Whenever I see Simon smiling in the face of Nia’s death, I can’t help but be reminded of the death of my own girlfriend.
I can’t help but feel ashamed of myself for being unable to hold a “brave face” when my girlfriend took her own life. Rather, it broke me so much that I had to send myself to a mental hospital. That’s how much I truly loved her.
I can’t help but feel not only confused, but outraged too.
Smiling in the face of someone dying is like pulling the opposite appropriate emotional response to grief and loss. I can’t help but feel deep in my gut that this emotional reaction feels wrong.
Like it feels emotionally disconnecting, or in other terms, cognitively dissonant, as in their actions don’t match their beliefs, or their facial expression doesn’t match their feelings. Which to me is…it just feels wrong.
I have suffered a lot like Simon; the bullying I’ve endured in high school from emotional, physical, and sexual trauma has landed me with a case of PTSD, and sometimes I get anxiety attacks whenever I feel myself overwhelmed by too many people talking to me at once.
When I compare myself to Simon I can’t help but feel ashamed of myself.
Unlike him I didn’t have any superpowers, friends, or a big brother to look up to. Just me and my iron will to live.
If I were Simon, and I did every single thing right, experienced his journey through and through, I wouldn’t be able to keep a “brave face”; a smile as Nia died.
I would be crushed, I would cry, I would fail to maintain my composure even if I had a week’s advance to cope with it.
Because that’s the kind of person I am, that’s how deeply I feel everything, including loss. And I hate myself for that.
Much like Simon, I too lost three loved ones I held close. First my childhood friend kills himself, then my ex girlfriend offs herself, then my own cousin is murdered by a hit and run. And now my dog has cancer.
Unlike him however I’m not sure how much more I can keep going.
It’s bad enough that my parents, supportive as they are, have a wildly unhealthy relationship with bottling up emotions, something they’ve passed onto me.
They’d grow easily annoyed whenever I cried about something and would more often than not just tell “big men don’t cry”.
But the worst thing they did was when my ex died, they never believed I truly loved her. So while I grieved for her they said, “Did someone cut off your finger? No? Then there’s no reason to cry.”
So I didn’t. I repressed my emotions, my memories, and put on a “brave face”. But deep down I felt emotionally numb.
Only recently have I begun to show my true emotions, my sadness, and…
I want to be as strong as Simon. I really do. But the harder I try the worse it seems to get.
I want to keep my loved ones close to me. I want to be able to hold them dear. I want to be able to keep their memory. And all of this without crying.
But every time I think back to the times I had with her, whenever I keep her memory close I begin to cry.
And I can’t help but feel weak and pathetic to be unable to keep a “brave face” like Simon. It makes me feel unworthy to find a wife and begin a family of my own…

Today, I found out that my mother-in-law’s birthday was going to be hosted at my sister-in-law’s house instead. The party is tomorrow. The second I found out, my heart sank to my bum and I knew I did not want to go nor was it worth the effort or mental burden to go.
Originally, MIL called and personally asked for me to be there at her birthday. I said of course and made myself “unavailable” that day for my shift job schedule. I was already wary because I have been low contact with my husband’s family for more than a year now. I entirely cut off ties with my SIL around that time. I said yes to my MIL instantly because I am doing it for my MIL and we still respect each other well; we just don’t see each other often or make the effort to do so. We just go with the flow.
Well it now turns out that the birthday party for MIL will be hosted at SIL’s house because “it has more space”. For over a month the plan was to have the party at MIL’s house and I was okay with it because I had nothing against her and I could easily slip away from the other toxic family members to another room in the house. Today, a day before the party, my husband randomly says “oh bad news the party is now being held at my sister’s house”.
I am angry for a number of reasons: 1) I am entirely no contact with that SIL, she even blocked me on all social media and blocked my phone number for standing up for myself (other family members agreed with me) 2) I know my husband will still go if I say I don’t want to go and it hurts to think he doesn’t stand up for me and try to make accommodations. For example, planning to take MIL and FIL for an intimate dinner with me, him, and our child instead. 3) my husband has known about the venue change for more than a week now and decided to just tell me now. 4) my husband’s way to make me feel better was “it’s okay though because my other sister and her boyfriend will be there so you can just talk to them” 5) SIL deliberately sends out invites last minute to my DH and DD for random cookouts but makes sure to exclude me. Not only does she exclude me, she makes sure that everyone else in the family is aware of it and will even post photos with backhanded comments about me or the situation. She just wants to rub it in my face and acts as if she’s the one that cut off ties with me but really I was the one that said enough is enough and cut ties with her.
I cut off ties with this woman because on more than one major occasion she has insulted me or disrespected me to save her face and hide her own insecurities. She has cursed me out in front of other people, trying to defend her husband (who in fact lied to her while I said the truth and he didn’t admit to it for a solid week). She also used my name as an excuse to justify her lack of courage and security in her marriage by claiming I told her to search her husband’s belongings for “contraband” which I never did. She also wrote a long persuasive essay via text to my husband about how toxic I am and why he shouldn’t be with me. That’s just a few off the top of my head. I am sick of these people and I’ve tolerated them for more than 7 years now.
Help! I don’t want to disrespect my MIL but I also want to stand my ground and respect my own boundaries. I also do not want to cause tension in my marriage, which is already rocky.

As the tittle suggest, please reccomend me a standalone or a series.
I have started reading the cosmere(starting with Mistborn) and I would like to read something else between the cosmere books if I get too fatigued with them and reach a reading slump.
I'm not really bothered with the lenght of the book/s.
I do enjoy books that are heavy on dialogue. Action does not interest me at all as I have a hard time imagining the action sequence.
Dont really matter for me if its a grim story or something slighly lighthearted, just as long as its not too satirical or too comedic.
Plot should be intriguing, but like I mentioned dialogue is a big thing for me.
Now is yhe time to mention that most of the fantasy I have consumed is in a movie/tv format, so I cant really give to many examplea of what I have enjoyed in he past....
Movies : Lotr, Pans labyrinth, Game of thrones (probably the series I love the most, such a shame in ended after only 5 seasons...) The shape of water, Harry Potter, Star wars(original trilogy), The dark crystal tv series.
Manga: Berserk, One piece
Books I have enjoyed in the past : Asoiaf, Neverwhere, Way of Kings, The name of the wind, first 2 books of the red rising trilogy, and now The final empire(minus the fighting scenes till now)
Would love something with a political intrigue with a bigger thread looming at the background...basically something to scratch that ASOIAF itch....
In a way I hope thats gonna be my cosmere experience...each world with its own conflicts and an overarching story that will connect them...
Thank you in advance for any reccs 🙇‍♂️

I just can’t get myself excited for or interested in breast pump parts and cleaning bottles..
Personally I’m loving Paloma and Riayns stuff right now. I feel like they’re on the rise, going to premieres and classes for the first time-and being overly gracious when they do. They’re in a show giving them regular content; podcast is a smidge more unhinged and adult with it just being them.
It’s sorta more fun to watch two peoples social media careers (hopefully) take off.. rather than someone who seems to be moments away from retiring from it.
They want badly what Sierra already did years and years ago and they’re trying to grind for it. It’s nice to see them be so appreciative of every opportunity and be excited about it. Where Sierra is in such a different place.. she wouldn’t dress up cute for a movie premiere or a cooking lesson in a million years these days.
I keep waiting for the day one of Paloma or Riayns videos or reels or post goes viral for something. I’d love to see the reactions and different support from the members of the team when it comes to that. Would it relight a flame for Sierra or is she just done done?

Today, I found out that my mother-in-law’s birthday was going to be hosted at my sister-in-law’s house instead. The party is tomorrow. The second I found out, my heart sank to my bum and I knew I did not want to go nor was it worth the effort or mental burden to go.
Originally, MIL called and personally asked for me to be there at her birthday. I said of course and made myself “unavailable” that day for my shift job schedule. I was already wary because I have been low contact with my husband’s family for more than a year now. I entirely cut off ties with my SIL around that time. I said yes to my MIL instantly because I am doing it for my MIL and we still respect each other well; we just don’t see each other often or make the effort to do so. We just go with the flow.
Well it now turns out that the birthday party for MIL will be hosted at SIL’s house because “it has more space”. For over a month the plan was to have the party at MIL’s house and I was okay with it because I had nothing against her and I could easily slip away from the other toxic family members to another room in the house. Today, a day before the party, my husband randomly says “oh bad news the party is now being held at my sister’s house”.
I am angry for a number of reasons: 1) I am entirely no contact with that SIL, she even blocked me on all social media and blocked my phone number for standing up for myself (other family members agreed with me) 2) I know my husband will still go if I say I don’t want to go and it hurts to think he doesn’t stand up for me and try to make accommodations. For example, planning to take MIL and FIL for an intimate dinner with me, him, and our child instead. 3) my husband has known about the venue change for more than a week now and decided to just tell me now. 4) my husband’s way to make me feel better was “it’s okay though because my other sister and her boyfriend will be there so you can just talk to them” 5) SIL deliberately sends out invites last minute to my DH and DD for random cookouts but makes sure to exclude me. Not only does she exclude me, she makes sure that everyone else in the family is aware of it and will even post photos with backhanded comments about me or the situation. She just wants to rub it in my face and acts as if she’s the one that cut off ties with me but really I was the one that said enough is enough and cut ties with her.
I cut off ties with this woman because on more than one major occasion she has insulted me or disrespected me to save her face and hide her own insecurities. She has cursed me out in front of other people, trying to defend her husband (who in fact lied to her while I said the truth and he didn’t admit to it for a solid week). She also used my name as an excuse to justify her lack of courage and security in her marriage by claiming I told her to search her husband’s belongings for “contraband” which I never did. She also wrote a long persuasive essay via text to my husband about how toxic I am and why he shouldn’t be with me. That’s just a few off the top of my head. I am sick of these people and I’ve tolerated them for more than 7 years now.
Help! I don’t want to disrespect my MIL but I also want to stand my ground and respect my own boundaries. I also do not want to cause tension in my marriage, which is already rocky.

This happened a while ago and this’ll be a bit long, so here’s the TL;DR. TL;DR: Weapon had a curse that made me want it by all means necessary; Flying leviathan sized worm eats it. I blow it up and it’s flaming body hurtles with me into a “dinosaur” park
Context: I play a bugbear rouge in a setting where me and my fellow adventurers were picked by an enigmatic rich and powerful adventurer to be his heirs, despite the fact we had never met him. (Turns out he picked a ton of these heirs.) All we had to do was show we were heroic enough to earn his incomprehensibly big fortune.
Our adventures included things like us hunting down a bat man who was turning children into rats. Infiltrating a cult and getting a demon tattooed to us (to which we subsequently let a holy army deal with that nonsense). Getting charmed by a massive slime queen and then further mind controlled to spread the slime’s influence, almost getting a higher up of the city. And we even had to deal with an undead mindflayer, who’s phylactery turned out to be a mech, so we just called a god to smite it. Not knowing the DM intended to have that mech focus on fighting an elder brain dragon, so we had to deal with that separately.
Our story really picks up here, after beating both the undead mindflayer and elder brain dragon, we finally get some time to search the place. I find a rather magical looking spear and shield on a long since dead body. Like the idiot I am, I pick both up without thinking, just wanting to take more. Turns out, while both items were extremely powerful, they were also extremely cursed. Just one of their various curses included a curse of obsession. Suddenly, I never wanted either item to ever leave my side and I would do anything to get them, and I was also inclined to use them above other weapons. (To be fair, I was inclined to use them anyway since they were both extremely powerful)
Cut to like a week or so later and we’re on the hunt for a certain artifact an oracle told us about. Turns out that it’s inside a “dinosaur” park. I say “dinosaur” with quotes because the place, while having dinosaurs, also had just a bunch of magical creatures. We’re greeted by Jackson, advertised to by Jackson and shown around by Jackson. (The owner had cloned himself and he’s the only one running the park). Eventually getting to a more wild and open area that we’re advised is dangerous.
Cut again to a bit later, we hear a cry for help. We go to check but find a creature that can mimic voices, and an already dead body by it. I climb back down, disinterested, using magical sticky gloves to easily climb down. My party watches though, and soon enough, more creatures arrive with a still living girl.
Fast forward to me climbing back up, using my gun since they were so far away, missing horribly and creating a VERY loud noise, attracting more of these things… along with a T-Rex. I use Fear from my Ring of Animal Influence to scare the T-Rex away and throw my spear to decimate many of the creatures, impaling one of them.
This is where things go bad…
A gigantic leviathan sized flying worm comes out of nowhere, and with its maw, big enough to eat a T-Rex whole, it swallows three of those creatures, including the one I impaled… my spear, to which I am cursed to absolutely be obsessed with, is in the cavernous mouth of this thing. By the time I realize, my companions try to stop me, but I break away. It still seems too late though, the thing is already 30ft in the air in the blink of its turn. But… I have a dagger that lets me teleport behind (and only behind) an enemy 30ft away. I run after this thing, jumping off a cliff and teleporting right onto this things back. Using my sticky gloves to hold on as it flys hundreds of feet into the air.
Skipping a lot of trial and error of me trying to hurt this thing, or stop it.
I realize the only way I’m getting my spear back is by going in… it senses me on its teeth immediately, and while I do find a gap to hide from its bite, its acidic spit lathers me a bit. Still determined, I crawl inside… I can’t see it, my much needed spear, and a “throat” is alternating between “open enough to fit a double decker bus”, and “your hand could maybe fit”. Seeing no choice, I instead stab the throat, as my tertiary unexpected choice. And that choice flings me right out, with me hardly holding onto his teeth as it’s even more acidic puke dissolves me.
I heal up a bit right there. You know… just hundreds of feet in the air, right on a gigantic worm’s teeth.(Turns out, easy to do when you can one-hand it with magic gloves)
At this point, I say “screw this thing, my spear might be dissolving in that!” And with that, I use my super weapon. You see, I have a crown that can cast ANY fire spell as long as enough charges are spent… but the thing has 20 charges… and the DM ruled that I can expend more charges then what would be required for the highest level spells, at the risk of a 50/50 break. I don’t care about some stupid crown, I want this monster that ate my spear, dead! “All 20 charges!”
What proceeded to happen was… well, the mere charging of this thing caused the monsters teeth to burn away. I only survived that kind of power from my shield (the other item I’m obsessed with by that curse), which gave me fire immunity.
I couldn’t see anything, but outside the blast, druids and mages and all kinds of people watched in horror as this gigantic flaming meteor of a corpse plunged from the air, heading to the biggest tree in the park. With me as the tip of it, as bright as a star. These magic wielders attempted to staunch the ball of fire, but no one was prepared for this, and no one knew just how much power was behind this thing. With smoke and fire covering me whole, along with spells and shields being launched at me, I go unconscious during my free fall.
Surprisingly, thanks to my earlier heal, as well as a big health pool anyway, terminal velocity and all those spells didn’t even bring me to zero. Though I did have to spend all 9 of my hero dice (which is stuff we earned for doing heroic things, allowing us to add as many d6’s as we want to any roll), just to not break my arm. I only just managed the check with all of that.
I awake in a crater, fire quickly spreading around me into the nearby forests full of life. I raise my fire shield and expend almost all its power to call all the fire to me. All the flames trailing like tendrils of fire to my shield. The flames now extinguished, I crawl out and look for my spear.
I find it.
(By the way, I mentioned all that stuff about our other adventures to make it somewhat clear that we all have a ton of magic items at this point. I would have mentioned them all first, but with so many, it was just easier to just use them and not explain too much. Hell, I didn’t even mention we met with a nature goddess(?) who gave me the power to heal myself and alter enemies through nature. Heck, I hardly mentioned my team mates either and their own wacky items and abilities!)
Hope you enjoyed reading this. We were laughing the whole way at how assured this was… just because this thing decided to eat my spear. Oh, and that fire crown didn’t break.

Hello fellow Americans, my time for reenlistment is coming up and I would love to go to Korea. I know there are many different locations in Korea that you could get sent to but I was curious as to see which ones are the best (in terms of things to do and optempo and stuff)
I am a SPC and I am not combat arms. When I googled it I read a post saying that Daegu is a really good one but it’s mostly just staff so it’s hard to get but generally speaking Humphreys is the best and Casey is the worse, is this true?

I (24f) have been with my bf (25m) for about 6 months. Before him I was married for 5 years (still going through divorce) and I have 3 kids. I know what I want and cannot casually date, I want something serious. He has absolutely stepped up into a step dad role when their dad has been a POS and even tho we are both poor he gives me and the kids everything we need even if it’s his last. Lately though he’s been very wishy washy with what he wants. We were at a birthday party the other day and instead of coming home with me, he wanted to stay with family and drink. Multiple times he has hung out with friends and drink instead of me and the kids. He is absolutely able to have his own free time but he’s been putting a lot of things above our relationship/being with me. Maybe it be different if we actually lived together? I feel like I have done a lot to build on our future like get a different job that pays more, putting savings aside, therapy and he still calls in to work 1-2 times a week… he says he wants what I want but his actions have been proven different. I’ve already talked to him multiple times on how I feel and he says he just has to realize he’s not single anymore. I feel like he likes the life he used to have but an added benefit of a girlfriend. How long would you/should I wait for him to get it? I do not have any intention on getting into another relationship as this one wasn’t even planned but I just don’t want to waste my time or get hurt.

Hello everyone, this is my first time posting something like this. I'm about to blow up my whole life.
I have been with my s/o for over 7 years and we had been friends for a few years before we started dating. Let me start off with this, I love my s/o. They are a great person and friend, but over the 7 years in our relationship I have fallen out of love with them. I absolutely love them as a person and I consider them one of my best friends. (Sorta my only friend. I don't go out much and I work from home.) This was their first real serious relationship, so I was always very understanding and tried to communicate with them on things. Trying to be mature and have this relationship last. I wanted to marry them and have a life together with them.
When we first started dating there were patterns that I saw that I wasn't thrilled with. Mainly with drinking too much and adult responsibilities not being upheld. I thought "hey we are 24. We are young, acting this way isn't that bad". There were good times and bad, just like any other relationship. We talked about marriage and possibility of a kid. (Both have not happened.)
We bought a house after being together for a year and a half. As time progressed, their behavior of drinking became more of a habit. I felt I had to be responsible for making sure they got up in the morning and went to work. This way they wouldn't lose their job. They would drink and stay up all night playing games, listening to music, talk to people online.
There have been multiple times were they would drink and start fights (verbal, never physical) with me. I would try to calm the situation and tell them my side while hearing them out. Everything they ever asked of me I would do because I loved them. When I asked them to do things like meet my most basic needs of feeling loved. They would not do them because I would ask them to do it and they don't like being told what to do. (They have ADHD/AUTISM)
Things began to build with me doing everything around the house, work, cooking, cleaning. The usual women taking on all the tasks that aren't getting done. While nagging to have help around the house or with them going to work on time, or even spending time with me.
When COVID happened I started my job remotely. I would work from home and not have any human contact besides them and a few of our mutual friends. (Really they were their friends and their family.) I have moved around a lot due to family so keeping up with friends was always really hard for me. Plus I have depression which makes me feel like I am a burden to people a lot of the time. So I don't have a lot of people I'm close too.
They would come home from work and get on their computer and completely ignore me. I would try to ask for attention and they would blow me off. I would try to initiate sexually contact for any type of closeness to them. Once again I would be blown off.
I slowly over the few years would tell them things needed to change. We should go to therapy to work on things because I was falling out of love with them. Their response was they needed to go to therapy first on their own... but would never set anything up... and the fights turned into me just pushing my wants and feelings aside. I cried to them multiple times, pleading for things to change and they never did.
So as time went on I stopped doing things. I stopped wanting affection from them, I didn't want to be around them. I took up another job so I'd get out of the house. I stopped cleaning and cooking and asking things from them. They eventually noticed I stopped caring.
It wasn't until then they agreed to couples counseling and change their ways. I tried so hard to fall back into love with them, but the damage of multiple years of being over looked and under appreciated took their toll. We went to a handful of counseling sessions and it didn't really help. I asked my friends and family what to do and how to fall back in love with someone. If someone could just tell me the secret I would do anything for that.
They still love me and have made efforts in making this better. I can see they are trying their hardest but I am not in love with them anymore. It breaks my heart and I wish I was still in love with them but it's been 2 years of me not having those feelings. We haven't slept in the same bed for over a year now. We haven't had sexually contact in over 2 years. I don't think it's fair to either of us to keep this going.
We have a beautiful home, animals, and memories together. We have been together for over 7 years. I love them as a friend and care for them deeply. This is were I'm blowing up my life. I will be breaking up with them at the end of this month. We bought the house together the animals are both ours.
My hope is that they will be ok with us living together still. They have their own room and I have mine. We practically live like roommates anyway. I'm thinking about all the bad out comes. Of them trying to hurt them selves or hurt me (I don't think they ever would but it's a fear still). I'm afraid to lose my best friend and I'm scared of not knowing what my future holds. I know it's for the best but I'm still scared of how things with shake out.

Background & Context:

Throwaway account. This isn’t an immediate issue, or even an issue anymore. This relationship issue happened when I was 18. Now I’ve been in a loving relationship with my current girlfriend (we’ll call Mia) for 3 years (I love her to bits, I can’t understate that). This topic came up when I was talking to a group of people about our relationship history. I talked about my first relationship as nowadays I find it to be a funny story. Everyone laughs when I tell it, but they usually come to the conclusion that she was a raging A-hole and gaslit me, even though to this day, I think we’re both at MASSIVE faults for our behaviour. My closest friends have even nicknamed her ‘the devil’. It feels weird to me that despite feeling like I was also an A-hole, but everyone around me thinks otherwise. I was telling my girlfriend about this and she’s like, ‘you know what, you should post this on reddit, it’d be really funny to see the responses!’ Few days later here we are. Now that I’ve gotten context out of the way, Imma just start telling the story.

PART 1 - This is Where I Feel I Was Asshole:

Before The Break-Up:

After some time in the relationship, (I think 2-3 months in, not entirely sure), I felt absolutely awful. Not because she (we’ll call her Emily) was a bad person, not at all. 3 months-ish into the relationship, there were entire days were I would ball my eyes out, or feel completely sick, not able to really do anything apart from contemplate the state of the relationship, mostly because I felt like I was putting in a lot of effort, and she wasn’t putting in effort at all. I think around 3 months in, I ‘talked’ about how I thought ‘the relationship felt like a friendship’. I wasn’t completely open with how much it was affecting me at all (which was an issue on my end), however she kindly set her boundaries, saying how she thought the relationship was fine. She wasn’t mean or anything (maybe AT WORST), slightly dismissive. It was a very civil conversation. I did leave that conversation feeling better, but I also left that conversation thinking I was asking for way too much out of the relationship, and that relationships aren’t really how I thought they’d be. Regardless we move on.
Later on into our relationship, we go on one of our dates, and I remember it being one of the most draining outings I’ve ever had. On my end, and her end as well. I was drained because she was having a bad day before our date, and was frankly being rude to me when it wasn’t really justified. On her end, there were times when I being an idiot and frankly embarrassing, which looking back on it, WAS DEFINITELY TRUE. I remember we were making a joke on the train, and I got to into it and loudly said ‘GANG SH*T’, and then immediately regretted it because 2 or 3 old ladies looked at me, and Emily looked absolutely awe-struck with embarrassment. (Spoiler: A lack of self-awareness in certain moments plays a crucial role later in this post. I read my friend this story, and she said to me, please state that you are also autistic as I feel it also plays a crucial role in this story. I don’t know if that helps but that’s what she says I should say, so yeah). During the end of this date, when we’re both clearly kinda beat up, she brings up the point ‘Does this relationship still feel like a friendship to you?’. We had a civil conversation about it, got some pizza at a pizza place, and left the date on a rather sour note.

Break-Up:

Okay, let’s fast forward to the time when I ask her ‘Can we talk at ‘x’ location?’ This was after the semester in the summer. I wasn’t completely dead-set on ending the relationship, but I was pretty sure within this conversation, it was probably going to happen. She agreed, but later on the day, she texted me that she’d rather talk on the phone (later on within that conversation she jokingly said, ‘I’m not gonna lie, I’m not going to get all dressed up to get broken up with man’, which got a good laugh out of both of us’). We talked on the phone about the relationship and our issues with it, and at the time I thought ‘Yo, this is like the best break-up ever!’. There was very clearly no sort of strong dislike or hate between us despite our moments. We even started jokingly roasting each other during the conversation, laughing our assess of. Hell, she even said that she’ll invite me to her 19th birthday party at the end of the conversation. We even said to each other ‘let’s not tell our school friends that we’ve broken up, and then act like the most platonic homies ever in front of them!’ We both left that call feeling good about ourselves. I told my friends (who didn’t go into the school about the interaction), and they were happy. One of them even said ‘you delayed what could’ve possibly been one of the most calmest break-ups ever’. I texted her about what her friends said, and she said that she was going to tell them in the evening. I didn’t hear back from her about her friends, but didn’t really think anything of it. We very much occasionally texted sometimes in the summer. Sometimes about working out, sometimes about music…don’t really remember much of it, but it was calm (or at least I thought it was calm).
(As I type out this paragraph right now, I indefinitely cringe. The lack of self-awareness from me in this story is…a lot to say the least).

After The Break-Up (Back To School):

I go back to school to see Emily and my friend studying on a table. I see Emily and get slightly nervous, I haven’t seen her face to face for months on end, but I go up to her and my friend, and dap them both up. We have our conversations, go to class, and go home. It did feel VERY awkward being around her, and I did sense that something was wrong, but I chalked it up to, ‘Oh, you’ve just met your ex after months on end, it’s going to be slightly awkward’.
I saw my other friend (we’ll call Daisy), the next day, and she had broken up with her girlfriend. I asked her how the break up went, and she said the break-up went decently. She then asked me about my relationship break up. My brain goes ‘hold on, my ex told you about it?’. Additionally, she asked me that in the most sad way possible. I immediately knew that something was off. I ask her, ‘Yo what did she tell you?’. I’m going to give a very approximate re-enactment about how the convo went.
Daisy: She’s really hurt, from what I said
Me: What did I say?
Daisy: She said that she felt really hurt, the fact that you called her disgusting-
MY EYES WIDEN. I was like WHAT?!? ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO’, THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT. OH MY GOD, I FEEL AWFUL…NOOOOOOOOOOO’
Daisy looked at me like she expecting my reaction, like completely unphased. She said to me that she told Emily:
Daisy: ‘You should probably talk to him, because that’s definitely not what he meant.’
Emily: ‘No, I’m tired of explaining myself to people’
I remember the feeling to this day, I felt absolutely awful in the moment. I’ve genuinely never felt worse about hurting a person in my life. I asked Daisy whether I should talk to Emily about the situation and apologise to her, but Daisy said that Emily really doesn’t wanna talk to me again, and that the damage has already been done. Maybe you can apologise in the future, but to give her some time. After school, I go home from this incident, still feeling like shit, and call my friend to tell her about my mistake. We’ll call this friend Steph. Steph listens to me, and doesn’t look amused. She says to me….
Steph: I don’t believe you called her disgusting
Me: What do you mean?
Steph: What did you say to her?
Me: I said to her that during the relationship there were times that I felt sick and couldn’t do anything in the day, as well as struggling with attraction (VERY BRIEFLY, LIKE A FEW SECONDS). Also during the break up, fast forwarding when we were both in a jokey mood, my ex said to me:
‘Why did you DM me a few days before this break-up calling me babe?’ ‘Like you knew this moment was coming hahaha’
Me: ‘Girl, when I did that I was absolutely DISGUSTED’
She laughs and we continue talking to each other making jokes and releasing some tension.
Steph says to me: So, you didn’t flat out say to her face, that she was disgusting…in a serious or jokey tone?
Me: I mean, what I said, can CLEARLY be interpreted as such man. Even though I didn’t flat out say it, I shouldn’t have said any of that, whether it was in a jokey or serious tone. And looking back on that, it’s stupid that I didn’t take that break-up as seriously as it should’ve have. Like…come on, I’m an idiot for roasting and joking around in a moment that should be taken seriously.
Steph: But she was joking around too right?
Me: yeah…
Steph: And she was roasting you too…right?
Me: yeah…
Steph: So why is she mad? That doesn’t make any sense.
Me: I mean, I don’t remember, but knowing me, I probably initiated the jokes.
Steph: Bro, don’t assume. And even if you did initiate the jokes, she would’ve had to play along as well. And the fact that she just assumed that what you said, meant that you found her disgusting, and didn’t find her physically attractive, without talking to you about that…DOESN’T MAKE SENSE.
Me: I don’t know…I still feel like I shouldn’t have done any of that
Steph: Bro, don’t PURELY blame yourself. Hell EVEN HER FRIEND TOLD HER, THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU MEANT! AND SHE DECIDED TO RUN OFF WITH HER ASSUMPTION ANYWAY!
As you can see, my friend was pissed on my behalf. She didn’t really convince me, I still felt awful for a LONG TIME. Okay let’s keep going with this story, it’s a long one

Birthday & ‘The Talk’

My ex and I, have the same birthday. Shocking I know. We were both in school, I didn’t see my ex for the entire day, but even if I did, her friend told me that she really didn’t wanna talk to me, so it’s not like I would talk to her in the first place.
When I went to get lunch, I saw Daisy and Emily were sitting at the table having lunch. I saw my ex, and I made sure not to make eye-contact and walked past them. I thought in my head, she probably wants to enjoy her birthday, and probably doesn’t want to see her ex who called her disgusting on her birthday. A day later, I talk to Daisy, and the topic of Emily comes up. Daisy said to me that Emily was looking for me on our birthday, to also wish me happy birthday, and got upset that when she finally saw me, I walked past her and ignored her. AGAIN, I FEEL AWFUL, but in the back of my head, I’m just like ‘wait, I swear she said she doesn’t wanna talk to me’. I inquire Daisy on this. (Unfortunately, since it’s been years now, I don’t remember what Daisy said). So bing-bang-boom, later on in the day, Daisy, my ex, Emily and my old friend group meet up. Emily smiles at me, but also looks emotionally beat-up. Bro, when I saw I almost teared up, and was like ‘not today, not today, not today’. After some small talk within the group, I ask Emily to talk privately with her. She was amicable and agreed to go to talk privately.
The first thing I did was apologise, and says that’s not what I meant at all, and clarified my feelings. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I said the comment about me being disgusted about my Instagram DM was meant playfully, to criticise my own behaviour. Additionally, when I said I was struggling with attraction and felt sick during the relationship, it wasn’t because of how you look. It was because of the nature of the relationship, and how I felt like I was putting inn way too much effort (within that conversation, I was trying to omit the fact that I felt like she put in no effort at all. I felt weird putting blame on her for that in the time) I even admitted within the break-up conversation, that I still felt attraction to her, but I know the relationship wasn’t working, as so did she. She said:
‘Well, I’m not going to ask for clarification, like oh maybe he didn’t mean this, when someone says something as blatant as that’
We talk some more. Emily said that she didn’t want to be friends because she was VERY hurt about what I said, but if we ever see each other, that we can be civil. She gives a lot of points about the break-up. I remember in my head disagreeing with the points, but unfortunately while I’m writing this post, I don’t remember those points. The conversation that we had was very civil and respectful. I remember that I disagreed with the points that she put forward, but I didn’t give any push-back. I was there to take responsibility for my stupidity and negligence, and apologise. Daisy told Emily what I said about just being there to apologise, and emily got annoyed saying ‘Why is he trying to act like my therapist?’ to her. Daisy told me she said this…I was confused but decided to leave it there, and not talk to Emily again, and reflect on how I communicate with people,, because I didn’t want to hurt anyone like that again.

Conclusion

Okay, everything I’ve said here, to this day, I still believe that I’m a MASSIVE ass-hole. The way I talked to her whether jokingly or not within that conversation was unacceptable. I should’ve kept it serious, no roasting, and not to give jokes at the expense of the other WHATSOEVER within a context as a big as that. Due to that, I hurt someone that I really cared about. Agree with me or not, that’s how I feel to this day. The experience has helped me for the better as it did help me change my behaviour in terms of how I communicate, and be more conscious of what I say. It’s carried on YEARS later, and whilst I slip up and may occasionally hurt someone’s feelings or say something out of pocket, it can easily be solved with a ‘hey, please don’t say that’, and nowhere near as bad as someone who is supposed attracted to you, feeling DISGUSTING. From here, this is where she does some things that dictate her as a massive asshole.

PART 2- This is Where I Feel SHE Was An Asshole:

Making Up

3-4 weeks go by , she seems a lot more chirpy and happy when I occasionally see her in school. One day she taps me on the shoulder, and says ‘Hey, I’ve thought about our conversation, and I think I’m over everything[…]I’d appreciate it if we can be cool again, if you would like, and we can hang out in the same circles. I light up and I say ‘yeah, that’d be nice’. Being in the same friend-circle with her was nice. We didn’t talk face-to-face often, but everything was friendly and cool.

Water-Incident:

3 days later. Somebody in our group spills water onto the ground in the cafeteria. I try to clean it. Emily and my other friend (we’ll call Marco) go to get some cleaning roll. She comes back giving me a death-stare. I was startled, but for some reason thought nothing of it. I thought it might’ve been how I was cleaning the water, as she’s very big on cleaning. She says ‘WHY CAN’T YOU GUYS CLEAN?’ Marco makes a joke along the lines saying ‘Men don’t know how to clean’ or something like that. She laughs, and I start thinking that ‘oh this is a bit’. As we’re cleaning the water off the ground, and then let the water soak into the tissue, she goes away from the water, and starts ranting to her friend. My friend and I start laughing, as we think it’s a bit. She storms out and says ‘it’s not funny’. Instantly I froze. I went over to her friend (we’ll call him Kyle. BTW Fck Kyle. He was a terrible person that sexually harasses women, despites them saying that they’re uncomfortable. I didn’t know about that during the time of this story, but I knew that later on during that year. Kyle, I if you’re reading this, I hope you’ve changed your ways, if not, fck you, sincerely). I went over to Kyle’s table and asked, ‘Yo is Emily okay?’
Kyle: It’s not my place to say what happened
Me: slightly panick Bro, I just wanna know if she’s okay
Kyle: okay…YOU AND EMILY GOT SOME ISSUES! AND YOU GOT SOME STUFF TO FIGURE OUT!
She shouted at me in front of the cafeteria, with multiple tables looking at me, some people laughing, and some people looking sorry for me.
Kyle walks away, and I just stand there for 5-10 seconds, give a large exhale, put my palms in to my hand, and walk back to the group. When Emily comes back, I ask her if she’s okay. She said something alone the lines of ‘Don’t make fun of someone, and then ask them if they’re okay straight afterwards…’. (She wasn’t mad at Marco for some reason, but was mad at me, but as Daisy said ‘I knew how her anxiety worked’.) I walk away from the group, and go outside and just look up at the sky. I thought that I had fucked up again, and not able to realise when I’ve crossed a line. I distanced myself from the group, and just stayed alone from a bit and studied for the upcoming exams. I was studying for around 14 hours a day, and when I wasn’t studying, I was thinking that I was a terrible person. It was probably that, and the combination of exam-stress that lead to me getting my first panic-attack when hanging out with my friends. When Emily came up to my group of friends with someone else, I left the group, and just wanted to be in my own space.

Getting jealous of multiple girls I was talking to and proceeds to stare them down:

I was talking to other girls in a group. Not in a romantic way. I was NOT in the space for another relationship, especially when I don’t know when I’ve crossed a line. I didn’t want to hurt anyone the same way I hurt Emily. There was a girl (we’ll call her Lacey) and another girl (we’ll call her Selena) that I got on pretty well with. We’ve been talking for a few months at this point. I was talking to them during my lunch-time, and I told her the story about my ex and I. She said to me ‘Is your ex the girl that’s been death-staring me?’
Me: Wait what?
Lacey: Yeah, whenever I talk to you should just death-stares me for ages. It’s made me so uncomfortable, I’ve wanted to get up from my seat and say ‘excuse me, do we have a problem?’
This battle between them apparently lasted for the ENTIRE YEAR until they never saw each other again.
Selena has talked to her and said to me ‘Yeah…I’m not going to lie, I don’t like her, you can do better’
I was like ‘guys, relax’
Them: My bad, my bad.
Selena: But, there’s better out there.
I was also notified by another woman that my ex death-stared them and made them uncomfortable because of it. That was really weird to me, but hey I wasn’t talking to her anymore, and I just minded my business. I haven’t talked to her since that ‘water incident’.

Make-Up No.2

Emily hits me up on Instagram, wanting to call. We have a chat about the current state of affairs, and both admitted that we had feelings for each other to summarise. She admitted that she was jealous seeing me hang out with other girls, and that she got mad at me again within the 3 days that we made up, and said ‘my bad about that’. We further clarified some stuff about the relationship, and we made up. I think a few days later - FOR SOME UNGODLY REASON, I DO NOT REMEMBER WHY, MY FRIENDS TO THIS DAY MAKE FUN OF ME FOR THIS - I asked her out. Maybe, it was the feeling of wanted to being rejected to fully get over her, I don’t know man. I was in a bad space. My friend as I’m reading her this draft, has now gotten on her knees, and started praying for my sanity. Emily rejected me, and to be honest the day after, I thanked god that we didn’t get back together.

‘Exploding at me’

We were hanging out in a group. I was being relatively quiet, and had learnt to shut up and think before I speak quite consistently until this point. I looked at Emily and she looked upset. I looked at her and was about to ask whether she was okay. From my glance alone, she exclaims at me: ‘If you ask me if I’m okay, I will shout/snap at you, just saying’. I put my hands up completely startled. I was thinking maybe she hates me asking if she’s okay. It had become a meme in the friend-group that I over ask people whether they’re okay if I think they look sad, so maybe I was annoying her.
Now, she later apologised a few days later saying Kyle had sexually harassed her, and she was really tense within that moment, and just exploded. NOW, people who were there said I was unfairly treated, however, something that’s as serious and harmful as that happening to someone, I understand blowing up at someone. So we moved on. As I said before, f*ck Kyle.

I WASN’T fully sure why she didn’t like me in this moment:

I saw Emily sad during the day, seeming sort of upset. I message her on Instagram during that evening ‘Hey, I know it’s a bit of a meme of me asking people if they’re okay, but you looked upset today and I wanted to know if everything was good?’. She laughs and says ‘everything is good’
I literally walked up to the group the next day, try to fist-bump everyone, and when I put my fist towards her, she ignored me. I thought she didn’t see me, so I stupidly fist-bumped everyone again and went towards her. This moment is comedic gold. She winces at me, and disapprovingly waves. My friend Marco says ‘Ooooooooo’, I’m like ‘woah’ and completely freeze, with my fist still in the air. Daisy tries to break the awkward silence and says ‘it’s just one of those days’. I’m completely frozen with my fist, still in the air during all of this happening, in complete awe, thinking to myself ‘what did I do this time?’. Daisy, to release me from this state, proceeds to rapidly first bump me 10 times. Once I register what’s fully happened, I leave the group and sit with my friends. I heard her from the other end of the cafeteria complaining about me to her friends. After that scenario, I didn’t talk to her one-to-one for the rest of the year, and tried to avoid talking to her. I accepted after that moment that no matter how I act, I’m going to be met with a negative reaction.
Later on after school had ended, I found out that she was upset because she thought I was dating my CURRENT girlfriend. Now to be brief, I met this girl in the beginning of the year. I remember we started talking very frequently as she was cool, but I wasn’t ready for a relationship whatsoever. She said really liked me, and in her words jokingly says that ‘she just waited patiently’. We went out for a couple of times, but these weren’t clarified to be dates (EVENTHOUGH nowadays we basically call them dates), and she admitted she liked me. I said that she was lovely, but that I wasn’t mature enough for a relationship, and that ‘you probably don’t want to date me’. I did start slowly developing feelings for her. All of this date stuff happened after being rejected from my ex. Now we weren’t dating at the time, and were strictly on friend terms. I guess it might’ve been obvious that we both liked each other, considering that Emily got upset and didn’t talk to me. Near the end of the year, we started dating, and as I’ve said before, we’re still dating to this day. Marco called it out that we liked each once we started dating, and we were like ‘welp, I guess the secret’s out lol’. Yeah that’s about it there.

A year later, Emily texts me when I’m studying my university degree, telling me I’m a dickhead, even though I blocked her:

I’m on facetime with my girlfriend. I believe we’re a year and a bit into our relationship, and then my ex texts me. Keep in mind, I’ve blocked my girlfriend on all platforms, and deleted her number. I should’ve blocked her number, because she decides text me, saying something along the lines of:
‘Hey it’s Emily here. Just wanna say you’re a dickhead for leading me on for 3 months, and telling me that you liked me when you didn’t. Thanks for adding to my trauma and my trust issues with people. Hope you and your current girlfriend are doing okay!’
Me: w-what? I’m so confused.
Seconds after, I then decide not to give a second thought, and then I blocked her.
Conclusion:
This was a long-story, but here’s my proper conclusion. I think I was an asshole for how I broke up with her as said in Part 1. I also think I was flat-out stupid for agreeing to be friends with her, despite her clearly resenting me. I think she’s the asshole for treating me horribly after the break-up, making some of my female friends feel uncomfortable by staring at them, getting mad at me multiple times without telling me she was properly mad, and then sending me an awful text, even when I’ve blocked her on all platforms.
Okay long story done. Discuss y'all.

Backstory: my girlfriend(26f) and I(25m) live together with 3 cats. 2 are boys, 1 girl. All different ages. However the kicker here is our girl. Her name is Chia, my girlfriend found her and the rest of the litter(they were 3-4 weeks old at the time) in the parking lot of our apartment at like 11pm in the during a thunderstorm so we took them all in, gave them food/wateshelter etc. for the weekend until we took them to the humane society. Chia was the runt and had a slew of issues but we decided to keep her. (I was the one who pushed for us to keep her specifically, maybe she can sense that lolol)
Fast forward 2 years, and she is absolutely in love with me. Greets me at the door, follows me from room to room, sleeps next to my chaicircles my feet while I play video games, sleeps on the couch next to me if I’m watching TV and is just generally glued to my hip at all times when I’m home. She will let me hold her and dance with her in my arms, she LEAPS her head into my hand almost anytime I go to pet her etc she just shows me a lot of love.
My girlfriend on the other hand is different story entirely. She can only pet Chia for like 5 seconds tops or she will scratch and/or bite her hand. She doesn’t initiate pets from her, doesn’t give her the lovey eyes, kind of runs away from her if she approaches her, she’s like a completely different cat. I wouldn’t say that she’s mean anything, no hissing or random aggression at my girlfriend she just kind of….tolerates her presence? She is very loving to chia, she’s the one who feeds them EVERY morning, she is the “cat person” in our relationship(I grew up with a minimum of 3 dogs in the household at all times) and sometimes it kind of bums her out that Chia won’t love her the same way our boys do.
Any ideas why the dynamic is the way it is? Any tips my girlfriend could use to maybe strengthen their bond or am I just Chia’s favorite guy? Sorry for the long winded post, I just like to talk about her lol :)

I don't have anyone else to talk to about this and I'm slowly becoming mentally deteriorated. I'm not looking for sympathy and I'm sure you guys are busy figuring shit out on your own end so if you do come here and read this, thank you for your time.
Coming from a brown family as the eldest daughter, I voluntarily stayed home for 4yrs after high school to help run my parents small store. For 4 years, working with them 10 hours a day, EVERY SINGLE DAY FROM MONDAY TO MONDAY. No breaks, no vacations, with no pay or whatever. Yeah they have a roof over my head and feed me. Why 4 years? Because I was first intending to stay one year gap to take some courses to boost my average and THATS IT. 4 fucking years flew by wasted. I am so burnt out and tired already. I feel resentful enough knowing I could’ve graduated today but it’s fine knowing that I am starting this year no matter what. But then i have to commute for 1+ hour to and back, continue to be available for them at their store, and having a toxic, narcissistic, cheap dad doesn’t help either. So I can’t even move out willingly without their permission and being financially disadvantaged. Uni is right in the corner and I am already stressed, breaking down and lost. I want to participate in extra curriculars and clubs to help me get into coop, the sole reason I took Laurier’s BBA. But they think its a waste of time and i should just study. This was like this in high school and I dont want to go through the trauma and stress again when i go to uni because this is so important to me and I just want to break out of this shell and become successful and do things. I thought parents are there to be happy for you and supportive; at least my mom is when she saved me from becoming suicidal and made me believe in myself. I was on depression pills because i thought it was me who had to fix myself. Ofcourse my dad knows nothing about this. He doesn’t know anything. His stress, emotions and things he has to do are the only thing important to him because he is the father of the house and have to look after everything. No one elses emotions and stress are important. If i say anything that goes against his wishes, theres gonna be a fight. So im mostly quiet, i dont talk, i dont joke, i dont show anything to cause a reaction.
I love my family, I will die for them wholeheartedly but i feel like the people i love are torturing me so much. Why is he like this with me when i sacrificed years to stay next to them and help. Instead they became a burden to me. These are very important years of my life and i dont want them to ruin my life again as they did before. (Thats another story) I am trying to hang on by the most thinnest thread thats left in me and im scared what will happen if that snaps. I don’t think i can stay strong anymore. Everyday i question my sanity and wonder what to do. Once i leave for school, they are already stressed how they are going to run their store, and my siblings are very little, didn’t even hit puberty yet so they can’t help. How will i concentrate school, commuting, work, family and everything. I feel like Im getting strangled all the time, it’s getting harder to breathe everyday.

Hey everyone! Sorry for the long wait, the story is not abandoned, I just got a bit lost in other stuff and have fallen out with the world of NoP a bit. I will continue the story, through I can't promise a new chapter every month.
On another note, I am quite proud of this chapter, this is definetly my favourite one, and I enjoyed expanding on Velnils past and mental health. (And tormenting him, of course. Nah, just joking. xD)
Thank you for creating this beautiful universe!
Also thanks to for proofreading!
Criticism is very much welcome, let me know what you think!
Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
First Previous Next
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Memory transcription subject: Velnil, Arxur deserter Date [standardized human time]: 25th of October, 2136, Middle of the night
CW: panic attack, hallucination, self harm
[Note: Dream state detected. Reliving memory. Proceed? (Y/N)]
[Y]
The cold seeped deep into Velnil’s scales as he trudged up the hidden path of the forest, up onto a small hill where a single, just barely alive tree stood still. There was no wind, no new smells and no sound. It was calm, eerily calm, forcing Velnil to periodically stop and look around, seeing if anyone had followed him.
Every time, there was nothing. It was just the empty forest, filled with dying trees and withered bushes. There were a few animal bones here and there sticking out of the ground, but he did not care enough to spare a glance at them.
As he ascended higher and higher on the small hill, he felt as his breathing slowly returned to normal from the usually used powerful intakes and blowouts. He took a slow, deep breath, as he arrived at the tree, letting the cold air run into his lungs, and calming down his beating heart. He was here again. The only question was if he was really alone or not.
“Frostbubble, are you there?” He asked, almost in a whisper as he looked around, moving towards the tree. It still felt strange to use this nickname, but if it kept her safe and happy, he was more than glad to use it.
“Aww, you did come, Velny.” The voice was almost sickeningly sweet for Velnil’s ears, but he knew it was because of everything he had been learning. The warmth in his chest was just another proof to it, as he noticed her lanky shadow climb down from the tree, keeping a small bag up with her tail as she did so. He felt a slight blush creep onto his face as she hopped down, and quickly approached him.
“How have you been? I hope they didn’t manage to rough you up too badly this time.” The care in her voice made Velnil shutter and relax at the same time, as her hand landed on his arm, caressing the scar he had first received for insubordination.
He was four back then.
“No. I’m okay, Zar… Frostbubble.” More warmth filled his chest at her wide toothed smile. “They didn’t get me this time. I managed to trick them.”
“So clever and cunning, Velny.” Her grating chuckle, while repulsive to his ears, was music to his heart. He felt a soft pressure on his hand as she took it, and began leading him to the other side of the tree, facing away from the facility, and out towards the dying wilderness. The view has always filled him with dread, seeing as nature had slowly withered away with his feelings, only to eventually be replaced by even more factories and facilities. It was truly as if the planet felt his pain, his suffering as he was slowly broken down, only to be replaced by the ideals and will of Betterment.
They sat down on the ground, neither of them caring about the cold, as they leaned back a bit, looking up at the night sky. Everything was so calm, yet Velnil couldn’t keep himself from looking around, listening for any noise that could tell him they were not alone.His anxiety only grew, until he felt a soft touch on his chin. He let his head be turned back towards her.
Her smile was horrible(line through) beautiful. The shine of her eyes as she looked at him so calmly, like they weren’t in constant danger of being found out and killed. It angered him, but at the same time, it filled him with a strange feeling. It was still so alien to him, he never felt it before, only when he was with her.
“We are safe here, Veln. Don’t worry so much about it. I am always watching and also making sure that no one is following you. You don’t need to turn around that often. Let yourself relax a bit.” It didn’t make any sense. How could he relax? They were out and about without the knowledge of the masters, they were going against the rules.
She is not even supposed to be here. She was never in the facility.
He opened his mouth, but couldn’t say anything as she closed it, playfully flicking one of her claws on his snout. He shook his head, incredulous about what just happened.
“I know that look, Velny. Relax, just for this once.” As she leaned forward, his heart rate spiked, the alien feeling shooting up like fire as warmth filled his face at the feeling of her nuzzling his snout. He leaned towards her, eyes half-lidded as he felt his muscles relax ever so slightly. Perhaps Zartha is right. He could relax with her, and not be on the lookout for any danger that may be around them.
“Maybe… maybe you are right, Frostbubble.” He mumbled, his eyes closing momentarily as his snout moved to rub at her throat, with a sharp intake of air coming from her.
“Veln, I…” Zartha stopped for a few seconds, prompting Velnil to lean back a bit to look at her. She looked… troubled? Unsure? No, it was something else. Her eyes fluttered while looking all around, as if searching for danger, but they always returned to him, at which point she flicked with her tailtip, until it snagged at her satchel.
“I made something for you.” Velnil cocked his head as he watched her pull out a thermos, quickly unscrewing its top. He watched as steam rose from the thermos, filling the air with a sweet scent, creating an even more serene atmosphere.
“It’s Trilltilla tea. It took a long time, but I wanted to make it for you.” Velnil watched as she presented the top part of the thermos for him. Slowly reaching out, he took hold of it, their hands touching as their eyes met. The shining in her eyes, the way her irises grew, her tail that wagged more and more. He was sure she felt the same strange feeling he felt, as his tail wagged as well, albeit slowly.
He then took hold of it properly, lifting it up to drink. There was no need to say thanks. She knew he was thankful for it.
“So, this is where you have been sneaking off.” Velnil jumped up and whipped around, the top of the thermos falling to the ground as its contents spilled. Next to the tree stood his master, with two burly arxur standing on either of his side. The scowl on his master's face told him everything. They saw everything, the two of them have been found out.
It was over for them.
Zartha slowly stood up, to which one of the arxur moves so quickly to her, it was almost a blur. A painful yelp came from her as she was punched in the gut, tumbling forward, but she wasn’t allowed to fall to the ground. The arxur kept her up, while his master and the other moved in.
“So, you must be Zartha. I have heard quite a lot of you. A disgrace to our kind, really.” His master’s voice was full of contempt. Velnil didn’t dare to speak, nor did he dare to move, lest he might lose his head.
Or worse…
“I’m no disgrace. The only disgrace here is how you trea-” She wasn’t allowed to finish. Master didn’t allow her. The arxur holding her punched her again, forcing the air out of her lungs.
“Tssk. Such a waste of resources. This one is unfixable.” As his master’s eyes landed on him, Velnil felt himself freeze under the glare. “But you will still be redeemed, boy. Oh, you will be. I will make sure of that. You are allowed to return to your dwelling, at this instant.” His heart didn’t want to, but his mind knew he must move. Velnil’s legs, almost like he was on auto-pilot, moved, one after the other, as he began making his way down. He heard as his master turned to address the other arxur.
“Find its father and wipe its disgrace off this world. Then find its mother, and make sure that woman brings a proper arxur into this world.” An acknowledging grunt was the only answer.
The cold seeped deep into Velnil’s scales as he made his way down the hill, the warmth escaping, leaving him with a cold, painful pressure on his rumbling stomach that yearned for her tea.
But it will never feel its warmth.
~~~
Growling, and pressure on his stomach was what woke Velnil up. On instinct, he striked with his right arm, his sharp claws swiping at nothing. His head swiveled around, with no need for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the night, trying to find whatever was threatening him.
There was nothing.
Velnil began to work on calming his breathing as he tried to listen, focusing on the nightly sounds of the forest, seeing if he can hear the soft running of paws, or the strong thumps of human legs.
Again, there was nothing.
With a grumble, he rolled onto all fours, sniffing around and looking for any clues on what might have growled and pawed at him.
The sound repeated itself, this time however, Velnil felt the painful clamps of his stomach as it rumbled loudly, seemingly discontent with the lack of food inside of it. With the realization that he is just hungry - very much so -, Velnil got into a bipedal stance, and began making his way towards the farm.
Looking around as much as he could see of the sky, it must have still been well into the night. He could have just checked it on his holopad, but then his eyes would have to adjust to the dark again, and he would possibly give away his location - after all, he could never know if something or someone was watching him.
The night was annoyingly cold, but it was nothing like what he had to survive during his training. It molded him, made him stronger, able to ignore the cold seeping into his bones and keep on going.
He always had to keep going.
He promised it.
Velnil didn’t know how long he was walking when another rumble left his stomach, this time however, his mouth began to water at the enticing smell his nostrils had caught. It was a familiar smell, divine even, and the bigger breath he took, the more it filled his being, as the picture practically smashed itself into his mind.
Krakotl.
Yumm.
Dropping onto all fours, he made his way towards the source of the smell, taking great care to avoid stepping on a branch, or making any noise that might give away his position. He froze, and silently cursed himself at another rumble of his stomach. Do you want to be filled or not?! If so, be silent!
His stomach did not respond. Good.
Continuing to stalk forward, the smell started to become stronger as the wind carried it to him. Reaching another, much smaller clearing, he hid inside one particularly big bush, easily seeing out of it.
There, in the gentle moonlight kneeled a young, healthy looking krakotl. Its feathers reflected the moonlight beautifully, and he could make out some kind of red pattern on the otherwise greenish plumage that covered it. From scent alone he could tell that it was a female, possibly the same age, or maybe older than he was.
It was just the right age. He could feel himself salivating as he watched it do something, it had its back to him, he could jump out and just get it!
His muscles tensed as he prepared himself, but a sudden thought of realization of where he was exactly forced him to stop, tensing up even more as to not jump. Just then, the krakotl leaned back up, revealing what it had been doing.
Velnil felt himself recoil a bit at the sight of the familiar flower. How did the krakotl get it here?! Who even allowed it to plant that? Why…?
The slits of his eyes slowly rounded out as he watched the light of the moon shine onto the flower, prompting it to slowly unfurl, revealing five sickly green colored petals, with a bright blue colored inside. Velnil felt himself lowering onto the ground, his eyes becoming blurry - but why?
Reaching up, he felt something wet in his eye - tears. He was… crying? Why was he…
It is what she used to make tea for you that day. The memory hit him like a plasma bolt. The flower - Triltilla, or Lover’s poison as some used to call it, was a rare flower from the krakotl turned arxur colony world. Interestingly, the prey was the one that came up with the nickname for the flower - it was said that when the lover made tea from the petals, it’s effect depended on the care that was put into it - the petals had to be cleaned from any pollen, then cured and dried for the right amount of time, which was then followed by making the tea. If the maker of the tea put the proper care to it, it worked as sort of a love potion - it helped with maternity and helped the mates bond.
But if even the slightest mistake was made, if the maker wasn’t careful enough, the pollen, or not drying it for the proper amount of time greatly changed its effect - causing severe pain for whoever drank the tea, and in some cases, even death.
It was dumb. Of course it was, it came from a prey infested world that was cleansed by his ancestors!
And yet, that single flower was one of her favorites. He never truly understood why, but of course, how could he.
He was well into his training back then. He saw it as her weakness. One of her oh so many flaws that plagued her ability to live as a proper arxur.
Oh, because you always lived as a proper arxur? Came the sudden response to his thoughts, feeling another pang of pain from his stomach as he once again wiped a tear from his face. He forced back down a slight growl as he looked back up at the prey, his tongue running over his lips as he kneaded the ground beneath his paws. He wanted to to jump out, to strike, to once again taste his favorite food.
Could he really kill through?
A third, this time much louder rumble had escaped his stomach, it seemed this time the prey had heard it.
“Hello?” The prey’s head whipped around, staring at his general direction, as her soft trilling voice rang out. “Is anyone there?” Another question rang out, it sounded so young, and yet, he watched as his prey’s eyes slowly went over her surroundings, forcing Velnil to slightly pull back, and close his eyes until there was only a slight line visible.
As he imagined how it would taste, his tongue running over his lips, the krakotl took a tentative step forward, eyes still scanning the treeline.
“Lia, is that you?” As Velnil finally got over the fight inside his head, his hunger slowly winning, he prepared to pounce, his eyes opening more ever so slightly as his claws dug into the dirt a bit.
“Aw, damn it. How did you know?” Once again, Velnil almost stumbled out of his hiding spot as a sudden voice came from somewhere to his right. He watched as the prey turned their head towards the voice, as Velnil barely held back an angry hiss at the appearance of a female human.
The woman, referred to as ‘Lia’ seemed to be around [180cm] in height, as she made her way over to the krakotl with surprising silence. Light brown hair flowed down her back, tied into a ponytail. Similarly to other humans, she was also wearing fake pelts, with surprisingly light colored blue jeans and light green shirt.
For a second, Velnil wondered how the human does not shiver from the cold, but his mind quickly wound up with another question: how in the twisted wriss does she hunt in such light clothes? What other thing could she do here at a time like this?
“I didn’t. You scared the… Why are you even here?” The krakotl puffed its feathers up as it turned its head to its side to glare at the predator in front of it. Albeit the body language of the prey showed slight alarm and trepidation, its voice was surprisingly calm, maybe even reproachful. The human seemed to also take note of its voice, putting up her hands as she looked at the prey.
“Oh, I’m sorry miss ‘I go for a walk into the forest in the middle of the night’”. At this, the krakotl seemed to deflate, lowering their head a bit, but not for long, as the human stepped up to them, and brought their head back up with what he assumed was a gentle touch. “I just woke up to being cold, and after waiting a bit, and looking and not finding you, I became worried. Besides, what do you expect if my living, breathing blanket suddenly disappears?” The human chuckled, which was soon joined by the prey's own chuckling, extending a wing to strike at the human.
“Oh, hush, you! It’s not my fault your only protection is your strange pelts! Plus, why are you not wearing anything else, aren’t you cold?” A slight worry in its tone was sickening to listen to, as Velnil continued to watch the two interact, until the human female suddenly stopped, snapping their head towards his direction, accommodated by a cracking sound, which was then followed by the woman groaning, and massaging their neck.
“Shit.. That hurt…” She mumbled. Both the prey and Velnil seemed to jump slightly at the sudden movement, albeit for different reasons. As the prey started worrying over the human, Velnil pulled back even more, laying completely flat on the cold ground as his heart beat even faster. Impossible, this is impossible! The wind is coming from their direction, I was as silent as a night stalker, how could she know I’m here?!
His question wasn’t left unanswered, which confused him greatly.
“Are you okay? What was that?” Asked the krakotl for the third time, thankfully silenced by the human.
“Nothing, nothing, I just… I thought someone was looking at me. I could feel whatever it was.” At the answer, the krakotl tilted its head in confusion, clicking its beak a few times in contemplation.
“You… felt something staring at you? But… how? Aren’t you humans… you know?” The meek thing shrunk a bit again, but was quickly calmed by the human, who ran their hand over their back.
“Eh, it’s hard to explain, and it’s quite late. Let’s just say that sometimes we just get this… feeling of being watched. I have to say, it wasn’t the best idea to come out here without a flashlight, now that I think about it. This place gives me the creeps.” The human seemingly shuddered as she looked around, while the prey looked even more confused.
Before it could say anything however, the human sighed, and turned back to the krakotl.
“Anyways, we should probably head back, Suyla. I heard that tomorrow we will have a… not so good surprise. So we should probably, at the very least, get well rested.” At this, the krakotl seemed to realize something, as they huddled closer to the human, looking around with fear.
“Do you think that it’s… here?” It asked, its voice quivering a bit as the human put their hands on its back, trying to calm the prey.
“Well, I saw Rich arrive, so he must be already here somewhere.” At this point Velnil realized they were talking about him, and he held back a growl once again. He watched as the human led his catch away, leaving him with an empty stomach and an even sourer mood.
“NoT sO gOod SuUrPRisE..” Velnil mimicked mockingly, growling to himself after the human and his food left, grabbing and squeezing a handful of earth as he sulked. This is so dumb, as if the humans would be any better! They are weak and pathetic predators! Even he could take on a few of them! Probably.
Yeah, and you would get yourself killed. And prove them right.
Whatever! He thought to himself with a rumble. It’s not like I care about what they think.
Of course you don’t. Otherwise you would have to accept you are a-
Silence! Growled Velnil as he shook his head. For a few moments, he waited for a reply, but when it didn’t arrive, he raised his chin smugly.
He was about to get up to be on his way when he heard some rustling in front of him. Looking up, he noticed something that looked a lot like a sivkit, except it was wrong in almost every aspect, except for its eyes. He watched the animal approach the newly planted flower, and Velnil scoffed as the animal began to sniff at it.
Dumb prey. You don’t even know what that is, and you just approach it. As Velnil watched the animal, his eyes widened, and time seemed to slow down as he saw it open its mouth.
Oh no, you won’t. With a growl, he sprung from his hiding spot, his maw opening wide with razor sharp teeth as he caught the prey just before it could turn and run.
The metallic taste was a welcome sensation.
~~~
Velnil hummed a low tune for himself as he was walking back to his clearing, his hunger somewhat satiated as he let the cold air fill his lungs to their capacity. With his hunger sated for the foreseeable few hours, he could think a bit more clearly about his situation.
This place looked nothing like a farm. At least, not how a cattle farm would look like, but even those places had parts where they grew prey food to feed the cattle.
So if the humans are not going to keep cattle on this farm, apart from the alien one, why grow so much on such a big area? He knew humans can eat prey food, as revolting of a thought it was, they all could just eat more meat. Do they really care that much about the walking and talking prey that they don’t eat meat because of them?
Bah. Of course they care about their cattle. That way they won’t run away.
Though, the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Do they really not eat the alien cattle that are here? Albeit he only just arrived, the animals didn’t seem to be scared at all. That woman - Lia, was his name, if he remembered correctly - even went out into the cold night to find her feathered ‘friend’.
Growling softly, he shook his head, banishing the line of thought to the back of his mind. He didn’t need to think about this - it was useless when it came to his survival. He knew the humans would do anything to save cattle - even if said cattle bombed them. If it needs to be, he can always take one as a hostage, and on the other hand - he probably could still get at least one of the prey riled up enough to attack him.
That will be spectacular.
But what else could he do? There was one saying he saw on a human website that described his current position quite nicely - He was a wolf among sheep. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. He had to get them to lower their guards, to not view him as a threat, but rather, one of those weak useless arxur who cannot do anything right.
Oh, you have experience in that, don’t worry.
“Shut. Your. Mouth.” He hissed to himself, stopping in his tracks as he looked forward. His arms shook slightly, but he forced his hands into fists to stop it.
What’s the matter, Velnil? Forgot about me so quickly? You hurt my - sorry -, our feelings.
“I said shut up!” Growling filled the air as Velnil leaned forward, the shaking moving to his shoulders.
Why should I? We are no longer in the Dominion. Betterment can’t get a hold of us. We are free.
“We are not free… We will never be.” growled Velnil suddenly turning to swiftly strike at a tree. He winced from the pain shooting through his right hand, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want to feel. He shouldn’t feel anything.
But we are. We ran away, fooled the humans, fooled their prey. We could go where we want. Or stay here. Live a new-
“This is NOT my home!” Velnil yelled. “This will never be. I am not free, just a damned prisoner of another species! I can never be as free as I want to be!”
And what would you call being free? Not like you would know it, of course. I can see it, after all. You know nothing about being free. You are just-
“Shut up! Shutupshutupshutup!” Velnil yelled as he began hitting his head against the tree, each time his body shaking in pain while the tree stood steadfast.
Unmoving.
Uncaring.
Emotionless.
With tears in his eyes, he slunk down against the tree, his breathing fast and uneven. The shadows danced around him, waiting in silence, waiting to pounce on his weak form. The sounds of the night sky became howls of predators, the ground further ahead opened up, the rotten, clawed hand of an arxur suddenly appearing at the edge of it, pulling it’s body up, revealing a set of familiar yellow eyes.
“V-veeeeelniiiilll” Groaned her corpse as she pulled herself up, taking a step closer. His breathing fastened as his eyes were trained not on her head, but her torn open neck.
“No… No… I- I didn’t…” His whines were left unanswered as her corpse took another step towards him, an arm reaching out as one of her eyes fell out, leaving the empty socket as a void to peer into and devour his weak soul.
“I didn’t want to!” He yelled, trying to crawl away, but the tree behind him didn’t let him. “I never wanted to! I-I-I wanted to keep you safe, but I-”
“Veeeeeel-” The corpse sighed out, before taking in a shallow breath - her torn open throat moving along with the action, opening to let air in, before she continued. ”-nyy.” Another step, then as he blinked, she was standing over him. A startled whine left him as he scooted back even more, pressing against the tree as she reached out.
“I’m sorry! I’m so fucking sorry, I wanted to save you, I did!” He screamed hiding away behind his arms as he shouted one last thing: “I loved you!”.
As he shrunk back even more, his breath slowed, his head became woozy as soon his consciousness began to slip away, hearing her speak one last time.
“Veeeeeelnnnyy.”
~~~
Velnil came back to consciousness with a start, head rapidly turning around as his breath hitched, until pain shot through his head. With a wince, he pulled himself up, gingerly touching his head - his scales were damaged, and blood was dried on his head. He winced slightly as pain shot through both his head and right hand.
Shit. They will definitely notice this… He thought to himself as he took a ragged breath. He looked where the hole had appeared - there was nothing, the ground was undisturbed. His gaze lingered on it, before he eventually turned, and continued to make his way towards his clearing, still in the darkness of the night, like nothing had happened.
It has been so long since the last one. Why now? Why is she tormenting me? His questions were left unanswered. He forced himself to stop, and after taking a deep breath, he looked around, listening for any nearby river or something. Sniffing around, he could feel the smell of water off in the distance, and so, he began making his way there.
I need to wash off the blood.
Within a few minutes, he had found a large river, the water flowing down with relative force. Kneeling down at its edge, he leaned forward, and began cleaning his head and hand with practiced, almost robotic movements. The proof of his weakness stinged and flared up at the cold touch of water, but he did not care. He watched as the water slowly took on a red hue, before disappearing down the river.
Within another few minutes, Velnil could easily make out the outline of the injury - it wasn’t too big, but it was most definitely noticeable, and will take days - if not a few weeks - to properly heal. He could hide it, since he was still somewhat bigger than everyone else - but then that would go against his plan on appearing meek and unsure about things.
Maybe I could use it. Play it off as having a bad night. Maybe I could get them to give me more food than they planned. The humans are very empathetic, I’m sure that after seeing this, they would feel bad enough for me to somewhat drop their guard. Maybe I can even fool some of the prey. Yes, that, being attacked by one should be enough for them to not view me as a threat.
Satisfied with the plan, Velnil got back up, and with a sigh and a few minutes of walking, he finally made his way back to the clearing. Lying down on the cold ground, he carefully rested his head atop his bag once again, looking at nothing in particular.
His next few minutes were filled with rolling around, unable to go back to sleep, as his thoughts were slowly but surely going back to the krakotl he saw. The green feathers, adorned by a red pattern, its yellow beak, and similarly yellow eyes.
Yellow eyes that stared deep into his soul.
The yellow eye that has fallen out of its socket, to leave an empty void to devour his soul.
Velnil forced his eyes shut, turning around again. Not again. He thought, forcing himself to think of other things - the taste of the prey animal he caught, his way towards Earth, the russif.
Eventually, within a gruesome few minutes, Velnil was finally granted the sweet release of sleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
First Previous Next
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are all familiar with prating gratitude. It is an overly used concept that many times can turn int o a form of “toxic positivity” and this is far from what I want to do here. What is to be grateful anything?
I believe it is a feeling in a warm tan color in my chest, that makes me smile and think “I am happy I am here to see/experience this.” Maybe it is a religious experience to you, maybe you feel like thanking God or the universe for the opportunity to be here right now.
Another interesting thing is, you don’t have to feel grateful about big life changing experiences only, sometimes I am just grateful for McDonald’s, or for my cat, my friends and family for being there for me. Some days I’m grateful for having to strength to take a shower or drinking a glass of water. You can be grateful about anything.
Practicing gratitude helps us guide our minds into a more positive way of thinking. It doesn’t mean you can’t complain (I love complaining lol) but it helps us thinking about the good things we are actually able to experience.
If this seems too hard for you right, try to modify it to fit your needs: try to write down one complain you have about your day, and battle it with one or two that you feel grateful or happy for. We are all in different stages of our journey. You’re loved and respected, and your feelings are valid.
Now tell me, what are you grateful for today? What are you complain you want to battle with a good thought?

I feel like my current resume is not passing the AI gods test lol. It worked before, but not anymore. So I would love to see what a current resume looks these days that would work. I was in formed that columned resumes with icons are just not flying now. And that you need a summary paragraph as well as core competencies etc. the way I have it now, my resume is split into 2 columns and one side has my experiences and the other side has my skills. The top part has my contact info and has an icon to represent it.
Could someone share me examples of what an ideal resume looks like these days that will capture attention in this saturated market?? I am not sharing mine because you will probably rip it apart and I know it needs to be fixed based on my notes above. This resume used to work and i would get tons of interviews. It’s not working now so I am open to change!!! Just need to see an example because the feed back I am getting sounds so wordy but I want to see how it’s laid out.
For context, I am applying for creative manager, lead designer, and art director roles. I have over 10 years of experience. Thank you!

This one is here because my Aunt still brings it up, and introduces me with this every time she has a new boyfriend.
When I was about preschool/kindergarten age, maybe even a bit younger (think between age 3 and 5) I was introduced to the concept of April Fools Day.
My Aunt started a 'Prank War' with me, which mostly consisted of her doing small pranks on me over and over and me being confused, offended, and ready to Hit. To me (who did not quite understand what a 'prank' was) I was deepy incredulous that it was allowed that people could just go around lying and playing mean pretend, only to not get in trouble if you said it was a prank, or called the person an April Fool afterwards. I did not like people tricking me!
Vengeance would be mine.
Coincidentally, my Aunt's birthday is in April. I decided that this would be the perfect time for my revenge prank. I'd give my Aunt a trick gift as a prank, and it would be the best prank, and I would Win April Fools forever.
I told my mom i had my Aunt's present and she gave me a box, wrapping paper, and even a nice ribbon bow left over from Christmas. I put my gift in the box, wrapped it to the best of my ability, and topped it with the bow.
When I gave my Aunt the gift at the small family birthday party, and again every time she tells this story, she gushes over it being a lovely, beautifully wrapped present. How adorable my big smile was when I told her Happy Birthday.
Nobody really remembers if I remembered to say April Fools after, though to be fair there was a lot of commotion and screaming when she opened the box.
But I succeeded.
My trick gift was the best prank, and I won April Fools forever. To this day I am the reigning queen, with the family trembling in fear over what I might do to regain my crown should it ever be taken.
But what, you may ask, was the gift?
I had wracked my diabolical toddler mind before thinking of the simplest, the most perfect fake gift!What would count as a prank gift at all? Not a rock, rocks were good and sometimes pretty. Not a toy i didn't play with anymore, i needed something better than a nekkid dog chewed bad haircut barbie with marker makeup. Not a toad, toads are outside friends.
No, in the end I went with the most simple and elegant of all possible solutions.
I shat in the box.

1, (15 F) was invited to be a part of my friend (15 F, we will kill her K)'s quince court, and happily accepted. if you dk, quinceañera is a huge birthday party that many Hispanic girls have when they turn 15, celebrating their coming of age. The quince court is made up of the birthday girl’s closest friends, who learn multiple dance routines to perform at the party. Naturally, dance routines and choreography require lots of practice. Our court includes me, K, and 14 of our closest friends. I knew there would be drama when I signed up for the court because multiple people involved don’t get along, and K is often involved in drama outside of this group. However, I agreed because we’ve been friends since elementary school. So far, we’ve only had two practices. It’s summer, and the party is still months away. Most people have attended at least one of the practices, if not both, but a few have missed due to prior commitments or family emergencies. K is struggling to find dates that work for everyone. Several of us have told her it will be hard to find dates that fit everyone’s schedule and that we can try practicing without our partners since we all dance with partners. Multiple members have offered advice, such as practicing at home with a video or practicing without our partners. We’ve also suggested practicing earlier in the morning, later in the afternoon, or on weekdays instead of weekends. We understand that people have jobs, but most teenagers don’t work all day. K has rejected these ideas, making it extremely difficult for everyone. There’s a couple in our group chat, R and J, who escalate problems by name-calling, picking fights, and making a big deal out of simple conversations. It feels like they enjoy causing problems and making the drama worse. Usually, we suggest a date, a few people can’t make it, and then K makes snide comments about how we need to “tell our mommies and daddies” to clear our schedules. K doesn’t have strict parents, unlike several others in the group, and often makes disparaging remarks about us not being available every day. K insists we should prioritize practice over family obligations, which many of us simply can’t do. We are teenagers, not adults, and can’t make decisions without our parents’ permission. We are trying our best, but it seems to go unnoticed. Once, K even said she doesn’t care if our grandfather is dying; she expects us to show up to her practice and forget our priorities because it’s her day and it needs to be perfect. R and J will then name-call those who are unavailable, complain about others’ suggestions for different practice times, and play the victim when told to stop. Ironically, R doesn’t even like K and once spent an hour at a sleepover badmouthing her. J doesn’t like anyone in our friend group, yet he still hangs out with us and causes drama, leading to problems with his girlfriend, R, who we’ve been friends with for years. This behavior overwhelms K, who then stops communicating for several days and expects us to show up without giving us details. Other people cause problems on the group chat as well, but it’s mostly these three. Many of us have complained outside the group chat about the constant drama, fights, and rude attitudes. Some have even compared K to a bridezilla. I understand K’s frustration and know how important this is to her, but her rudeness, including giving friends the silent treatment for weeks, is problematic. She has always been a problematic person, but it’s never been this bad. She complains about the lack of communication in the group chat, yet she rarely texts there herself. This hypocritical behavior led one of my best friends, O, to drop out of the court because the stress and fighting have strained her friendship with R. R and J have a toxic relationship, and the longer they date, the ruder and more problematic R becomes. This has caused drama within the friend group, except for a small group of four of us. The quinceañera planning is adding to the drama, pushing O and R apart, and causing friction among several others. At this point, there’s more drama than necessary. K is not communicating properly and is blaming us, and nothing is getting done. It feels too stressful and like a waste of time. I want to drop out, but I don’t want K to be mad at me since I made a commitment. I love my friends, but I don’t know if I can keep this up.So, AITA for wanting to drop out?

I, a fat 28F, am worried this new relationship with 28M is too good to be true? Lots of red flags
I lost my father in December, and I’ve been told it’s a red flag that I jumped into a relationship so fast, or that he jumped into one with me. He was in a 4 year relationship with someone he’s had a friendship with for 10 years and a relationship with for 4, up until January. Who he was still talking to as of February 15. Yes, I have proof of ALL of this.
Our relationship is only two/three months old. He said I love you 3 weeks in, and has been all over me, posting me on social media, and spending every moment with me. He seems very into my body, he loves that I cook for him, he loves having sex with me, and seems very into me. He calls me his love, and posted me on his social media for the first time this weekend. I’ve never been posted so quickly by someone, ever.
I found out recently, from both him and two VERY reliable sources, that he’s into plus size p**n. His mom is also fat, and he HATES his mother. Seems to have deep rooted mommy issues. His mom cheated on his dad, and his mom kind of caused a divide in his family.
I found out he also was in a 4 year relationship with someone not plus sized, who he was having sex with and telling her he loved her in February, and they only broke up in January. They were very serious. There was no cheating, and he broke up with her at the peak of his addiction. I fear it was out of shame/impulse
In his relationship 7 years ago, he punched a wall, and she kicked him out, after he was living with her and not paying for anything.
I also found out he was apparently horrible to his post recent ex, who is NOT plus sized, towards the end. He threatened to hit her and even put a dent in her car.
He has a history of sex, gambling, p*rn, weed, and alcohol ; but he has claimed to only smoke weed now and has “stopped” gambling after having gambled for 7 years. He has no life savings.
I am just feeling like there’s potential I’m the rebound, and that this is some sort of ego grab and sex thing for him. I do a lot of motherly things for him, like cook and take care of him; and I feel like that combined with his fat fetish thing, is a red flag. I know some men latch onto women they view as a downgrade for an ego boost and to mooch off of.
He is in fire school, and up until this point, has no life savings, and I think his last girlfriend paid for everything as well.
His previous girlfriend was a model, getting her doctorate in psych, younger, and all of his girlfriends have been thin and beautiful. I am hot and sexy, but I am fat.
I know men can gravitate to bigger woman to rebound to fulfill their needs temporarily, and I’m afraid especially with how fast things are moving, that’s what’s happening.
I feel like there’s a scenario where he goes back to his ex after his fire school is done, and is just using me as a temporary fix. I feel like posting someone and saying they love you so fast, after being with someone he could regret breaking up with.
But maybe in the right person for him? Maybe they didn’t love him right?
Please, be honest. You will not hurt my feelings.

(High Cranial Volume Pr and AE Hybrid Users ONLY)
I still can't get AE to perform well on my M2 Macbook Pro running Sonoma 14.0 and AE 24.3. 32 GBs RAM — so obviously that's going to be immediate the culprit, but I do suspect that I could do pretty much anything I wanted on this computer if I could just optimize it correctly. That's what this thread is about. I know there are a million threads like this one but hopefully we can dig up some new dirt. I haven't really written about Sonoma but what I've read seems to indicate a lot of people have had issues. I'm not an OS guy I get enough of a headache with the shit I care about. Not sure if downgrading is possible. Maybe I upgrade my RAM (whoops hee hee nvm forgot i was on an apple computer).
You can stop reading there, because the rest of this is schizo nonsense. I've sobered up and I can't say that any mother would accept a child this ugly. But I'm also getting giddy at the thought of crossposting to editors and seeing what the Avid Professionals Working On Big Serious Productions With Budgets That Totally Won't Disappear in the Next 20 Years have to tell me about making some dough in exchange for the sweet intoxication of art. I also did a better job of listing my issues in my follow up comment
**Intro Apology**
**I've bolded out the sections with the mostly important shit:** I would take extra care to avoid anything that's been italicized because it is some of the most craven text ever set to paper. As if! I can't even use metaphors anymore. Will the graphic designers starve without their paper (why is it always either minimalism or hyper realism? I like texture too but not everything has to be made out of everything, or not made out of anything at all! Nature Without Ecology.)
This is just me typing and never stopping. For some reason. Well, it's no mystery. I'm avoiding anything that even resembles productivity.
I've already wasted time just stream of concussing every intrusive thought, so why would I waste more time reformatting and trimming the fat? Bahahaha I hope you like lamb. If I put forward attention to giving you direct information that effectively communicates an idea, I might just achieve nirvana. Like if I hyperfixate when I'm shitposting, then I am just going to realize the World-Spirit in-itself trying to abide by the laws of rhetorics. Let me tell you, the laws of rhetoric certainly don't make you any less schizo. How do you think we got here?
But that's the future the fucking tech bros made. And it's fucking awesome. Can't wait to be animating using my Rule 34 Paper Texture Parallax Datamosh VFX by AEAnabolics via telekinesis (is there a plugin for that?!??!)
So no I'm not going to make this thread easily accessible or interpretable because I really want anyone possessing any degree of intelligence to stay the fuck away (there are even intelligent people amidst the industry leaders, I once even met a film producer who knew how to count through 12! In any case, if everyone under 30 could exit the room, us pedants, drop outs and philistines will congregate somewhere other than all and we'll be happy to update you later with a summary of our findings.
I do apologize for the wordvomit — I took my meds abt 30 mins before I had the brilliant idea to open up a silly little text box on reddit during my awesome Pomodoro break. I had to be off the ADHD goodies for a week for some sports stuff I was trying to do which needed my heart at optimal function. Why did my doc just let me hop back on the same dose? I am emaciated from all this heavy lifting with my fingers.
Please though, don't dismiss this as pathological ravings. I am not sick, just an Adobe Creative Suite subscriber (somehow, five years later, I'm still on the student discount paying 30 bucks!!! Haha!!! Sticking it to the man!!!! Suckers!!!! Almost as bad as pouring thousands into software you don't own and can be shut out of for trumped up fraud charges if one of the cretins working at Adobe manages to actually check the accounts submitting all those pesky support tickets. Wait....)
So ya it's pretty simple: I was sunning my balls and cheating on five different women *holistically though* before taking my L-Carnitine to maximize the effects of my meth (don't worry I don't smoke it!), when I decided, yes, this Friday, with deadlines looming in the evening, I will nuke my morning by typing. and just not stopping. It's like stim sex, but literally no one is cumming. Wait, literally it's like stim sex.
Okay stop. I want you all to save the horniness for pitching to the Rule 34 Clients — the last to adopt AI in favor of authentic art and animation (bahahahhahaha I seriously do think *This whole AI thing, or at least its acceleration, can be put squarely at the feet of Gooners. They're horny and no human can create what will quench their thirst! Such a tragic condition. Like craving art that can speak to your soul. Ugh. Can't wait for Mister Horse to drop the Anime Waifu presets*.)
*(speaking of Misters, watch Mr. Rush Rush Client — who just needed this edit NOW — not even watch the video until Sunday. That rat fuck: maybe I don't have a social life huh? Maybe I don't want another shitty "underground" (as if such a thing exists anymore) rave on a Friday and a Hinge date on a Saturday?
Maybe genuine connection is dead and all some of us can love is the labor we put into our products. Or the efforts we put into our shitposts. Certainly the products themselves are far beyond loving.
Mr. Rush Rush: your 9-5 is shit and you are shit for thinking you are not a piece of shit because you force everyone to meet your fake timelines. We no longer cultivate produce, nor ideas, we just materialize urgency so the boss can larp as the boss and we can pretend society needs us to keep rhythm. It is the Master who needs the Master's Injunction. I like want to change the world man not reproduce it. I am barren.
Just let me work on Saturday. Asshole. It would have saved all of us from this post which was, of course, provoked by pure, unmediated anxiety — and absolute boredom.
*Fuck paper textures! Fuck any lower thirds that use paper textures. Shit is garbage. The elementary school audience went off to war — it's the latest Roblox minigame. So we're not even impressing anyone any more)*
Instantly — upon the epiphany that I don't owe people shit, even if they throw money at me, my brain ditched all ideals of productivity and decided it was time to write a fucking treatise on my experiences trying to optimize AE. Please do not mock me. I am an idiot. It's not worth countering snark with snark —because I can't even read. I am literally dictating this post to my iPhone and then having chatgpt re-write it. Also, I really hope some GPT or AI research tool digs up this thread. I'm sure they will wire only the relevant information to Mr. Prompter! He deserves the best. In fact he's the only one who deserves anything.
*If I was a GPT prompt I would be posing as a weird hermit who thinks he is the postmodern reincarnation of Plato. WELCOME to the republic ... of stupid — ruled under the auspices of the Kingdoms of Adobia, Resolve-ru, and Avidia (btw can we do what we did to Twitter to Avid? I just don't think it's a cool name. I'm not Avid anytime I have to use Avid. It doesn't have neurolink compatability and I can't do a million things very shitily. It just does like one thing very well. Who would ever ask for that?!?!?1*
For some reason I decided to pump up the snark to the max on this post — I hope that's okay. Maybe I want to write novels, not make videos. In any case, I promise you I'm not AI writing this. Unless ....
But at the end of the day I'm just trying to entertain myself instead of getting real work done — which I can't imagine is something a community of useless creatives would have trouble understanding. You couldn't do math good, and that's because you're lazy!!!
(Dan Ebberts if you're here I am sorry Father: but you are not a useless sack of shit motion designer, you're not making lower thirds for the Nelk Bros? You are the fucking Grand Wizard Abstract Quantum Mathematician my guy, the highest expression of the Enlightenment rationale, not a useless 2.5d animator — though I do secretly harbor a belief that all numbers are racist and you, as the Prophet of Numbers where they don't belong (computers) have a lot of reckoning to do. Guilt erotics won't get you out of this one — we don't want sorry we want solidarity!
**I'm half shitposting and half offering my own insight in exchange for yours.** I hope you don't read malice in my words. In any case I don't think myself a victim and I will be fine. Our world is about to turn nonsensical. The division of labor will collapse. Those who are both just intelligent enough to do dumb shit and lacking in morals will take everyone else's jobs. Technocracy of the morons! Somebody invite France too.
What's your intricate knowledge of a cavernous software versus my ability to write out prompts at 130 WPM? Basically, where you used to be able to get ahead with creative ingenuity you can now get ahead by typing fast. Good riddance lol. But if only we could get this piece of shit software to do everything I want it to do with not even a smidge of an attempt to optimize, pre-render, under smart principles?
But I'm hoping maybe we can have some conversations about the best practices to get this piece of shit software to work consistently. AE is so cool 90% of the time but it's like a girlfriend that's loyal to you 90% of the time. Now I'm not suggesting Adobe is cuckolding the VFX wannabes among us.^1 But I do want to say that there's a problem when your most random software that kind of just somehow works if you need how to cast a few voodoo spells and play around with different effects is literally un-professionizable. You can do amazing things in After Effects on just 16 GB of RAM (even 8 if you're willing to walk away from your computer for a fortnight for a few renders), which was so cool when I was getting started on the shitcans they hand out in college (I sound spoiled but you didn't spend the first year of your professional career on an outdated Mac Air desperately refreshing Google News for a stimulus check as literally everyone is jobless whilst you never even got a job to be jobless from. Like come on guys, if you got started in the 90s at least you have analog nostalgia and to anyone born after 95 you look like a wizard talking about chemicals and film crystals and shit. A Covid alumnus like me who graduated in 2019 doesn't get shit, and 2020 graduates didn't even get to bask in the delusion that they were ever the center of the world. I just pray UBI is installed before the robots take our land and our animals, because truly the new generation of digital creatives is going to feature some of the dumbest people to ever rank through society. Which is true in any era, but what's unique about ours is that young people are no longer angry, just cynical like they were in the 70s. Another round of hypernormalization.
**My Problem(s)
I need the experts here to just assume that I don't want to do things the right way. Every single person who has ever posted a query to Reddit, complex or one Google Search away, every single on of us cursed posters imagines that someone will waltz into their thread and provide an unheard of fix. Jesus take the wheel! I will provide more information on my specific issues, maybe even some idiosyncratic fixes I have found (Thank you Klutz GPT! But fuck you also.) but only if you show you're not going to snarkpost. Until then I will leave you to wade through the coagulated shit stew that is this post.
This is basically the situation with the people becoming editors and motion designers. Thanks Youtube. Thanks Twitch. You ruined Cinema more than capeshit did. Special shout out to the editors in the Philippines running their Macs through literal fruits Just as Mr. Jobs intended. (Don't worry, I'm from a country that is actually dogshit, the Philipines is beautiful and extraordinarily culturally rich)
The Jungle people here to take our jobs! Why aren't we worried about them like we are AI? They can do literally any job. And they can do it poorly. Literally exactly like AI, but no one getting their underwear in a twist when they're browsing the World section on Upwrok.
Don't get me started on what the Ruskiys are doing. You've seen Russian social media, but do you understand what Russian creatives are doing? Absolutely nothing, because Russian creatives don't exist. At best they can reform and reclaim their Orthodoxy in Siberia before coming back to St. Petersburg and writing some of the greatest novels known to man (which some of the absolute most dogshit interpretations and translations ever produced of any Western texts that are even close to the Canon)
Anyway, people like me are going to be around more and more. It's me you're going to be responding "CC Marvel Effect huahua" while the Gen Alpha nicotine tweaker blows clouds into your PC's air vents. Cloud bitch! You're fucked, because the anxiety from vaping makes him lazy as fuck. We are going to starve all because these fuckers got into too much of a dopamine deficit huffing shit with 5x the nicotine of cigs. If you think we're gonna take your jobs now, just wait until I grow my third arm. I will take your job. And when I grow my third cock, I will take your wife.
**I am a "creative director", that's how I market myself at least. I work in a lot of industries, make a shit ton of ads, but I think of myself primarily as a (documentary) filmmaker and editor (at this point it may be a formality and nostalgia because people just want reels and I like money).
I began packaging documentary projects with commercial packages, so the idea has been to first tell someone I'll make a doc for them, but along the way I can use the extra edits and unused interviews or just any of the millions of unused bits of a documentary/reality project and recycle it into ads.** You wouldn't believe how well this works on someone with a little bit of ego and a little bit of money. Netflix really convinced the chuds that their life is like a documentary lol. It's okay, not everyone can monetize their passion, or have it ripped out of their hands to transform itself from quasi art (or something challenging art) to a glorified mouthpiece for mediocre wannabes and has-beens. Bring back the Birth of the Nation or that movie about the Nazi architecture, Will, Will, what was it called? Anyway, I really thought I was going to make shit about dictators or like some genuinely awful people. Instead I got all of the delusion and none of the murder, just a bunch of whining about Instagram follower counts and the "blacklist" (I really wish they'd post a sign up, because I don't want to be seen. For real.)**
** I won't claim expertise as a motion designer. And for the sake of all that is holy you can and should call me a highfalutin dilettante with talent to produce nothing except derivative drivel (I mean, I I told you I worked in documentary right?). **
**But please, please, just assume that I may just not *want* to do things the right way.** ^@
**I know I should label and rename my files. But we're way beyond that, I have become one with Solid 1, to Solid 1 + N. I am going to get last in my comps and no I'm not going to Shy anything because I am an ALPHA! (Seriously though if you are a talentless unorganized adhd piece of shit editor and wannabe filmmaker like me, there's a plugin called Declutter which will automatically sort your project: it offers decent customization that could be helpful if you are just torpedoing a bunch of Linked Comps into AE like we're in the Pacific Theater. But with this magic hack, all those dismembered and charred bits of corpse gets insta sorted into the proper bin! And now your project panel doesn't look like shit and you can screen record while you troubleshoot some issues with an Adobe representative without feeling embarrassed. (maybe if he see it, we can get some sorting function that automatically puts comps in a specific folder (or files of any type into a pre-ordained folder, either in Pr or Ae would be cool. It's not like there are a million plugins that do the exact same shit. I'd rather anime ai waifu available at the click of a button though. What will the Gooners' do if we ever dare stop production?!?1
**Every problem I have had could be improved or entirely eliminated with a proper workflow solution. I am like really painfully aware of that. **
**I have shat blood figuring out how to make Pr Pro work consistently. That's my main app yo. I've genuinly poured hours into unlearning and relearning how to do things. I hope I can like put together an advanced guide some day. But like what's the point if the client who thinks he wants an editor actually wants to see his name and his logo animated in 10 different ways? And you know, I used to be content to produce that auto shit. But the more I animate, the more keyframes I ease (if you tell me you can ease in Pr I am going to smack the shit out of you unless it's to reccomend this
Frankly, AE is such a shitshow. It's old as fuck in a way that none of the other major apps are. Like Photoshop feels stuck in the 90s in the same way but at least its code isn't fucked beyond belief and it's relatively easy to diagnose problems (maybe you need to put more thought into performance for something that generates 24 images a second, but who knows? Not Adobe. Btw, wtf is up with caches in PS? Why are they so fucking greedy for all my data. Fuck you I want space and to have you open in the background. Seriously PS is old and I feel like no one points it out because you can just use Illustrator but fuck that I can't draw mfer)**
**I am going to be spending the next three weeks making animations for about 50 reels, to pair with some other branding deliverables for Youtube and the client's website. It's a huge project and one that I scored by advertising a diverse skill set (I apologize to the specialists but we're all going to have to adjust to foreigners in our lands — if you're American this should sound like a founding ideal more than a problem).
Or so I get the job done: don't get me wrong I cringe when people come in here and ask about making AE faster and it's clear they know nothing and didn't even bother to Google. I have Googled and spent a lot of frustrating hours trying to make shit work that just didn't work.**
Ultimately, if I don't slap on effects until I have the bulk of my animation rendered, and avoid working in 3d for no reason and tread carefully when I do, then I should be good.
But I love the 3D camera. As a filmmaker it's probably my favorite tool in AE because there's actually somewhat transferable skills or a demand for vision (and when Pr's shitty AI takes off and filmmaking becomes glorified prompt writing everyone is going to stop asking for real cameras anyway so might as well accept my fate right now and bin my C70 next to all of the piece of shit analog cameras no one uses anymore and just buy as many 3d camera plugins and softwares as I can, right? Right?! Hello Cinema 4D 8) ). Parallax is fucking awesome bro. I want to receive joy when I work, so ya I'll throw on deep glow and SS3. Am I a terrible person? Probably. I just want you to know, before you offer me solutions, that I want to have my cake and eat it too and frankly I am going to give you snark if you solve one problem but create another.
(for some reason) continued in the comments. Tbh the comment is more useful than this post. I'm just having a bad day guys and retreating into words to escape my problems.

Hate to be negative here but here it is. I’m an agency recruiter and been doing this for about 3 years or maybe more (time flies). I love the job and think I’m pretty good at it. Can pull orders, pull candidates match them, negotiate, and manage my accounts. I’m also at the best agency I’ve ever been at. However, this year has sucked.
I started at this great agency from a major one that’s very abusive (think RH). Bumpy start getting set up and selling, but my first year was a great builder (aka consistently meeting my draw). Developed a whole market in a major city and now I have close to 100 great clients with a core 20. This year has been rough - lost around $100k due to fall offs and a no start despite my efforts to fix it. Now I have 30 highly active job orders and 1 teammate - facing either no candidates or slow slow clients. Not meeting my draw but luckily the amount of work I do is well noticed.
I’m getting burnt out, loosing money, and a little down about it. I wouldn’t go to another agency. Interested in starting my own agency but that won’t solve the current problem and add stress. I could go back into practicing law, make decent money, and gain capital but not very appealing. Any thoughts?
Also - please do just say this industry sucks or I suck lol. I know a lot of great people that love this industry, make/save enough for the slow periods and ride the great periods.

Hello there lovely people
I come to you in a time of need. I’m gonna start off with the disclaimer that I’m probably just too inexperienced to know the answer to the following questions. But that is why I’m here. To get answers and experience.
So. I started into a fresh campaign yesterday. I’m the GM, and my 4 players are all good people. I’ve played with most of them before. They are very passionate and love what they are doing. And I’m very happy to have them.
One of my players has build an alchemist. And had this plan in mind of making an amazing crafting build, crafting cool stuff and helping the party and being useful.
But today he approached me with frustration. He researched more into the crafting rules and what he found discouraged him a lot. To make it clear I’m not talking about feats associated with crafting, or the skill checks. Just about the crafting system used to actually craft stuff.
It seems like the possibility’s are very limited. Crafting seems to have almost no benefit over just buying the item. You have to spend tons of time to actually get any benefit from crafting instead of buying. And together with the complicated system in general it seems to frustrate him a lot.
He asked me if we can change something about the crafting rules. Anything to make it better. And to make it superior to buying. To give his character purpose and to preserve his vision of the character.
The only thing I could answer is that I’m too inexperienced to just change rules drastically. Pathfinder is a very carefully crafted system. Everything has its reason. That’s why I usually only do very slight homebrew that’s mostly for flavor.
I don’t know if the crafting system how it is now is fine and balanced. Or if I would destroy it with changes. I’m just not experienced enough.
I offered him to slowly implement very soft and subtle buffs to crafting, increasing them over time if it still feels bad. I offered that in the hopes of making him happy but also not fucking everything up by changing to much too fast.
My questions are:
Is crafting, the actual crafting of items, good how it is now?
Is it balanced? Is it too weak? Or too strong?
If you would want to make changes to it, what would those changes be?
Any help and advice is much appreciated!

A couple of months ago my parents decided we were going to go out to Colorado for my paternal grandfather's birthday. I love my grandfather and he's getting older, so, yeah, of course I'd like to spend time with him. At the time, my debate team was just announcing their end of year party. My mom assured me our tickets didn't conflict and I would be able to go.
However, a week away from the party, she told me the dates of the trip. I realized it did in fact conflict with the dates of the party and was very disappointed. It might sound kinda weird but I love this debate team and the people there have become pretty close friends.
So, I express my sadness at dinner one night, saying "I thought you said that I could go? This is the last chance to see my friends and congratulate them on their wins before the summer." Then, she got very upset/pissy and said "Well, we can't be in two places at once. Suck it up."
This kinda hurt, especially since she was going back on what she said before (she's been known to do this, as well as make plans and not tell my and my dad, then get mad when we don't leave on time for these plans; sign herself up for things and then not think to sign me and my dad up as well; etc.)
I appealed to her to let me stay home an extra day, as the end of year party was the day after we left, and I wouldn't even miss my grandfathers birthday, but she said no. I wasn't surprised, as that was kind of an outlandish plan already, but my dad also wanted to stay home longer. In the end, I had no choice but to go to Colorado.
My dad made sure to tell me he was on my side. The night we flew in, my dad and I went out to get fast food at around midnight because we had only checked into our hotel at 10:30. He told me he hated how my mom got to be such a control freak while traveling, and he would have backed me up more if it had been earlier.
So, the first day we got there, we took my grandpa out to Red Rocks Amphitheater. He's in a wheelchair from a stroke maybe 20 years ago, so it's not particularly convenient. We took 30 minutes getting there, spent 10 minutes driving around looking for parking, and then 10 minutes later he complained he was too hot and wanted to go back to his house. (If you can't tell, he's not a very agreeable person, especially around my dad. They have issues.)
I guess i'm just upset that I couldn't stay behind one day to go to an event with my friends. Instead, I got dragged out to Colorado to deal with my pain-in-the-ass grandfather.
TL;DR - My mom refused to let me go to an event with my friends, didn't let me vent about it, and then proceeded to bring me to Colorado to have to deal with my grandfather complaining a bunch.
This is just the beginning, lmk if you want to hear more of my mom's antics.