I join the waitlist in 2020. Every once in a while, they will contact me and ask if I’m still interested. I update every time that I am. I see that they have brought on so many people and yet for some reason I had to wait a ridiculous amount of time.
Now here’s the problem: I signed up to drive in Charlotte North Carolina. I got the notification that I was off the waitlist and ready to be approved pending background check the day before I moved away from Charlotte. I went ahead and did everything in the app and just today I received notification that I’m approved.
I moved from Charlotte to Ohio. I followed the instructions to transfer to my new region. However, Care is refusing to transfer my region until I do 20 deliveries. I am 600 miles away from my region. I clearly can’t do deliveries. I’m going back-and-forth with them over email and they don’t seem to understand that.
What can I do? This is ridiculous.

After spending hundreds of hours in the game I think I can confidently say I know what I wished the game did more of or better. Don't get me wrong, I love this game and I played it for so long but the more I just feel like there's more that could've been done. Dragon's dogma is the only game of it's like. Sure you can say it's similar to this and this but nothing really scratches that itch that dragons dogma does. I love a lot of the decisions they made with the game and the world but I'm not blind to it's flaws either. Most of the things I'll talk about has been said a million times but it really can't be understated how much more they could've done.
Gameplay
Like I said up in that paragraph no other game really scratches the itch that dragon's dogma does. Combat alone was a big selling point for me because where else will you get an ARPG where the combat feels nice and weighty without it being clunky and or it being too light and feeling more like a hack and slash combo game. It too me hits that perfect itch of being realistic but also fantasy. My only gripe with it is that it feels like a high fantasy game trying to be a dark fantasy game. It's more of a tone thing but in a world where people are able to cast meteors and tornados and jump 10 meters into the air and become a spinning ball of death the enemies you face are just grounded goblins and monsters. I feel like it's trying to be two things at once leading too the classes feeling just kind of mismatched. compare the gameplay of fighter to thief. Two close quarters classes and starting out they feel like they're on the same level somewhat but as you progress fighter just kind of remains the same while thief is over here causing explosions and flying around everywhere despite them starting on equal grounds. A more jarring example is mystic spearhand the "anime vocation" you can teleport around send out magic waves and stun enemies with a magic chargeable bolt. I have no problems with spear hand but to go from fighter a pretty grounded gameplay style to mystic spearhand where I feel like I'm playing DMC it's just kinda jarring. I like that the vocations feel unique don't get me wrong but it really just does feel weird to be a really normal guy swinging a sword around to teleporting everywhere and becoming invincible exploding man. Other than that I don't really have much else to say about the combat besides game difficulty really does affect combat a lot. As much as I like the combat even I can agree that it gets stale killing everything in 2-3 hits with no real danger. I still remember my first ogre fight since it was the first and only tough battle I had after that the game was a cake walk and I quickly shut my brain off for the majority of it.
Exploration
the world of dragons dogma is fucking beautiful. Sometimes I just walk around admiring the world they made, seeing the trees and grass sway with the wind as oxcarts and patrolling knights walk past. The only thing that can ruin it is oh right an enemy encounter every 3 mins. I Love the combat but fuck, combat every 3 mins when I just want to explore and see the world can get tiresome and just lessens the encounters to be mind numbing button mashing. not only does it lessen the combat system by just giving you too much of it but it ruins exploration by making the world feels smaller. The world is so fucking beautiful but if the only thing you really see or interact with is combat after combat you stop focusing on the world and you just look at the same goblins and lizards. One video I've been watching a lot is a dragons dogma 2 relaxing ambient music where they have scenes of the world just existing. You forget how beautiful the world that capcom created actually is because every 3 mins you just fight goblins. Just that open field of wheat outside of vernworth can give you like 50 beautiful screenshots of the world. I really wish there was a mod that would either lower enemy population count or get rid of half the enemy placements in the world because I really do just want to explore and take in the world. Another problem that DD2 has with exploration is that all the armors and weapons are in the shops. After realizing this halfway through the game I just lost like 50% of my desire to fully explore the game. If all the cool armor and weapons can just be bought what's the reason to explore caves and dungeons and complete quests? I get why they did this because if you're a thief and a quest reward or a random dungeon chest is a warrior armor then you pretty much just wasted time to get loot that doesn't match your vocation but having it all in the shop just ruins so much of the game's exploration and quests. Also if you want to start a new game I recommend you download a mod called "wild loot" on nexus. It takes all the items in the shops and just does what it says, places it into the wild. Whenever I found a cool new armor or weapon I'm always interested to see how big a difference it made rather than just buying the best set in the store.
World
I just wish there was more world building and lore to the world to explain stuff for those that truly want to know about the world. Like why don't we have the misty marshes be explained as "A long time ago a litch showed up and that's why theres so many undead and an uneazy fog around it" and if you keep exploring you can find out that oooooo the old villagers executed a wizard or priest for some reason and they placed a curse on the local area to be an undead area. I wish there were more biomes too, like wide open plains or snowy mountains. Imagine climbing a snowy mountain at night being lost in the snow storm only to see a bright yellow light off in the distant and seeing a tiny little cozy mountain village. seeing different architecture and culture from the giant stone fortress that is vernworth. Some kind of nordic (cheesy I know) wooden mead hall and all with people wearing heavy layering of furs of the loacal animals. Magic also just feels kinda out of place too. Maybe these ideas are cheesy but you're telling me that magic where you can summon litteral meteors wouldn't affect the world even a little bit? There wouldn't be some kind of magic school that teaches young mages to control such volatile and destructive magic? This brings me back to the whole "Low fantasy" trying to be "High fantasy" The world just needs more to feel alive. Like what if the elven village was more than just three circles connected to each other and instead you're able to walk up through mountain edges and actually see the elven houses up on the cliffs that you couldn't reach. There's dwarves in the game but they have no impact to the world at all. They don't even have their own place or history. You won't go down a cave and find yourself in a abandoned dwarven mine like moria and find a dragon hoarding a secret vault of treasures like a cool magical armor or weapon. It lack world building to add context to why the world is the way that it is. Things just are in this world. The original DD wasn't perfect but it tries to add context to the world, It really just needs to bake the world more.
Story
I'll keep this short we all know the story sucks, only thing I can say is, make the story about you and the pawn. We like our pawns more anyways. Make it about exploring what free will is and if pawns are even alive or something, just make us connect with our pawn. Add more scenes and flesh out the characters more. Just do better that's it. Also add more RPG mechanics. Honestly, just mix Bethesda rpg and dragons dogma and it's a perfect game for me.
Pawns
I love the pawn systems. I have my gripes with it but the main thing I want is for more pawn interaction. The only meaningful interaction is them showing you the way, the dap, and dual casting. Like why don't we have team attacks in in ff15? they tried to do it a bit with the ability to launch pawns but its lack luster and barely works. Imagine how cool it would be if you could coordinate with your archer pawn to launch them over the enemy and do a flip while raining arrows down on the enemy. Or if you're a sorcerer and have a warrior pawn that gives you a cool fist bump before taking a giant swing at a charging minotaur causing it to fall down while you have charge up a quick magic spell for a quick follow up attack. Just more interactions would've been so cool especially in combat.
Overall I loved dragons dogma. I wished it did more but it's one of my favorite games. Wish there were more games like this.

Hello! Just as the name suggests, I’m looking for someone to roleplay with! Before messaging me, I would like it if you could read through. Let me start off by introducing myself, and telling you about myself so you get a good idea of who I am, and if that doesn’t scare you off then great!
My name is Euphie or Ras, whichever is fine, I’ve been roleplaying for several years and even aspire to write a book at some point. I work, have a spouse, and I also do a lot of gaming, anime watching and binging. Roleplay wise: I am comfortable doubling up, playing male and female roles, I have diverse characters (they’re all not mary sues) and I’m big on communicating with my partner. I can do semi-literate to literate, and be able to match what my partner gives. I do not mind playing Canon character’s, it’s not my strong point but I’m down to try anything. Just so I know you have read through this properly; tell me what is the capital of Hawaii?
What I’m looking for; I’ll try to keep this simple. I do require a few things from my partner if they are to RP with me but they’re not too bad.
1.) Please be older than 21. I’m older than 25, it’s a bit weird for me.
2.) Be comfortable playing Male Roles and or Doubling up. I like to play both genders; but I’m still rusty when it comes to being a man. Most of my men are morally gray buttheads anyways.
3.) Communicate. This is my biggest thing. I’ve had people ghost me a lot, or suddenly change their mind when they realized I’m not 24/7 waiting to talk to them. I’ve also had people drop me over little misunderstandings. Just to let you know, I will likely ask you multiple times for clarification.
4.) GOOGLE DOC/Discord. I only roleplay through Google Doc, I try not to use Discord a lot but for the right moment I will heavily contemplate it!
I am looking for several things. * is how I will rate how badly I’m wanting it. *** is the most.
Fandoms:
***Baldur’s Gate 3 / OC x Canon / Either; Gale, Astarion or Halsin: I have a vague idea for this, I would be willing to double and play whoever.
**Harry Potter / OC x Canon / Draco Malfoy - Again, I can play whoever for you, I have a storyline for this.
*** Call Of Duty / OC x Canon / Either; Soap MacTavish, Alejandro Vargas. Same as before.
*** Bridgerton - The new season is coming and I am heavily excited for it. So, anything themed. Prefer double up and maybe OC x OC.
Tropes:
NOTE: Do not come into my DMs wanting....more than just RP.
***Second Chance: MC1 and MC2 dated for years until one day MC1 left town, never to be heard from again, MC2 moved on and eventually either a funeral or a wedding happens and MC1 is back in town many years later. I have a plot for this. I’VE BEEN WANTING FOR LIKE EVER to roleplay this.
** Best Friends Brother - MC3 is MC2’s best friend, and grew up together. MC3 is MC2’s brother who went off to the military after graduating High School. MC1 has not needed MC3 since they graduated highschool nearly 10 years ago.
*** The One Night Stand - After a fling, both character’s go separate ways. MC1s family is hosting an event (maybe they’re rich or own a company), only to be reintroduced to MC2 who is investing into MC1’s family's business or whatever.
** Fake It - MC1 needs to marry someone in order to maintain their social status AND MC2 is struggling financially to help their family , so MC1 devises a plan to fake marry MC2 and in return, MC1 will help MC2s family.
I’m also open to fantasy related things like:
Arranged Marriages. Princess x Knight. Demon x Priest/Priestess.
Feel free to DM me if you have any ideas!

I use a rural ISP. They gave me a modem and 2 wifi routers. My modem is nowhere near where my office is. We mostly rely on wifi for the whole house, as the modem is in an inconvenient spot for direct connection.
We frequently have outages in wifi that affects my work. Calling the ISP frequently ends up with a "we can't see anything wrong with the modem, but if you'd like to pay for a service call we can send someone out."
How do I start taking more control over my own home network? What should I keep in mind when trying to migrate from ISP provided hardware onto my own?
TL;DR Where do I even start?

I am far from the first to take a crack at debunking the video made by DeathBattle a few years back where they argued that Madara would clinch the win against the transcendental one himself. Many have called into question their reasoning and pointed out its flaws but I wanted to add a new perspective on the subject in an attempt to shut this case once and for all
I am going to break down this debunk into 3 parts to run down all things DB got wrong about Aizen and his scaling while providing counters which should make it far easier to read
For transparency, I will also be using this to debunk some arguments not made by DB directly but by fans defending the video, nobody specifically being targeted here just metas I have seen

Part 1: AP/Speed Scaling

1: In Death Battle’s analysis they used the Soul King Linchpin for their basis on scaling Aizen which is a common meta, where they booger’d this though is that they then proceeded to say that the only thing being held together by the Soul King Linchpin was the 3 main planets of the realms, rather than the dimensions themselves. This lowball interpretation of the Linchpin’s job is contradicted by 2 main things.
A: The Dangai is also stated to be affected, even in the scan they used, which would make no sense as it exists outside of the boundaries. For this to be the case the energy of the Linchpin would have to be skipping over all astral bodies in each realm, hitting the Dangai that exists between 2 of the dimensions, and then somehow only affecting the primary planets in each realm.
B: The novels clarify that the Linchpin is maintaining the “boundaries” of the realms as well, and considering we know Garganta (a massive empty void) exists outside of “the 3 worlds” that would have to mean all of the stars and galaxies we see exist within these borders as part of the dimensions, that is without even mentioning the realms being point blank referenced as universes or the newer 5D meta
2: They mention Aizen being stronger than Kenpachi and then use the feat of destroying the meteor to scale his striking power. What they fail to mention is that Gremmy (who Kenpachi also mid-diff’d) created a pocket of space containing multiple galaxies which would scale Kenpachi and therefore Aizen to at least Multi-Galaxy
3: They mentioned Yhwach and Aizen being matched in power after Yhwach absorbed the Soul King, but never mentioned Yhwach destroying or reforming the realms as a point. This was likely because they considered it equal in power to the Linchpin feat but we have statements of Yhwach also affecting the Garganta which exists outside of the realms themselves which would easily scale Aizen above the 3 dimensions
4: When scaling Aizen’s speed Death Battle used a databook statement saying that Ichigo and Byakuya fought “like lightning” to say that Aizen should only be marginally faster than light by EOS after considering multipliers.
This raises an obvious problem, well 2 actually
A: “Like Lightning” isn’t indicative of speed and is just a metaphor for “fast” meant to sound cool. If it wouldn’t work to upscale speed why would it work to downplay their speed?
B: By this point we had multiple databook statements that place other characters below SS arc Ichigo at FTL reactions at minimum, after the multipliers they mentioned this would scale Aizen EASILY into MFTL+ giving Aizen a massive speed advantage

Part 2: Hax

1: Death Battle says Aizen’s most effective spell is Hado 90, Kurohitsugi. This is one of the points that almost makes me wonder if they have more than a passing knowledge of the series because Hado aren’t numbered arbitrarily. They are numbered according to their difficulty and effectiveness, which means Aizen has 9 Hado at his disposal that are better than Kurohitsugi and he is able to cast even Hado 99 without an incantation.
2: This is going to be a hard pill to swallow for many but I will keep banging this drum until people stop saying it, ready? TRUTH SEEKING ORBS ARE NOT EXISTENCE ERASURE
Truth Seeking Orbs (TSOs) have never been shown to actually function as existence erasure and this description of them directly contradicts what we are told about them to begin with, which is that their purpose is to nullify Jutsu which would include a Ninjutsu like Edo Tensei and its regen properties. DB claims they are EE anyway and gave that as the primary win condition of Madara
Hell, we literally see Hiruzen get his entire upper body obliterated by a TSO, turning him to dust, yet later he is back and all is good. Sakura even tanks one straight to the chest. I know they are aware of these too because they used the clip of Hiruzen being destroyed by Obito in their “TSO are existence erasure” bit during the conclusion section of the video so you can’t even say they didn’t think that was a TSO that erased spirits (what is typically said when countered with this)
3: Aizen is granted Reliant Immortality from the Hogyoku and is the basis for his strongest form of immortality, this is not mentioned by DB likely because they believe he no longer has the Hogyoku, even though…
4: Aizen DOES have the Hogyoku after his defeat by Ichigo and Kisuke, it is confirmed in the novels. With this reliant immortality he survived being disintegrated at the cellular level even though Gin had stolen the Hogyoku. This means even removing the Hogyoku from Aizen doesn’t prevent him coming back to life stronger
5: As established, DB gave Madara the win condition that Aizen could be destroyed with Existence Erasure via the TSO, I already tackled the TSO themselves but for fun lets see if Aizen COULD in theory be killed with Existence Erasure.
Aizen was imprisoned in Muken after his defeat, the reason given for this is that “no executioner in Soul Society” can kill him. This is a statement coming directly from Mayuri who is likely the single most knowledgeable character in the Soul Society on their abilities. Naturally this would mean he would be aware of something like Hado 54 “Abolition Flame” which is literally an attack that “eradicates the very existence of a target”. It isn’t even a particularly hard spell, Bakudo 63 is 9 levels above Abolition flame and it is considered “mid level”. There is also the argument that Yamamoto’s Bankai could do the job as it is stated to be existence erasure.
If that isn’t enough, Aizen has also survived being disintegrated at the cellular level as already mentioned. There is absolutely no way that even the headcanon’d TSO should be able to eradicate Aizen
6: DB gave Madara the win becasue Madara’s “immense variety of abilities” should give Madara the ability to overwhelm Aizen. Madara has one hell of an arsenal but Aizen has literally Hundreds of abilities when considering both Hado and Bakudo as well as forbidden Kido and the ability to make new Kido on the fly.
7: Very importantly for their analysis they started both characters in base, having them power up during the fight and oddly… Gave Madara 6 Paths. This form is not something Madara just has at his disposal all the time, yet they had him randomly summon the ten-tails and absorb it after breaking Kurohitsugi. Aizen has the Hogyoku and can freely evolve to the form shown and beyond, meanwhile Madara doesn’t just have the ten-tails in his pocket
8: DB used an extremely biased take on Verse Equalization to say that Chakra and Reiyoku are close enough that Madara would be able to absorb Aizen’s Kido but then never considered that this would mean the constant flexing of Reiatsu done by Soul Reapers would mean Genjutsu would never be able to stick against Aizen

Part 3: Genjutsu vs Kyoka Suigetsu

1: Kyoka Suigetsu is NOT like a Genjutsu, and isn’t even close enough to be properly VE’d to be equivalent
Genjutsu: affects the brain, controlling the senses of the victim directly and can be broken by realizing you are under an illusion and disrupting your Chakra flow or having someone else disrupt the flow for you
KS: Controls the spirit to directly take control of your senses, Shinigami are constantly fluctuating their reiatsu and having their Reiyoku flow changed by borrowing from the powers of their Zanpakuto spirit yet none of this works to break Kyoka Suigetsu. Even knowing you are under an illusion doesn’t help you
They control via different methods with different ways of controlling the senses AND have different methods to break them, Verse Equalization should not allow blanketly saying that the same methods should work to break KS considering those methods are things people in Bleach actively do
2: The ultimate genjutsu Infinite Tsukuyomi doesn’t work on spirits, that is all
3: Aizen is not weak to illusions, people point out that Aizen was manipulated by Shinji and his Shikai which is an illusion and use this as an argument that Aizen has weak mental resistance to Illusions and to those people I have one response… Actually read Bleach
Aizen “fought” Shinji and was manipulated by his illusions , but we find out soon after that Aizen had all of them misinterpreting his actual location during this, even Aizen’s wound on the arm which he got during his “fight” with Shinji is gone when he reveals himself, before point blank saying “Since when were you under the impression I wasn’t using Kyoka Suigetsu?”
Aizen’s “fight” with Shinji was a ploy that culminated in them unknowingly attacking Momo and getting Ambushed by the real Aizen

Conclusion

It is no secret that the DB staff have a hate boner for Bleach, Liam is outspoken for his distaste for the series. It is clear looking at the evidence they presented and how they lowballed Aizen that they wanted to keep the stats mostly equal but the moment they started headcanoning things like Existence Erasure TSOs and Aizen being weak to illusions it became clear this was a popularity contest

I feel like I need to get this off my chest. Potential trigger warning
My first pregnancy, one of my first symptoms was intense fear. I was scared of the dark and was convinced a demon was watching me. Sometimes I’d think I’d see something and my heart pounded throughout the night. I spent my nights going between opening and closing my eyes until finally the sun rose and I could sleep.
I struggled with suicidal thoughts as well which felt more intense during pregnancy and postpartum.
However postpartum wasn’t so bad, thankfully. However when I gave birth to my child and saw her for the first time, I wasn’t happy. I was shocked. There was no way that could’ve been my child. I smiled anyways and took her. When the doctors were gone, i asked my husband many times if he was absolutely sure this baby was the same baby that came from my body. She was and if I compare my pictures from being a child to hers, she is my exact image. For the first year, I had no bond with her. No love that I felt a parent should have. She’s 6 now though and that has changed immensely. I love her more and more the older she gets and am proud of who she is becoming.
Then I was pregnant with baby number two. Symptoms of paranoia and delusions started quickly, but I didn’t recognize them as such. I just knew I had an intense fear and conviction that someone was watching me or in my house and they were going to kill me and take my daughter. My husband worked nights and I’d lock my daughter and myself in my room until he got home. I’d stare under the door for any shadows that might pass by. When my husband got home, I’d ask him to check the house every night. Sometimes multiple times. I’d even run the shower because I figured if someone was using heat vision to see inside my house, this would throw them off. I kept my curtains closed and taped aluminum foil over the windows without curtains. This lasted my entire pregnancy and I didn’t realize this wasn’t normal. To me, this was normal.
Postpartum: when this baby was born, there was an immediate bond. I knew this was my child, without a doubt, and yet strangely he looked nothing like me. PPD depression set in during the hospital which I expected. I also expected the anxiety. I cried. A lot.
Then finally we went home.
The depression got worse and I’d have moments where I felt fine and the next I’d be crying again. I didn’t think I could take care of my kids. I begged my husband to take more time off work, and he did, unpaid, but eventually he had to go back.
While he was at work, I was having a crying episode and went to the bathroom away from my kids. Everything shifted. A voice was telling me I was alone and I knew it wasn’t my voice. Immediately afterwards, thoughts of harming myself and my children came. In my mind, I couldn’t take care of them, but if I did this, we’d all be in heaven and we’d be safe.
The thoughts became stronger and I didn’t think I could get help because I was scared of losing my children. I tried talking to a couple people about, but I was blown off.
I had delusions that someone was trying to take my children and theyd be safer not on this earth. I also had delusions that my baby was possessed and would try to take my life. At one point, I remember waking up at night, thinking I saw them in the crib next to my bed staring at me with malicious intent. But my eyes were playing tricks - the baby was sleeping.
Eventually, my husband and I made sure I was never alone. I couldn’t trust myself with my own kids. It was the scariest time of my life. He’d have friends check on me, he’d take me and the kids to his work. If he couldn’t do that, then we’d stay on the phone until he got home. Eventually the delusions went away, I even lost friends during this because they told me “something was wrong” and I wasn’t acting like myself.
The depression and anxiety lasted for the next year and a half, but eventually I was able to feel a resemblance of normal.
Now we are expecting our third and this will be our final. Mentally, I’ve been doing great until a week ago. I realized I was having minor delusions. I thought my medicine for morning sickness was slowly killing me and i had convinced myself a specific spider was going to come after me if I didn’t research into it. After losing sleep over it, I recognized that this was a delusion, albeit a minor one. I laughed at myself but I know how bad it can get. Then the other night I had a violent nightmare. In my dream, my children were possessed and it ended horribly. I had to save them in my dream but in the worst way. It reminded me of how I felt postpartum with my last child. When I woke up, I spent the entire day in a fog, wondering if free will even exists and if my children are safe with me. I hugged my children when they woke and then my husband took them out and spent the day with them while I rested.
But things are different now. I will see a doctor and I’m going to be more open about my issues. I’m going to have a plan in place in case I mentally go on a downward spiral. To say I’m scared of going through again what I did with my previous child is an understatement. I’m terrified and I’m hoping it doesn’t get like that again, but I won’t take chances.

I never considered myself to be smart, but I never thought I was stupid. As Artemis and I left Athena's oasis, I couldn't help but ponder the enormity of what had just happened. My mind was beginning to clear up and reflection set in as I followed Artemis through solid objects, down rabbit holes, through fire, sleet, and bodies of water.
The fire didn't burn me.
The cold didn't freeze me.
The water didn't drown me.
To think that my stupid human brain caused me to err in judgement to such a degree that I would step into the domain of godhood where I didn't belong... all because I was horny. I cringed the thought away. Yes, it was the hottest thing that had ever happened to me, but the way Athena looked at me; it sent chills down my spine. There would surely be consequences for this, but Artemis had clammed up completely, and wasn't answering my questions.
"Artemis?" I whined. "Hey... I'm sorry. I didn't know this would happen."
She stopped in the middle of the woods. We stood surrounded by a captive audience of oak trees; it was eerily silent. She turned and cast me a long look before walking into one of the larger oaks. I sighed and followed her through it. On the other side, we were back in Thyra under a familiar violet menagerie of stars and planets. She had stopped, finally, sitting down and leaning back.
I stepped in front of her. "Artemis? What, umm... Whatcha doing?"
"Waiting," she said plainly.
I looked around at the desolate canyon.
"... Waiting for what?"
"Judgement," she sighed. "This will be the first place Father will look for me when he hears the news."
"Father?"
"You may know him as Zeus."
A little bit of sweat gathered around my temples. He was the main guy. Like the biggest name in Greek myth. Everyone knows Zeus. But judgement... what was about to happen?
"I thought we were going to go hunt some beast in the Underworld or something." I looked down at my rifle and ran my hand along the length of the barrel. "I was scared at first, but now I want to see what a weapon kissed by Hephaestus can do."
I scoffed. I didn't know where that kind of verbiage came from. Kissed by Hepheastus? What was I, a poet all of the sudden? When I looked up, she looked sick. Her face was sagging and her eyes were lifeless. She leaned back and laid flat on the ground, her arms and legs outstretched as though she were dead.
"I too was eager to hunt," she said in a forlorn tone. "But that was before, in my miserable judgement, I welcomed you into divinity."
That was the first time she'd confirmed it with her own lips and it struck me for the first time that this was truly happening. The weight of it fell on my shoulders and did my level best to suppress it down. I didn't want to think about the implications just yet.
"I thought it was just a blessing," I said, sitting down next to her. "I didn't know there was a limit..."
"Athena tried to pry you from my breast, but you were stuck to it like a stubborn babe. You refused to listen."
"I didn't even realize it!" I defended myself. "Why couldn't you have just blessed me in a different way? Why did it have to be so weird?"
"Each god and goddess may bestow blessings, but for each it is different, and tied to their domain," she answered. "I am the goddess of the hunt, but also of nature, childcare, and birth. My blessing is bestowed as such that reflects my divine purpose." She cast me an annoyed glance, "You are the one who has decided it is weird."
I set the rifle down in front of me and leaned forward, thinking carefully. I didn't want to dig my hole any deeper with Artemis. I didn't need her mad at me too. "I'm sorry," I said finally. "But on earth it's kind of a sexual thing."
"Your species is perverse," she said, closing her eyes. "Am I to blame for that too?"
"No!" I said quickly. "I'm not blaming you for a damn thing, but-"
"The blame lies with me entirely," she cut me off. "I brought you here. I took you to Athena's Oasis. I fed you the milk of the gods with my own breast. Who else is to blame but me? My father will certainly say as much when he finds us."
I swallowed. I didn't know what to do. I was in over my head; way out of my depth to such a degree that I wondered if maybe it was just a good idea to keep quiet and sit still. But I had one question that was burning behind my eyes.
"What's going to happen to you?" I asked.
She opened her eyes and stared at the sky as she contemplated. "... I suppose I'll be reduced to my base components and be remade a more capable daughter. They call it rebirthing."
"Artemis," I said softly. "That sounds like dying."
"There is no death," she refuted. "Only rebirth. I will be remade."
"Yeah, it still sounds like death to me," I pressed.
"It's the closest thing to death that goddess can experience," came a familiar voice from behind me. I turned to see Apollo walking slowly toward us. "Sister, sister," he chanted. "What have you done this time?"
I wasn't overwhelmed by his beauty this time, but I still felt my chest tighten. It was the same feeling as seeing an ex from a long time ago in a public space like the mall or the grocery store. A flutter of something that once was there, but nothing substantial.
"Word will spread," Artemis said, her voice cracking. "And when Father has discovered what I have done, he will do what is right, I am certain of it."
"Will he?" Apollo asked. "Because Father has never been one to overreact, yes?" His tone carried the faintest hint of sarcasm.
Artemis didn't respond.
"I can't help but feel responsible for all of this," I said, getting to my feet. "I'll accept full responsibility."
"That will not be up to you," Artemis said, sitting up and hugging her knees.
"You may assume all the responsibility you like," said Apollo, turning to face me. "But there is not a single god or goddess on Mount Olympus that will accept that. You were a simple-minded human when you erred. It is what your kind does. Would you curse an acorn for falling from a tree?"
"I get it, I get it," I rolled my eyes. "But it's not fair. Artemis didn't know I would fuck up the way I did. She doesn't deserve to die!"
"Make no mistake," Apollo said sternly. "It will not just be her, but Athena and Hephaestus for participating in this little charade." He turned his eyes toward the cracked canyon floor and sighed. "... And of course, I as well."
"No!" Artemis was on her feet.
"I will be punished for failing to alert Father to your wily machinations," he looked up at her. "I turned a blind eye. And I did it while Brian was still a human."
Artemis held his gaze for a second before turning and looking at me. "... The Fates," she whispered.
"The Fates?" I looked between the two of them. "What's going on?"
"Father will speak with the Fates," Artemis said as though in a panic, returning her attention to her brother. "They know all that is and all that will be."
"For humans," Apollo clarified, turning to me. "The Fates have no knowledge concerning the gods and goddesses. But everything that transpired around you while you were human will be a part of their knowledge."
"So Zeus will talk to them..." I began to put it together. "And you'll have no plausible deniability. They'll have seen you interacting with me here."
"Hephaestus and Athena as well," Apollo nodded. "None of us can deny what we've done here." He looked at his sister and scowled. "Because we trusted in her to know what she was doing."
This was a mess. A complete disaster of my own making. I was such an idiot. I should have known better than to trespass against the gods. For had I known that Artemis would pay such a price, I would have never chased such an audacious undertaking. I held one hand to my head and felt that same nausea that had overtaken me back at the oasis. My inner dialogue was changing. I was thinking in a voice that wasn't really my own. I could feel myself slowly changing somehow.
"Forgive me," Artemis said to her brother.
"He may," came another voice to her left. In the blink of an eye, a newcomer had manifested. "But I will not. I trusted you to know better, Artemis."
After only a moment, I recognized him. It was Hephaestus, but human-sized and not all glowy and scary. He also bore a nasty scar across the right side of his face. I hadn't noticed it in the shadowy forge, but it was distracting. He stared daggers at Artemis, his strong arms folded across his chest.
Artemis buried her face in her hands. "I did not mean to risk you all alongside me," she sobbed. "I am so ashamed."
"As well you should be," Apollo spoke furiously. "Father already detests Hephaestus. He will be rebirthed as well."
"He detests me," Hepheastus, turned to Apollo, "Because I dared to suggest he was wrong about something. Though, if you ask me, the old man has hated me from the moment he laid eyes on me."
"Stop, stop, stop," I lifted my hands. "Just... let's just think about this for a second. Why do we have to wait around for Zeus to find out?" I asked. "We could just, y'know, get out of here. Nobody has to be killed over this, we can just leave, can't we? He doesn't know anything yet!"
"You imbecile," Apollo seethed, putting his face inches from mine. "You know nothing about anything. Keep your moronic human notions to yourself for so long as they persist within you."
That broke my heart. I wrestled with the emotions that roiled within me. I took a step back and inhaled, holding the tears back. I wasn't going to cry. I was a grown-ass man. So why did I feel like a toddler in time-out?
"Actually," came a new voice from behind Artemis. We turned to see Athena caressing her chin thoughtfully. "While his primal human instincts compell him to flee... in this case, it might not be the worst idea."
"You've hit your head, yes?" Apollo asked. "You would take a human's side? So much for a goddess of wisdom. Take your council elswehere."
"Mind your manners, Brother," Artemis spoke up. "That is Athena you are addressing. You will hear her speak."
We all stood in a moment of tense silence. Athena began to pace around the gathered gods, patiently choosing her words before she spoke them.
"Father has had a hot temper as of the last few hundred years," she began. "Don't act like you all haven't been weary of him; that you haven't shared whispers of concern with your siblings."
Everyone turned their eyes away from her, as though unwilling to accept it. But I could tell from the expressions on their faces that she was telling the truth. Something was going on with Zeus, it seemed, but what? Why were his kids so afraid of him?
"He has been rebirthing gods and goddesses for small offenses as of late," Athena went on. "I, for one, have been living in fear of his ire for some time now. He is not the same as he once was."
"Do not speak ill of Father," Artemis came to Zeus's defense. "He is facing difficulties!"
"That is..." Apollo trailed off. "A hefty accusation," he said finally, staring the goddess down.
Athena stared back with equal ferocity. "Then why, Apollo, did you keep your sister's little venture to yourself?"
He remained quiet. I didn't know the gods bickered like this. I always assumed they were some big happy family just living in paradise, but it seemed like there was at least some degree of treachery afoot.
Afoot?
I winced.
"Your silence says it all," Athena smirked before turning serious. "What little empathy Father once possessed is gone. We can all wait around to be rebirthed to Father's liking," she passed her eyes over us. "Or we can flee. The worst thing that can happen to us is rebirth either way."
"I have yearned to leave his gaze for eons now," said Hephaestus. "I will join in an escape effort."
"There would be little effort required," Apollo announced. "There has never been an attempt to leave the pantheon. It would likely be as simple as walking through an open doorway. But this discussion is traitorous; blasphemers, each and every one of you."
"I will run with Athena," Artemis announced.
"Sister!" Apollo scolded.
"Athena is more than my sister, she is my best friend," Artemis balled her fists. "If it were anyone else who suggested it, I may not have listened. But Athena's wise words have guided me through great trials."
"I am with them," Hephaestus said to Apollo. "You can stay here with the accident," he eyed me angrily.
Artemis looked as though she wanted to come to my defense, but ultimately said nothing.
Another arrow through my heart.
"Hephaestus," I began my sentence without anywhere for it to go. "I... I might not be..." I flailed. Suddenly, I had a question. "Wait," I pointed at him. "Why can I understand you now?"
"Because, dear Brian," Athena answered for him, walking up to me and placing a hand against my forehead. "You are a god now. It doesn't matter whether Hephaestus likes it or not, you are divinity born of mankind."
"Well," I glanced around without moving my head. "What am I the god of?"
"She is checking," Apollo said. "Be quiet while she divinates your domains."
I felt a tingling sensation around my forehead. It tickled, and I couldn't help but giggle a little. It made Artemis smile and my heart soared.
"You are..." Athena spoke, closing her eyes, her concentration tightening. "The god of indulgence and isolation," she announced, opening her eyes and smiling at me. She removed her hand and stepped back, leaving me in a stunned silence.
"Did you just call me fat and lonely?" I blurted out.
Athena lifted her hand to her mouth and dimples manifested on her cheeks. Artemis did the same, but couldn't stifle her laughter. Apollo snickered and turned his head. I stood there with my mouth wide open as Hephaestus began to chuckle to himself. But he didn't look happy about it. He would smile and laugh before scowling it away, and then start laughing again as though he were being tickled while in a terrible mood. The others adopted an expression not dissimilar to mine and stared at the god of the forge.
"I can't stop," Hephaestus managed between breathy laughter.
"By the stars," Athena murmured. "I don't believe I've ever seen Hephaestus laugh."
"Nobody has," Apollo said in equal wonderment.
"That is your sense of humor?" Artemis asked, aghast. "It is so... childish! So unexpected!"
"I have no sense of humor!" Hephaestus barked, finally getting his laughter under control. "He did something to me!"
"I didn't do anything!" I threw my arms up.
"Perhaps," Athena smiled at me. "He also holds the domain of humor. I didn't search for it."
"Great," I said angrily. "I'm 'Hilarious', the fat and ugly Greek god of comedy, I love it."
Hephaestus exploded in a renewed fit of laughter, once more prompting the others to laugh again. I stood there in the center of it and frowned.
"Can we get out of here now?" I shouted.
They laughed harder.
This sucked.
Writing Prompt Submitted by u/blablador-2001

50 Biblical scriptures that address Overcoming Temptation and Addiction, along with their texts:

1. 1 Corinthians 10:13 – “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”
2. James 1:12-15 – “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
3. Matthew 26:41 – “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
4. Galatians 5:16-17 – “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.”
5. Ephesians 6:11-12 – “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
6. Psalm 50:15 – “Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”
7. 1 Peter 5:8-10 – “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”
8. 2 Peter 2:19 – “They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for ‘people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.'”
9. Romans 13:14 – “Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.”
10. 1 Corinthians 6:12 – “‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’—but I will not be mastered by anything.”
11. 1 Corinthians 15:33 – “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”
12. James 4:7 – “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
13. Romans 6:12-14 – “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.”
14. Proverbs 4:14-15 – “Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evildoers. Avoid it, do not travel on it; turn from it and go on your way.”
15. Hebrews 2:18 – “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
16. 2 Timothy 2:22 – “Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
17. Titus 2:11-12 – “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.”
18. Hebrews 4:15-16 – “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
19. Psalm 119:11 – “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
20. Proverbs 20:1 – “Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise.”
21. Romans 8:5-6 – “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.”
22. Ephesians 4:27 – “and do not give the devil a foothold.”
23. Philippians 4:13 – “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
24. Colossians 3:5 – “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”
25. Psalm 141:3-4 – “Set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips. Do not let my heart be drawn to what is evil so that I take part in wicked deeds along with those who are evildoers; do not let me eat their delicacies.”
26. Job 31:1 – “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman.”
27. Proverbs 6:27-28 – “Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched?”
28. Psalm 101:3 – “I will not look with approval on anything that is vile. I hate what faithless people do; I will have no part in it.”
29. 1 John 2:16 – “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.”
30. Luke 22:40 – “On reaching the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you will not fall into temptation.'”
31. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 – “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
32. Psalm 23:4 – “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
33. Proverbs 23:20-21 – “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.”
34. Isaiah 40:29-31 – “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
35. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 – “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
36. Luke 4:1-13 – “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’’ The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’’ The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down from here. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’’ Jesus answered, ‘It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’’ When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.”
37. Romans 12:1-2 – “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
38. Ephesians 5:18 – “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”
39. Proverbs 27:12 – “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.”
40. Psalm 37:23-24 – “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”
41. Philippians 2:13 – “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”
42. Proverbs 25:28 – “Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.”
43. 1 Thessalonians 5:6-8 – “So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.”
44. Proverbs 16:32 – “Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city.”
45. Isaiah 41:10 – “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
46. Psalm 119:37 – “Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.”
47. 2 Corinthians 7:1 – “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”
48. Psalm 1:1-3 – “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.”
49. Proverbs 13:20 – “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.”
50. 1 John 5:4-5 – “for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

These verses offer wisdom and guidance for dealing with temptation and addiction, emphasizing reliance on God’s strength and the importance of spiritual vigilance and moral integrity.

Prologue

Hello and welcome to my post. I will subdivide this into two large parts. One will cover my thoughts, feelings, my hopes and dreams...While the other will tell you the specifics of how I pass the time, what topics interest me, what passions do I posses. I believe that at the end of this leap into my inner world, you dear reader, will have all the necessary information to judge whether we are compatible or not.

Part I
I am writing this in the hopes of finding something that I lack. Lately I have had this feeling, this tinge of melancholy within the dephts of my being, this yearning to find a kindred spirit, another Soul, much like mine, to form a bond with. Perhaps Loneliness is the right word for what is bothering me, but to use it seems to carry with it a connotation of ungratefulness. Ungratefulness for the people that I do have in my life, although none of them, of course, have the connection to me that I seek here.

I have found it increasingly necessary to seek in this Life a sort of purity of thought. What I mean is, I have began to undestand what ideas and concepts are ultimately compatible with my inner most Self, ergo what guidelines I have to follow to feel the most whole. Naturally I have likewise realised what I cannot add to my Self and what I will henceforth reject with all the power that I posses.

With this new context in mind, I now follow on the path of self improvement. I will now begin to mold my Self into my perfected idea of how the Self should be. This is certainly a significant undertaking, one that will not be easy to follow through on but one that I ultimately have to do. To me such context is essential. It is akin to a Guiding Star shining in the night. I will follow this Star for without it I am lost in the vast Darkness.

Looking back at my life, it was suboptimal, especially if one compares the way it molded me to how I will now mold myself. I suppose I must look on with a hint of regret at all that time which one might consider to be lost. Still... I try to stave off such decisively negative interpretations, after all, I have ultimately came to these conclusions. That means that somewhere along the line I had to have picked up on enough of such ideas for them to become so cemented in my consciousness. Well, either that or I was always like this, but in that case I can at least thank my life up to this point for not being able to supress such manifestations of my inner most Self.

To add to the topic of my life, I must admit that not all the battles have yet been won, not all the Demons vanquished, not every Mountain climbed. I want you to keep such things in mind when deciding whether or not to approach me. Many will shy away, I undestand that much, but the pursuit of true Companionship is just another such battle. Having said all that I do believe that being able to overcome hurdles together carries with it a certain appeal. That is to say, what's the fun in joining once the Game is already over?

I don't shy away from such challenges, perhaps to a fault. Certain troubles that I faced in the past carry with them a long shadow over my current health and well being. Still, I intend to change little in this regard other than the proficiency with which I will clash the current of my Will against the cliffs of Life.
Part II
In this part of my post I will tell you about my interests and hobbies, I will try to be thorough, commonality in this regard is rather important to build a relationship
History. I have had an interest in history for almost a decade now, it started back in school and developed from there. Well, now that I think about it one could argue that it started even earlier in my life as I liked watching the odd historic documentary or film aired on television but it wasn't regular back then, I never actively sought it out. I am mostly interested in European history in the period between the 18th-20th century but I sometimes branch out to other time periods and other parts of the world. I watch various channels related to history and read articles and sometimes books. I have recently got a few books on the German revolution of 1848/1849 and a historical magazine on the Thirty Years' War. Besides that I try to visit museums sometimes.
Literature. Especially old novels. I like to immerse myself in the Worlds of these books, I tend to read them while listening to thematically fitting music and take my time with them. One time you are following a troubled Youth in his quest for spiritual understanding of the world, another you see the aged and decrepit Doctor gambling his very Soul on the promises of abtaining satisfaction in earthy pleasures, then again your olfaction notices the most pleasant scent known to man even as the one eminating it has the appearance of a revolting Frog. These and many other stories open up to you once you decide to set foot into the literary World.
Languages. I know three, with one being a bit rusty. I am currently working intently on strengthening it. I believe that if I continue to apply myself in this regard then I should be able to finally conquer it. What language am I working on? Well, if you were to stack all the major works in it they would be as tall as a house... It is fun to go through different works in multiple languages, the same goes for film, games and such.
Games. I recently played Cyberpunk 2077. Well as recently as I played any major story centric game. Now that the dust has settled and the bugs mostly removed...It's not that bad. The main questline at least. Besides that I tried Fallout 76 (Very average, I'm dissapointed with what they made the "RPG" system) and I might give Deus Ex Manking Divided another spin (since it's somewhat similar to Cyberpunk when it comes to its aesthetics). Dark Souls is one of my favorite series, I still haven't beaten Elden Ring though. When it came out I wasn't in the right mindset to invest a hundred hours into it, with all those bosses and difficult locations. I think I'll only consider playing it if I am streaming it to someone. I am generally interested in either streaming games or having the person I am talking to stream them to me. To be specific I mean streaming to a single person while being on call. Besides that I'm a big fan of Paradox strategy games, especially Europa Universalis IV and Heats of Iron IV, I tend to only play single player since I find multiplayer with many people to be rather stressful but on the other hand I have nothing against a co-op game. I'm not the best player though, despite the ammount of hours I have in them. Another great game I would mention would be Dragon's Dogma. A very underrated RPG. I recently beat it again and it was an atmospheric and interesting experience. It is one of those games that feel like they have an endless ammount of depth and constant new secrets to discover.
Anime and Manga. In recent times my interest in them has waned but I still watch the occasional series here and there. Like Cyberpunk Edgerunners (Which I found to be rather mediocre) and the very good first season from the new arc of Bleach. Some of my favourite series include: Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Death Note, Fate;Zero, Psycho Pass, Code Geass and Attack on Titan. I wouldn't mind if you were to introduce me to some new series, maybe based on the ones I mentioned. My favourite Manga is Berserk which I still follow, althought I am still not certain on the direction that the new author is taking. I suppose it really is a matter of contention whether a somewhat (or considerably warped) vision is better than an unfinished work. One could argue that a few novels remain unfinished and possess a macabre appeal to them as such.
Music. Classical music has a very special place in my heart. A few of my favourite pieces would be: Clair de Lune, Nocturne Op. 9 No.2, Devil's Trill Sonata, Danse Macabre, Valse Sentimentale, Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92: II. Alegreto (by Beethoven) and Suite from Swan Lake, Op. 20a: I. Scene. Moderato. There are more but these ones always invoke something in me when I listen to them. Besides Classical I also enjoy listening to Synthwave, old Western pop and J-pop, both modern and from the 20th century.
Esotericism. I am interested in things spiritual, mystical, magical and esoteric. I have read religios texts, magical grimoires, introductions to various schools of thought. It is interesting to me.
Epilogue
Hopefully I was able to cast the spotlight upon my inner World in a clear and unequivocal manner. I feel the need to add to the aforementioned that I am rather introverted, which means that I tend to dislike large social gatherings. I managed to condition myself to be able to endure the presense of large groups of people but it isn't something that I would seek out in most cases. Besides that I am neurodivergent and suffer from certain issues with mental health. I have to take medication to keep myself under control. They work well enough but certain days are harder than others. I respect the struggle that others have with mental health but in the context of a relationship I have my limits, no one with BDP for instance. I am also not looking for anything casual. I understand than one cannot demand depth and meaning from a conversation with an absolute stranger, that is akin to trying to build a sand castle right before the waves strike but I ask at least that you enter with a mindset that this might become something of significance. I also do want to say that I am completely Monogamous. My preference? The sickly, pale, intellectual who watches rain droplets slide down the window in Autumn. Lastly, if I enjoy the company of a person I tend to not want to let them go.
Thank you for taking the time to read my post and have a good day. I ask that you send a DM instead of a chat and that you give the English translation of my title in the opening of your message.
Goodbye...Or perhaps untill we meet again

Edit: apoglize for the errors. This has been a post longtime in the making. I’ve been penting up so much stress from this. On top of working and now looking for a job i’m responsible for being my nmoms maid. You might thing where she is all the time while I do all these things? She’s at work and the rest of the day is her spending time up in her room getting drunk and talking to her boyfriend , on the weekends she doesn’t even spend a ounce of time to do HER chores and expects me to them for her. While she drives out hours away to see her boyfriend IN PERSON this time. That’s all her energy is put into. She literally abandons her chores and responsibilities for a man. Yep. You heard that right.
So l (20F) live with my parents still. When I turned 18, my Nmom basically stooped down to the mental state and emotional state of a child. I have a mom but I don't have a mother yk. She wants everything to be done for her but won't do the same for anyone else. I've helped my Nmom out a few times and every time I do she treats me like garbage and she never helps me out. It's just unfair, she wouldn't even drive me to my doctors appointments or to the dmv bc it's always about her. She just didn't care. Anytime I needed her help and just with anything she would be up in the room just on her phone doing everything but not tending to my needs.
Idk if it's just me but I her behavior towards housework and her just not having to help out let alone DO ANYTHING seems very skewed and unfair. Since I'm 20 and I don't have to pay the bills but I still suffer. I still suffer from every ounce of abuse, my payment is my mental sanity. I've had my childhood tainted because of her. She made everything revolve around her even when i was 15 years old. She never helped out except putting a roof over my head, feeing me and putting clothes on me. But that was it, I never got a mother who was mature and healthy. She made me her therapist and made everything aot HER struggles, HER trauma, HER issues. My childhood wasn't like everyone else's. She's an adult child, she makes tons of excuses, she leaves the house without having any of her responsibilities done like her chores. She has so much time to do them but she always ditches them so I have to do it. My mom doesn't have any hobbies, friends, interests.
She's always out and about, I never see her cuz she's always with her boyfriend. She's always going out to see her boyfriend leaving the house a mess and not doing any of her chores before hand. She's the equivalent of a teenager who goes out partying instead of finishing their homework, that's the best way I can describe it. She goes out of her way to see her boyfriend who isn't even a good guy toh cuz he's abusive and toxic too. He's just another supply to my Nmom. It's so hard for me to explain the fact that my Nmom literally does nothing except work and she runs with that as an excuse. Even during the weekend she somehow "never" has time to do her own damn chores. She goes out of her way to make a mess but never has time to clean it up?? Like I shit you not. It drives me fucking crazy. She comes up with two excuses and expects me to believe it. She acts like she CANT do it when ik she can. It's not like she's a mother of six kids working four jobs and a single mother. She's not. she's trying so hard to be those busy mothers as an excuse to not clean after herself. She's absolutely lazy and disgusting.
She's a pig. It's quite pathetic. She wants me to do everything for her, pick after her own shit, flush the toilet for her, wipe stuff down that she made a mess out of, clean her dishes, do HER laundry, and much much more. So while I'm cleaning all day even after I get home from my job, she just is always out and about. She's nowhere to be found in the house and then I find the entire place a mess! And guess what? ALL of the mess is her mess! So during that time when she was here AT HOME which is like 5 mins before she’s out d again, she couldvee spent the time cleaning after herself before she left but no, she leaves in a mess to make me pick it up! Get this, on every Friday of the week she goes out and doesn’t come bald till Monday. The house is clean because she’s not home but she would abandon her chores. She expects me to do them for her while she’s out seeing her fucking boyfriend. I find extremely extremely bizarre of her I do that because if I want to see my boyfriend, I would make sure all of my chores are done. Isn’t that a basic rule a mother would tell her child? Why is my Nmom just PATHETIC!? Ugh. Before I leave the house I always make sure my dishes and chores are done. I make sure my room is clean. But for some reason, she can’t do any of that.
There were times where we will come home at the same time and I would just wish for a teamwork helper moment with my mom, but she would just go straight up to her room and drink and talk to her boyfriend all night while I'm cleaning, taking the dog out, feeding him, changing his water bowl and more! It's not like I'm complaining that she's making me do this. I just wish she were to help out. I know most of the things in here are basic things I’m required to do but it’s the fact she feels entitled to not clean up after herself and expect me to do it for her. Like seriously? This is a Cinderella daughter dynamic. My mother should be cleaning her own mess. Am I in the wrong to be upset about this? I can make an entire list for you guys to explain. It drives me absolutely mad. I am losing myself and my mental state is declining. It’s terrible that I have to do all of my nmom’s chores while she gets to have fun and do all these things. Before I do anything, I always make sure my house is in order before I have fun, but she can’t do that! FUCK. It makes me suicidal. She’ll leave her house quite literally a mess so she can just have more fun. It’s just so irresponsible.

For most (inherently subjective) things you could rate, anyway. I'm not talking about, like, measuring something in a lab, where being as precise and granular as possible as all upside.
But for rating, say, books or movies or games or restaurants or product reviews? Rating out of 5 is generally all the granularity you need to cover all the meaningfully distinct subjective evaluations, and in fact has a number of advantages over more granular rating systems. 1 genuinely sucks, 2 is mediocre, 3 is average, 4 is good, 5 is a masterpiece—that's really all you need if you really want to put a number on your opinion. And by rating out of 5, you generally avoid some of the weirdness that gets carried over from the American education's grading system (where 50 or 60 is failing, and 70 is merely average)
Rating out of 100 generally introduces a meaningless level of granularity for something that is basically fuzzy and subjective. Saying one album is a 4 out of 5 vs a 3 out of 5 says something meaningful about how you rate them. But saying one album is an 81 and another is an 82? A functionally meaningless distinction.
Rating out of 10 isn't as bad as out of 100 for meaningless granularity, but it runs into another problem, which is the extent to which ratings have been warped by the American education's grading scale. In theory, 3/5 and 6/10 are the same. In practice, 6/10 tends to invoke associations with a failing score in school (at least for Americans, but I'd argue its sort of infected everyone else via the internet), and so both reviewers and those reading reviews tend to treat 7/10 as "average". For whatever reason, that doesn't hold true with 5 point rating systems, where people are less inclined to treat 3/5 as a failing score.
5 point rating scales also usually avoid another stupid blindspot of other rating systems, which is the tendency of some reviewers to treat the top end of 10 and 100 point scales as some impossible to attain level of perfection that should never be rewarded. Many (dumb and wrong) people will argue that a 100/100 game or movie or album can't exist because thats a perfect score and perfection is unattainable. This is a fucking stupid way to structure a rating scale—the top end should be the best that someone can achieve, not some theoretical platonic ideal of perfection that doesn't and cannot ever exist—and fortunately for 5 point rating scales basically no one makes this stupid argument. The people who say a 100/100 or 10/10 work of art can't exist generally don't say a 5/5 work of art can't exist, because the system doesn't have enough granularity for cutting off 20% of the possible scores to be viable. This is a good thing.
In conclusion, 5 point rating scales get a 5/5. 10 point scales get a 3/5. 100 point rating scales get a 1 out of 5.

Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road
Having said his piece, Rene had expected the woman to accept her role as a prisoner of the Fleet. But no sooner had he taken his knee of her back than she was at him again, rolling over and cursing as she tried to spit him on her claws. Training kicked in and Rene applied the wrestling component of his hand-to-hand combat course. He secured underhooks with his arms, locking them together with his hands and hugging her tight from behind. Zildiz bucked and twisted around in a futile attempt to make room for her blades, even managing to get one of her knees beneath her and push off the ground. Rene allowed her to gain her feet, cunningly using the opening to slip the loop of his encircling arms around her waist. Now in complete control of her center of gravity, Rene swung his leg out and arched his back, heaving her up and over like a sack of turnips in a textbook suplex. A fraction of a second before he smashed the top of her skull into the hard ground, he remembered that he was supposed to keep prisoners alive and preferably not in a vegetative state, and so he cushioned the fall with his own body, falling on his side to increase surface area and dissipate the force.
Zildiz was caught totally by surprise. Unlike Rene she had neglected to tuck in her chin before the moment of impact, a vital detail which was one of the first things a recruit was taught to do on the mats.
“Oof!” she said as all the breath slammed out of her by the throw. Rene felt her body go limp as her dazed senses tried to adjust to the violent change of orientation. He took advantage of this moment of weakness and looped his legs around her body, locking his ankles together to form a full body triangle. His left forearm punched up and took her neck in a rear naked choke, a suffocating vise formed by the insides of his elbow crushing her windpipe and carotid arteries.
“I warned you,” he told her. His choking hand grabbed the inside of his other elbow, right forearm sneaking behind her neck and under his armpit, tightening the garrote even further.
“Had enough?”
“Hrrnnkk…” Zildiz choked. She lifted an arm and slid back the blade until it was the length of a finger, deliberately giving Rene the universal gesture to go and fornicate with himself, before sheathing the claw entirely and aiming her fist at him over her shoulder.
Rene ducked as the blade shot out again, only just avoiding it going through his eye socket and into his brain. As it was, it only nicked his temple, sending warm lines of blood trickling down his visor. Rene hugged her even tighter, constricting the chokehold until he heard her breathing reduced to an agonized wheeze. He throttled her until she stopped moving, her struggles weakening until she went completely lax. Then he held the choke for exactly three seconds longer, counting carefully to avoid giving her lasting brain damage. He let go and was relieved to hear her snoring faintly. Gently rolling her onto her back so she didn’t suffocate in the dirt, Rene cast about for a means to secure his prisoner. He had only a few seconds before she regained consciousness. Quickly he cut some vines from the surrounding trees and knotted them into a crude rope. He flipped her back over again and tied her hands at the wrists and elbows. He had no illusions that it would hold her for long. He tied her wings together at their bases for good measure. She had two sets of them, but the larger pair was missing one of its partners that had been torn off at the socket to reveal a gaping wound. They were wondrously tough membranes considering how thin and flexible they were, as sturdy as ultrapod leather. Rene looked over his work and loosened it a bit so as not to cut off the circulation in her arms. It wasn’t bad for something done on the fly. Then again, he’d been playing this whole thing by ear ever since the ambush that had cut his unit to pieces. Ye gods, but that whole experience felt like a lifetime ago. He had not expected to ever use that component of his hand-to-hand training designed for fighting human opponents. Of course, he’d helped put down a fair share of civil unrest in his time, but even during the worst of the food riots in Mound Ulysses he’d never so much as given a person a light shove. The civilians knew better than to antagonize a battalion of the Fleet’s finest over something as routine and reoccurring as a government rationing in the face of crop failure.
He felt quite bad about having to roughhouse the woman, that is, until she sat up awake and glowered hatefully at him, coughing and retching.
“Don’t,” he pleaded with her in exasperation as she gave him the old stink eye, “I don’t want to fight you again.”
“Why?” she spat defiantly, “Afraid you’d lose?”
“Uh huh,” Rene grunted, amused and even a little impressed by her spunk. She couldn’t have weighed more than sixty kilos soaking wet and was at least half a foot shorter than him even with that exomorph of hers, but this woman was all fight and no quit. She would have to be, living on the surface world and facing these abominations day after day. Rene looked at the dismembered corpses of the black-furred devils and had a sudden jolt of inspiration. As Zildiz tested the strength of her restraints Rene went over to the monster he had chopped to bits and poked the misshapen hump on its back, which had excreted thick ribbons of silk at the moment of death. Feeling more than a little squeamish, Rene pulled on the threads of silk. He had only meant to collect two or three meters of the material, but more and more of the stuff kept unwinding out its glands like a handkerchief from a magician’s pocket. Eventually his hands became enmeshed in the horrid stuff and he had to struggle like the dickens to unstick himself and scrape it off onto a bush where it stuck like a lumpy hammock. Remembering how his enemy had plugged the stab wound in its gut, Rene snapped off a twig and curled it into the white mess like those vendors at the fairs did with candy cloud treats, ending up with a spool of silk. He applied it to the cut on his temple by winding it around his head like a bandage, and was gratified when it stopped the bleeding almost immediately. He heard the rustle of dead leaves and turned around to find Zildiz furtively attempting to sidle away from him.
“Don’t even try it,” he told her, “Or I’ll run you down and knock you senseless. I’m taking you back to civilization. The Fleet needs to know what it’s up against out here, and you’re a veritable trove of information.”
Zildiz squatted back down and stared at him, simmering with resentment. Rene shook his head and continued his work, moving on to the monster that had been the first to die at the woman’s hands. Cutting open its hump, Rene was rewarded with a dense lump of thread still packed inside its spinneret. He took another twig and spooled it in, then wrapped the bundle of silk in a large leaf.
A leg twitched of its own accord. Rene nearly dropped the bundle as he sprang back, sword upraised. The devil’s limbs began doing a tap dance and Rene relaxed a bit, recognizing it as the onset of rigor mortis. The side of its face was split open and hanging loosely by a strap of flesh. Struck by a nagging suspicion, Rene stooped down and peeled off the segments of its head, holding the edge of his sword against its neck to decapitate it in the event that it proved too lively for his liking.
The musculature and armor tore away just like it had with Zildiz’s helm, and for the second time that night he found himself staring into the face of another living human being. Only this time it was a man whose face was utterly disfigured, a perversion of the basic form. In the place of his lower jaw were fingerlike protrusions of gummy tissue and exposed nerve endings. His nose cartilage was likewise missing, leaving only a pair of holes dribbling with snot. The man blinked, and glassy eyes with almost no whites at their edges fixed Rene in their gaze.
“Kill…me…” the man whispered.
Rene began to shake uncontrollably, wiping a trembling hand across his mouth as he was forced to consider the carnage he’d just wrought in a new and horrifying light. These weren’t three dead monsters littering the jungle floor; these were three dead men, and some of them he had killed himself.
“Kill me!” the man begged him. He was young, barely Rene’s age, his smooth skin untroubled by the wrinkles of age and worry. He had clear brown pupils and dark, expressive brows. If it weren’t for all the rest of him, Rene might’ve mistaken him for a fresh-faced recruit at the academy, or a paperboy climbing up the terraced apartments of inner hive to deliver news of the Fleet’s latest victory.
On unsteady legs Rene staggered back to Zildiz’s side and away from the awful truth he had uncovered.
“Something the matter?” Zildiz asked in a gleeful tone, “Feeling a little worse for wear, are we?”
“Shut it,” Rene said distantly. He dragged Zildiz to her feet and began winding the silk around her wrists, layering them over thick and tying them off with a simple knot. He kept the vines on her for added insurance and told her to start walking.
“Where to?” she demanded.
“I’m not feeding you to my children, if that’s what you’re asking,” he muttered, “I don’t have any to begin with, and even if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t raise them to be cannibals.”
Zildiz didn’t move, so Rene grabbed her and frog marched her away. He had no real destination in mind—he just had to get away from this place and the bodies he’d made. Zildiz rounded on Rene, saying:
“Aren’t you going to deal with him? I only severed his neural connection to paralyze his exomorph. He’s still very much alive.”
“No!” Rene yelled, “That’s not how I—how people do things. Almighty ancestors, is that so hard for you to grasp?”
“Yes,” Zildiz replied quite candidly.
“He’s a living, breathing human being. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but those are pretty rare on Arachnea and worth keeping around.”
“No. He is a Leaper. After extracting your gilt helix, he and his packmates would devoured you right then and there.”
“That’s why you saved me, isn’t it? So they couldn’t obtain this shiny helix thing?”
Zildiz ignored his question, continuing:
“If you leave him here, at best he will die of exposure. At worst, his tribe will come looking for him, and if they find him, they will run us down and kill us anyway.”
Rene bit his lip. She spoke the truth and they both knew it. But after all this world had already taken from him, there remained one thing which he refused to part with. And Rene knew that if he gave in now and took the expedient option—the sensible option—he would be surrendering it forever.
“Sorry,” he said finally, “That’s against the rules.”
He dragged Zildiz over to the Leaper and spoke to him, saying:
“I won’t kill you. I’m not about to eat you either, so you can stop begging for a quick death. As long as you tell me what I want to know, we’ll leave you here and go our separate ways. I might even patch your wounds if you’re cooperative. Does that strike you as a fair bargain?”
The Leaper met this pronouncement with a look of utter perplexity that mirrored the one on Zildiz’s face.
“I’ll take that silence as a yes,” Rene said impatiently, “You’ll begin by telling me your name.”
“Kryptusshh,” the Leaper said slowly, as if not daring to hope.
“Very good. Are there any more of your people out there, Kryptus?”
“Why sshhould I trusht you? I would only be dooming more of my kindred, and there issh no certainty you would not kill me afterwardssh.”
“It’s a chance you have to take,” Rene shrugged, “Either that, or I’ll let this woman do as she pleases with you. And just between you and me,” he said in a loud stage whisper, “She doesn’t seem all that fond of your sort.”
Zildiz and Kryptus locked eyes with each other. Rene could almost feel the waves of hatred coming off her as she bristled, every tendon in her body tensing expectantly. Kryptus must have seen something he didn’t like, for he looked away and said:
“I am a warrior of the Weeping Vipersh. We are roughly eleven hundred sshtrong. One tenth of that number are bravesshh like me.”
“He lies,” Zildiz said, baring her teeth in a snarl, “That is less than half their true strength. He does not count the adolescents and the old loom-mothers, who are the deadliest of their kind.”
“Three hundred, then, if they are consshidered,” Kryptman quickly admitted, “Your pardon, merciful one.”
“I’ll excuse your forgetfulness just this once,” Rene warned, “But your memory better not fail you again.”
He questioned the Leaper closely. Kryptus claimed that only he and his pack had seen the safety pod’s crash landing, and that they had told no one else as they wished to claim the great prize all for themselves. The Weeping Vipers were the largest tribe in the rainforest and were always looking for an advantage over their numerous and belligerent neighbors. Apparently Kryptus had hoped to gain a modicum of the Divine Engine’s power by extracting something called a ‘gilt helix’ from Rene’s blood.
“Jussht one sample would have shatishfied uss,” Kryptus swore, “Then we would have taken you back to the Loom alive.”
“I’m sure nothing would’ve pleased you better,” Rene said wryly, all too cognizant of Zildiz’s earlier assumption that he planned to feed her to the Fleet’s youth.
Rene learned from Kryptus that the Divine Engine had ignited a blazing wildfire that was swiftly spreading north and west. The tribes would likely have noticed it by now, and would all be sending braves in a joint effort to douse the flames. For some reason all the Leapers felt collectively responsible for the wellbeing of the region, and could not allow it to come to harm for fear of dire repercussions.
“Last question. Is anyone going to come looking for you?”
“Not till the morning.”
“Good!” said Zildiz, breaking out of Rene’s grip and aiming a vicious kick at the side of the Leaper’s head. Rene barely caught her and yanked her back, shouting:
“Blood and thunder, woman! Is there nothing you won’t do to piss me off?”
“Are you insane? You cannot possibly mean to leave him alive!” the Gallivant hissed.
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Now come here!”
Rene took her by the elbow and pulled her forward, leaving Kryptus where he lay.
“You promished you would tend to my woundssh!” the Leaper cried after them.
“Don’t push your luck!” Rene said over his shoulder, “Anyone who follows us will meet the same end as your friends.”
He and his prisoner went tramping off into the night, Zildiz raging at him all the while.
“Fool! We will both come to regret that decision!”
“You’re probably right,” Rene had to agree.
“Then why did you do it?”
“For the same reason I’m letting you strut around and screech into my ear. What can I say? I’m a conversationalist.”
Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road

Can anyone recommend a good State Farm agency in Denver? I’ve been through two agencies here. I’ve had no claims, but any time I call to adjust (in this case add more insurance) the first agency was completely unresponsive so I switched to one in my neighborhood. This new one has been unorganized to the extent he’s had my address wrong each time we’ve spoken. He also assured me this would be done in one day and that was a week ago. No follow-up or anything.
I prefer someone in north Denver, but would consider any in Denver. Alternatively, I’d consider a good insurance broker. Thanks for the help.

For over two years now, my sister has been complaining of high heart rate and feeling sick with stomach ache after eating. She has lost a significant amount of weight and continues to lose weight.
She thinks there is something wrong with her physically and won't entertain the idea that there may be something mental at play. She has had multiple tests, ranging from nutrient deficiencies, endoscopy, H.Pylori test x 2, and an abdominal MRI. The endoscopy was the only thing to come back with anything and the diagnosis was 'mild gastritis'. Which is extremely common. She has been prescribed stomach acid reducing medication.
The confusing thing is the way her symptoms present themselves that make me think it could be a mental health condition, rather than a physical condition. The medications she has been prescribed always work to start with but then always a week or so later they suddenly stop working and she starts obsessing on the next potential diagnosis.
At one point she thought these symptoms were a result of her gut microbiome so she started eating fermented food and claimed that it significantly reduced her symptoms, again, until a week or so later when it stopped working and she started researching her symptoms again. She is obsessed with her heart rate and spends all day looking at her fitness watch, every time she eats she will look at her watch and can sometimes get emotional when her heart rate increases after eating.
Her diet is not very varied, she tries to eat foods that will help her gain weight, which is great but these things tend to be Pizza, chocolate, cakes, coca cola, chips, yoghurts etc. She can eat other things if someone else makes them for her, but she avoids certain foods that she thinks will cause a stomach ache, like greasy foods, but this doesn't add up when she eats pizzas.
She also has a massive fear of contamination, refusing to hold food from a packet in her bare hands, she will eat things with her mouth out of the packet. If she opens something from the refrigerator and doesn't finish it, she will not eat it. Anything that has previously been opened is contaminated and she refuses to eat/drink it.
Does this sound like a mental issue or a physical one?

The amount of posts I've seen on this sub about people chomping at the bit to openly join a cult is absolutely unreal, and legitimately unprecedented in modern culture. Never before in our history have the disenfranchised so eagerly sought out blatant oppression in an effort to belong. So why not exploit it? I'm going to tell you how to start a cult, and how to keep your followers coming back for more like social media junkies feeding off their favourite influencer. Ready? Let's go.
One: People are just organic computers. Learn how to code.
Life is great, right? It's full of independent minded, socially conscious individuals just trying to wade their through this horrible mess that we call life. Wrong. People are tools. Don't be a fucking idiot. They have nothing to offer you but advancement. Learn how their dumb brains work and use them accordingly.
Two: Divide and conquer, always.
The last thing that you want is all these pesky followers ganging up on you. Separate them by force. Create an environment where followers are constantly snitching on each other for clout. Remember, human beings are cattle who enjoy nothing more than exacting power over one another. Pretend that there's a hierarchy with actual power while you sit behind the scenes holding all of it.
Three: When it's over, it's over.
Doomer cults, as they are yet to be defined by me, god of the universe, are centered openly around suicide. When the Swat teams move in, and the FBI presence is too pressing to continue the regular commune routine, maybe its time to leave this mortal coil behind and take every last dooming man, woman and child with you. Jim Jones did it best with his certifiable hood classic punchbowl, which went on to create the eternal phrase "drinking the punch", or whatever the fuck it is.
So there you go, you just learned a full Netflix documentary in about a fraction of the time it'd take to watch it. And I'll bet you feel really clever about it, too. So, by virtue of this post, I'm technically a professor of the art of deception and you are all my students. And you know what, out of the goodness of my heart and nothing else, I'm giving you all an A+. I'll bet you feel pretty good right about now, and rightly you should. It can get even better if you join my online Mewing Chad classroom for a mere 69 bucks a day. Subscribe now, and learn how to chew right to finally unlock the girl of your dreams like a video game achievement!

Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road
The Colonel’s tent was leaking again. Ordinarily such a mistake would’ve earned his adjutant an hour-long dressing down and possibly, if the Colonel was feeling particularly enthusiastic, a sharp backhanded slap across the face. After all, a leaky tent could hardly be said to be hermetically sealed, now could it? But this affront to his sensibilities paled in comparison to the utter travesty and exemplar of sheer incompetence that now sat before his desk, a sagging wreck of a man in the tattered uniform of a Fleet officer. Colonel Moch Leelan curled his lip at it and barked:
“Once more, if you please. And I don’t want this on record,” he added, darting a look at the clerk poised to take dictation in the corner of the room, “Not a word of this gets out. There’s been enough of a snafu already, and the brass won’t stop shitting down my neck about Mound 13 and the loss of Prota’s pestilential pet project. Did you hear me, man? I said start from the beginning!”
Outside the monsoon was intensifying into one of those proverbial downpours which prompted doddering old men to remark that it was ‘raining cats and dogs’, though what either a cat or a dog were, none could now say. A trickle of it seeped in like a string of winking glass beads, catching the orange glow of the gas lamp and turning into sparks of amber, into seeds of flame. They dripped on the bald man seated on the low footstool, and he raised his head to meet the scornful gaze of the Colonel, grey eyes unabashed and unafraid. He spoke then, in a hoarse voice that matched his pallid flesh and buzzard nose:
“It was the third day of reconnaissance. We were forced to abandon our pack-beasts in the mire. My assistant and I—”
“Name, rank and serial number!” Colonel Leelan interrupted, for the sole purpose of seeing the coward blink and quaver like the worm he was. But in that he was to be disappointed, for the man continued in the same flat tone:
“Sollem Deschane, Lord Navigator, 3^rd Pathfinder Regiment, serial number 18911944. We received orders from the Admiralty and Fleet Command to reconnoiter the area around the enemy concentration designated as Mound Euler. I was to lead a platoon of twenty handpicked volunteers across the river Foss at its lowest point, then scale the outlying cliffs to get better readings as we mapped out the approaches to Mound Euler. It was the third day of reconnaissance. We were forced to abandon our myropods in the mud and carry our own gear. My assistant navigator Rene Louvoture and I noticed a discrepancy with our visually confirmed data and the aerial sketches of the Aeronautical Division. We quickly worked out that the enemy concentration far exceeded initial estimates by an order of magnitude. Mound Euler is an omega-class colony the likes of which the Fleet has faced only once in its entire existence, during the Scouring of Assail. It is my belief that—”
“Leave your hysterics for later and get on to meat of things,” Leelan snapped. Deschane straightened a bit in his seat and scowled as his layers of bandages shifted. The man was practically mummified by the sheer extent of his wounds that it was a wonder he had managed to limp into the tent in the first place. But the navigator had made a point of refusing to be debriefed in his sick bed and had insisted that he be given no further pain killers. This was to prove that his report was not at all influenced by the effects of opiates, as well as to underline the supposed importance of his eyewitness account as the sole survivor of the siege of Mound 13.
But Colonel Leelan was no fool. He knew the tactic for what it was: a bit of playacting by a soon-to-be-disgraced officer, a desperate attempt to pass himself off as a tragic hero rather than the author of the most monumental military cock-up of the decade.
You may very well get that wish, Deschane, Leelan smirked inwardly. If you play your cards right. You’ll find that I can put on a pantomime as well as the next man.
Deschane regarded him cooly, replying:
“You asked for my report, sir. I am stating the facts as I understand them.”
“Understand?” Leelan guffawed, “There’s precious little to understand about this debacle! Explain to me how a routine scouting mission winds up in the loss of 5,000 men, a Rear-Admiral and an entire frontline outpost! Explain to me how you not only got every last one of your own men slaughtered, but still managed to save your own sorry arse!”
Now that had an effect on the navigator’s bearing. He dropped the holier-than-thou attitude and even pretended to dab at some moisture in corners of his eye. For a moment his mask of iron cracked and he looked tired enough to sleep for a thousand years, never to waken. Then he seemed to recall that his career was at stake and had the temerity to argue with the Colonel:
“We were given faulty intelligence. I made mistakes, I’ll admit that here and now. We should never have continued after our pack animals were trapped in the mire. The gear slowed us down in enemy territory. I can’t wash my hands of the loss of my platoon. They were the best and bravest men I ever fought with, and I will carry the shame of losing them to my grave. The fact that I am still alive when none of them are breathing is an accident that was not of my choosing. As for Mound 13, it was only a matter of time before they were discovered and dealt with. They were only two day’s travel from Mound Euler. In fact, it was miracle they managed to exist for so long undetected.”
Magnificent deflection. Colonel Leelan had to admire the snake and his flawless attempt to pass the blame onto the shoulders of the dead Rear-Admiral Prota.
Yes, I think we can make an arrangement here, the Colonel thought wryly. He waved Deschane’s prattling aside and said:
“This omega-class colony of yours. A mound so large that is beggars belief, you say? Curious, then, that such an object should have escaped your keen senses for three whole days!”
“Visibility in that terrain and climate is poor. But yes, it was another one of my errors.”
“I’m so glad that you agree,” Leelan purred, his words dripping with condescension. He reached into the drawer of his desk and took out a bottle of fermented honeydew. Uncorking it with a loud pop, he poured out two glasses and lifted one to his lips, saying:
“On a related note, it’s funny how the fog of war can obscure so many important details. Even the best commanders can lose their bearings, lose sight of the greater picture, fixate on the wrong things. Take our dearly departed Rear-Admiral Prota, for example (may she rest in the Flight Eternal). Not to speak ill of the dead, but she was assigned an entire sector for her research into enemy behavior. And what does she do with it? Cultural studies! Anthropology! As if the Amits have a culture worth sneezing at! They’ve been working with flint and wood since this primeval war of ours began, and they’ve never taken the hint. Meanwhile, we’ve finally gained the advantage of powder and artillery and mass-produceable gas masks.”
“One big push! That’s all it would take to clear the northern highlands. We have the men, the will and the technology to do it! The last thing we need is some starry-eyed academic telling us that the Amits have somehow found religion. I mean, really!” Colonel Leelan warmed to his subject, “Five thousand soldiers dedicated to safeguarding some blessed cave paintings, right on the frontlines, too! What a waste. Like you said: if you hadn’t led the Amits directly to them, someone else would have down the line.”
“We took steps to ensure they wouldn’t follow us. We tried, but they found the fear-death pheromones—”
“Steps?” Leelan pressed him mercilessly, “What steps, exactly?”
Deschane looked away and said nothing. Leelan sniffed, continuing:
“I thought so. As I was saying, Prota’s project was doomed from the start. It was an ill-conceived, harebrained mission, and now the Admiralty will have to explain to Fleet Command and the general public how it lost an entire regiment in the name of some woman’s flight of fancy. But there is a silver lining to all this. Seeing as how we recaptured what was left of Mound 13 within mere hours of it falling, we think there’s a way to salvage the situation after all. You can be part of that, Deschane. Every victory may have its price, but it must also have its heroes.”
Leelan sipped his honeydew, waiting for the offer he’d made to sink in. Deschane smiled, a humorless crack in his granite features.
“You’re going to make me a hero?” he asked. Leelan nudged the other glass towards him, shrugging:
“And why not? Someone has to wear the medals. ‘Lone Survivor of Desperate Last Stand’,” Leelan exclaimed, dramatically forecasting the future headlines, “He tried to warn them, but did they listen? You get the rest, I imagine. We’ll have to improve some of the details, of course. Like how it was the 3^rd Pathfinder Regiment which held back the flood of Amits in the final hour and ignited the fortress’ ammo depot—”
“We never did that,” Deschane objected, rudely cutting off Leelan’s train of thought, “It was the Divine Engine. I saw it with my own eyes. It broke out of Mound 13 and slaughtered the enemy.”
Leelan sighed.
“Not this again. Deschane, I’d appreciate it if you’d save your hallucinations for the regimental shrink. Think, man! The honor of our unit is at stake here. You have a chance to redeem the men of your platoon, even if you can never truly redeem yourself.”
“I saw it,” Deschane growled, and for a moment Leelan almost reached for his ceremonial saber hanging by its belt on his coatrack, “Sir, it left footprints the size of—”
“For heaven’s sake, you witless worm, the earthquake was felt all the way in the Southern Delta! Not very big one, but certainly enough to account for the avalanches and landslides that took place around Mound 13, not to mention the sinkhole we found you snoring in! It’s certainly not the first time an uncontrolled detonation triggered a seismic event. Deschane, I’ll only say this once: either you get your story straight or by thunder, I’ll bury you so deep in shit you’ll start to think you’re made of it! And you are! If you breathe a word of this delirious vision of yours to the press, you’ll not only receive no medals, but I’ll have you court-martialed faster than you can say ‘diddly-squat’. Which is precisely what you’ll be left with unless you jump like a good boy and ask how high. No honor, no rank, no reputation, no pension. Nothing! Do you understand?”
Colonel Leelan wrathfully thrust the glass at Deschane, spilling most of it in the process.
“Well, do you?”


Deschane hobbled out of the tent, escorted by a pair of grenadiers in fluffy white shakos. They sealed the adhesive lining of the tent airlock after him and the Navigator went on his way, the taste of honeydew lingering on his tongue like a bitter poison. He lifted his mask and hawked up a gob of spit that eloquently described his opinion of the colonel, wiping his scowling mouth with the back of his hand.
Ven was waiting for him with the crutches, a young and rather portly corporal with apple cheeks and a worried, pouting mouth. She helped Deschane as he made the slow and painful walk across the encampment to his field tent, the lord navigator deep in thought. Along the way they cut across the central avenue of the camp where a seemingly endless artillery train was lumbering its way up from the south and curving around the broad talus skirts of Gorgo Plateau, teams of scuttling myropods hitched to six or twelve-pounder guns, their hundreds of tiny legs threshing the soil into a quagmire. Behind them, plodding dejectedly into the rapidly liquefying mud, were ranks upon rank of fresh colonial levees, their brand-new sealant suits creaking loudly at the joints as they made what for most of them would be their first expedition into the surface world.
And what a foray it would prove to be. Almost two hundred thousand men amd women were mustered here at the edge of civilization, poised on the cusp of what was to be the largest surface offensive in recorded history. The Fleet had arrived in the Northern Hinterlands, and it had come to conquer.
"Gangway!" the levees hollered at Ven as she tried to cut a path for Deschane through the line, "Can't you see we's marching 'ere, ya stoopid bint?"
"He's an officer, ain't he?" she screamed back, pointing at the navigator.
Upon noticing the faded chevrons on Deschane's shoulders some of them clumsily snapped to attention, stopping in their tracks. Their comrades behind them, oblivious to this turn of events, bowled right into them, causing a minor stampede. Men and women cursed as they dropped their pristine muskets, never fired in the heat of battle, into the churning soup at their feet, or themselves went sprawling on their hands and knees. Baton-wielding sergeants descended on the mess, screaming for them to get back up, generously assisting them with a boot to the rump or a smack on the side of the head. Deschane looked back at the display for a long moment, as if considering something. Abruptly he grunted at Ven and they continued on their way to the outskirts where the Pathfinders were billeted.
She waited until they were inside the tent and Deschane was back in his sick bed, the navigator turning his back to her in stony silence. Cautiously, she ventured:
“What now, sir?”
“Draw up a list of volunteers,” he rasped, “But do it on the sly. We’re going back out there."
"Very good, sir," Ven squeaked, and went scurrying out of the navigator's chambers, sealing the tent flap softly behind her. She knew that tone and what it signified: the lord navigator had made up his mind, and heaven help whoever would stand in his way.
Link for all the chapters available here: Engines of Arachnea on Royal Road

Let me just start by saying that I am trying to remain as *positive* as possible. Anyway, I just called my obgyn back after a couple of missed calls, and 1.) my current dr is moving and will no longer be treating me (ouch, I loved her) and 2.) I will have to reschedule my lap consult and get *another* ultrasound prior. This is after me originally scheduling this appointment in the beginning of FEBRUARY. For an appt. in JUNE.
I understand that I am not their only patient, and there's probably someone else on the list who's more desperate than me. Totally understandable, and even though I was in pain, I was willing to wait. My symptoms progressed more over that time, and now I've gone from pain some of the time with no additional issues, to pain pretty much constantly and it's impacting my bowels/urination, sex life with my husband, and my job. So I am honestly not great, but still trying to be understanding and cooperative.
I've just been told that this gyno surgeon prefers imaging to look at (side note: I just had an ultrasound last month, with no changes), and will probably have me do another ultrasound on June 12th and then have a consult in July. I just... I don't think I can do it. I understand that pretty much everywhere has a waiting list, but I think I'm done. And who knows if something else will come up in my next 2 month wait where I'll have to reschedule again.
Mentally, I'm not in a good place. I've exhausted my PTO trying to take it easy on my body when I'm in too much pain, and since I don't have an official diagnosis, I'm not even eligible for unpaid leave either. I'm anxious about everything that seems to be going wrong, and I'm so depressed at my life essentially being turned upside down. I just don't even know how to handle this anymore. Is this normal? Does everyone get pushed back over and over? How the hell does anyone keep going??? I just don't know how to continue when it feels like everything moves in slow motion, and no one seems to be in a hurry to actually help me figure this out.

For context, I am male, 14, a Christian, very sensitive, autistic, mildly schizophrenic, and mildly bipolar.
Last year was horrible. I hated myself, I constantly thought about suicide, I was crying most of every day, and I was as lonely as could be. Thanks to my autism, I had trouble making friends at my church. Shame tore away at me every day as I continued in the sinful habits that I hated so much. Everything was horrible. I wanted death more than anything. I damn well knew I would be going to hell, as my heart was not in a good place, and I believed I deserved hell. But that was the past.
I met a girl who I liked a lot and I started talking to her. I'll call her V. Things started off as expected for my age, kinda awkward, stupid, and neither person really knew what to do in a relationship. But I had already been in one relationship a little while before, and I seriously hurt her. I'll call her M. And because of that I made it my goal to be the best boyfriend I could possibly be in the next relationship I was in. So when things started getting a bit more serious with V, I really started pouring myself into the relationship. I spent as much time as I could with her, bought her a lot of gifts, said and did things for her I knew she loved, stayed up on the phone with her late every weekend, and overall did everything I could for her. I changed as a person to make her happy. I was admittedly a terrible person before me and M broke up, and she really helped me develop and change as a person.
A few months later, I start realizing I'm extremely unhappy in the relationship and I'm not sure why. I start thinking about it and I finally realized how unbelievably one sided the relationship was. She bought me ONE thing for like $10 the entire time we were dating (i spent about $200 on her), she never talked to me if she wanted to do something else, and constantly made fun of me or made jokes I told her I didn't like. She never wanted any kind of physical touch, which is my love language (which i totally would've sacrificed that disliking for her if i was her). And worst of all, she was a complete liar. As a Christian, I want to do what's right and please God. We never had any inappropriate or sexual relations, although we messed up a few times and talked about it. We quickly realized our wrong and stopped. Anyway, she told my brother's girlfriend that I had sexually assaulted her. Luckily, my brother and his girlfriend knew damn well that I wouldn't do something like that and it didn't get anywhere, but when I learned that I was absolutely fuming.
She also told me she was a Christian. She is not a Christian at all. She lies about everything. She (which I didn't figure out until recently) is a porn addict with no intention of quitting, and sure, I have issues with porn too, but I do my absolute best to get it as far away from me as I can. She did not. I even confessed to her that I was addicted to porn at one point and just the thought of her knowing helped me to break the addiction, despite her making no effort to help me quit. Long story short, I gave her just about everything I could, and she gave me absolutely nothing back. I broke up with her a few weeks ago, and that is when I realized she was the only thing holding my life together.
I'm right back to last year. It might even be worse. I have one friend who is bad at talking about serious topics. I left my church due to corruption in the leadership. School is crushing me with stress. And it feels like my soul has been torn apart. It feels like she took part of my heart and my soul with her. I feel so empty and I have nothing to look forward to. Life is now just tasks that need to be done with no enjoyment or hope to be found anywhere. Any little inconvenience puts me into a blind rage, and then a sobbing session right after. I feel like I can't deal with this anymore. I am not suicidal as I was before, as I understand now that suicide is not a good solution to pain. Life has stages, and this is a bad one, but there will be better times. It is not worth missing all the good times just because of a bad time.
If any of you are Christian out here, please pray for me. I need hope.

I was walking down the beach at Hug Point, Oregon. It was around 6 in the afternoon on a random Friday, and honestly, it had been a rough week. Feeling low, I found a spot against a large rock with a perfect view of the ocean and the setting sun. As I sat there, I found myself wondering how hard it would be to climb the rock.
Out of nowhere, my thoughts were interrupted by a commotion. I looked to my left and saw a girl and her boyfriend fighting, their argument escalating until the boyfriend yelled, "Have fun walking then," before storming off. I decided to mind my own business, focusing instead on the sunset.
By 7, the sun was nearly gone, casting the last of its golden glow over the water. I felt someone sit down next to me. It was the girl. "I saw you watching," she said. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude on your business," I replied. She shrugged, "It's okay. He cheated on me and then decided to leave me here." "Oh," was all I could muster in response.
We sat there, just inches apart, watching the sun dip below the horizon in silence. It was surprisingly peaceful. She broke the silence, "Why do people cheat?" I thought for a moment. "Some people use others for specific things like their bodies, but others do it because they're scared of real love." She turned to me, "Have you ever cheated?" "No," I said. "I choose to love, and I'm not afraid of the pain and fear that come with it." She nodded, "I feel the same."
I asked her how long they had been together. "Two years," she said, "and apparently, he's been cheating for a year of it." "Do you hate yourself?" I asked gently. She sighed, "Yeah, I hate the fact that I couldn't see it." "I understand," I said.
Curious, she asked, "What are you doing out here on a Friday night?" I explained, "I'm not much of a partier, plus I don't have any friends out here. I come here to write and clear my mind." She smiled softly, "Can I come with you next time?" I asked why. "It sounds like fun," she said, "and a break from people who constantly drink and party. I feel like it would clear my head." "It is nice to feel clear-headed," I agreed.
She looked into my eyes for the first time, noticing that I was crying. She lay down next to me and asked, "What's wrong?" I took a deep breath. "Most times, I cry here. I've burned my boats – it's either I make my business work in four months, or I'm sleeping outside a place with Wi-Fi, trying to make it work." She hugged me tightly. "You've got this," she said. "You had enough courage to go all in. It will pay off, and I will be by your side to see it."
I asked why. By then, it was completely dark, around 9 pm. She answered, "Because your passion shows you're trying your hardest to make it."

Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, Reminiscence: By Their Own Rope to Chapter 7
Welcome back to Tal Verrar, where the artifice is real and the pirates are fake. Let's see if we know the Gentlemen Bastards’ business this week.
Summary
Six months since the last Reminiscence, Locke has locked up the mysterious chairs and is with Jean in Vo Samara. Jean brought rope which was secured around a thick tree trunk. They're practicing getting to the vault. They used harnesses and a safety line to rappel down the cliff.
Someone calls down to them from the top. He'd steal their coats and chop the ropes. He was a highwayman always on the lookout for people to rob. He called them heretics and cut one of Locke’s lines. Jean tried to throw a knife at him, but only the hilt hit. Then the thief fell off the cliff onto Locke’s harness. Jean grabbed the bandit by the hair, and Locke held a knife to his throat.
His name was Trav, and he was unemployed. Jean made it up first and hauled them up. Locke berates the incompetent thief. He left a purse of silver for him. He could be helpful to them later if he remembered their kindness. It had been eighteen months since anyone tried to kill them.
In the present day, they eat breakfast at The Gilded Cloister. They discuss the attack last night and who might want them dead. Merrain is dressed as a waitress and hands them a bill and a note to meet where they first met. They are on their guard all the way there. They enter an abandoned shop where four men in gray cloaks and hats wait for them. The four men are decoys. Jean and Locke don their own cloaks and hats and get in a carriage.
Merrain is already in their carriage. They will head to the docks. They hoist themselves into a boat filled with rowers. Merrain is the coxswain. They enter the Sword Marina and the stone walls of the bay. A man meets them there and says it's a fool's mission. He's Caldris the ship's master. He leads them to a dinghy in a “pissing-pond” for practice. Stragos had tricked him with poisoned wine, too, so he “volunteered” his services.
Every ship must have a woman officer and a cat for luck. They have a kitten but don't need the woman yet. Caldris cut their palms with a knife and put a slice of bread over it as part of a ritual to the deity Iono Stormbringer. They practice rowing for hours. He bet them that they would capsize, and he won.
Locke is exhausted, but he has to see Requin and give him the chairs and tell him of the voyage. Merrain almost didn't let him go. After two hours, he and the chairs go to see Requin. He waits at the service entrance and pays a servant to get him Selendri. She used to be an Eye of the Archon before her injury.
Requin loves the chairs. Locke says he won them in a card game. He tells Requin that he'll be away for a while to find a lockpicker named “Calo Callas.” Requin makes him promise to tell him of any more plans right away.
They learn how to use a Verrari/Camorri quadrant (sextant) among other navigational instruments, books, and charts. Stragos and Merrain pay a visit to fit his uniform. He must look the part of a Captain at least for a day.
The ship The Red Messenger is in the harbor one day. It was seized from a man who tried to smuggle in stiletto wasps. The enormity of his task hit Locke as he boarded for the first time. Two weeks of training had prepared him to climb the ropes to the mast and sails. Caldris was feeling his age as they climbed down. Luckily the captain and the master stay on deck.
Jean found Locke in a sailor’s bar trying to get drunk and forget anything nautical for a night. (Wrong place for it.) Six watchmen entered and caused tension. The bar patrons were hostile, so one of the watchmen left some money for a round on him and all left. Locke and Jean give their free dark ale to a dockworker woman. The woman was choking and gagging. One the bar workers had put some poison (and not salt) in the drinks!
A ship leech used Locke’s stiletto to perform a tracheotomy on her so she could breathe. It was too late, though. The barkeeper accused the doctor of killing her. The other sailors demand he apologize. Then he drank some ale to prove it wasn't deadly. Jean asked where the second assistant was. Authorities would be called, so Jean and Locke made their exit. The free ale was a cover, and the watchmen were used by someone trying to kill them. The Priori did it.
Jean catches a man in the alleyway. He's an Eye, but who can be sure anymore? They want him to send a message to Merrain that they need a place to stay and protection.
They check out of the inn, and Locke sends a note to Requin. Caldris is even harder on them in his training. All three devise hand signals for when they can't speak among the crew. Caldris and Merrain are impressed by Locke's acting prowess.
Later on, Locke and Jean knock out a guard with a hood full of a sedative. A tower is their destination. Stragos had brought one of his own ships for them to do a demonstration. They sail to Windward Rock where a prison tower stands. That's where Stragos locked up the other Captain for stealing and treachery. He says that this Captain is Locke.
In the tower, Locke hands his papers to a woman who shows them to the lieutenant behind a desk. His pseudonym is Orrin Ravelle. He and Jean are there to see the prisoners. They both attack the guards. A poison called witfrost will put them asleep for the night.
Stragos tells Locke about Highpoint Citadel Gaol and Windward Rock. He has arranged for Ravelle to have a paper trail. He will find his crew in Windward Rock. The prisoners were in one large cell. Locke tells them that he chose them to be his crew. (Stragos chose 44 and made their lives miserable so they would want to leave and be on his crew. Four were women and got too sick, or so he said.)
Locke promises them equal shares of any plunder and freedom from the hell cell. They clamber to join.
Caldris had a bad feeling about the voyage if there won't be any women on board and no basket of cats.
Prisoner Jabril is made acting mate. Two younger prisoners row a boat out to a bigger boat. They all board and sail to the Red Messenger.
Merrain had hidden nearby, and after they all left, she snuck into the tower and killed the guards except the two on the top floor.
Locke pretends to knock out the guard on the ship. Duties are assigned. The guard is placed in the smaller boat. Some of the men were on the ship before and were assigned topmen. So starts their voyage. Locke was having fun playing the part of rogue Captain.
They sight sails on day three, but it's too early to be pillaging. Locke orders them to practice archery. Caldris estimates that they'll make it to the Ghostwinds in two weeks.
The crew drank and partied, playing knife throwing games. Locke saw bioluminescent ghostly things called flit-wraiths. Caldris had seen unbelievable things out on the sea. Two of the islands’ populations were destroyed: one by fire during a war and one by some kind of monster from the jungle.
The crew notices there are no cats. Locke had forgotten them on shore. (Uh-oh!) He tells them they're shy and hiding. Caldris is tired and gets little sleep. He is pissed off that there's no cats. The crew will mutiny if they find out. They'll have to fight another ship just for the cats. (They better hope it rains cats and dogs.)
A storm is brewing. The crew ready the ship and its supplies. Locke and Jean spend rare time alone in the stern cabin. Caldris feebly knocks at the door, and has a heart attack. He dies just as the storm hits. (Double uh-oh!)
Extras
Marginalia
Parts of a ship
Ship's cats
Ship's cats in hammocks
St Corella’s fire is actually St Elmo's Fire.
Larboard used to mean left.
Navigate back here May 23 for Part 2, Chapters 8-11. Questions are in the comments.