Okay this is in Oklahoma and a lot happened but to summarize basically I've been with this man-child for 3 years almost, I ended up breaking it off after work on Monday (mainly) because of all the issues he has but just blatantly refuses to fix. Immediately after having the discussion he flipped out, throwing things across the room and screaming at me to leave. I stayed at a friend's house that night with nothing but my bag and the clothes I had worn to work. The next day I wake up to a phone call from him where he told me not to bother going back to the apartment because he already let his mom go through all of my things. He said he told her I wanted to fight her (never said that) so she's now determined to kick my ass, and that all of her gang-banger friends now have the addresses of all my family and friends to hurt them as well (this man never remembered my phone number, no way in hell he knows anyone's address lmao but still). I have a witness to this conversation. I also was informed by one of my employees that he had come with his mother to my workplace looking for me, apparently he had been swerving through the parking lot and was acting aggressive and intoxicated. We called law enforcement out and my friend and I went back to the apartment to find it completely destroyed, multiple holes in the walls, and a lot of my furniture was torn apart across the floor, as well several paintings and art pieces that held quite a bit of sentimental value to me. I also found that my medication, makeup,some art supplies, and my medical marijuana paraphernalia has all been taken. His cat was standing on the balcony, I don't know how long she had been outside for. He was not home at the time thankfully, and we had cops standing by while I grabbed some of my things and cared for the animals. Several hours later I was at a friend's apartment on the other side of the complex after submitting the Emergency Protective order petition, id parked far down the road just in case he drove by and surprise surprise he did, I remember hearing the familiar sound of his truck before his mom knocked on the door, I was thrown in a closet to hide and dial 911 while my friend stood at the door talking to them, and thankfully he got them to leave before the police arrived. I can't imagine what might have happened if I didn't move my car down the street. I stayed with a different friend that night for my own safety. The next day went by relatively uneventful until later in the night, we got the EPO and I immediately went and made a bunch of copies before returning to my friend's house on the other side of the complex. I had been in contact with his dad who was using the tracker on his phone to keep me updated on his location, and at this point he had returned to his adoptive parents house in Oklahoma City. At around 20:45 on Wednesday we decided to head back to my apartment to take care of the animals and we found the residence occupied by a couple that none of us recognized. We quickly ran back to my friend's place and called 911, Police came out and removed them from the premesis, and they came out with bags and bags of mine and his things. The woman seemed very confused and had a baby with her, she said that my ex had given her all of it, and that I could take any of my belongings. We went through all the bags and I found several small things of mine, she claims that she was told to stay there and watch over the apartment and to pack his things for him, we got him on the phone (through his dad, I have not spoken to him at all since Tuesday morning when he called me) and he told the officers they weren't supposed to be there and that his key was stolen, and he still sounded heavily intoxicated. Finally everyone left and we went inside to find that everything had been pretty well cleaned up, but the vast majority of my belongings were missing. Adding now my PC, monitor and keyboard, a sewing machine and many yards of fabrics and notions, a cake decorating kit, a small TV and fire stick, a sweing kit from my great-great-grandmother, and a diamond necklace my mother had gotten me for my 16th birthday to the list of missing things. My jewelry box was cleaned out, anything that seemed valuable is now gone, his dad swears up and down they're going to get it all back to me but I don't think that's going to happen. We also found a bread knife with a white-powder on one side of it sitting in the living room, we suspect it to be meth or cocaine (more than likely meth, taking his mother's history and his behavior into account) but when I tried to have it tested the officer told me to just throw it out because it would just be a waste of time. That was the last big event, the last few days have been comparatively quiet aside from getting the PO amended so I can leave the apartment, and his dad texting me, begging me to drop the PO (I won't) I really want to press charges, the court Hearing for the protective order is on the 23rd and I want to be prepared for it, and I have a police report that was approved on Sunday that I have no clue what to do with.
TLDR: Crazy ex gets drunk after breakup, harasses and threatens my entire support system, destroys a bunch of my things and gives away all my valuables to his mothers meth-addicted buddies, and now is hiding behind his dad's hoping I'll drop the protective order.
Do I need an attorney? If so how do I get one? I don't have money right now as I'm trying to get a new place to live, do I still have options? I have a paper trail and witnesses to everything, what is the next step I need to take? Can I press charges for things that happened before we broke up (SA/DV??)? His parents have money and I'm afraid they won't make this an easy fight, but this man has spent his entire adult life having everything handed to him, and walking all over everyone around him. I spent 3 years trying to "fix" him and I want to make sure that after this he won't go off and hurt another girl the same way he did me. Any help is appreciated!

This list is not made to be a "Best games" or something like that, it is my opinion about how much I enjoyed each game.
Also, the way I play the games to make the list is: I play it once without searching for anything in the internet to feel it as a genuine first experience, then I play it again with a guide to do everything the game offers, normally the review is based on the first playthrough since it is my own impression of the game, but sometimes the second one becomes relevant, for good or bad reasons.
These are all the games that I have access to, my computer can't run 14 and 15, I had some problems running 13-2 and 13-3 so I didn't play 'em, and I don't have enough time to play 11 yet.
Anyway, here's my list:
14- Final Fantasy 13 (Steam)
This game has beautiful graphics... And that's the only good thing I have to say about it. It's just a bunch of hallways the whole time, the part that it should open up is 20+ hours already in game and it is just one big area with 5 or 6 hallways. The battle system is boring and the AI is just dumb, the characters are not interesting and the game fails to tell you it's story and almost forces you to read Data Logs to be able to understand it.
13- Final Fantasy 10-2 (Steam)
I think this game just relies too much on being the successor of FFX, the story is way too simple, the final boss didn't make me fear it like Sin did, it was said that he could destroy the whole world, but nothing is shown, he's just sleeping through most of the game, and when he wakes up, YRP destroy him without any difficulty.
My second playthrough to 100% was pretty boring, the amount of little things you have to do in a specific order because if you don't do one little thing in chapter 1, you have to restart it, because you're not getting 100%, the game is not that bad, but i haven't enjoyed it that much.
12- Final Fantasy 1 (PSP)
Of course the first game is really important for the franchise and for the whole gaming industry, and it's so old that it is indeed too simple. I'm not saying it is a bad game, but of all the ones I've played, it is one of the games that gave me the less fun of all.
11- Final Fantasy 3 (DS)
This game looks like a better version of FF1, I mean, it's pretty much the same, the party is together and bam, they are destined to save the world, the story is not that great, Xande wasn't as menacing as he should, I think that if he appeared more during the game, I could have respected him more than just seeing him once and proceed to beat the s* out of him. Cloud of Darkness was there just to be the final challenge as "the greatest menace the world has ever seen"
10- Final Fantasy 2 (PSP)
This game is actually pretty good, some reviews I saw before playing it said that the leveling system was bad and the story wasn't good, but I liked it, it made sense that if a character fights using a sword it will get better with it as the time goes on, of course this means that by the end of the game I couldn't change the "jobs" of my characters, but I didn't see this as a problem at all. Also, I like this game's story, it's not as epic as the next games (of course, it is pretty old) but I like the way they made the villain be someone I should fear, someone that is really evil and made me want to stop him.
9- Final Fantasy 8 (Steam)
Old Review: The story is good. That's it. The draw system made me stop playing this game 3x when I was younger, and almost made me do it again this time, I know it is supposed to be challenging to get all the magic so you can assemble them to your stats, but at some times I was so tired of having to battle the same enemies for long periods of time just to get 100 of their magics that I had to use the save editor to get 100 of the ones I already had. It's not a bad game, really, I was immersed in the story as it kept getting bigger and bigger, but this little detail made me enjoy the game way less than I think i should.
New review: So, after some discussion in the other posts, I gave FF8 another chance, and the game is good, really, this time I've used Triple Triad as I should, making the magic gathering waaay easier, and then I proceeded to enjoy the game more than the last time.
With this being said, FF8 is a good game and i had some fun playing it, but i will not change its position on my ranking, since all the ones above him were more appealing to me in their own ways.
9- Final Fantasy 16 (PS5)
The story is pretty good and I like the characters, I'm not the greatest fan of action RPGs, but the Variety of builds I could make with different Eikons got me. There's not much I can say about this one, the game is nowhere as linear as FF13, but it also ain't open as FF15. There are some beautiful fights, but I didn't feel any challenge during my gameplay, not even in Final Fantasy Mode. Also, there is a point near the end of the game that they just throw a lot of sidequests in your face, but overall is a good game.
8- Final Fantasy 4 (PSP)
This is the first Final Fantasy game that I played in my life, and it is really good, the story is nice, the characters are cool and having that much charisma on my party after playing FF3 made me enjoy this SO much that I can play it many more times and still enjoy just like the first time. Of course it have its problems, some characters get really weak if compared to others and the difficulty is pretty low, but overall, a really cool game.
7- Final Fantasy 12 (Steam)
This is the second Final Fantasy game I played and the first I beat when i was younger, it has its problems (like every other) but the characters have charisma (Not you, Vaan, shut up), the story is ok and the Gambit System made my eyes shine when I saw it for the first time. The hunts where so challenging for me back in that day that i remember myself just breaking my head doing good Gambits to each member of my party (of course when I played it again it wasn't that hard but ok), this is the game that made me love this series and JRPGs, and it's pretty sad for me to leave it this down on the list, but I have to be honest when I say that the next ones made me enjoy more the journey and are simply better games.
6- Final Fantasy 5 (Steam)
This one is the perfection of what Square began on FF1 and then evolved at FF3, the job system is really good, the variety of parties you can make is awesome and the story made me want to chase Exdeath so bad that I was almost entering the PC to beat him with my own hands. The characters are charismatic and Gilgamesh made me laugh every time he appeared. The game is not the most complex one, but it is really good.
5- Final Fantasy Tactics (Mobile)
The only one I played that is not from the main franchise, but the story is so good, the characters seem so alive, Ramza and Delita really make you feel what they are feeling, the jobs system is pretty certainly the best I've seen until now and the gameplay got me since the very first battle. If you've never played FFTactics, do it right now, it is one of the best games I've ever played and certainly deserves this position on my opinion, maybe even higher when I play it again on the future.
4- Final Fantasy 7 (PS1)
I think I don't have to say very much about this one, it was for a very long time my favorite game, the story is so good, the characters are perfect, Sephiroth made me fear him every time he was on the screen, just as he made Cloud sweat by hearing his name, the parties you can make are so diverse, you can play it with many different comps and you will still enjoy it and not be stuck anywhere because they're all acceptable, I'm not gonna make an analysis of every aspect of the game, but this one is REALLY worth playing, even if you're not much of a FF fan.
3- Final Fantasy 9 (Steam)
This game is so good I have difficulty finding words to describe it, Zidane is a great main character (He is a classic hero, of course, but his plot made me enjoy his character a lot more than I already did), Garnet had so much drama around her, Vivi is so precious, wish I could protect him from everything forever. The story is really good, the way it scales 'til the end made me not want to stop playing it, Kuja is a wonderful villain, he was not only the big bad that should be defeated because he wants to destroy the world, he was a villain, a really good villain that I wanted to defeat, I wanted to stop him as much as the characters, FF9 is amazing.
2- Final Fantasy 6 (GBA)
FF6 is a wonderful game in every aspect, its story got me so much feelings, Kefka is my favourite villain from the franchise, Terra, Locke, Celes, Edgar, all of the characters made me care about them, made me want to see how they would react to everything that was happening through the whole time, the side stories after they get separated almost made me cry, Celes is a wonderful character in every aspect, this game was my favourite until I played the Top 1, but it still is one of the games I've enjoyed the most in my entire life.
1- Final Fantasy 10 (Steam)
This is a game that my brother always told me to play, and when I did, I understood why he was telling me to do so. The battle system is great, being able to switch your characters in the middle of the battle is awesome, the sphere grid, when I first saw, i thought it would be overly complicated, but it isn't, the trials to get Aeons are pretty good, not that hard but I understand why, all the characters are so charismatic, I love all of them. And the story... Final Fantasy 10 made tears fill my eyes while I was playing it, Tidus' plot is beautiful, Yuna as well, every character had their own little arc and I enjoyed all of them, this game is the one that surpassed FF6 for me, and I was thinking that it wasn't possible since I love FF6 so much, but FF10 is wonderful in every aspect and is the game that I enjoyed the most.

It’s a little scattered doing it on my phone. I’ll get home and clean it up. But I want peoples input. I really think this would work and it’s totally realistic. I think CIG needs some guidance and the medical changes offer the perfect moment to add these features in the game.
I have been a developer for years and I can see CIG trying balance what’s realistic and what they promised. Every startup I was with came to a point where they realized their proposals were far too aggressive, and the higher ups would not even listen to ideas unless they were easy to implement.
So, I’ve been trying to come up with ideas that take minimal effort for maximum gains. These are fairly simple, but will add depth or will lay the groundwork for easy future development.
I think this is the perfect topic for my first idea. The medical system is tricky, but so important. Right now, the medical system is boring and doesn’t add much to the game and with a few tweaks it could add 25% more and be a major part imo while feeling more immersive and satisfying both parties. We need to look to other amazing games like Eve online and cyberpunk imo.
The hard-core fans want investment and death to cost. Now that I am older and have a family, I understand how hard it is to balance that in time to play Now that I am older and have a family, I understand how hard it is to balance that and time to play. It’s really hard to get your average gamer to want to invest 30 minutes to simply respawn.
So in my opinion, we need a system that…

1. Makes death inconvenient and costly but with several ways to pay the “bill”, not only costly at that moment so the player decides quitting is easier.
   
2. Makes the game far more immersive and makes the game deeper, not shallower. In real life in the future, in the future, medical would be a vast portion of warfare and finance and exploration and exploitation. Not just a glorified HP counter.
   
3. Makes all medical ships useful and relevant. Cannot have a shallow system where one ship is clearly the best.
   
4. Makes healthcare and biology affect all the other parts of the game…. It is our bodies and minds after all. In the future, the wealthy will modify their bodies, just like their ships.
   
5. Uses a lot of these modules that are currently window dressing, but have amazing application. Things like blood pressure and reflex times and damage reduction and bio scanners and the HUD and incorporates it to a tiered clone system.
   

TLDR is We need a Cyberpunk / Eve style futuristic bio medical system with weapons and implants that completely change a persons capabilities and a jump clone system that reflects this. T5-T1 clones 5 being a throwaway and 1 being a Spartan from Halo. T1 would have the exact HUD we have now with additional systems. T4 and less is like the game in photo mode with nothing. People take for granted how much information you get from the HUD and who would really have access to it?
The beauty of this is while it sounds like a lot and would add 25-50% more careers, economys, gameplay and strategy’s from a gameplay perspective. Its actually not much at all from a development point of view. It would reuse all of the current systems now, and add a few skills like scanning / hacking and weapons like EMP, Darts to humans. Generally, this is how it would work.
T5 clone is a meat bag with a 4 hour life used as a spare tire. It’s the base level. Operated similar to when you’re drunk because The damage from the cryo. You can do stuff, but you are very limited. They can be carried around in 1 SCU containers or special lockers in big ships for dangerous work like reactor repairs etc.
T4 clone is a meatbag the same we are inhabiting right now IRL. Basically this is exactly like you turning off the game hud in photo mode. These cannot be cold stored and reused. No HUD or endgame information input at all outside of your Moby glass watch.
T3 clone is the first of the implants. It can take one implant. Combat might allow thermal vision or the local map and radar and crosshair. Exploration might have the ability to bookmark or see things on your HUD that you scanned from your ship. Conversation might add elements to charisma and talking people into doing things, getting better prices on goods, or hearing rumors about opportunities, etc. Covert allow you to scan people and check their inventory and run checks on who they are, what crimes they have committed, etc.
Basically it’s a stripped down version of the hud that’s active all the time even without helmets. It has to work in tandem with your mobi. You have to select one element.
T2 clone has upgraded reflexes, can run longer, survive more dmg and has the complete HUD suite. It has the bandwidth and upgrades to support 1 implant and 1 physical modification. Everything CIG has been adding can be added to the HUD but you have to switch between exploration, combat, conversation, covert etc. 1 physiological mod or weapon. Like a brain hacking chip that can open ship doors, and emp that shut down all electronics in a 20 m radius for 15 seconds or a drone or fiber optics camera. Then there are all the illegal modifications like hidden blades, Multi launchers with everything from neurotoxin to EMP darts.
T1 clone is very costly and made for combat and for solo explorers who need complete autonomy. 20% more hp, and basically 20% better everything. It has the complete HUD with the ability to Connect to the data stream of two ships in your party. If your buddys ship detect an enemy ship coming in it would pop up in your actual vision as a big red square with information. You would have the ability to zoom without a helmet on and have limited scanning just like your ships function on everything.
It could 2 implants. 1 legal and 1 illegal implant. Emp, Hacker etc
It also has two physical modifications. Blades, darts etc
Also the tier 2 and 1 are the only clones that are not harmed using heavy or power armor. The others are slowly harmed by s by the rapid and jarring servos, etc. so they are all time limited.
Imagine how amazing this would make the universe in general. You would have ripper docs implanting stolen, or military implants. Corpses would now be valuable if they had upgraded organs for implants. People would become targets just for their implants.
If you killed an assassin coming after you, you could take his cool tools.
Sometimes corpses could be worth as much as a ship. You could actually ransom back bodies.
You could have a repo men coming to collect the implants. Organ traders and human traffickers.
But it would also make T1 and 2 ships completely necessary in combat because they were the only ones who could rec clone military units.
Best of all. All of this code is already there. All of the heads up display and all these cool features they’ve been adding Would be the implants themselves.
The game the Way it is it doesn’t make sense that a Moby glass can produce all of this data. It makes the game more immersive as well.
It doesn’t have to be over the top like cyberpunk. But we almost have brain implants now and everything is going wireless, you really think in the future they’re gonna be wearing a wristwatch? Everything will be brain implant and wetware.
With these easy changes, we solve our medical problems and add a ton of depth along with the ability to add as much depth as we want.
All you would need is to create the UI for this, but the game already has a lot of that with its biological scanners. All the balancing could happen by biologically if you’re using implants, etc.
Jump clones would cost a lot of money to make, and healthcare in real life is one of the most expensive things. But just like the hospital doesn’t make you pay your bill the moment you’re out of surgery, we need to spread the cost to a later time.
The time the player needs to respawn is usually after they have already planned and loaded up and executed, but didn’t succeed. This is time where casual players set aside their block of playable hours. (when the kids are asleep and wife is watching something etc) So by making it too costly at that moment, ( 30 minutes to an hour, getting geared up and in ship flying back) your odds are they will just quit, which is not engaging for other players and your odds of a major war or event go down drastically. What’s good for the game and what was so successful in Eve was the fights after the opening.
Instead the front loading all the time investment, Charge 5-25k for the biomaterial. spread the cost of the death to a later time and let them pay off their debt when they log back in.
We also want to make the smaller tier 3 ships necessary while not killing the t1 and 2 beds.

Part 5
Gerard, God
Somewhere in time and space
He watched the passers-by as they moved about, following their daily routines, unaware of the fate that would shortly befall them. This was the time that fascinated Him the most. The moments before they finally understood that The Threat was here.
It was a sort of last hurrah, He thought. They didn't know it, but Gerard could nonetheless sense a sort of joi de vivre, a liveliness that simply didn't exist in prior times, and couldn't possibly exist in future ones. He watched mothers dote lovingly over their children, watched children hurl themselves into play with abandon, watched addicts take in their drugs like a drowning man would gulp for air. They might not known that there was no tomorrow for most of them, but they nonetheless seemed to put just a little bit of extra effort into everything.
Eventually, it came to an end, of course. It always did, no matter how many times He watched it. He saw happiness and mundanity give way to pain and suffering. Laughter was replaced by the screams of the dying. Life was replaced by death. The world replaced by destruction.
He sighed, leaving this timeline. He never watched the arrival of The Threat twice in the same timeline. There was nothing for Him to learn that way. His power was immense and total. He only had to witness The Threat once in each timeline to understand it.
Worst of all was the knowledge. The knowledge that He would only be able to save a single timeline. That all others would fall into ruin, destroyed and left to rot away. Only one could survive; the one that He chose. He could stop The Threat only once, for doing so would require Him to remain. Ever vigilant, ever ready to stop any recurrence.
He had to choose which timeline. That task was less than He feared, for now he knew that there were an infinite number of them. He could choose one with the right qualities, one whose nature would aid Him in His work. He realized then that He would, once He had chosen the proper timeline, finally watch The Threat come twice. Once, when He reviewed that timeline prior to choosing. And again, when He would stop it.
And stop it, He would. No other outcome was acceptable. He had already sacrificed too much. His mortality, His life, His happiness, His very soul itself. He had wrought Himself into a weapon, to strike down The Threat, and He would fulfill that purpose, no matter what.
----
Jerry Williams, Godslayer
Nibiru
We were sharks, swimming and darting among a school of fish. Gods and devas fled, screaming in terror as we flew through the swirling, chaotic energies that should have driven us -or at least my wife and daughter- mad within seconds. They had thought that their realm protected them.
Little did they know, we were already mad.
Inanna and I flanked a group of fleeing gods, preventing them from leaving this world, extending their essence into manifested bodies somewhere in one of the countless material worlds, or simply crossing the energy that was the core of their beings into the Spirit World. Here, in Nibiru, our divinities and demi-divinities gave us access to unlimited power. We seized it and wove nets with which to entrap those minor gods who could not find escape elsewhere, and had huddled here in fear of our coming.
As the group fled, we sped up, curving our course, which caused them to curve theirs, fearful of drawing too close to either of us. We moved slowly, carefully, angling them where we wanted them to go.
It wasn't long before the gaping maw of the Grandfather of the Gods came into view. Ixlublotl, the primordial god, the originator of divinity. The gods we herded realized their peril and turned to flee back the opposite direction, but there they found Aaina, burning towards them, screaming in rage and bristling with offensive energies.
Trapped, they had no choice. They attacked us. Emotions and thoughts, energy and matter, all of it flew at us in an orgy of sudden violence that churned the substrate of this world into a screaming chaos. All three of us linked our magics into a shield; a half-sphere of anti-magic that absorbed their attacks, sending the energy of which they were made back into into the swirling chaos around us.
They threw everything they had at us, a desperate last stand, driven by necessity and panic. All of it crashed against our defenses, the resulting streamers of magic filling the space around us with an all but impenetrable cloud. Hidden by that cloud, Ixy closed in.
By the time they realized that it was too late, it was over.
Ixy's physical body, that cloud-wrapped cacophony of maw-stalks, eye-stalks, spider-like legs and whipping tentacles, currently the size of a skyscraper, swept in, mouths snapping up the energies that were the cores of our quarry.
We came together when it was done. Inanna created a haven for us, allowing us to release the magic that held our bodies in stasis and protected us from the wild magic all around. It was a copy of our house, something she'd come up with a while back and shown to me with great pride. I had loved it, of course.
I sank into the loveseat with Inanna next to me as Aaina took the recliner.
"That's most of them," Aaina said.
"About thirty more," I replied. "And then we can start the next phase."
"Do either of you have any doubts about what we're doing?" she asked. I could see the indecision in her eyes. She was so young, and such a good girl. My heart broke at having dragged her into such dirty business.
"No," Inanna answered, her voice hard and confident.
"Yes," I added. "But at the end of the day, this is what needs doing."
Aaina looked back and forth between us, then nodded. None of us smiled.
----
Emily Windham, Wizard, Artificer
Fremont, Nebraska, at the corner of E 4th Ave and N Main St
Emily turned just in time to see the massive troll hit Jim Carmichael with a shoulder, sending the trooper flying before angling at her with no change in speed.
Acting on pure instinct, she conjured a wall of force between them. The troll slammed into it, shattering the magics that held it together with raw force, but the wall did its job, stopping the warrior in his tracks.
Emily snatched the rune-engraved knife off her belt and surged forward, jumping at the last second to put her in range of the troll's huge neck. The blade plunged in, and she released a quick burst of magic that made her legs and off hand sticky, allowing her to cling to the thing, too close for it to use its battleaxe on her.
She ripped the knife out and plunged it in again and again as the barbarian roared in pain and indignation at being hurt so badly by a foe so tiny. Emily grabbed his beard, yanking hard to bring his eyes to hers as she slammed the knife in and twisted, the magic in the blade telling her when it found his windpipe and carotid artery.
Blood sprayed, coating her face and shoulders. The troll's roars were cut off in a gurgling, breathy hiss. He stumbled, then fell. Emily rode him down, her eyes locked onto his, watching all hopes of victory, or even survival, fade from them. She lost herself in those eyes, in the mystery that was this troll's life, ending right before her. She saw the regrets, the crushed hopes, the shame of defeat and wondered at the context.
The impact as they hit the ground broke the spell.
Emily released the magic and stood up, instincts trained into her by the security troops and war wizards making her search for more threats before she could even process what had just happened. But there were no more threats. That had been the last one.
Greg Ramirez walked towards her, his rifle barrel pointed down, hanging from the sling in front of his armor and all the various attachments that he and the security troops referred to as their 'battle rattle'.
"Nice work," he said, eyeing the troll, who continued to gasp for air, the sound of his labored breaths reminding Emily of a pig squealing. She looked down, searching for that orgasmic feeling her bio-dad had so desperately wanted her to share with him, but not finding it. All she found was a sense of satisfaction, yet even that was too much.
Years of therapy, of telling her story to trained clinicians and listening to and internalizing their advice. All of it had helped her make friends and move among the normal people, but it had never erased that feeling of satisfaction. This was the fourth time she'd killed a sentient being, and each time, she felt the exact same way. It was a victory.
Her maudlin thoughts were interrupted by the bark of Greg's rifle. The troll's head jerked and deformed, a splattering of blood coming out as a .277 fury round drilled a hole straight through his temples. She glanced up to find Greg still eyeing her.
"You did good," he said, his expression showing some concern.
"I liked it," she said quietly, her eyes turning back.
"You liked killing him?" Greg asked. Emily nodded, wondering if she'd always be fucked up.
"I killed him," Greg said. "And I damn sure liked it."
Emily turned back, eyeing him with some interest. Greg was, in many ways, the opposite of her. Cool, confident, charming and just all-around well-adjusted. She hadn't ever imagined that he wound enjoy something like this.
"It means I won," he explained. "It means that big, badass motherfucker showed up here trying to bully us, and take whatever he wanted from us, and little old me stood up and said 'no', and when he tried to force the issue, I took his life away. It feels like justice. It feels like one less motherfucker trying to kill me and my friends. Damn straight I liked it."
Emily smiled. She didn't realized she had smiled until Greg smiled back.
"I read your psych eval," he went on. "I know you think you're fucked in the head, but I'm gonna tell you right now, you're not. You're a warrior, that's it. Bloodlust isn't a bad thing, if it can be controlled. Enjoying killing isn't a bad thing, if you're killing the people that need killing. Give yourself a break, girl."
He clapped her on the shoulder, then took the back of her head with his free hand and pressed her forehead to his.
"I'm gonna recommend you be allowed to join the war wizard roster. You're all trained up, you're prepared for it, and from what I've seen today, you're a fucking natural."
Without waiting for a response, he let her go and turned away, grabbing the radio fob on his armor and squeezing it.
"Black Lead, this is Black-Two Actual. All raiders at the target site are neutralized. We're commencing a sweep now, will report back in thirty mikes."
Emily smiled at his back as he walked away. A part of her reflected that he was a natural leader, knowing exactly what to say to her in that moment. Another part didn't care, because it worked. She glanced down at the troll again, and didn't see a victim.
She saw a victory.
----
Kathy Evenson, Professional
Somewhere in the ruins of an ancient city in the Seventh World
Kells shifted nervously as Kathy continued to cut chits from the electrical panel lid with the magical laser emerging from her fingertip. He held his machete, really a short sword, in one hand, and his dagger in the other.
"We really shouldn't be much longer, Kath," he said. Kathy had explained to him the difference between Kath and Kathy, and even hinted at the things she'd done while possessed by Pissface and calling herself 'Kath', and even gone into some detail about how much she hated the nickname. Kells hadn't cared. He simply agreed with her, then continued to call her 'Kath'.
And the truth was, she really didn't mind that much.
She wasn't quite sure why, though she could hazard a guess. The man was disarming to a great degree. He presented himself as a dirty wanderer, a simple, violent man who shouldn't be trusted as far as you could throw him. But within just a few minutes of meeting him, she'd seen the intelligence in his eyes and words. She had seen the integrity in his negotiations with her, and the ethics that had turned him protective when the Searchers had appeared.
And despite that protectiveness, he still managed to avoid being patronizing. When she'd told him how she planned to get his chits, he had warned her of the dangers, then agreed to come along without hesitation when she didn't change her mind. Kells was a good man, she thought, and if a good man wanted to call her Kath, she supposed she could let him reclaim the name from the hell it had once represented.
"It won't be much longer," she said. She already had over seven hundred, and this plate would bring her to eight hundred. She only needed five or six more. This deep in the ruins, there was an untouched electrical box on almost every building. Some had been corroded, but most were surprisingly intact.
As she cut the final strip into chits, a roar sounded. It was a gurgling, rasping roar, unlike anything she had ever heard before. Or rather, the first one had been unlike anything she had ever heard before. This was the third time she'd heard it, and it sounded closer than the last two.
"That's no good sign, right thur," Kells said.
Kathy finished, dumping the little squares of galvanized steel into her bag and standing up.
"Come on," she said. "We'll go a couple blocks away from whatever that was before I cut the next one."
"Aye," Kells agreed, his head swiveling on his shoulders as he followed her down the alley. Kathy took note of how spooked he was. He seemed more nervous here than he had with the Searchers right in front of him. She supposed that might have something to do with the nature of the threats. The Searchers were, regardless of power and reputation, mere humans. Whereas whatever was making that roar was clearly some sort of monster.
She led him six blocks in a direction away from the roar before she stopped to examine the buildings. They had moved into a downtown area, which was one of the reasons she had stopped. The buildings here were closer together, which should make the rest of her task quicker. She found a good cover and ripped the little padlock off, then pulled it open and off its hinges.
A mass of spiders rushed out of the electrical box. She jerked her hand away, but they ignored her, scurrying down the wall and vanishing into the cracks between the bricks, safe once again in enclosed darkness.
She began to cut as Kells again stood watch.
She hadn't even made it halfway through the panel when another roar sounded, even closer than the last, and from a different direction.
"Call it," Kells said. "Call it now, Kath. Better ye collect some more later on than deal with the beast makin' them sounds."
"What kind of beast?" Kathy asked. She kept cutting, but glanced up and around, not seeing anything but filthy, dilapidated alleys.
"Walkers, they call 'em," Kells said. "Like great spiders, but rottin' away, with bones stickin' out an' flesh hangin' off th'legs."
"Great spiders?" Kathy asked. "How big?"
"Bigger'n a building."
"You've seen them yourself?" Kathy asked.
"Only once," Kells said, his voice growing quieter. He seemed to be done speaking for a moment, staring around. But after a few seconds, he continued.
"Friend o'mine, name o' Gil. We used t'work together, he an' I. I were real new to runnin' a caravan crew back then, about ten years back. Gil were an old hand at it, though. Took me under 'is wing and taught me th'roads, as it were.
"Anyways, we'd taken a pair o' contracts. Rough ones, with a tight timetable. Merchants needed t'get to Freeman's Port post-haste. One faster'n th'other. Gil took that one, left me with the easier one, though that weren't t'say it were an easy job.
"We was in Craster's Holdfast at th'time, an smack in between there an' Freeman's Port were an ancient ruin. Big one, 'bout the size o' this'un, in fact. Normally, it took about a week t'travel between the two places, but if one were brave or foolhardy enough, they could cut through th'ruins an' make it in five days.
"Well, old Gil had that in mind. We left together, an' at th'place where ye normally would turn north t'go around the ruins, he led his caravan on straight. I prayed fer their safety that night, but never really believed anything would happen. Gil were an experienced caravaner, an' tougher'n anyone else I'd ever met.
"Two days later, we was walkin' this ridgeline north o'the ruins when somethin' called out t'me. Not sure what, exactly. I started lookin' south, scannin' the ruins, an' sure enough, I found Gil's caravan, walking down a wide road between th'largest buildings. They was movin' at quite a clip, I hav'ta say.
"I were tickled pink, at first. Because we'd made near as good a time as they had, despite movin' almost a day's north to skirt th'ruins. But as I watched, I realized that they weren't just travelin', they was runnin'."
Kells sighed, his eyes distant and full of old regrets.
"That's when I saw one. A great Walker, striding out o' th'deepest part o' th'ruins. The way it moved were like nothin' I ever seen before. It crawled along th'sides o' the ruins themselves, like a spider almost, but always with two or three feet on th'ground.
"It came fer th'caravan, and fell on 'em in a slaughter. I watched it breathe fire down on 'em, stompin' men flat with its feet an' scooping 'em up with its great claws."
He sighed again, then looked down. He tucked his sword under his armpit and used his hand to rub his eyes for a moment, before taking the blade up again.
"Killed 'em all, it did. Erry single one, as I live an' breath. An' when it were done, it went around, stompin' th'bodies flat. Never ate one, jes did all it could t'make sure that not a single survivor lived t'tell the tale. I were shook something fierce, I tell ya. Took me own caravan down off the ridge, t'avoid bein' spotted. We ended up arriving a day late, but to this day, I thank me lucky stars we made it at all."
Another sigh came, and Kathy heard the cracks in his voice as he continued on.
"Not Gil, though. Nor any o'them what worked for him, or th'merchant what hired him. A few years later, I worked up th'courage t'take a couple o'men into the ruins, t'find the bodies. I found bones dressed in Gil's clothes. I took his sword, which had survived, an' is th'one I carry to this day. I think Gil'd be pleased to know his blade had saved me life, quite a few times since."
Kathy finished cutting the cover up and stood to put her hands on Kells' shoulder.
"Thank you for telling me that," she said, her voice gentle. "I can tell it's an important story to you."
Kells nodded and sniffed once, then jerked his head in the direction away from the most recent roar. "I still think we should get out o' here, Kath," he said. "I'll face down the Searchers an' be happy o' a good death, should they take me. But them Walkers... They ain't warriors ye can face an' die with honor. One o'them things finds us, there ain't no fightin' it. We jes' die screaming, th'only consolation coming when it's all over."
Kathy weighed his words carefully. Kells knew this world far better than she did. And while she knew her own abilities far better than anyone here, she had to be mindful not to be too arrogant. Kells had told her how a single Walker had slaughtered an entire caravan of experienced fighters, led by an experienced leader.
"Okay," she said. She handed the bag to Kells. "There should be about eight hundred and fifty chits in there. You can count them out later, and I'll trust your count. After I find what I'm looking for, I'll collect the rest and we'll settle up."
"Good call," Kells said. He tied the bag off to his belt and walked to the corner of the building, peeking around. When he was satisfied, he nodded. Kathy joined him, and together, they made a beeline to the edge of the ruins.
They had made it about halfway out when another roar sounded, this one right on top of them. A rumbling crash sounded from her right, and Kathy turned to see rubble falling to the ground as something massive rose off the ground, two blocks over.
"Stars an' stones," Kells swore, then shouted "Run!"

In a lot of sci-fi, people often dismiss surface defenses, or make them overpowered or ridiculous. Orbital bombardment's effectiveness is quite overstated when we look at the history of warfare. In particular wet navies at sea get overlooked. Certain writers will fight tooth and nail to keep infantry, tanks, planes, and artillery in a story, then laugh at the idea of a space marine ever setting foot in water. But why? Submarines are naturally stealthy, and theoretically can avoid getting shot from orbit by diving. Yet they'll be dismissed or ignored. A surface vessel has 71% of the globe to maneuver in, it can carry a large reactor and plenty of weapons of any kind. Yet it is generally taken for granted that all surface vessels would be sunk immediately in any conflict, and are worthless. Other criticisms abound, yet the most common threads are presumption or omission. There is an undercurrent that consistently believes the ability to destroy a planet will make all enemies submit, when that hasn't stopped us since Trinity. I submit that naval vessels are underutilized, and could be more useful than expected, as a mobile source of energy and firepower that's bigger than anything ever put on land, and through their maneuverability have an advantage no stationary installation can match in terms of survivability and strategic deployment.
The arguments generally made against naval vessels are that a wet navy ship can't hide. You can't throw a tarp over it like you can infantry, tanks, or planes. Critics will insist that a seagoing vessel will be instantly lit up, it will be a target that will immediately be destroyed. If a submarine pops up to fire, they'll get nuclear depth charge'd or shot with a laser. Here's a few questions; what's the difference between that and infantry? Why have ground forces at all? Some critics will ask that exact question. In some circles it's presumed that space warfare makes all other kinds of conflict obsolete, or that significant firepower does the same thing. The ability to destroy a planet has done nothing to dissuade us from having conventional war. But that's what we've always said with any new weapon. The Templin Institute video on planetary invasion had a great description of this.
https://youtu.be/XgN5yq362_s
Before WWII, strategic bombing was seen as a game ender. It's effects on breaking the enemy's will to fight is dubious at best. Strategic bombing and nuclear weapons did nothing to end war, or force the enemy to surrender. Even with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that was a country at its breaking point after fifteen years of near-constant conflict, and five years of a global war. And still, some holdouts tried to stage a coup to prevent the emperor from surrendering.
After WWII, there were those who believed the nuclear age put an end to conventional war. The air force insisted the Navy and Marines were obsolete. This was part of a conflict that would be known as the Revolt of the Admirals. Air Force General Frank A Armstrong was quoted in Nathan Miller's "The US Navy: A History":
"You gentlemen had better understand that the Army Air Force is tired of being a subordinate outfit. It was a predominant force during the war, and it is going to be a predominant force during the peace, and you might as well make up your minds whether you like it or not, and we do not care whether you like it or not. The Army Air Force is going to run the show. You, the Navy, are not going to have anything but a couple of carriers that are ineffective anyway, and they will probably be sunk in the first battle. Now as for the Marines, you know what the Marines are, a small bitched-up army talking Navy lingo. We are going to put those Marines in the Regular Army and make efficient soldiers out of them."
This was accompanied by:
"In the age of atomic warfare, the fast carrier task force was regarded as an anachronism, and such a massive concentration of ships was seen as being more vulnerable to the bomb than any other weapon system...some strategists doubted that the navy would have an important part to play in the future...Admiral Nimitz, then chief of naval operations, pointed out the same thing had been said about the navy when the submarine, the torpedo, and the airplane were introduced. 'While the prophets of naval doom are shouting themselves hoarse, the Navy will be at work to make the changes needed to accommodate American sea power to the new weapons,' he declared..."
They can't think of a war without nuclear weapons. Then the very first war we came across after WWII, Korea, they could not use nuclear weapons at all. Political, economic, or military reasons could all make orbital bombardment less than desirable in certain situations. The situation might prevent it politically. There's limited wars, there's rules of engagement, there's resources you need, there's stuff you want. On the other side of the equation the weapons might not show the results you expect. They might not be accurate, they might be affected by some new flaw, they're just not what you hoped. Or the enemy is more capable than you expect.
Heinlein said in Starship Troopers that "War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose." Clausewitz once said that "War is a mere continuation of policy by other means". And I say that the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of "why on earth would you do that". If your goal is to conquer a planet, simply glassing it won't get you anything. If you wish to conquer and seize land, you need to send troops. You need someone to hold it and die for it.
So why in the world must this apply to everything but the wet navy? You will see people with big garrisons, you'll see Bolo cybertanks with megaton-per-second firepower, you'll see infantry doing guerilla warfare, you'll even see aircraft. Why is the wet navy seen as so obsolete in sci-fi circles? The largest vehicle ever built in the real world is the ship Seawise Giant, nearly twice the size of the Hindenburg, the largest flying machine ever built, and longer than the largest aircraft carriers ever. This means that a future battleship, carrier, or other vessel could be just as big and carry enormous weapons. Yet still folks insist that because surface ships can't throw a tarp over themselves, that they'll be sitting ducks.
Submarines I've noticed in some circles are a solution. They are small, sneaky, and can use lasers as much as missiles. Others say that they're vulnerable when launching, hence the laser idea. One cool idea I've seen is a boat that extends out big laser arrays on the surface connected by a tether to the sub hiding deep underwater, so that if the laser is shot the submarine is safe beneath the waves. Yet just as often when this idea is proposed, it is claimed that if a submarine pops up, they'll be bombed, insisting that satellites have advanced too far. I don't know enough to speak to that, but there's a lot of ocean. What do you gain by wasting ammo dropping rocks on 71% of the planet just to be sure they don't have a submarine hiding? Wouldn't that be an excellent reason to have submarines, just so the enemy has to waste ships patrolling and not hitting the land targets?
The arguments eventually circle around to "we can nuke it". First of all, the ocean is big and it is deep. You'd trash the environment, including things you might want to conquer, if you vaporized thousands of square kilometers of sea water to kill a single hundred-meter sub. As I must repeat, the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of "why on earth would you do that?" During the Cold War, despite having the ability to glass the planet, we still built tanks, ships, and artillery, because there are certain kinds of war, certain modes of operation, certain things that don't involve total annihilation, because so often that's not what war is about. If you want to conquer a planet, you have to take it. The Soviets being able to annihilate Washington didn't magically alter the fact that they didn't have the ships to move any troops to hold it.
A submarine is one thing. If that can survive, why not a surface ship? Again, that tarp thing would be the answer. "They're sitting ducks!" One must ask why? During the Cold War, carriers were vulnerable, sure, but we still built them, and they can carry nukes too. And they can do a lot more things than a battleship can, from disaster relief to moving the crew's cars. A surface ship can be stealthy, just not as much as a sub. They can carry larger weapons than a sub, with more power to put through them.
While it's said a surface ship can't hide, neither can a starship, it's sitting up there shedding heat like mad. A surface ship has the whole planet to play with.
http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2009/06/space-warfare-i-gravity-well.html
One scenario pitched to me recently is a bunch of corvettes and frigates loaded down with missiles and lasers that shoot their wad in the opening salvos like a lot of Cold War plans. But does it have to be that small?
Let me be clear. Current generations of naval vessels likely wouldn't stand a chance. But they create an interesting precedent, because there exist multiple anti-satellite(ASAT) weapon projects that we could extrapolate for use on a surface vessel. We have a ton of projects, from the MIRACL directed-energy weapon, to the ASM-135 air-launched missile, the YAL-1 Airborne Laser(ABL), to the RIM-161 Standard Missile 3(not technically anti-satellite, it's an anti-ballistic missile that has been used in ASAT roles). These are ground-based, air-launched, and sea-based. We also can think about space guns, i.e. weapons used to launch projectiles into space. Project HARP in the 1960s used modified 16-inch naval guns to launch projectiles high into space. They succeeded, and a mass driverailgun would likely be able to get the same performance out of a smaller package. Keep in mind, these weapons don't need to achieve orbit, they just need to hit something in orbit, so they can be much smaller. They were flawed, and less than accurate, but they do exist. So this means that we can speculate on the future of these weapons if they were more mature. And all of these could be mounted on relatively conventional platforms. Size isn't everything, yet a war machine's power isn't in just its armor, but in its ability to deliver offensive power as much as defensive power.
The MIRACL was ground-based, and not mobile; they tried to use it to shoot at a satellite. It didn't work well, they ended up using a smaller less powerful weapon for the job. The YAL-1 ABL was a 747 modified with a weapon of the same output as the MIRACL, only airborne. The ASM-135 was attached to a squadron of unmodified F-15s that would go into supersonic zoom climbs to launch the missiles. The RIM-161 is an anti-ballistic missile mounted on standard AEGIS VLS cells that has successfully intercepted satellites. 16-inch guns have been used on battleships for years. And with newer technologies, you don't need anything that dramatic, or that big. In the 1970s, the US experimented with an eight-inch gun mounted on a destroyer. That project didn't go very far, but it did function, and it means big guns can be mounted on small ships.
So, let me lay it out. F-15s(which people have considered using for aircraft carriers), conventional VLS cells, and cannons have precedent for being able to intercept spacecraft. Modern stealth systems do exist even for surface vessels, they can't hide as well, but they can carry a larger variety of weapons, and more powerful reactors than a sub. This creates precedent that modern destroyers, or something similar, and aircraft carriers, could serve a role in space warfare. As for surviving orbital bombardment? Super-cavitation is a process for reducing drag on a ship or a weapon's hull as it travels through the water. We also have hydrojets, hydrofoils, and other technologies that are deployed or in the works. Increasing the speed of a surface ship could be the difference between life and death for it.
A futuristic carrier group might consist of a carrier, smaller than ours perhaps, equipped with futuristic air-breathing aircraft, protected by destroyers and submarines. These destroyers are armed with energy weapons, missiles, and cannons capable of firing at targets in orbit. The submarines can do the same thing. The carrier can provide air support to land-based units and fire at the enemy in space without having to worry about needing specialized runways or that they might get hit in a first strike. The escorts can shoot at the enemy, provide gunfire support when needed, and light out at a hundred knots to escape the blast of an orbital bomb.
Now, there are certainly challenges. What warrants posting a large force like this on a planet that might not have any fighting? I'm not sure that is easy to answer, though one thought is to ask what's the point of the Kansas National Guard? They're not likely to see any combat anytime soon. On the other hand, navies in our world exist to fight potential threats. Depending on a setting, your colony world might only have one faction there. Having a trained naval force might be very useful for disaster relief and keeping the peace.
There's also reason for water-based Marines, with amphibious assault ships and all the bells and whistles therein; big transports, air cushion landing craft, helicopters, etc. What if the enemy lands across the continent? Or across an ocean? Might you need sea transportation? Imagine if you didn't have surface defenses. You have militia to play guerilla, and orbital defenses, and your colony only settled on one of two continents on the planet. The enemy blows up your orbital defenses, then steals some mining equipment and sets up a whole operation on the other side, eating up your planet's resources, sending them off to the war effort, while you're completely helpless because the biggest boat you have is a yacht. You can't fight back without being bombed, but you can't even fight back without that because you don't have any missiles, lasers, or any other weapons capable of hitting their ships, and more than that, you can't even get your four thousand militia over there to destroy the mine. A futuristic carrier group would make all the difference here, with access to amphibious assault equipment and other gear that can move in one go what could take months by helicopter.
One thing that keeps coming back in this debate is "but they could get bombed, why bother investing in them?" In the Cold War, trillions were invested in technologies they knew would get annihilated in any conflict. That a first strike could wipe out all our bombers and missiles in one stroke. And that is what second strike capability is about, the ability to hit back even if they hit you first. No matter how much you destroyed, no matter how many ships you sank, missiles you found, or bombers you shot, you could never ever be sure the enemy couldn't drop a hundred more nukes on you hidden somewhere. If even a single plane, a single fighter jet, with a single pilot, got through, millions would die. So much of modern warfare is based on the idea that this advanced weapon could easily be wiped out in a master stroke.
I submit that wet naval vessels are underutilized in sci-fi circles, and could be more useful than expected, as a mobile source of energy and firepower that's bigger than anything ever put on land, and demonstrate strategic mobility and survivability their maneuverability have an advantage no stationary installation can match. They can respond to threats all over a planet, and engage with the enemy in space. Like how nuclear weapons didn't end the age of the carrier, I doubt orbital bombardment would put an end to the sea.
Let me know your thoughts, or suggestions you have for using sea vessels in the context of space warfare!

Estimating what you need resource wise to move is hard. We just finished our 6th move in 8 years and still have trouble. I figured I’d make a quick post with some lessons learned and what it required - hopefully someone might find it useful in the future.
The House - Phoenix, AZ, USA - 1850 sq ft 3 bed/2 bath house - Modest master bedroom, a toddler room, and an office - 1 couch, couple arm chairs, 6 seat dining table, and half a dozen other pieces of furniture - Small outdoor shed and a wall’s worth of storage in the garage - Washer and dryer.
The Packing - Around 120 boxes (didn’t keep exact count - sorry) split roughly equally between small, medium, and large. Paid $85 for 100ish used boxes and left over packing materials from Facebook Marketplace. No fancy boxes. Just cut some down to fit awkward items - 14 rolls of good quality packing tape (cheap stuff is not worth it) - 5 Costco rolls of plastic wrap (2-3 layers of wrap on all important furniture) - 1 Costco roll of tissue paper for breakable items - 1 large roll of bubble wrap
The Moving - Ordered 4 U-Haul self-load storage pods (5w x 8l x 7h). U-Haul’s online estimator and the 2 reps I spoke to were both wrong on the estimate - we needed about 5.5 pods. Plus they come with a TON of moving blankets that take up 1/3 of a unit (total for all 4 pods) - Cost $50/pod/month plus insurance and a $99 delivery fee on both ends. Storage is payed per month no prorating - Paid professional moving company $300 to load the pods (and another $300 to unload in a few weeks). It took 2 guys about 3 hours to load 4 pods - Additional 5x8 conditioned storage unit for temp sensitive or breakable large items. About $100/month plus lock and application fee. - Total cost for move with 5 weeks of storage is around $2000
Lessons Learned - Don’t be stingy with the packing materials. Similar sized boxes are a lot easier to pack. You’ll use way less good quality tape than the cheap stuff. - Over estimate the storage you’ll need. I’d consider our home in about the middle as far as “stuff” goes. We needed roughly the square footage in cubic storage space (so an 1900 sq ft house needs about 1900 cubic feet of storage) - 80% of the packing is quick. The next 20% takes just as long as the first 80% and there is always at least 1 car load left over. Plan a full weekend for just the last 20% of stuff.

A delicate young man with pallid skin and dark circles under his eyes sat on a weathered bench opposite the police station. He held a cup of coffee in his hands—not the cheap synthetic kind available to those in the slums, but genuine plant-based coffee, a luxury usually reserved for higher-ranking citizens. It had cost him nearly all his savings, yet Sunny chose this day for a bit of indulgence.
After all, he was at the end of his road.
Basking in the warmth of the extravagant beverage, he lifted the cup to relish its scent. With a cautious sip, he winced.
"Ah! So bitter!"
Staring down the coffee with a deep sigh, Sunny persevered, taking another gulp. Despite its bitterness, he was set on enjoying the full value of his purchase—regardless of his protesting taste buds.
"I should've opted for real meat instead. Who would've thought actual coffee could taste so foul? At least it'll keep me awake," he mused.
Gazing into the void, he began to nod off, only to jolt himself awake with a slap to the face.
"Such a rip-off," he muttered.
With a shake of his head and a few choice words, Sunny downed the rest of his coffee and rose to his feet. The affluent residents of this part of town hurried by the small park, casting curious glances his way. His haggard appearance, accentuated by cheap attire and sleep deprivation, made him stick out. His thin, pale figure contrasted sharply with the robust passersby. Enviously eyeing their stature, he aimed the cup at a nearby bin.
"That's the difference three square meals a day make," he scoffed.
The cup missed its target, landing on the pavement. Sunny sighed, retrieved the cup, and made sure it went into the bin this time. A wry smile on his face, he crossed the street and stepped into the police station.
Inside, a weary officer cast a brief glance at him and frowned in clear distaste.
"Are you lost, boy?"
Sunny surveyed the surroundings with interest, observing the reinforced armor on the walls and the barely concealed turret nests in the ceiling. The officer appeared scruffy and stern. It seemed police stations were consistent everywhere.
"Hey! I'm speaking to you!"
Sunny cleared his throat.
"Uh, no."
He then scratched the back of his head and continued:
"Under the Third Special Directive, I am here to turn myself in as a carrier of the Nightmare Spell."
The officer's demeanor shifted from annoyance to caution. He scrutinized the young man anew, this time with a sharp gaze.
"Are you certain you're infected? When did the symptoms begin?"
Sunny gave a nonchalant shrug.
"A week ago?"
The officer's complexion turned noticeably paler.
"Damn."
Then, with a swift movement, he hit a button on his terminal and shouted:
"Attention! Code Black in the lobby! I repeat, CODE BLACK!"
***
The Nightmare Spell emerged several decades ago, during a period when the planet was beginning to recover from catastrophic natural disasters and ensuing wars over resources.
Initially, a new ailment causing widespread fatigue and drowsiness didn't garner much attention. However, as people began to succumb to an abnormal sleep from which they wouldn't awaken, even after several days, governments started to panic. By that time, it was too late for any response to make a difference.
As the afflicted began to die in their sleep, transforming into monsters upon death, the world was unprepared. These Nightmare Creatures swiftly overran national defenses, casting the world into utter disarray.
The nature of the Spell, its capabilities, and methods to combat it remained unknown.
Ultimately, it was the Awakened—those who had endured the Spell's initial onslaught and returned alive—who halted its destruction. Wielding extraordinary powers gained through their Nightmares, they reestablished peace and forged a new semblance of order.
Certainly, it was just the initial catastrophe unleashed by the Spell. However, for Sunny, it seemed irrelevant — until recently, when he began struggling to stay awake.
For the average individual, being selected by the Spell could be as dangerous as it was fortuitous. In school, children were taught survival skills and combat techniques in case they were affected. Affluent families employed private tutors to instruct their offspring in various martial arts. Members of the Awakened clans even possessed potent heritages, harnessing ancestral Memories and Echoes during their inaugural journey to the Dream Realm.
The wealthier your family, the greater your odds of enduring and ascending as an Awakened.
Yet for Sunny, an orphan who devoted his days to foraging rather than education, the Spell's choice offered no prospects. For him, it signified an almost certain demise.
***
Minutes later, Sunny yawned as several policemen busied themselves securing him in restraints. Shortly, he was strapped into a bulky chair, an odd hybrid of a hospital bed and a torture device. They were in a room located in the police station's basement, encased by thick armored walls and guarded by a daunting vault door. Nearby, officers stood against the walls, clutching automatic rifles with stern looks etched on their faces.
Sunny was indifferent to them. His only concern was his overwhelming desire to sleep.
At last, the vault door swung open, and a gray-haired policeman stepped through. His face bore the marks of experience, and his stern eyes seemed to have witnessed countless horrors. After inspecting the restraints, he cast a swift glance at his wristwatch before facing Sunny:
"What's your name, kid?"
Sunny blinked several times, struggling to focus, then squirmed in discomfort.
"Sunless."
The elderly policeman lifted an eyebrow.
"Sunless? That's an unusual name."
Sunny attempted to shrug, but his body refused to cooperate.
"What's unusual about it? At least I have a name. Where I come from, not everyone is given one."
He yawned before continuing:
"It's because I was born during a solar eclipse. My mother was quite the poet."
Hence his peculiar name, and why his younger sister was named Rain… at least, when she was still with them. Whether it stemmed from poetic flair or sheer indolence, he couldn't tell.
The policeman gave a gruff sound.
"Should I get in touch with your family?"
Sunny shook his head.
"No need. There's no one left."
For a moment, a shadow crossed the policeman's face before it settled into a grave expression.
"Alright, Sunless. How long can you remain awake?"
"Uh… not very long."
The policeman exhaled deeply.
"In that case, we don't have time for the complete procedure. Resist sleep as best as you can and pay close attention to what I'm about to say. Understood?"
Without waiting for an answer, he continued:
"What do you understand about the Nightmare Spell?"
Sunny looked at him with uncertainty.
"About as much as the next person, I suppose? Isn't the Spell common knowledge?"
"It's not the glamorous stuff you see in dramas or hear about in propaganda broadcasts. How much do you truly understand?"
That question was difficult to answer.
"So, I just enter the Dream Realm, slay some monsters to complete the First Nightmare, gain magical powers, and become an Awakened?"
The veteran policeman shook his head.
"Pay attention. When you fall asleep, you'll be transported into your First Nightmare. Nightmares are trials crafted by the Spell. Inside, you'll encounter monsters, but you'll encounter people as well. Remember, they aren't real. They are merely illusions created to challenge you."
"How can you be certain?"
The policeman fixed him with a stare.
"I mean, nobody really grasps the nature of the Spell or its mechanics, right? So how can you be sure they aren't real?"
"You may have to eliminate them, kid. It's better for you to consider them as mere illusions."
"Oh."
The aged officer paused for a moment, then nodded and resumed speaking.
"Much about the First Nightmare is left to chance. Generally, it's not meant to be excessively difficult. The predicament you find yourself in, the tools at your disposal, and the creatures you must overcome should all fall within your capabilities. After all, the Spell conjures trials, not death sentences. Your particular situation does put you at a disadvantage, but remember, children from the outskirts are resilient. Don't lose hope just yet."
"Mm-hmm."
Sunny's drowsiness was intensifying, making it difficult to keep up with the conversation.
"As for the 'magic powers' you inquired about... indeed, you will acquire them if you endure the Nightmare until its conclusion. The exact nature of these powers will depend on your inherent affinities and your actions during the trial. However, you'll have access to some of them right from the beginning..."
The old policeman's voice was fading into the distance. Sunny's eyelids were so heavy, it was a struggle to keep his eyes open.
"Remember: your first task upon entering the Nightmare is to assess your Attributes and your Aspect. If you're assigned a combat-oriented Aspect, like a Swordsman or an Archer, you'll find things more manageable. If it's complemented by a physical Attribute, all the better. Since Combat Aspects are quite common, there's a good chance you'll receive one."
The light in the armored room was fading.
"If you're unfortunate enough to have an Aspect unrelated to combat, don't lose heart. Sorcery and utility Aspects have their own merits; you just need to use them wisely. There are no truly useless Aspects. Well, almost none. So do whatever it takes to survive."
"Surviving means you're on your way to becoming an Awakened. But if you perish, you'll create a portal for a Nightmare Creature to enter our world. That would mean my colleagues and I have to intervene. So, please, Sunless, don't perish."
Sunny, already drifting to sleep, felt somewhat moved by the officer's plea.
"And try not to perish immediately. It will be hours before the nearest Awakened can arrive, and we'd really prefer not to confront that creature alone..."
'What?'
With that final thought, Sunny succumbed to a profound sleep.
Darkness enveloped everything.
And then, from the shadows, a vaguely familiar voice echoed:
[Aspirant! Welcome to the Nightmare Spell. Prepare for your First Trial…]
****
Please Support the Author by Visiting his Site at:
Read Shadow Slave - Guiltythree - WebNovel

I have a story I would like some help with, I'm going to try to make this as short as I can but there's things I wanna say to help anyone reading understand the situation, so this could be a lengthy one.
Firstly, I'm aware this could seem like a stupid post but idk nor do I trust anyone around me to give me a second opinion bc ppl I would think to go to either don't care, don't know what anything I'm saying even means, or have the same "that's how the cowboys did it" stupid fucking response. So I'm making this post to hopefully hear from ppl who are actually willing to help me see from different perspectives rather than brush me off. Considering not having much to look to, I'm fairly easily swayed by ppl I meet who know more about something than I do bc I want to be able to look up to them.
Secondly, some backstory. I have a 21yr old mare who was abandoned with aggression issues. Just straight up left in the field to rot from a very young age, I know this very well bc she used to be owned by my aunt, who dropped her off at my grandparents' farm, who hated her to begin with and having heard about alleged aggression issues refused to do anything with her themselves, such as find her a better home. My aunt bought her with the intentions of growing and learning with her but didn't know enough to properly communicate and they would fight with each other alot so she gave up.
Well I recently finally got her to let me have this horse under the condition that I can prove I can financially support her needs and give her a better home than they could. This was about a year or two ago she finally said yes after years of asking. So this mare, Eclipse, in fact is not at all aggressive, one of the sweetest horses I've ever known. She's just reactive to improper and unfair treatment. Since she was abandoned and left in a field for 15+ yrs of her life she's never had much work done, this includes her hooves which is what I'm here about.
She has all the health issues u can imagine, half of them 2yrs later I finally have under control and I'm currently trying my best to find solutions and manage what's remaining. I've spent the same amount of time trying to get her to pick up her hooves, she is only as of these past few months confident enough to stand quietly and let me work on her, and when she's not she has learned how to safely tell me so. As you can imagine, her hooves contribute to ALOT of her health problems so this is a top priority for me. I spent a good while making sure she was confident enough working with me before having the farrier out, who she has met many other times before bc he comes here for my other mares.
I now have 3 horses in total, all mares as well as a big burly dog. He's not afraid of anything, he guards the property, he's not aggressive but you're guilty until proven innocent. He has also met the farrier many times.
I go thru farriers like candy bc of my location. They hate being here and tell me that just having 2 horses to work on is a waste of their time so every couple years I'm looking for a new one. My horses have hated every single farrier that has worked on them, bc they come out here with negative attitudes, often in a rush, just trying to get it over with and it resulted in "arguments" between the farriers and my horses each time. My horses are super patient and have high tolerances, I can assure you they do their best to not cause problems but I know that's hard when you're trying to be kind to someone who doesn't care enough to be kind to you.
Story time. This new farrier I have has been around for 2 years. He has competed in blacksmithing and farrier championships and has placed in the top 5 multiple times. My horses are barefoot and only have trims done, so it takes him 5 - 10mins per horse. He is super quick and does a fucking beautiful job. Better than any of the last farriers I've had before. He's super considerate of any physical problems any of the horses might have and very carefully works around them. Idk if this is what had me so blinded or what but I told him I finally have full confidence in Eclipse and we're ready for her to be trimmed. I was excited, I put her thru every test I could think of I made sure she was familiar with farrier holds and the feeling of trims and being handled and so on and so forth. I wanted her done first, so I had her first in line when he came out. She must have known what was going to happen bc she panicked like I've never seen before solely at the sight of his truck. He comes up, I made sure to be clear that considering her history and everything ik about her it's important to be slow right now, and I stressed the fact that it took a very long time to get this far with her. It's her very first farrier appointment. He goes to start working on her, she was okay at first but I could see he was rushing her and it started to scare her and the more she tried to express she was getting scared the more aggressive he got. I told him multiple times to stop and give her a second and maybe I misunderstood and she's not ready. Maybe he didn't hear me, bc he didn't quit. She ended up fighting like her life depended on it and it resulted in him hitting her and pressing his hoof knife into her any time she tried to move any which direction. He ended up only getting one hoof partially cut and left unfinished. He did the rest of my horses afterwards but they were extra reluctant.
I'm pretty upset by the way he treated her. She has marks all over her body from being hit and stabbed and pinched. Her back and shoulders are extremely sore, the muscles have lumps from relentlessly trying so hard to move away from him but then being ripped at and pulled around. She's feeling rough right now. I have made a couple attempts to clean out her hooves again and now she won't let me pick them up. I'm worried that I have to restart everything I did with her. I'm going to give her some time to relax and instead just do bodywork and massages for a while, then pretend we're back at square one, just to help bring back her confidence but I'm so worried that we actually are now set back 2yrs, bc if that's the case not only do I have to re-teach her but I also have to reverse the trauma and the effects of that day.
But now for a plot twist, I'm more upset about how I blatantly ignored my horses. Maybe it was bc I looked up to this guy so much, I'm not sure. But it's VERY unlike me to ignore their signs. All 3 horses AND my dog told me that there's something not right with this guy. The dog cowers around him and hides behind me. The other two horses that have been worked on by him before each time expressed severe anxiety when he'd show up for them, but I let it go bc they still stood for him just fine. They were jumpy, they'd move away from him sometimes, they would try hard to stand quietly for him but they were constantly flinching and jerking their heads up and just very clearly uncomfortable with being handled by him. He has never hurt them as far as I've seen, and I'm always intently watching him work bc I'm so fascinated by his skill.
I wholeheartedly blame myself. We wouldn't be in this situation if I would have listened to the other two horses and my dog. I didn't know what any of the things they were saying or doing meant, but what's worse is that I never tried to either. I saw it and for some reason never thought anything of it. I didn't think to try to understand their behaviour or literally anything, and it took Eclipse's situation now to realize what's actually been going on. I can easily compare it to being in a toxic relationship.
Everyone I've gone to about this has said "you're being dramatic, that's how the cowboys did it" or "that's what happens when you're too nice to your horses".
I can't stand knowing that I'm allowing someone who gets physically abusive upon becoming frustrated to work on my horses. I'm being as honest as I can be about what happened that day, what I saw in the horses, what I saw him doing, etc. It makes me sick to think about. Am I overreacting? What do I do about this?
Edit: I gave this a welfare flare, not ethics.

Recently I have been seeing a lot of posts about getting stuck at X weight, or “I cheated and now I am out of Ketosis.” So I wanted to share my journey with you and what has helped me go from where I was, 343 lbs at my heaviest, down to 280lbs as of this week the last time I weighed myself. Today I am lighter than I have been in over 15 years! I still have a long way to go, and my end goal is 200 lbs, because I want to be thin and attractive and I want people to respect me and not judge me because I am fat, just like you probably reading this right now. Well, I am here to try and help!
My journey started with an initial health scare from when I visited the doctor back in 2019, as you are all probably aware of, pre-diabetic, stage 3 fatty liver, ect… I had known about Keto diets in the past, when I was younger, the low carb diet at the time was Atkins, and I had used this diet before to keep my weight in check as I have always struggled with my weight, but that was back in my early 20s. My solution to fixing my health problems (and weight problem) was to go back on a ketogenic diet.
In 2019, I went through the struggle of getting my body in ketosis, dealt with keto flu, low energy, and was able to overcome those challenges and get on a good track of staying low carb. I managed to do this for about a year before I started to slip. It started with small slip ups here and there “a few Doritos wont hurt, its just a hand full.” “A small piece of cookie wont hurt.” Before I knew it (mid 2022), I was kicked out of Ketosis and craving high carb foods again and back into old eating habits. I went from 343 down to 283 then back up to 312 lbs, Darn! I was losing the battle...
Then in 2023, I started having health issues again, which I won’t go into details, and I wanted to get my health in check for good. What was needed, in my opinion, was a fundamental shift in the way I (we) view food. We need to look at food as an essential building block and an energy source for our body and get out of the mindset of looking at food for comfort and enjoyment. This is not an easy thing to do and is probably the hardest thing I have ever done next to getting an Engineering Degree, but if you can master this one thing, you will be hugely successful in your journey to losing the weight and being healthy.
Step 1: Small steps and Logging
My first piece of advice is start small. Yes, you are impatient and yes you want to be thin RIGHT NOW! I get it, but this won’t happen overnight. This is a long process that takes a long time. You are fighting an uphill battle. You are probably surrounded by people eating all kinds of high carb foods, you probably got that skinny friend/relative that can eat anything and stay thin (NOT FAIR! I totally get it..). The first thing I recommend is track absolutely everything you eat. Lose it is only $3 bucks/month (best money I ever spent). Do not try and diet yet, just track what you are eating. Eat a cookie? Log it! Eat an entire party bag potato chips? Hey don’t sweat it! But LOG IT! Get into the habit of logging absolutely everything you put into your body no matter what it is, and don’t judge yourself for your bad eating habits, don’t worry you and me, we are going to fix this together!
After about a week (maybe 2 weeks), make a small change… I was eating about 250 net grams of carbs per day, so I set a reasonable goal for the next week… Lets see if I can get that down to 150 net/day for a week. One week goes by, easily beat it! All it took was cutting some bread out of my diet as well as rice and potatoes. Next step, 100 net/day. Weeks goes by I was at 120 net/day. Darn! I tried my best, but next week, I’m going to do it! Next week goes by I was at 99 net/day. Yes! I did it I hit my goal. Let’s see if I can do it again and again. 2 more weeks go by, and I was down to 80 net/day without hardly trying. Then I lowered my goal to 50/day and that is when it started to get hard. Now I had to cut that slice of toast out of my diet with my morning eggs. I had to cut that bowl of rice out with my meat. I had to really start making some hard changes, and I wasn’t always successful during the first month. I went over and hit 60/day, but I kept at it, kept logging. Today I average 21 Net/day carbs (not too bad right). The best part about the second time I got myself into Ketosis, there was ZERO side effects. No keto flu. I did have electrolyte imbalances for a while but was easily fixed with upping potassium and adding more salt to my food.
The key here is set reasonable goals for yourself that you know you can beat, you wont always be successful, but keep at it. Breaking bad habits is hard, but if you keep logging, and you keep at your goals, eventually you will break it!
Step 2: Eat only nutrient dense foods
This goes back to looking at food as building blocks and energy for your body, make sure every food you eat is to fulfil a specific nutrient requirement. You need more potassium, eat more kale/spinach, need to get your vitamin D up, eat some smoked salmon. Over time, your taste buds will change, and you will start really enjoying the foods you are eating. I absolutely LOVE kale now!
Also, this includes keto-friendly foods like bacon. I do not eat bacon. There is almost no nutritional value in eating it, so why eat it? Eat some steak instead.
If I eat a food with Carbs, it will be a very nutrient dense food and because my body needs those nutrients. What kind of foods am I talking about? Here are some examples:
73% + or more cocoa chocolate
Berries (strawberries for example)
Lemons/limes
Nuts and seeds of all kinds.
All kinds of vegetables like broccoli, spinach, kale, Peppers, Onions
The Key to staying in ketosis when you are consuming foods with carbs is moderation. Yes that 70% chocolate has sugar in it, but I eat one square MAX per day. That one piece of chocolate has 4.7 grams of net carbs and 2 grams of fiber. There is plenty of room in my daily carb limit to allow for it. As long as my weekly average total carb intake stays under 25 grams/day, I am good (my personal set goal).
Step 3: NO CHEAT DAYS!!!
Once you are in the groove, and you got your carb intake to your set goals, be EXTREMELY strict with food intake. Allow for ZERO cheat days and have a ZERO tolerance policy on any "empty carb" food. What do I mean by empty carb? any food that is high in carbs and has no nutritional value, like cookies, chips, ice-cream ect... Cheating will get you kicked out of ketosis and is the path back to bad eating habits and putting the weight back on and that is exactly what happened to me! Just don’t do it. We are not eating for comfort anymore; we are eating because our bodies need this specific nutrient. This is the goal.
Step 4: Fasting
You don’t need to do this right away, make sure you get yourself into the habit of logging, and eating foods that are nutrient dense and make sure your body is in ketosis first. Like with before, don’t try and jump headfirst into fasting, take small steps and build on it every week. Start with a shorter duration fast once per week, for 12 hours, then increase slowly until you hit 18 hours. The end goal here is twice per week for a minimum of 18 hours. If you get hungry and you cant do it, don’t beat yourself up over it, its hard! Your body will fight you and want you to eat. Try again the next week with your set goals. Just make sure you are eating those nutrient dense foods we talked about above. As your body becomes more and more fat adapted, this will get easier and easier.
I am currently fasting for 24 hours on Mondays and Tuesdays. Monday morning I eat 2 fried eggs and drink my coffee with half and half then fast until Tuesday morning. Then on Tuesday morning, I will eat 2 fried eggs and that same coffee without eating until Wednesday morning. It is currently Tuesday and I have not eaten since this morning. I won’t eat until tomorrow morning.
To prep your body for long fasts that will allow your body to eat itself with ease is making sure you are LOADED with TONS of nutrients, (remember step 2?). Saturday and Sunday are prep days for that fast. I eat dark leafy greens, like Kale, and Spinach, cheesy broccoli I make myself, peppers, ect... I eat lots of nuts and seeds, Walnuts, pecans, brazil nuts, peanut butter, steak, Smoked raw salmon. I will eat a little bit more than my metabolic rate, about 200 calories more (2500 cal). I also generously salt everything so that I am around 4000 MG for the day. This will load your body with potassium, magnesium, and sodium. Then I go into my fast on Monday. Perfect for me since I need to be at work on Monday and Tuesday.
If you do this, when you go into your fast, you will have plenty of nutrients/electrolytes for your body to just eat your own fat off your body. You probably wont even feel hungry for many hours on end, but if you do get hungry, drink lemon in water, or apple cider vinegar to suppress your hunger.
Now, the key to coming out of your fast is to NOT over-eat. Eat VERY SLOWLY (I cannot emphasize this enough). Take bites, chew, put your fork down, wait 10-30 seconds after you swallow, then take another bite. Eat high fat foods like cheese, eggs, peanut butter. This will help you feel satiated. Try and keep your first meal out of a fast at around 1000 calories.
Step 5: Exercise
Try and add exercise into your weekly routine and this will help you lose the weight even faster, but is not necessary to lose the weight. Exercise is really good for you anyway. For me personally, I picked up swimming (I swim 2 miles 3x per week now), and I feel great afterwards, all those endorphins! So why not?
Step 6: For life!
What do I mean for life? What I mean is that you need to view keto as a for life plan. The key to staying healthy is eating healthy. So why ever go back to your old way of eating? On this diet, I feel great, my libido is way up and I have tons of energy to do things! I want to go outside and work on my car! I want to go to the gym. When you are eating healthy, you will feel amazing, you will have moments of euphoria, you will be happy, you will have an amazing sex life! That guy/girl you like at the gym will notice you. You will no longer be ignored! You will also be smarter, your mental clarity will be better than ever, you will be able to focus on your goals!
Final piece of advice: You will fail… yes you will fail at your goals over and over again, I still fail my goals once in a while. Last week I had a day where I went up to 30 net/day carbs and ate 2600 calories (DARN!), but I didn’t give up! I wont give up! Sometimes you will slip, but as long as you set reasonable goals for yourself and tighten those goals solely over time, and you keep at it, you will be successful in the long run, and you will get the weight off! Don’t focus on the scale, but focus on getting into healthy eating habits, focus on exercising and I promise you, the weight will come off!

Before you self harm in any way, you should probably know what you’re getting into. Before you make that cut, please keep in mind that you will find the pain release, and blood, strangely addictive. You may think to yourself that you’ll be able to control it, that you won’t let it get out of hand. You may think that you can just stick to a few small, shallow cuts here and there that won’t be deep and that will heal quickly and easily. But you’re wrong. You can’t control it, it’s impossible to control. It controls you. It’s an addiction. The cuts will get deeper, they’ll scar. They’ll take weeks to months to heal and years for the scars to actually begin to fade. You’ll find that soon, you depend on it. You can’t go more than a few days without cutting. You’ll go crazy as your skin itches and burns, your hands shake, your head pounds, your vision goes blurry as you try to keep your mind off of it, try to hold back from giving in. But you will. If you think you can limit the cuts to just one area of your body, you better think again. It’ll spread slowly but steadily, like a deadly virus. It’ll spread as you run out of skin, from your wrists to arms, past your elbows, up your shoulders down to your stomach, across your hips and waist and soon will cover your every inch of your legs right down to your ankles. I hope you’re prepared to withdraw from others and live in a constant state of shame and guilt. Even if you have been the most honest person to ever live, you will lie to your friends, family members, everyone around you who you care about. You’ll find yourself jerking back from the touch of someone, as if their fingers and hands have been bathed in a toxic, burning poison. You’ll be terrified that they will feel a scar or cut from beneath the fabric of your shirt or because it just plain hurts so much to simply be touched. Be prepared to become your own worst enemy. You’ll fear yourself, your head, the urges that taunt you every minute of every day. You’ll come to fear the next time you cut because you don’t know how bad it’ll be. Wait for the 10 cuts to turn into 20 then 50 then 100. You’ll be covered in scars and cuts. Your entire life will begin to revolve around your addiction. You’ll constantly be thinking about cutting, covering up your cuts, how you’ll hide your blades, scissors, bobby pins and the other objects you use to destroy your body. And then..the first time that you cut “too deep.” The bleeding won’t stop and you’re gasping, shaking, panicking, fear takes over you. You pray and hope that the bleeding will stop. Your purpose wasn’t to die, you won’t ever go that deep again. Right? Wrong. You’ll go there again, and deeper. But don’t worry. You’ll learn how to take care of your cuts so you don’t have to take a trip to the hospital every night. The better you get at treating your wounds, the worse they become. You’ll lie to yourself and try to justify it when you go to the pharmacy and drug store, finding yourself spending 20, 30, 40 dollars on dressings, gauze, alcohol wipes and sterile strips. You’ll tap your foot impatiently, hoping that no one stares and asks you why you’re buying all of these things. But at the same time..you hope someone asks, so you know they care. Be prepared to spend even more money on an entire new wardrobe. Long sleeved shirts, hoodies, long pants, boots, bracelets, wristbands. The list goes on forever. You’ll keep scanning other people’s bodies for signs of self harm, hoping that there is someone else out there who feels the same way you do. Hoping, praying that they will be like you. But that will never happen. You’ll see clean, uncut, unmarred arms and feel even more alone and ashamed than before. You’ll do a lot of things alone, be prepared to kiss your social life goodbye. You’ll always be doing your laundry, always in private so no one sees the blood stained towels and clothes. You’ll be spending hours scrubbing blood from the bathroom floor, and wiping dried blood off of your keyboard. You won’t be able to make it a day without cutting. You’ll carry an emergency kit in your wallet or purse. A key, safety pin, a needle, a paperclip, even a pencil. Everything around you will become a weapon. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it gives you that feeling that sends you reeling. Next thing you know, you’re in the bathroom stall at your school or work, picking open the scab of an old cut with a needle. Say goodbye to all of the things you took for granted. Shorts, sandals, tank tops, swimming in the summer, going to the beach. All of these things will be a far off memory. I hope you like itching and scratching non stop. You will itch and itch and itch. It’ll be so much that it’ll look like you have some sort of flesh eating disease. You will become an expert on your body as you carefully destroy it, taking it apart piece by piece. You will dream of cutting, dreaming of getting caught. It will haunt you day and night, in your dreams and when you are awake. Cutting will take over your life. It now has it’s hold over you, it controls you. You’ll hate yourself, hate yourself for making that first cut that threw you into this vicious, neverending cycle. You’ll wish you never made that first cut. You’ll wish you had read something like this, or that someone had told you what would happen. But as much as you hate your addiction and self harm, you love it and can’t live without it. You’d rather die than go just a few weeks without cutting.
Now, I’ll tell you what the title pertains to. How to self harm. Here is where I tell you how to successfully hurt yourself. So put down what you’re about to use Because you are so much better than this. And believe me, you don’t want to get involved with the monster of self harm, it’s not worth it.

My keyboard keeps stop working and or switching keyboards or the space bottun doesn’t work alsoif you see Typos it’s cause I’m leaving it how it is to Show proof but it closes apps and opens apps or or the speak keyboard thing pops up like auto correct works but nothing else and I can not open the emojis and sometimes I can’t close a app or even open or swipe up from the button of up to open the opened apps and it does not let me do that so I got into contact with Apple and they helped a lot but it’s still the same and they check my phone and I don’t have a virus so it’s not that and I did update my phone and sometimes it works but other times my phone just stops working and then works again I literally even took my screen protector off to see if that’s what it was and i restarted my phone and cleared the settings thing I literally am stunned like am Is my phone rhag fucked do I need to get a new phone? I was rereading this to make sure it made sense and it opened the Camrea rol and closed the app I also can’t open or close my phone at times
Is on most recent update btw

My boyfriend and I want to start a small house cleaning business together. How much should I charge? Should I go by rooms or square feet? Should I throw trash away at their house? How many clients do you get a day? Best cleaning products and equipment? Should I get an LLC? Do I need a business license or permit(I'm from Minnesota)? How much do you make weekly? This business is just going to be between me and him, nothing crazy like hiring people and expanding.

Initial Contact: Description, First Impressions
I was outside, grinding corn, grinding it with the mano, over and over. I couldn't hear the screams of Chimalli, my older brother. He was sprinting, so fast, he tripped over the metate and spilled the corn. “Watch it, you fool!” I shouted, worried that I may get beaten. Nantli didn’t like food waste, and she wouldn’t care that it was foolish Chimalli’s fault. He was gasped for air, his hands on his knees. “Acalan… and I…were hunting…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “We were by the water when we saw this fish, a fish of great size. It wasn’t in the water, it was on top of it! It was brown, and atop it was 10 feet monsters with light skin!” I barked a laugh. “You’d better stop lying, Chimalli.” I decided to put the already ground corn back on the metate and take off the grass left in it. “I swear on the gods I'm not lying! I swear on Huitzilopochtli! Quetzalcoatl! All of them, I swear!”
I rolled my eyes, put the mano on the matate, and got up. “Show me what you’re talking about, fool.” Chimalli grabbed my hand tight and started running as fast as he could. I was whispering prayers to Patecatl, scared that what Chimalli was saying was true. We met up with Acalan and hid behind a bush near the lake. We could see the white-skinned people, and they were covered with weird clothing. They spoke loudly, in a peculiar way. They waved their hands around like birds and marched fiercely like jaguars. My heart was beating so loud, I was scared that Acalan and Chimalli would hear it. “They look so weird,” I whispered. The marched along, with their weird looking animals, amd were headed towards our causeway! Chimalli, Acalan and I exchanged a worried glance. Slowly and carefully, we all left our bush and headed back to the calpolli.
I went inside and saw Nantli sitting down, weaving. When she saw me, her face twisted in rage. “You dare spill the corn, leave the metate and mano unattended, and leave with the boys!? What were you even doing?” I shifted on my feet. Nantli was scary, but hse was understanding. Sometimes. “There are monsters on our land! They have big animals, a big brown fish that can swim ontop of water, and pale skin! The don’t speak Nahuatl, too!” i blurted out everything i saw, even if it didnt make sense. Chimalli was beside me, nodding his head so vigorously that it looked like it was about to fall off. Nantli got even more angry and said, “If you don’t stop lying this instant, i will call your Tahtli!” Chimalli and i both said in unison: NO!
“I swear on Huitzilopochtli! Tepeyollotl too! I even swear on Xolotl!” Chimalli cried as we were bothe getting pulled by the ear by Nantli. We were pulled outside, when we saw Tahtli. His face looked like he’d seen death. “Your foolish, lying children came to me talking nonsense about monsters with pale skin!” Nantli said, but Tahtli wasn’t fased. Tahtli was calmer then Nantli, and he was more wise. That was probably because he was a priest. However he was severe in punsiments. Nantli was all bark and no bite. Tahtli was bite, no bark, and when he did bite, it would last forever. He shook his head. “They're telling the truth. They are like us, but they have come from another land. Spain, they call it.” Nantli’s mouth was open so wide, I was trying my hardest not to laugh. She finally let go of me and Chimalli’s ear, her brows furrowing. “Did Moctezuma talk to them? Did you talk to them? How did they come here?” I side-stepped away from her, rubbing my ear. I exchanged a mischievous glance with Chimalli, and like a tiger, we left as fast and quietly as possible. In front of the door, Acalan was waiting for us impatiently and said, “Let’s go see them again. Maybe we’ll try to talk to them.” Chimalli raised his eyebrows. “Are you nuts!?” He exclaimed. I didn’t think it was a bad idea. Maybe we could understand their intentions. We never got to do that though. We never got to do anything.
Amoxtli
​
Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs
They kidnapped our ruler. The scary, stupid, dumb-looking monsters took our ruler. Foolish Chimalli brought it upon himself to save him. Nothing reasonable ever comes out of that stupid brain of his. He got killed doing it. Atleast he was brave. Braver than me, thats for sure. They have loud, long black tubes that shoot out fire. That killed him. Nantli hasn’t been the same, she doesn’t let me go to school anymore. Tahtli has fallen sick. Why is this happening? Is this a sign? Oh why, oh why? Oh gods, why?
I woke up, the rays of sunlight shining directly into my eyes. I got up, and to my right, was Acalan. He had decided to stay with us since all members of his calpolli had died unfateful deaths. His Nantli got sick, and his Tahtli and all of his other relatives died in the battle with the monsters. Whenever I start to pity myself, I remember Acalan. He’s got it worse. “Good morning,” I said. Acalan nodded, not uttering a word. He was looking outside, and his eyes had this aloof look to them. “Where’s Nantli?” I said, looking around the room. He mumbled something, but I couldn’t hear it. I sensed that he obviously wasn’t okay, so i scooched beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. “It's okay, just try not to think too much about it. I know how you feel, the gods will help us out.” I said softly. He shrugged my hand off his shoulder, and moved away from me. He was looking hard at the ground and whispered, “How can you be so sure?”
“Huh?”
“I said,” He looked at me square in the eye. “How can you be so sure? That’s what everybody’s been saying, but I'm getting tired of it. Face it, Amoxtli. The gods have done nothing for us. They’re just a bunch of stupid stories to scare us. My calpolli would still be here, alive and well. Those monsters wouldn’t have come here. The gods aren’t real.”
I sat there, stunned. What was he saying? He must be mad, because this isn’t the Acalan I know. The Acalan I know was so devout, more than I was. Maybe the grief got him bad. “And no, you don't know how I feel. You will never know how I feel. You ever think about jabbing a spear into your chest? You ever thought about jumping off the mountains, and drowning yourself underwater? You ever think of that? Huh?” Acalan continued. And before I knew it, he was sobbing. Acalan, the soon-to-be soldier who had never shed a tear, the boy whose heart was made out of stone, was crying. He was saying something in between sobs, but I couldn’t understand it. His face was buried in his hands. The truth is, no, I have never thought about any of those things. I didn’t know that Acalan was this affected by it. Maybe I’m the foolish one.
A few hours later, I told Nantli about what Acalan had been saying, except the blasphemous things. That brought out a side of her that i never knew she had. Her face softened, and she nodded with understanding. She comforted Acalan, giving him words of reassurance. Nantli sent me out to get water, since Chimalli wasn’t here to do it anymore. Every passing day I miss him more and more. As i walked through the village, I heard loud, bone-rattling screams. The monsters were pushing and shoving their way into the houses, and coming out with valuables. I stood there, frozen in place watching it all happen. A tall monster stood in front of me, and all I could do was stand there, looking stupid as we both stared at each other. He scowled and grabbed my bucket, throwing it on the floor. “Hey…!” I said quietly. He kicked my bucket and continued walking. I don’t know why I didn’t do anything. I don't know why I just stood there, acting clueless.
I left the bucket and ran, far far away, near the lake. I sat down and dipped my feet in the water, trying to calm down. I saw Acalan in the distance, sauntering towards me. He finally arrived, and joined me, dipping his feet in the lake. We greeted each other, exchanging awkward small talk and sat in silence. “Maybe this is how the world will end.” He said suddenly. I nodded. If that's the case, then I wish it would've waited sooner. I had so much to do, and so much to see, I wanted to be a doctor, and raise warriors. If the world really is ending, I would just be a foolish, scared girl with no importance. Chimalli never got a chance to be the warrior he’s always dreamed of. “If the world is ending, then it's a shame that you won’t be a warrior.” I sighed. “I don't want to be a warrior.” He said sharply. “Isn't that what you always wanted? To be a warrior?” He shook his head vigorously. I furrowed my brows. “Then what do you want to be?”
“Nothing.” He said. Nothing? How could someone not want to be anything? I decided to let it be, and we sat in silence once again.
-Amoxtli
Outcome of the conquest on Aztec Society:
I'm starting to realize that what Acalan said two years ago was true. The gods did nothing. Tahtli passed, and Nantli is sick, she's in horrible condition. I caught Acalan trying to hurt himself twice. He’s been in bad condition as well, even to the point where he hallucinates about his Nantli and his Tahtli and his Achcāuhtli. It's really bad for him. If the gods really cared, they’d put a stop to this madness. If they really cared, we’d be flourishing, and winning against those damned Spaniards. I'm starting to get sick too. At this point, if you don't die in war, you die of sickness, if you don't die of that, you die of starvation. I’ve learned some Spanish, and I'm thinking of converting to whatever their religion is. A few priests came to the village, rambling on and on about their religion. I understood a few words, but not much though.
“You’re so naive, you know that?” Acalan said when I told him about the new religion. I rolled my eyes. “You could give this a chance. Maybe their god will help us.” He shook his head. “Never. If Huitzilopochtli, all-powerful, god of war, can't even help us,” He said in a mocking tone, “Then how will another help us? It's all the same.” I shrugged. “It's worth a shot.” Just then, I heard Nantli cough a hoarse, horrible cough. I jumped up and quickly went to her. I gave her a cup of water and some piptzahuac. After a long coughing fit, she finally caught her breath and said, “I heard what you and Ancalan were saying. He is a bad influence.” My heart felt like it would leap right out of my mouth. Despite this, I kept my calm and tried not to show any emotion. “What?” I said, trying to act clueless. Looking back, it was a stupid thing to do since Nantli already heard everything.
tbc

Hi Morgan, Longtime listener, first time writing in. My best friend and I are having trouble figuring out the right thing to do in this situation and wanted to get an outside perspective. Buckle up because this is a LONG one because theres a lot of backstory that’s necessary.
Would we be the assholes if we didn’t attend our childhood best friends wedding?
There is a lot of context in this storyline so I’ll try to give a lot of detail. We start in January of 2023, my best friend, Greta(26F) and I(26F) get in contact with one of our childhood best friends, Laura (26F), and plan a visit to catch up on the past 10ish years that we’ve been apart. Laura moved away from our hometown when we were 15. Now Greta and I live about 2 hours from where Laura moved to when we were young, so we reached out and invited her and her fiancé Logan(26M) up to stay with us and hang out.
They come visit, we have such a great time, her fiancé was pretty quiet and distant the whole time, but the 3 of us together were big talkers so I just chalked it up to him not being able to get a word in and they left. In March they came back to visit again and announced to us that they were moving a few states away. We were really sad, but happy for them since they were getting to move somewhere that they’d wanted to be for a while. They were going to elope together after a few months but Logan had a university study abroad for a month in Japan so they were going to wait until after.
So, he leaves for Japan in May, and while he is away a girl reaches out to Laura from the college that Logan attends. This girl tells Laura that her friend had been getting really close with Logan, uncomfortably so and she wanted to give Laura a heads up that she thought they were romantically involved. Greta and I were worried but Laura brushed it off and said it was probably nothing, so Greta and I dropped it because we didn’t feel close enough to Laura to tell her we felt like she should look into it more.
Flash forward 2 weeks into Logan’s study abroad, he calls Laura at 5AM to let her know that he doesn’t think he wants to get married anymore. She’s distraught but has to go into work that morning and calls us after to let us know. We support her, you know he fucking sucks for doing that not only over the phone but right before she went into work, real shady. Greta and I are very worried about Laura because Laura really wants to make it work, but we still don’t say anything because we just want to be there for her.
He gets back and agrees to go to couples counseling, they do couples counseling for 2 weeks, during this time he repairs her car. Replaces a tire, breaks, oil change, the works, he’s been working with cars for a long time, so this was no biggie. Well after that two weeks, Laura comes home to all of Logan’s stuff packed and he tells her it’s over and he’s moving back home. He leaves. She’s devastated. We comfort her, come up and visit her, and tell her that she doesn’t need him and she slowly starts getting over him. Meanwhile she gives us A TON of context about her relationship with Logan. She paid for his college, he has had no job for the past 2 years while getting his degree, so she had been financially supporting them both. She paid for his trip to Japan, he put her in 20K of credit card debt, and more in personal loans, etc. Then in couples therapy told her he wasn’t attracted to her because she made money and he didn’t (so weird).
So immediately Greta and I are like, “Girl, we had a bad feeling, we wanted to tell you but didn’t want to upset you, we’re just glad you’re finally out of that mess”. She tells us that next time we should come to her and be honest with her, we apologize and agree. Then one day Laura calls us to tell us that she almost got into a really bad car accident. She lives in a mountainous area and her breaks went out on her when she was driving on the interstate on a hill, she managed to pull of into a grass median and slow the car down.
She gets the car towed to a mechanic that night and heads to work the next morning. Mechanic calls her midday. He asks he who worked on her car last, she said “My ex” and he said “Is he still in your life?” she said no. And he said “Good, Because I’ve never seen anything like this in my 20 years as a mechanic.” Her brake fluid hadn’t been connected so all the break fluid drained out. Her brake pads weren’t fastened/screwed in to the wheels, the were just placed in there. And he back tire bolts were stripped so hard that he said he tire probably would’ve come off had she kept driving.
Later that week, Logan asks to talk to her, she agrees only to get closure on the situation. Well he calls and begs her to get back together, she says no absolutely not. Then he asks” How’s the car?” She said, “Well I almost died last week”, he immediately jumped to the defensive “Well, that had nothing to do with me, I didn’t do anything” a very guilty response, so we were all convinced he tried to kill her. She filed a police report on him and started moving on. This is in July.
Now we move into part two of this debacle. My partner and I go up to visit her in September and she’s doing well on her own, she’s having fun, dating around, putting herself first, in therapy, just doing really well, were happy for her. She hasn’t really made any friends which is making her lonely but we were telling her to get involved in clubs and meet people, etc.
We leave our trip which was really fun and head back home. 2 weeks later, Laura says she’s met this really great guy, its almost October at this point, she’s gone on multiple dates with him and really likes him, were happy for her, still a bit concerned, but if she’s happy we’re happy. So Laura, Greta, and I plan a girls trip to come up and visit Laura for a long weekend. Laura wants us to vet this new guy, make sure he’s a good dude. She tells us she really values our input and so Greta and I are so excited to go on this trip with an open mind. November rolls around, one month before our trip and Laura announces that the new guy, we’ll call him Will (29M) has moved in with her, bringing his dog with him. Greta and I are a bit shocked but we didn’t say anything bc we’ve both done stuff like that before and Laura was struggling to keep up with rent on her own (she was still in the house that her ex fiancé left her in) so we knew she could use a roommate.
December is finally here and Greta and I hop on a plane and Will and Laura pick us up from the airport, first impression in the car was fine, he seemed nice, he drove us back to their place and we walk into the house. I come face to face with a completely different living room than I saw in September, all of Laura’s art and stuff are moved out of the living room replaced with the following: a giant poster of Elon Musk smoking a joint, a poster model of a rocket, a poster of Jesus riding a dinosaur with a machine gun. And a bookshelf full of Will’s books and Lego sets on display. Alarm bells are going off in my head and Greta’s at this point. We have a little conversation and because it’s late, we go to bed. We sleep in a room that outside of the house in the backyard, it has full heating so its basically just like a bedroom with a deadbolt. I double lock the dead bolts and we go to bed.
At 3am I’m woken up by Greta shaking me in a panic, asking me if I remembered to double deadbolt the door, I told her I did and that were okay and we both went back to sleep. When we woke up the next day, and she told me she had a weird feeling that he was gonna come in our room in the night. I agreed, and told her that was why I double dead bolted the door.
We go through our girls trip which ended up not being a girls trip at all, Will was by our side the entire time. Laura and he talked about looking at ENGAGEMENT RINGS, they bought a ring sizer, she was picking out her faves. He never let us have girl time except for one hour trip we took downtown to window shop. He would come sit in Greta and my room when we were talking with Laura, he would watch movies with us, he went everywhere with us. Not only that but in the middle of conversations, he would pull out his guitar and just start playing in the middle of us talking, or when we sat down to watch a movie. There is one bathroom in the house, and the main house part is very small about 650 square feet, my friend Greta has bathroom anxiety, she doesn’t like to poop in public places so she asked Laura and I if we would grab Will and the dog, and just go for a quick walk around the block while she used the bathroom. It was no biggie, so we got ready and went on a walk, we got 20 feet out the door and Will starts griping about how he doesn’t want to be outside and that Greta is a selfish pooper, and continues to complain the entire time were outside. We don’t even go for a walk, we stop at the corner of the street and just stand there because he doesn’t want to go any further.
At this point I’m annoyed with this guy, he just seems really controlling. To add to it, he didn’t want to go for a hike in the mountains, so Laura didn’t want to go so we ended up spending the entire weekend inside their house basically, even though we were in a beautiful area, and hiking is a group favorite, because he didn’t want to go. We didn’t. Also this is a personal anger of mine but I bought a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts (they were $18, which is crazy) and he ate EIGHT OF THEM. it pissed me off so bad, I had to hide the box that night just so I had 1 donut left over in the morning. Anyway onto the big finale.
Our last night there we finished up watching a movie and the events that unfold all happen within 3 minutes, keep that in mind. Laura had taken an edible so she was pretty out of it, like laying on top of the dog, whispering, just all around sounding really tired. Will says hes gonna take her to bed and Greta and I say were gonna get ready for bed in the bathroom. Bedroom and bathroom are five steps fro each other. I brush my teeth and use the bathroom while Greta is brushing hers and then I walk out of the bathroom and tell Greta that I’m grabbing my stuff to head over to our outside bedroom. I grab my bag from the kitchen counter, which is right next to their bedroom door. The bedroom door is open so I say goodnight to both of them and tell Greta I’ll see her in a sec, she’s just finishing up. Maybe 45 seconds pass and I’m waiting in our bedroom when I get 3 texts from Greta “OH MY GOD” “HELP” “HOLY SHIT”, Greta comes running out of the house, slamming the back door, and I run up to her.
She tells me that they were loudly having sex in their bedroom with the door open, mind you the bathroom is 5 steps from the bedroom. the kitchen counter is right next to the bedroom and Greta had to walk over to it to grab her stuff.
We are freaked the fuck out at this point not only was it super disrespectful but Greta was super affected by it, which who wouldn’t be it was disturbing. Because mere moments before Laura went to bed she was so high. And I smoke regularly so I know what it looks like when someone is super high and I hadn’t gotten that high in a long time. She was very out of it. So this really bothered us both.
The next day, were ready to go home, we get to the airport where they drop us off and once the two of us are in the airport we both look at each other and both just say “that was horrible”, we both felt like the entire trip we had a bad feeling about him and didn’t want to ruin the vibes of the trip so we just didn’t say anything about it. So were sitting in the terminal writing down a list of all the red flags, all the instances where he gave us a bad feeling. And overall just as a person he gave us a really bad feeling. Just gross, nasty, icky feeling. Not sure how to describe it well but I just knew something was off and Greta said she felt the same.
Laura had asked us to give our opinion on what we thought of him so we drafted up a letter to her, with key moments and points that we felt were big signs that he may not be a good guy. It includes everything we went over in this story, I didn’t want to supply to much of our opinion on the situation but I know that my bias comes out in this story a bit.
We wrote to her, and she responded to us with basically “I appreciate your concern, I will take your opinions into consideration” Its worth it to note that they were talking about getting engaged in March of 2024 (It is Early December 2023 at this point) and in our letter we told her that she should give their relationship more time, and get to know him better before they get engaged.
Our relationship with her after that became very one sided, Greta and I tried our best to keep messaging her but she really never responded so we kind of gave up. End of January we get a text from her, a picture of her and him she has an engagement ring on, “We’re engaged!” Greta and I respond with a Congrats! and a heart emoji, we’re super concerned but we have genuinely said all we can in that letter a little over a month before, so It didn’t feel right to say it again.
March she posts her “I said yes to the dress post” with Wills mom and his two sisters. She still doesn’t have any friends up where she lives so it makes sense for her to bring his family along. She didn’t message us about it, which is fair because we hadn’t been talking. We just thought they were getting eloped, because Greta has always said she wanted something small since she isn’t super close with her family (they’re not great).
So we left it there until last week I received an invitation in the mail to their wedding. Its this September on a Monday night.
Greta and I would have to pay around $500 each in order to even go to the wedding, calculating in airfare, shared rental car, shared hotel room, and that doesn’t even include, food, gas, wedding gift, etc. The two of us are not well of financially, we both live paycheck to paycheck so it would be really hard for us to go in general not to mention that the wedding is on a Monday night, so I have to take off extra days of work that I really don’t have. Same with my best friend, were in the same industry so wen have the same days off and all of that.
And I know it took us a while to get here but would we be the assholes if we decided not to attend her wedding?
TLDR: Best friend’s ex fiance tries to kill her in past relationship, she moves on two months later, her new partner moves in with her 3 weeks after dating. We go visit her and meet him, he’s go a lot of red flags, we tell our best friend, she distances herself and gets engaged weeks later. Invites us to her wedding in September that is also on a Monday. AWTA?