    
20. S5 Ep 14 Spend- aside from Francine being here to be used as eye candy for me I loved how some of Alexandria like and dislike rick's group here. I do hate Noah dying as I feel like he could've been so much more.
    
21. S10 19 One More- I love havng the episode based on Aaron and Gabriel as they have came a long way since their beginnings. When they have few an encounter with Mays I felt like this was a testimony to who they are as people. We see how they care for each other and how Mays fails to make a point of who they are until Gabriel Kills him showing he has gone farther away from the light.
    
22. S7 Ep 3 Cell- Daryl is locked up and he is now being treated like shit. This episode feels great cause of how it feels like he is trying to break Daryl. Dwight also has a great mission on how he mercy kills a savior and shows he isn't as bad as you may think.
    
23. S6 Ep 1 First time again- I do enjoy the setting of the episode how we see the diverge in Alexandria and who listens or hears Rick out. The episode is a great example for staring episodes... But not the best at it.
    
24. S5 Ep 9 What Happened and what's going On- I loved Tyreese's character so to see him die was horrible for me. His episodes I feel like was a good send off since it is a test to who he is as a person who is confounded about the world around him.
    
25. S3 Ep 4 Killer Within- this episode was played perfectly and I feel like is a good sendoff for other characters as well like how I hate Lori. She is made just a bit better from her sacrifice and thought T-Dog went out in a good way as well. The prisoners also had a good show for their trust.
    
26. S4 Ep 5 Interment- this is where Hershel's best episode is as he is the best Samaritan Alive in the apocalypse. At the end where Rick and Carl fend off the walkers inside the gates in a great bond and I love the whole episode.
    
27. S6 Ep 3 JSS- it is well rounded and has good action as well as a lot of tension and suspense with Carol showing off her capabilities and Morgan with his philosophy.
    

Finally we cracked the top ten and into Premium Episodes. If you've made it this far you are are persistent as me... Well probably less since this took a long ass time but still. These are the episodes whee I cherish them and can watch more than once a month.

1. S8 Ep 15 Worth- Worth has what I want in an episode; good characters and story/plot. Eugene's parts are made more important seeing how he needed to stay at the sanctuary to save Alexandria and the other communities. I loved even more Dwight's part where I have without doubt the most suspense with him and Negan. Simon also had the most best arc death as it felt complete.
   
2. S5 Ep 16 Conquer- the episode has a lot of action and the ending was the pivet. I love the speech he has and how Diana let's Rick be in charge now was a sort of cliffhanging ending that signify's perfection.
   
3. S5 Ep 1 No sanctuary- both Season 5's beginning and finale are amazing and the way Rick and his group take down Terminus in one episode is amazing as they fight there way out and the scene with Judith was great. Morgan was just a sprinkle of wholesomeness to see.
   
4. S10 Ep 12 Walk With Us- The Episode had just enough action, good deaths and character interactions to make it here. First of the battle at hilltop was amazing. The second best thing was Earl and I feel very sad every time I watch this episode at his part. Then the best thing is the end with Alpha and Negan.
   
5. S3 Ep 1 Seed- The best beginning to a season it shows how the group has changed since Rick and the prison is a great example. The tombs are a great scenery and the ending was perfect for a cliffhanger as well as Conquer.
   
6. S3 Ep 2 Sick- the prisoner episode was pretty good to watch as a group of prisoners try to take on walkers. While some are good others would rather be assertive. Rick has definitely changed since season 2 and the group is played great here and much more human like.
   
7. S7 Ep 2 Well- what helps this episode is the last episode before it having a dark tone. This instead has a more uplifting one with the king and with Carol and Morgan being a great pair. The Kingdom seems to be a good community and seeing how Carol tries to smooth talk the king and how he tells whays her bullshit is an amazing scene.
   
8. S10 Ep 22 Heres Negan- We realize he was a kinda lousy husband that wasn't really too good to becoming a really supportive husband who cares deeply for his wife Lucille. The story before showed a lot of Negan and how he is and I love Lucille as a character from this episode trying to do whats best for Negan.
   
9. S4 Ep 8 Too Far gone- Honestly this IS the best episode, but I am bias so I had to put my own personal favorite above it not to say this isn't right behind it easily. Too far gone is what feels like a season finale but isn't. The Governors first encounter should've been this and I'm glad we got to see it unfold great. Rick has a great speech in it about not being too far gone yet and the Governor killing Hershel to start the best battle of the series. The Governors death feels fitting and the ending was sad and amazing.
   

Before I get to this last one I wanted to say a thank you in advance to whomever reads this as I really had a hard time making this and spending a lot of time to do this isn't easy. And remember this last episode is my very own person opinion entirely and in no way is it the best of the series definitively, without any furthermore, lets end this.

1. Season 3 Episode 15 This Sorrowful Life- Now what makes this episode so great to me? Well I'm totally biased towards the actor and the character in the show Merle Dixon. I could watch Merle all day which is what they episode feels like with the perfect duo of Michonne and Merle on their way to the governor. It has some of the most perfect comedy in the episode as well as having the best sacrifice redemption arc and ending. This episode made me laugh, smile, cry and more. There will never be a time when I ever change my opinion about this episode in existence.

Again another huge thanks to everyone and I hope this will satisfy everyones needs... Now I'ma go watch S3 Ep 15 Legit.

last night i had a dream that i met your best friend and your mom. Your friend was distracted and that made you upset. he was fumbling around in the kitchen doing other things and i could see you getting tense because you wanted him to like me. your mom liked me though. i said something to make her laugh. we were laughing and walking outside somewhere. it was an unfamiliar landscape. i woke up laughing and my first thought was to tell you that hey, your mom likes me. but i cant tell you something like that. because that would be unfair. your mom will never meet me and probably not your best friend either.
you told me that one of my poems made him cry. that it was reigniting the love between him and his partner. ironic isnt it? our heartbreak makes their love stronger.
as i sit here at 1 o'clock in the morning, i wonder if texting is equal to thinking. like, do you think about me even if you arent texting me? or does your lack of text mean that you have found peace tonight somewhere else? i waiver between wanting you to be happy and wanting you to long for me. we fell in love together simultaneously, living parallel stories and not knowing it. do you think we will fall out of love the same way? on two seperate sides of a wall?
i think this will all pass. the only reason im holding on so tight is because I dont think ill ever get to feel this way again. feelings are overpowering logic tonight. nights are for feeling anyways.
i stay up all day to be someone for him, and i stay up all night to be someone different for you. i need an extra place between night and day to be someone for me.
i told you i had a plan, and i did. it sounded good at first and man it just felt good to be in control again. i wrote it all out. steps one through five. by step five it stopped looking like a plan and started to just look like moving on.
pain fills my body again, making me 50 pounds heavier. i sunk into the couch and opened this note to write, write, write. I write what i cannot say. i write to contain my feelings so as not to scare you with it all.
funny how i told you i wasnt a romantic. well now you know. i heard the way you said it to yourself out loud, like realizing even more reasons why im a caged bird. you shook your head.
but dont feel bad for me. im trapped in a cage of my own making. no one put me here and no one has the key. i know its easier for you to think you can save me from the dragon in the tower. i am the dragon.
but hey, i do love you. i think i do. i mean i could name five things i dont like about you but i love you. i love your mind and the way you make things go easier. quiet and simple against my raging impatience. you stood still and i walked. i asked you why you stopped and you said you wanted to see how necessary it was for me to keep moving. well it was necessary, until i met you and i decided i wanted to stay here. but life is moving me. its always had a heavy current. waves lift me and throw me, so i learned how to be one myself. i crash over everything. i would probably crash over you too.
you wanna know what i think about alot? the way you look when you chew your food. isnt that odd? your face gets really serious and you furrow your brow a little bit. someone in a movie reminded me so much of you. if i told you who it was you would laugh.
it's time for me to stop writing. my eyes are getting lower and lower and the numbness is turning into sleepyness. i wonder if ill have more dreams about you. i wonder if youll have dreams about me.
maybe we will both dream about that hillside tonight. i hope so.

Ok so this happened a while ago, but I think it's funny now because of how obnoxious this woman was.
So this takes place when I was 8, yes, 8 years old. I've been a girl scout for a while so I've been used to selling cookies. The thing is, you have to order the cookies before you are finished selling them, so you order the pre bought cookies and then a few extras to sell when they arrive, like at cookie booths. That year, we got little too much boxes and needed to go door to door selling.
I should mention I was a tallish child, somewhere around 5 ft. And that was not the only time I was mistaken for a teenager while I was under the age of 10. But anyways I, my mom, and my little brother, who was 2, loaded up a little red wagon with some cookies, and started selling. Now I lived in a small town, so a lot of people know each other or at least reasonably friendly. I should note because people might be a little mean that I was wearing a girl scout vest, probably tight pigtails with my thin hair that made my forehead look massive but besides the point, and some pink shirt and neon yellow jeans. True fashionista right there. Now since I was 8 I don't remember much of the story so this part is mixed from what my mom heard and my memory.
We've been selling cookies for like over an hour, and we're tired, but I'm used to this and I'm trooping along. I've got my sales speech I know the cookies and prices I was on it. So we get to this house and it had some tall bushes outlining it, very important to remember. Now I go up and ring the bell, and my brother was next to the bushes sitting in the wagon, but within view of the front door. This woman answers and she was visibly annoyed. Now I was not great on social cues so I smiled and do the whole "Do you want to buy some cookies thing." Even I remember this absolute NASTY look on her face. Idk what happened to her but yeah. She then notices my brother who is sitting in the wagon. Then this woman, and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't remember exactly, called me a slut and how nasty I was for parading my son around and how teenage girls should just close their legs. I was just standing there awkwardly because 1. I was too young to understand what she meant thank goodness, and 2. Surprised and a little scared that this random woman yelled at me. She probably yelled a few more things but I was too confused to remember and my mom was so upset she couldnt hear what she was saying. I think my mom knew I didn't know what that woman called me because she didn't start yelling at her, but her face was very red. So this woman slams the door because I didn't respond, and I just go back to my mom and was like, "that was weird and she was mean." I don't remember what happened after but my mom definitely kept her cool and we pretty much finished for the day after that. I mean I sold a lot of cookies that day so yay?
For those wondering what I was thinking she meant, here you go because I remember this purely from how confused I was. First of with the closed leg thing I always stand weird from some leg issues I had so I didn't think much of that but here's the funny part. I thought this woman called me a slug. Yes, like the slimy little thing that doesn't like salt. I didn't know what a slut was and if that was even a word at the time so I thought this woman did one of those mild insults like I hope both sides of your pillow is warm kind of thing. You'd be surprised on what people say or try to pull on girl scouts, so support your local girl scouts because they've dealt with pretty much unpaid customer service yay.

Reading through the emails that Bill sent to the student body, I’m genuinely just in awe that the university defended their actions the way they did. I was not at the encampment but all the photos and videos and eye witnesses that showed what it looked like were all completely reasonable. At the end of the day, it was a PEACEFUL protest carried out by students, alumni, and outsiders to gain more traction and awareness for the current situation in Palestine.
I understand that the university isn’t directly funding the genocide like how the US government is but again, at the end of the day it’s a multimillion dollar institution with immense influential power and an international reputation. The brave students that went out to protest are doing exactly what they should be doing and a university of this stature sure as hell doesn’t deserve to be sitting on the high horse that it is if they sent in EPS to forcefully remove the protest.
I get the whole trespassing thing because yes legally the university is allowed to remove trespassers but sending out an email saying that there were wooden pallets on the grounds etc etc and that they were essentially scared it would become violent DOES NOT justify what they allowed to happen to the protestors.
The video of the officer literally hitting the woman’s leg on the quad? How do you justify that Bill? 🤨
The entire world has been watching the Palestinian genocide going on for months now and these institutions and “authorities” still want to take the “Well actually you see these are all the reasons we can’t let you do what you’re doing but you still have freedom of speech tho hehe” route ??? For a PRESIDENT of such a huge University you’d think you could handle that better? It’d be one thing if the protest was actually disruptive of classes, student life, or posed an imminent and genuine threat to the campus and faculty. Funny how it only became distressing once the cops showed up to do their “job”. Serve and protect? You just violated the students you’re supposed to be protecting because they’re trying to make a point to demand ceasefire.
Of course one or two universities doing this won’t magically end what’s happening right now. But it’s the actions and intentions that matter and the fact that most of the emails just kept coming back to the point of “it’s our duty to keep you safe etc etc, the videos of other uni protests escalated what if that happened on ours?” is just so disappointing I don’t know where to begin...
All week long I’ve just been seeing media of protests from universities and high schools around the globe bringing attention to ceasefire and in every single video there’s cops arresting people and clearly violating their rights.
You encourage us to educate ourselves, to be mindful, to be kind, and to always be curious and stay informed about the world. When students are doing EXACTLY that, you decide “no” and send in reinforcements that escalated the protest into the exact situation you were worried about happening. Enough with the “we’re here to help you guys” nonsense when you clearly aren’t. Institutions like this can do so much with their power but they just choose not to. You could start a fundraiser, a campaign, a petition, literally anything to show that you do care about what’s going on and aren’t just ignorantly standing by as your students do more than you but get punished for it. We are actively putting money into your pocket in attempts to have a better future for ourselves but when we’re exercising our rights and freedoms regarding a real current horribly disgusting situation, you want us to be quiet.
You are an institution of higher learning, do better.

My parents and I lived in Ukraine. I always did, my parents too. They were born there, my grandparents too, and most of my family. But two years ago, Russia attacked us. Father stayed because he had to, and mother and I ran. My mother and I went to Poland. But we didn't have much money and most of the things were at home. My mother's sister lived in Russia with her husband and children. My mother got me to go there. It was difficult to get there, but it was possible. Mother stayed. I was very sad and cried a lot because I missed my family and home. I couldn't go to school and my speech was sometimes confused.
My aunt and uncle don't like me either. They always tell me how grateful I should be and that they decided to take me. Their children are small, cry too much and are very spoiled. My aunt won't let me talk to anyone when we're out because of my accent, but then she got mad when I took the children outside to play and then got lost because I didn't know how to talk to anyone. I try not to bother, but I’m still there. They say I'm too expensive, which I try not to be. I don't eat much and I don't use heaters too much or anything like that. Mother pays a little, but it's difficult because of my father. My uncle does things I really don’t like, and my aunt blames me a lot, including for those.
They are very patriotic and become angry because I read and look at very modern things made in America or England and also the way I dress because I have some clothes that I have from home. And that I am trying to be fluent in English. They don't like a lot about me, or maybe nothing at all. And now my aunt is trying to make me Russian. It wasn't too bad at first, she forced me to cook differently and worked on my accent. But now she won't let me talk to my mother, and I don't know what is happening to my father because of this. My mother can only talk to me at certain times of the day and my aunt turns off the internet so I can't. She is also forcing me to be involved in a different church than the one at home and not exactly the same religion and now that I am nineteen because my birthday was a couple of weeks ago, she thinks I should marry one of the men who is at the church.
But I don't like any of them. Most parents of them have bribed the government not to go to war so they are very spoilt and they are very rude. They touch me and joke that they will force me to sleep with them, but it's not funny and I don’t like it. They are stupid. But my aunt says I need to marry one of them and then I can breed my genes out and then I won't have to live with them anymore either. I don't know why they don't like me so much. I know they didn't want me here, but they seem to hate me a lot but I haven’t done anything bad. I have a small job, that gives a little bit of money, so I can pay for most things but I know I still cost them money. But they are not struggling financially, and I try to be helpful so I don't know what I am doing that is so wrong.

I (30 F) need to get this off my chest, and would honestly also love some outside perspective. It will be a very longer story bc some context is needed.
The context:
I'm originally from Mexico, currently living with my spouse in the US. My family (dad, sister & mother) still live in Mexico, so I only see them as often as I can travel (usually once a year). I've been living in the US for about 11 years at this point, initially went to college there and got a job & my own family.
My sister is deaf and my dad was a stay-at-home dad after he and my mom agreed when we were very young that my dad should retire earlier and take care of us while my mom took care of the finances and continued growing her career (really my mom pushed for this). This had to be done since my sister was going to need more help to develop her speech and get used to her hearing aids and all that. My dad was a little on the fence about this because he was worried about the money, but my mom assured him that she was going to handle that while he took care of the house. And so he did, he stayed with us, took care of the house, took my sister to her speech therapies, took us to our extra-curricular activities, helped my mom's parents in their house, took them to their doctor's appointments, and really stepped up with any help that family needed (my grandpa was diabetic & my grandma had cancer so it was quite a bit to deal with). My dad is a very noble, level-headed person. He's very sweet and has never disrespected my mom.
My mom and dad have been in a divorce battle for the past 10 years - the pandemic made the process so much longer. The story that led up to this is very long, but in summary my dad sued my mom bc she doesn’t think he deserves to get anything that she, with her sole efforts, was able to make. She has a house, a car, and a very good pension. My dad only wants to get what is fair.
My dad: Currently battling cancer. The situation in Mexico with his health insurance is tough. He needs medicine that they haven’t given him bc #corruption. He’s a very kind-hearted, funny, easy-going, respectful, and would do anything to make anyone’s life easier. He has taken so many insults and humiliations from my mother. When I am with him, he always shows so much interest in what I have to say, he jokes with me, he understands that everyone is their own person and that you have to accept everyone the way they are. He currently lives in the house my mom lives in because of the divorce situation. With all that he has going on, he is the only person caring for the dogs, he helps clean the 3-story house, goes to the market to buy fruits & veggies.
My sister: Currently working. She doesn’t make enough to live by herself in an apartment, so she is also living at home. She is also a victim of my mom’s psychological & financial abuse. Time and time again I have told her to leave, but I also understand that money is an issue. She can be a bit lazy and unmotivated, so I can understand my mom’s frustrations with her, but yelling at her is no way to make her understand things.
My mom: Hard-worker. Has a very strong character, her life hasn’t been easy. She decided she wanted to grow her career and now uses that to feel better than everyone and hold everything she has done & given us over our heads. She thinks the way she sees life and does things is the ONLY right way to live. Patience score: -10. Self-righteousness score: 1000. She has body-shamed me and my sister since we were 7-8 years old. She used to claim we are useless bc we didn’t have jobs at ages 11-12 because at that age she did and she was already helping her mom. When my sister and I approached her with issues that made us feel sad, she would end up yelling at us for not being stronger and then end up telling us that we needed to be stronger, so the validation we got from her was null. She did hug and told us she loved us, and she also sacrificed a lot to be able to give us the life she didn’t have, and we are so very grateful for that, but the bad far outweighs that at least for me. Any reaction to her yelling at you (AKA trying to explain something) just ends up making her angrier.
Me:
Life at home was unbearable. Home was a battlefield. I would dream of the day I could leave and not come back. Throughout college, I was still financially dependent on her. I couldn’t work too much bc I was on a visa in the US. I remember every so often she would call me saying this was just too expensive for her and she was angry bc I made her do this and that she was going to stop paying for my tuition after my sophomore year. I could understand but I was also a bit sad. Those were just threats, she ended up paying until I graduated, she helped me get my first car. She just loves shoving it in my and my dad’s face that she did all that by herself and that I am where I am bc of her. It is VERY true. I really couldn’t have done it without her. However I do feel very guilty for leaving my sister and dad behind.
After 10 years, the lawsuit has come to an end. Late last year the judge declared that my dad has the right to claim 50% of everything. Unfortunately, my dad's cancer is back and he is fighting for his health. He talked to me last December and told me he is tired of fighting her. He has realized that his health is more important than what he can get, and that all he wants is peace. He told her that he wasn't going to fight to get anything, and she was oh so happy. The only thing my dad wants is to make sure that all she has is split as evenly as possible between me and my sister.
Two weeks ago, my mom called me to talk (aka try to manipulate me thinking I'm stupid) & she told me she wanted to upgrade her car but that she needed the judge to release the car's title or something like that and that she needed my dad to stop all this. She proceeded to ask me if she thought she should give him anything... I said "yes, bc if the roles were reversed, you would claim that home labor is still labor, and the fact that he stayed with us and helped raise us and take care of HER parents is enough reason for him to deserve just as much, especially bc she wouldn't have been able to get to where she is without him". She got mad and yelled at me for siding with him yet again. A day later I heard that my childhood dog who is 15 years old was really sick and in the hospital. I hadn't been able to leave the country before and last time something like this happened, my grandpa died and I couldn't see him ( I know a dog is not the same, but he is family too). So I decided to book a flight to see him. I have been in Mexico for 2 weeks now and it has been so uncomfortable.
I feel very sad that I love my mom but I really hate who she is as a person. I hate how she treats us and I hate that she sees nothing wrong with it. I hate that my dad and sister are still living with her and I really can’t do anything about it. I hate that I can’t just have an understanding mom who doesn’t yell at us for not cleaning the house (we do clean it btw, it is fucking cleaned every day). Nothing is ever good enough, she is the only person who always does things right, she insults my dad, she insults my sister, she laughs at her own jokes making us feel small and humiliated. She is always boasting about how she is volunteering at a hospital and it makes her feel so good and how her friends love her so much… I wonder if her friends know the way she is. Why can’t she treat us, her family, like she treats her friends… It really hurts.
This weekend was mother’s day here in Mexico, and I don’t have time off, so I have been working my normal 8-5 (have been waking up at 4am and going to sleep past midnight). I told her I’d take her to this place so she can choose what she wanted as a present. We agreed we’d wake up early and have breakfast there. I slept through my alarm and she didn’t wake me up. She just yelled my name and said “you’re not coming with me, right?” and I said “oh it’s so late, I’m sorry I slept through my alarm” and she proceeded to get in the car and drive off. She has been so petty ever since with me, my dad and my sister. She says I have been buying everything for the dog (I have ordered a few things to make his life a bit more comfortable) but I couldn’t get anything for her.. I was going to, but then again, she left without me and it pisses me off that she is acting like this. Today she came back from the market with an attitude that said “I am so happy, you don’t get to me. I live my life and you should feel fucking lucky and special if I decide I am in the mood to talk to you”. Also proceeded to say that if we wanted to eat her food, we could pay her ¼ of what she spent and that she wouldn’t be making us any food. Then proceeded to ask me if I wanted a salad and i said “make yours, I can make my own” and she got mad.
… I am honestly very pissed to a point where I want to change my flight to leave sooner and completely cut her off.
I am not religious, but I am spiritual and I don’t want any bad karma from this. I don’t know if cutting her off is gonna make me regret it in the future. I am hurting and don’t know what to do. I always end up coming back to her, there are no boundaries set between us bc she would see them as an offense and rude, but I know I need to set them. I also know if I did, she really would be offended and try to make me feel less or stupid. Not to mention that she will pull the “you’re in my house and you do as I say” card on me.
One last thing I want to add - the thing that makes all this all the more confusing to me is that at times when I have needed advise, she is encouraging and sometimes makes me think I want to be as strong as she is (nothing and no one gets to her)
Any input will be appreciated.

So this is a post I made in the Classic Fallout subreddit, but it was immediately removed by the moderators. I fail to see how it broke any of the subreddit's rules, since I've presented my points in a clear and respectful manner, so I'm posting it here. I reckon this community is probably more open for discussion than that one. Moderators, if you find any issues with the post, warn me so I can make proper adjustments, but please don't outright remove it.
EDIT: The mods of Classic Fallout said the original post was just caught in a filter, but I had just assumed it was manually removed. It's been approved. I apologize for the confusion. Either way, it's good to post it here too and see the opinions of each community.
So on September of last year I've finished Fallout 1 for the first time and posted a review here. I was absolutely amused by it. Absolute masterpiece.
After procrastinating for months, I finally decided to actually play Fallout 2 (with the Unofficial Patch installed), and finished it last week after 81.7 hours. This is gonna be my "review" of the game.
Things I liked
So, starting with the things I liked about the game: the UI is much improved over Fallout 1, being more intuitive. From the "take all" button, to not being able to loot corpses with no items, to having more digits on the barter menu, to not needing to click again on your destination after a random encounter in the world map, the game feels much better to play and has aged better as well. I'm still of the opinion that both games aged pretty well, considering they're from the 90s, but Fallout 2 certainly has the edge.
I really enjoyed how they improved companion interaction. From dialogue, to inventory management, as well as combat control, it's undeniable that companions are orders of magnitude superior in Fallout 2. Also, making the amount of companions you can have on your party be based on your Charisma really helps putting it to good use, as opposed to Fallout 1, where this stat was virtually useless.
Moreover, Fallout 2 has many more locations, factions, missions, weapon variety and overall content than Fallout 1. Which is great, since one of my few complaints with the first game is that it felt a bit short. Not only that, but there's generally more outcomes for quests and potential for roleplaying. Yall know much better than me about all the crazy stuff you can do in New Reno, for example.
Also, THE HIGHWAYMAN IS SO FREAKING AWESOME I LOVE IT.
Now, to the stuff I didn't like...
The early game just sucks
The Temple of Trials, as well as the first 2-3 hours of the game are really hard to bear. The game kinda forces you into a melee build, otherwise your chance to hit is gonna be too low, turning it into a very frustrating experience. It totally undermines your choices on character builds. Fallout 1, on the other hand, starts you with a knife and a Colt 6520, which encompasses both melee and ranged.
Not only that, but it feels like it's too long before you can get your hands on an actual firearm in this game, since you are broke at early levels and item prices are quite steep, and there doesn't seem to be many lootable guns available early on. I've tagged Melee Weapons, and despite not using them for 95% of the game, I don't regret this choice, because it made the early game much more enjoyable.
Honestly, the Temple of Trials should have been designed in a different way, with many more options on how to tackle it based on your character's abilities, or just outright removed, to be very honest. I've watched a video from Tim Cain where he said it was originally supposed to optional, as you'd be able to convince the other tribal to skip it. Too bad it wasn't the case.
The story is just not as interesting as Fallout 1's story
To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the concept of being a tribal, but I rolled with it. The thing is that overall the plot didn't have me as engaged as Fallout 1's. I did not care as much about Arroyo as I cared about Vault 13. I also didn't really feel like "The Chosen One".
Multiple times I felt dissatisfied with the dialogue options. They tended to be a little too "extreme" for my taste. You either have to act all sassy or like a very naive person, with not many options in between. I didn't have this problem with Fallout 1, as there were always very honest, straight-forward, level headed dialogue options available. I had an 8 Intelligence in Fallout 2, just like in Fallout 1, but the first game conveyed much better the idea of my character being smart in dialogue.
The world seems a bit disjointed, and not as cohesive as Fallout 1's world. It's very hit or miss, really. In one hand, there are very interesting locations, such as Vault City and New Reno, but other locations honestly feel weird and out place, such as San Francisco, with the Shi Vs. The Hubologists. Not only that, but it seems that the more south you go, the more "incomplete" the game feels. The NCR feels specially underdeveloped: I did two missions for Tandy, prevented a guy from blowing himself up on the power generator and freed the slaves to join the NCR, but even months after joining them. there were no missions for me, as Elise would say something like "Well, there's nothing for you to do, as I'm just reporting to the NCR that you are now a member". I assume that's a byproduct of cut content, as I heard apparently 1/4 of the content was cut.
The Brotherhood feels specially weird not well developed in this game. They have two bases with literally nothing in them, aside from generic NPCs, and one with some great gear and a super computer that can improve your stats. And that's it. There's no apparent explanation for them to know your name and even know about "The Prophecy of The Chosen One", as is suggested when Matt is killed by Frank Horrigan. It seems that they only know about you to keep the player curious and incentivize them to go to key locations and move the plot forward. As you're like: "how do these guys know my name? I gotta get to their next base to find out", but when you get there and ask for answers, they say some BS like: "we know about a lot of things... Now steal the Vertibird plans for us and we'll grant you access to some powerful gear".
The Enclave, despite being a cool concept, are not as interesting and well developed as The Master.

• First of all, they don't have as good exposition as The Unity. In Fallout 1, you start not knowing about The Unity or The Master, but then you gradually put the pieces together (talking to NPCs, learning about the FEV at West Tek, reading Richard Grey's Logs, etc.) and learn about them, to then have the legendary dialogue with the Master and learn their true intent. In Fallout 2, on the other hand, you go from knowing virtually nothing about the Enclave to knowing everything about them, and that's if you actually talk to the President or that scientist. You kinda get a massive "lore dump" upon arriving the Oil Rig. For this comprasion, I'm assuming you talk to NPCs and search for logs in both playthroughs.
• Second, The Master is a much more interesting and cooler final boss than Frank Horrigan, which is just a generic though evil guy you HAVE to fight (no Speech checks or anything like that), otherwise you can't finish the game. He honestly feels like an afterthought: "well, we have to put a final boss in the game, so just roll up a BBEG with 999 HP and a cool design quickly!".
• Thirdly, you can't (and there's no reason to) join the "evil faction". In Fallout 1, you could be convinced by The Master and join his Army, getting the "evil ending". In Fallout 2, even if you wanted to, you couldn't join the Enclave, as they don't even consider you human to begin with. Now, it makes sense from a lore perspective, but it certainly removes nuance and takes away form the RPG experience, as there's only one possible ending because of that (excluding killing the Elder at Arroyo, which is much more of a gimmick ending).

Inconsistency in tone, pop culture references, 4th wall breaks and straight up bad lore
So the game has a serious problem with tone. It has a serious main quest and serious side quests with moral dilemmas and politics, but this is all disturbed by constant jokes, references and 4th wall breaks that completely destroy the immersion for me.
See, within the first 10 hours or so I was really, really enjoying the game. By the time I was doing the Vault City - Gecko side quest, I was convinced that the game was indeed better than Fallout 1, due to it's massive world with many quests, choices and consequences. I was like "yeah, they really doubled down on the RPG aspects of the game". The thing is that I had not experienced any 4th breaks or egregiously silly stuff yet, aside from maybe the "Rat God", but then I encountered the talking Deathclaws at Vault 13. That's what I mean by "bad lore". Seriously, I'm gonna have to call BS on that concept, no matter what justification you give me. It's just dumb. And what disappoints is that it's at Vault 13, a location I was eager and curious to see in the sequel. What could have happened to it? What could have changed in 80 years, specially after the events of the first game? ... Uh, talking Deathclaws? Well, that's certainly subverted expectations... just not in a good way. Honestly, they could have just made the Vault empty, have the GECK there to be found as normal, and leave the player curious to learn what happened, to then reveal at the end that the Enclave captured everyone.
What's strange is that only after encountering the talking Deathclaws that the 4th wall breaks started appearing to me. I don't know if this is just a coincidence, but I started getting all those silly random encounters, with the Mad Brahmins being the first one (which, coincidentally gave me the "Hope you've saved your game, cause you're dead" deathscreen right after). Do they only start appearing after you find Vault 13? Now, I've made a list of all silly/dumb/4th wall break encounters I've got.

• Mad Brahmins: Just dumb.
• Bridge Keeper: Arguably one of the most egregious ones, and I got his one like four times throughout the playthrough.
• Sacred head of the Vault Dweller: Not gonna lie, that was actually kinda funny, though very immersion breaking.
• Café of Broken Dreams: Bruh.
• Guardian of Forever: That one was really, really idiotic.

As for the pop culture references, I didn't catch most of them, since I'm a zoomer and a lot of them are very specific to the 90s. Didn't watch Monty Python or most of the other media referenced in the game either, so they didn't annoy me like the actual 4th wall breaks. There were a lot of instances where I was like "yeah, that's probably a reference to some 70s - 90s movie or show I didn't watch ".
There is room for silly stuff in Fallout, obviously. Silly/humorous stuff that didn't annoy me at all were things like the Yakuza Vs. Mobster combat encounters, the hilarious video call with the Enclave soldier, or Sargent Arch Dornan "Trooper, what are you doing here, GET BACK TO YOUR GUARD POST!!!".
In short, the game could have a very serious tone and immersive setting, just like the first one, if it wasn't for the constant breaks the developers inserted to try to give it some comic relief. The thing is that they overdone it, while Fallout 1 did humor just right: Harry and his stupidly named squad) were really funny in a way that enhanced the world building. So were the low Int dialogue options. Thankfully Obsidian came up with Wild Wasteland for New Vegas, which solved this issue. I wish Fallout 2 had a similar feature, so people can choose if they want to enable all the silly stuff or play a more serious game. Do you guys know of any mod that does this?
Some mild annoyances
I've encountered some mild annoyances in dialogue, such as Renesco not acknowledging that I've already talked to him, making it so everyime I interacted with him my only dialogue options would be to either introduce myself or say "I think I'm at the wrong place, bye" and leave, even though we've already met. Also, when I first talked to Tandy, she responded me with "What?" and my only dialogue option would be to tell her I had solved the Vault 15 situation, only to end conversation and then having to talk to her again so introduce myself. I suppose this can happen if you deal with the New Khans at Vault 15 before talking to Tandy for the first time, which I did. The game has some weird dialogue oversights/bugs like this that I think are valid to point out. I didn't encounter issues like this in Fallout 1.
Also, in the end-game slides, there was contradiction between the Gecko's and Vault City's slides. It was said that Vault City's isolationsm made them stagnate and be absorbed by the NCR, while at the same time saying that Gecko's power plant optmizations helped Vault City expand, and that they let their xenophobia aside and a new era of cooperation between ghouls and humans started.
The end-game slides said that I wiped the Deathclaws at Vault 13, when was actually the Enclave that did this. Weird.
The game has only 13 Talking Heads. Now that's a bummer, specially considering that Fallout 1 had 21. It's even more noticable when you take into account that Fallout 2 has many more NPCs overall, so there are actually far more "Talking Heads per capita" in the first game than in the second, and it shows. Now, that's probably because they've made this game within less than a year IIRC, so I won't blame them. Fallout 1 was also supposed to have many more talking heads.
Now, these are some mild annoyances that don't take much away from the experience, but I felt were valid to point out.
Conclusion
Now, this long wall of text probably made it seem I disliked the game, but I really didn't. It's a very good game, and an exceptional CRPG. I just think it's not on the same level as Fallout 1, solely because of it's (in my opinion) weaker story and constant breaks in immersion that aren't that funny to begin with and add nothing of substance to the experience. There are no engine optimizations, quality of life additions and gameplay and UI improvements that make up for the lack of that eerie, almost opressive, yet epic atmosphere and story the first game has. The sequel doesn't live up to the expectaions for me, so I rank it lower. Overall, 8/10.