So, I finally got around to watching a production of The Tempest (The Globe's 2013 version starring Roger Allam, FYI), and I made some reflections on it that I wanted to write down.
Feel free to respond to any points and get a discussion going!

1. Are we expected to root for Prospero from the beginning? Or, given historical context and the Romance genre's tragedy-comedy fusion, does Shakespeare expect our first impression to be that he's some tragic antihero? After all, the premise of the play is essentially that of a revenge tragedy, and early 17th century Britbongs weren't keen on magicians, as I understand it. Shakespeare also shows us Prospero's darkness with the opening tempest scene and the later comment on the storm, "Hell is empty, And all the devils are here" (1.2.252-3), plus his tormenting Alonso's party with the harpy vision in Act 3 Scene 3. Moreover, it's hard to root for Prospero in getting his dukedom back, since he freely admits to having been negligent and irresponsible, devoting his time to his magical studies.
2. Relatedly, are we meant to take Prospero's framing of how he lost Milan in Act 1 Scene 2 at face value, or should we be critical of Prospero's authority to shape our perception of the play? After all, Prospero repeatedly lies and messes with other people's understanding of reality - his accusations against Ferdinand (1.2.541 onwards), his evasion of Ariel bringing up the promise he made to free him (1.2.290-354), getting Ariel to lie to Alonso and say his son is dead (3.3.93-4), etc. Moreover, Prospero's magic is fundamentally a power to conjure illusions and the play's story is him using misdirection and manipulation to get what he wants. Elsewhere in his work, Shakespeare seems ambivalent about usurpation - Claudius and Duke Frederick are evil, while Henry IV and Henry VII are the good guys - so I feel that, in principle, he could be leaning either way.
3. Is the play just.... not very good and a really boring story? I've seen it argued pretty widely that the problem with The Tempest is there's no real conflict or struggle, in a narrative sense. Prospero has a goal of retrieving his dukedom and he just... does it, apparently without facing any real threats or hindrances. People usually identify the fundamental problem as being his magic - when Prospero wants something done, it's just "Come with a thought. I thank thee, Ariel. Come" and then Ariel does it "to the syllable". In the place of narrative conflict, there's spectacle. I feel particularly conflicted here because I loved reading The Tempest, but it just left me cold seeing it performed. Did I watch a dud production, or does it just not work on stage?
4. Relatedly, Prospero's conversion to the path of forgiveness just felt unconvincing. It doesn't happen until literally the start of the final scene of the entire play, and the only reason he changes tune is because Ariel tells him how sad Alonso and his men look...? But Prospero literally watched the prior harpy episode first-hand, and seeing his magic distress Alonso's men didn't put pity in him or temper his wrath then. I guess since then he's had the entire "We are such stuff" monologue in Act 4, and thinking about mortality and impermanence has him questioning if revenge and strife are worth it...? But he immediately follows that monologue by using another vision to torment Caliban and co and declares "At this hour Lies at my mercy all mine enemies", so I have no idea what Prospero's thought process is.
5. Likewise, the big confrontation at the end felt really anticlimactic. Especially since there's literally no confrontation between Prospero and Antonio, the person he most had it in for. Antonio literally gets a single line in Act 5 and it's just him making fun of Caliban, so what gives?
6. For a final (potentially) weak plot point, the Caliban/Stephano/Trinculo rebellion is... frustrating. For one thing, why does Caliban want Stephano in power to replace Prospero - "I prithee, be my god" (2.2.155) - given that he's so adamant earlier that "This island’s mine by Sycorax, my mother" (1.2.396)? As I see it, there are three possible explanations, none of which feel convincing. First, you could explain it by Caliban being genuinely convinced Stephano's a god for his "celestial liquor"? But that's just not believable, since Caliban has met a literal wizard with magical powers he claims could control a god (1.2.448-9) yet whom he recognises to be a mortal human, so why is he suddenly so oafish as to be persuaded by Stephano's alcohol? That leads to the second sub-idea: Caliban got drunk, so he's not thinking straight. But the humour of this entire subplot is Caliban being sharper and more rational than the motley crew he's assembled to lead the rebellion, hence the eloquent, artful "The isle is full of noises" monologue and the pitiable scene of him trying to get Stephano and Trinculo to stay focused in Prospero's cell in Act 4 Scene 1. So, third and final explanation, maybe Caliban is pretending to worship Stephano as part of his own Prospero-esque manipulative scheme to get his homeland back? But, for one thing, he seems sincere when he laments "What a thrice-double ass Was I to take this drunkard for a god" (5.1.352-3). (Unless he's pretending in order to get mercy from Prospero?) For another thing, it doesn't feel like Shakespeare wanted me to think this hard and read between the lines with this subplot. It just feels like a silly bit of comic relief and that makes it frustrating.
7. Finally, what's the deal with Caliban? I'm aware I'm opening a conversation here that many Shakespeare Redditors loathe, but is Caliban meant to be a human victim of colonisation, and are the references to him being a "monster" just abuse? Or is he a literal monster? My main gripe with the latter, more traditional reading, is that it seems to deprive The Tempest of one of the principal virtue's of Shakespeare's work, namely his penchant for complex, realistic, morally ambiguous characters. If Caliban is just an innately depraved beast who gets no humanisation beyond a brief, pretty soliloquy, then it makes him feel very flat. Going back to point 6, maybe this just the shallower comedy side of the play shining through? It also ties back to point 1 and whether or not Prospero is truly a "hero" in any conventional sense. Are there just good guys and bad guys in The Tempest? Or is it more mature than that?

An hour after getting back from the Mason apartment, Bruce Kenner had the distinct misfortune of meeting Bertha Henderson.
A plump, gaudy woman with wrinkles and sun beaten skin only an alligator could love, Bertha Henderson wore bright red lipstick, bright red rouge, and way too much mascara. Her tangled hair was a dull red color and her clothes - pink pants and a white floral top - stretched tight across her bulbous frame. She looked like the kind of woman who lived in a trailer with velvet pictures of Elvis on the wall and pink flamingos in the front yard.
She acted like one too.
From the moment she stormed into his office, she hadn’t shut up once. She scolded, chided, accused, and badgered, sometimes even wagging one fat finger in his face like he was a naughty little boy. Ten minutes into the dressing down and Bruce was beginning to fantasize about police brutality.
It took him another ten minutes to find out what the hell she even wanted.
“It’s my granddaughter,” she shot back, “she’s missing in your town.”
My town? Lady, this is barely my office. I share it with three other people.
“Well, if you’ll calm down, maybe I can help.”
Jesus Christ was that the wrong thing to say. She hit the roof and didn’t come down again until Bruce was this close to arresting her for assault on a police officer. “Young man, I do not appreciate the way you’re talking to me. My tax dollars are the only reason you have a job. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working at a car wash.”
At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you.
Bruce took a deep breath and held his tongue in check. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“I told you, my granddaughter is missing. If you listened to me, you’d know this already.”
Bertha produced a picture and slid it across the desk. Bruce studied it. A girl, roughly sixteen with black hair, blue eyes, and dimples smiled back at him. “She;’s with that Rossi man, I just know it,” she said bitterly.
“Who?” Bruce asked.
Rolling her eyes like he was stupid, the old woman told him the story. Jessie - the dimple faced girl - had the rotten luck of having to live with Grandma Bertha after her parents went to jail on drug charges. They lived in Sand Lake, a little town in the mountains outside Albany, where Bertha was no doubt loved and admired by all. One day, Jessie, who her grandmother lovingly described as “A little troublemaker”, ran off. Bruce didn’t blame her. He’d known Bertha for half an hour and he wanted to run off. Bertha did some snooping on Jessie’s laptop and found that the “little whore” had been chatting with an older man, Joe Rossi. Rossi, or so Facebook said, lived in Albany and worked at Club Vlad.
“I want him arrested for pedophilia,” Bertha said and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “He’s a dog just like all men. She’s probably pregnant already. Another mouth I have to feed.”
Behind the old battle ax, Vanessa appeared in the doorway and lifted her brows as if to say What a piece of work. Knowing her, she’d probably been standing just out of sight this whole time with McKenny, the elderly evidence clerk, and snickering into her hand like a little girl. LOL she called him young man.
Bertha noticed him looking over her shoulder and started to turn. Vanessa’s face went white and she ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding detection. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” Bertha said to Bruce. “Meanwhile, if I don’t get Jessie back, the state’s going to stop sending me my checks. I need that income. I can’t work, you know. I have gout.”
Too bad being an asshole isn’t a job, you’d be world-famous
“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said.
“I want more than talk, young man, I want action.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Bertha finally decided to waddle off and ruin someone else’s day, Vanessa came in and sat in the chair the old woman had so recently occupied. “Oh, my God,” she said, “that was intense. I was this close to radioing in a 1015.”
1015 was code for officer down.
“Funny,” Bruce said without a trace of humor. He had kids going missing, a dead guy someone moved around like a goddamn Barbie doll, and now this. What next, hemorrhoids?
“What do you think? Code 1 or code 2?”
Code 1 meant top priority. Code 2 meant not a top priority. Bruce thought for a moment. It didn’t sound like Jessie Henderson was in danger. It sounded like she met a guy - granted, one too old for her - and decided to hide out with him from her psycho grandma. Maybe it could be something more, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t…and his gut feelings were usually right. “2,” he finally said. “I got shit to do.”
By shit, he meant “Talk to the families of those missing boys again.” He’d been interviewing them for two days looking for clues, but there was nothing. It’s like they just vanished. Bruce didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Vanessa said and slapped the desk.
When she was gone, Bruce sighed.
Never a dull moment, he thought.
***
Ed Harris - no relation to the Hollywood actor - had been the medical examiner for the City of Albany since 2002, and in all that time, he had never seen anything quite like this.
It was Wednesday evening and Ed was locked away in the cold, sterile space beneath the city offices that comprised his domain. With its puke green tiles, harsh lights, and cloying smells of disinfectant, the .coroner's office creeped most people out, but not Ed. He was at home here, as comfortable surrounded by toe-tagged bodies as a cactus was surrounded by desert. A thin man in his fifties with curly, steel gray hair thinning in the middle, he wore a white smock, blood stained over his clothes that made him look like a butcher instead of a low level government functionary. He had a dark and dry sense of humor, but then again, so do all people who play with dead bodies for fun and profit.
The coroner’s office was a vast, utilitarian vault segmented into multiple different rooms. Here, where the magic happened, three stainless steel tables stood in a row; a bank of refrigerated drawers kept watch, making sure nothing funny happened. One of the cold fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a hum of electricity, and water dripped rhythmically from a faucet. It was a cold, eerie place, but to Ed, it was home.
On most nights, only one of the tables was occupied, but tonight, two were. On one lay an old lady who died of what appeared to be cyanide poisoning. On the other was Dominick Mason.
Naked save for a white cloth draped over his groin to protect his dignity, Dom was the most corpsy corpse you’d ever hope to see. In fact, if you looked up dead guy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him. His body was pale and sunken, one side covered in purple splotches where his blood had pooled, and his eyes were closed. His abdomen was slightly distended with the expected build up of gas, and his flesh stuck fast to the bones beneath. In other words, he was text book. A normal corpse.
Mostly normal.
As men of his trade are wont to do when strange bodies mysteriously appear, Ed had opened Dom up, making a Y shaped incision from his neck to his groin. He hummed to himself as he did so, his hands wielding his sharp and shiny tools with the deft assuredness of a seasoned surgeon. Done cutting, he dipped his gloved hands into the cavity and started removing organs. A spleen here, a liver there, nothing Dom would miss. When he got to the heart, however, he stopped.
There was something…off…about it. At first glance, it was black and withered like an oversized raisin. An odd and putrid odor emanated from it and though he was familiar with the various smells and stenches the human body produced after death, this wasn’t one of them. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even compare it to anything. Plucking a magnifying glass from the metal cart next to the table, he peeled back part of Dom’s chest and examined the heart closer.
That’s when things got really weird.
Dominick Mason’s heart was, indeed, shriveled, but it was not black. Instead, it was almost entirely covered by an interlacing crisscross of what appeared to be black mold. Here and there, Ed could glimpse flashes of the heart beneath: It was wrinkled and a sickly gray color. “What is this?” Ed asked himself at length. He grabbed a pair of tweezers from the tray and carefully, very carefully, attempted to remove a piece of the mold for analysis. The moment the cold metal tips touched the heart, it gave a violent spasm that sent Ed falling back with a shocked gasp, the tweezers falling from his hand and clinking to the tiled floor.
The heart began to pulse like an alien egg sac, slowly at first, then more rapidly. For a moment, Ed was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Once you die, your heart ceases beating. That’s that. Only living hearts beat, and Dominick Mason was certainly dead. He was dead from the moment Ed first laid eyes on him earlier that day and he was dead now. Yet there was his heart, beating anyway.
It could be a muscle spasm. They usually aren’t that violent and consistent, but dead bodies sometimes do strange things. As he watched the blackened muscle expanding and contracting, however, Ed had the most eerie feeling. He went to rub the back of his neck, realized he was still wearing blood soaked gloves, and stripped them off. He was spooking himself out; he needed a break and a hot cup of coffee. He’d come back fresh and start over again.
With that mold.
Could you really blame him for being creeped out? That stuff wasn’t normal. He’d never seen anything like that before, not even in textbooks. Dom was scrawny and didn’t get enough vitamins in life, but overall, he was healthy; that mold…or whatever it was…had no business being there.
Going over to the coffee pot, which stood in the same room to save travel time, Ed grabbed a styrofoam cup. When he was done here, he planned to go home and -
A terrible, metallic clatter rang out, and Ed jumped. He turned around, and when he saw Dominick Mason standing next to the table, hunched slightly over and staring at him, an electric burst of fright shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, so strong it made the edges turn gray. Pale, hands hooked into talons, and the flaps of his chest hanging open to reveal the cavity beneath, Dominick Mason looked for all the world like a boy who’d been caught sneaking out to meet his girlfriend. A weak, involuntary, “Oh, God,” slipped from Ed’s trembling lips, and the spell was broken. Dom came alive and ran toward the door leading out to the parking lot. He slammed through it, and the sound of it crashing open and then falling closed again echoed through the empty chamber.
Shaking, panting for air, and soaked in piss, Ed sank to the floor in a sitting position, his eyes wide and staring like those of a soldier returning damaged from the front.
It was a long time before he composed himself enough to call the police.
***
Dazed and caught in a nightmarish twilight realm where nothing made sense, Dominick Mason limped painfully down the sidewalk, a stranger lost in a strange land filled with danger and hostile creatures. Barefoot and shrouded in a white sheet, he trembled with cold and struggled to ignore the dark, threatening shapes looming from the fog in his brain, shapes that would turn into unspeakable truths if he let them.
Passersby openly stared at him, their expressions either morbidly curious, disgusted, or alarmed. A man put his arm protectively around his girlfriend; a woman pulled her little boy to her breast, and another man sneered at him, his nose crinkling. Dom, his glazed eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the many street lamps, headlights, and storefronts, lumbered headlong toward nowhere, his fear growing until he was shambling. He imagined he could hear every cough, every whisper; smell the odor of every unwashed body. Each car horn was deafening, every whiff of ass or armpits sent his stomach churning. The rustle of a passing pedestrian’s jacket jammed into his ears like icepicks, and the approaching globes of LED headlamps burned his eyes. He gritted his teeth and groaned against the pain.
The dense mist wrapping his brain made it hard to think. Like a frightened animal, he made his way on instinct alone. Home. He needed to get home. Out here, on the street, he was exposed. At home, locked away in his small apartment, he would be safe.
A car passed in the street, bass heavy rap music blaring from its open windows, and Dom’s brain exploded with agony. He threw himself against a street sign and held on for dear life, his legs weak. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he almost went down. He was also cold.
So, so cold.
People around him quickened their step; they never took their eyes off him, as though he were a venomous snake that would strike at any moment. He needed to get away from them. They were going to hurt him; people always hurt him.
Pushing away from the sign, he began to hobble once more toward home, wherever home was. He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down Central Avenue, and each time, he saw that no one was following him as he had feared.
No one, that is, except for the man in sunglasses.
Tall and lank with curly hair, he wore dark Aviators and a leather motorcycle jacket over a button up shirt. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his face showed no expression. He was always there, always a few steps closer. Outside Capital Fried Chicken, a group of people openly stared at him, He heard their whispers as he passed. What’s wrong with him? Dude’s straight tweakin. And the one that struck him the most. That guy looks dead.
Dom hobbled faster, as if to outrun the realization that he was, in fact, dead. The man in sunglasses was closer now, his footsteps so loud that Dom winced. He turned around, and the man was impossibly in front of him. Dom ran into him and bounced backward, going ass over tea kettle and landing on the former. They were in front of a church on a darkened corner, the lights here either burned out or shot out - you could never tell in Albany. Even though it was dark, Dom could see everything with crystal clarity. Dom tried to scurry away, but he was too weak to escape. Right there and then, he decided to give up. Come what may, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
The man stared down at him, emotionless, unspeaking.
Dom squirmed.
“You’re real lucky I came along,” the man said. His tone was flat, even.
Dead.
“Get up,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
Home?
Yes.
Dom wanted to go home.
The man helped him up, and Dom followed him into the night.
***
Bruce Kenner stood in the middle of the medical examiner’s office at half past nine that evening with his hands on his hips and stared doubtfully down at Ed Harris. The lonely cavern was alive with activity as cops went over everything, all of them looking either bemused or a mused. Bruce was neither. He’d been at home, sitting in his chair and having a beer in front of AEW Dynamite when Vanessa called. “You might wanna get down here,” she said, sounding confused, “something really strange is going on.”
Ed Harris - no relation to that one guy - sat in a straight back chair beside his cluttered desk and gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands, putting Bruce - for some reason - in mind of a monkey. When Bruce came in, the old man was white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. In the last half hour, little had changed.
“Tell me again,” Bruce said.
He and Ed were pretty good friends. He knew that Ed knew standard police procedure. Cops don’t ask you to repeat your story a thousand times over because they’re forgetful fucks, they do it because telling it again and again helps to jog loose details that you might have forgotten. Ed, therefore, did not protest. “I turned my back,” he said and chopped the chair like Jackie Chan, “and I heard the noise.”
His voice was thick, unsteady, and halting. He sounded as squirrely as he looked…and he looked pretty damn squirrelly right now.
“I turned around…and he was looking at me. He was standing there and he was looking at me.”
This was the fourth time he’d had Ed go through the story, and nothing had changed. Bruce felt something stirring deep inside his gut. It was either disquiet…or he had to fart. He opened his mouth to speak, but sighed.
“You don’t believe me,” Ed said.
“I dunno, Ed. Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away.”
Ed flashed. “I know that, goddamn it, but this one did.”
Bruce glanced at Vanessa. She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Bruce asked.
Ed opened his mouth, closed it again, and said, “I did the autopsy.” His voice broke on the last word, and he sounded almost like he was pleading. “His fucking liver’s on the floor. He stepped on it. The man has nothing in him. I-I’m telling you, there’s no way he’s alive.”
During the autopsy, Ed had sat Dominick Mason’s organs on the little tray table where he kept his pointy things. Mason knocked it over while getting up. Indeed, there were human organs on the floor, and one of them did look kind of squished. Bare, bloody footprints led to the exit door, up a set of concrete steps, and then disappeared in the alley behind the office.
“You said you left his heart,” Bruce said.
“And his brain,” Vanessa helpfully added.
Ed pinched the bridge of his nose like a put upon professor dealing with two particularly stupid students. “Even with his heart and his brain, he’s dead. You saw the livor mortis. He was cold, he was stiff. His heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He was in one of those drawers for nine hours, not breathing, no blood flow - it’s impossible. It’s just…it’s impossible. I don’t care what you think, he was dead. And even if somehow he wasn’t, I cut out almost everything. I opened his stomach, I took his spleen - you don’t just get up from that. You don’t walk away from that, much less run.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his bottom lip because he didn’t have a Twix. He didn’t look like the smartest man in the world…and he wasn’t…but he knew a dead body when he saw one, and the body they took out of Dominick Mason’s apartment was D.E.A.D. And like Ed said, even if by some freak fluke of nature he wasn’t, he couldn’t just get up and go about his day with no liver, spleen, or kidneys. Hell, Bruce had his gallbladder out and he couldn’t even walk away from that.
“You said there was something funny about his heart,” Vanessa said.
Ed finished off his coffee. “Yeah. It was…moldy. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is it possible that…has something to do with it?”
“Unless the rules of biology have changed overnight, no,” Ed stated.
While Ed poured himself another cup of Joe, spilling some because he was still shaking, Vanessa took Bruce aside. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Is he telling the truth?”
For that, Bruce did not have an immediate answer. All else aside, he was a cop. He followed the evidence - and his gut instinct - wherever it led him. Ed was a sober man - he was not a drunk, insane, or stupid - and no man on earth could fake the look of trauma in his eyes. Bruce’s eyes went to the bloody footprints leading away from the exam table and his stomach roiled. It might be cliched, but there had to be a rational explanation. “Yeah,” he finally said. “The kid got up like he said, but there’s no way he was dead. Maybe…I dunno, he had a surge of adrenaline or something. I’m not a doctor.”
“That’ll only get him so far,” Vanessa said. “We’ll probably find him on the street somewhere.”
He went back to the purple splotches on Dom’s face, to his cold stiffness. There’s no way he was dead?
Bruce was confused, and he hated being confused.
“I dunno,” he said, “maybe.”
But he had the gnawing feeling that they wouldn’t. They would never find him…and Bruce would be confused forever.
Goddamn it, Mason, he thought, where are you?

An hour after getting back from the Mason apartment, Bruce Kenner had the distinct misfortune of meeting Bertha Henderson.
A plump, gaudy woman with wrinkles and sun beaten skin only an alligator could love, Bertha Henderson wore bright red lipstick, bright red rouge, and way too much mascara. Her tangled hair was a dull red color and her clothes - pink pants and a white floral top - stretched tight across her bulbous frame. She looked like the kind of woman who lived in a trailer with velvet pictures of Elvis on the wall and pink flamingos in the front yard.
She acted like one too.
From the moment she stormed into his office, she hadn’t shut up once. She scolded, chided, accused, and badgered, sometimes even wagging one fat finger in his face like he was a naughty little boy. Ten minutes into the dressing down and Bruce was beginning to fantasize about police brutality.
It took him another ten minutes to find out what the hell she even wanted.
“It’s my granddaughter,” she shot back, “she’s missing in your town.”
My town? Lady, this is barely my office. I share it with three other people.
“Well, if you’ll calm down, maybe I can help.”
Jesus Christ was that the wrong thing to say. She hit the roof and didn’t come down again until Bruce was this close to arresting her for assault on a police officer. “Young man, I do not appreciate the way you’re talking to me. My tax dollars are the only reason you have a job. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working at a car wash.”
At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you.
Bruce took a deep breath and held his tongue in check. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“I told you, my granddaughter is missing. If you listened to me, you’d know this already.”
Bertha produced a picture and slid it across the desk. Bruce studied it. A girl, roughly sixteen with black hair, blue eyes, and dimples smiled back at him. “She;’s with that Rossi man, I just know it,” she said bitterly.
“Who?” Bruce asked.
Rolling her eyes like he was stupid, the old woman told him the story. Jessie - the dimple faced girl - had the rotten luck of having to live with Grandma Bertha after her parents went to jail on drug charges. They lived in Sand Lake, a little town in the mountains outside Albany, where Bertha was no doubt loved and admired by all. One day, Jessie, who her grandmother lovingly described as “A little troublemaker”, ran off. Bruce didn’t blame her. He’d known Bertha for half an hour and he wanted to run off. Bertha did some snooping on Jessie’s laptop and found that the “little whore” had been chatting with an older man, Joe Rossi. Rossi, or so Facebook said, lived in Albany and worked at Club Vlad.
“I want him arrested for pedophilia,” Bertha said and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “He’s a dog just like all men. She’s probably pregnant already. Another mouth I have to feed.”
Behind the old battle ax, Vanessa appeared in the doorway and lifted her brows as if to say What a piece of work. Knowing her, she’d probably been standing just out of sight this whole time with McKenny, the elderly evidence clerk, and snickering into her hand like a little girl. LOL she called him young man.
Bertha noticed him looking over her shoulder and started to turn. Vanessa’s face went white and she ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding detection. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” Bertha said to Bruce. “Meanwhile, if I don’t get Jessie back, the state’s going to stop sending me my checks. I need that income. I can’t work, you know. I have gout.”
Too bad being an asshole isn’t a job, you’d be world-famous
“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said.
“I want more than talk, young man, I want action.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Bertha finally decided to waddle off and ruin someone else’s day, Vanessa came in and sat in the chair the old woman had so recently occupied. “Oh, my God,” she said, “that was intense. I was this close to radioing in a 1015.”
1015 was code for officer down.
“Funny,” Bruce said without a trace of humor. He had kids going missing, a dead guy someone moved around like a goddamn Barbie doll, and now this. What next, hemorrhoids?
“What do you think? Code 1 or code 2?”
Code 1 meant top priority. Code 2 meant not a top priority. Bruce thought for a moment. It didn’t sound like Jessie Henderson was in danger. It sounded like she met a guy - granted, one too old for her - and decided to hide out with him from her psycho grandma. Maybe it could be something more, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t…and his gut feelings were usually right. “2,” he finally said. “I got shit to do.”
By shit, he meant “Talk to the families of those missing boys again.” He’d been interviewing them for two days looking for clues, but there was nothing. It’s like they just vanished. Bruce didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Vanessa said and slapped the desk.
When she was gone, Bruce sighed.
Never a dull moment, he thought.
***
Ed Harris - no relation to the Hollywood actor - had been the medical examiner for the City of Albany since 2002, and in all that time, he had never seen anything quite like this.
It was Wednesday evening and Ed was locked away in the cold, sterile space beneath the city offices that comprised his domain. With its puke green tiles, harsh lights, and cloying smells of disinfectant, the .coroner's office creeped most people out, but not Ed. He was at home here, as comfortable surrounded by toe-tagged bodies as a cactus was surrounded by desert. A thin man in his fifties with curly, steel gray hair thinning in the middle, he wore a white smock, blood stained over his clothes that made him look like a butcher instead of a low level government functionary. He had a dark and dry sense of humor, but then again, so do all people who play with dead bodies for fun and profit.
The coroner’s office was a vast, utilitarian vault segmented into multiple different rooms. Here, where the magic happened, three stainless steel tables stood in a row; a bank of refrigerated drawers kept watch, making sure nothing funny happened. One of the cold fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a hum of electricity, and water dripped rhythmically from a faucet. It was a cold, eerie place, but to Ed, it was home.
On most nights, only one of the tables was occupied, but tonight, two were. On one lay an old lady who died of what appeared to be cyanide poisoning. On the other was Dominick Mason.
Naked save for a white cloth draped over his groin to protect his dignity, Dom was the most corpsy corpse you’d ever hope to see. In fact, if you looked up dead guy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him. His body was pale and sunken, one side covered in purple splotches where his blood had pooled, and his eyes were closed. His abdomen was slightly distended with the expected build up of gas, and his flesh stuck fast to the bones beneath. In other words, he was text book. A normal corpse.
Mostly normal.
As men of his trade are wont to do when strange bodies mysteriously appear, Ed had opened Dom up, making a Y shaped incision from his neck to his groin. He hummed to himself as he did so, his hands wielding his sharp and shiny tools with the deft assuredness of a seasoned surgeon. Done cutting, he dipped his gloved hands into the cavity and started removing organs. A spleen here, a liver there, nothing Dom would miss. When he got to the heart, however, he stopped.
There was something…off…about it. At first glance, it was black and withered like an oversized raisin. An odd and putrid odor emanated from it and though he was familiar with the various smells and stenches the human body produced after death, this wasn’t one of them. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even compare it to anything. Plucking a magnifying glass from the metal cart next to the table, he peeled back part of Dom’s chest and examined the heart closer.
That’s when things got really weird.
Dominick Mason’s heart was, indeed, shriveled, but it was not black. Instead, it was almost entirely covered by an interlacing crisscross of what appeared to be black mold. Here and there, Ed could glimpse flashes of the heart beneath: It was wrinkled and a sickly gray color. “What is this?” Ed asked himself at length. He grabbed a pair of tweezers from the tray and carefully, very carefully, attempted to remove a piece of the mold for analysis. The moment the cold metal tips touched the heart, it gave a violent spasm that sent Ed falling back with a shocked gasp, the tweezers falling from his hand and clinking to the tiled floor.
The heart began to pulse like an alien egg sac, slowly at first, then more rapidly. For a moment, Ed was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Once you die, your heart ceases beating. That’s that. Only living hearts beat, and Dominick Mason was certainly dead. He was dead from the moment Ed first laid eyes on him earlier that day and he was dead now. Yet there was his heart, beating anyway.
It could be a muscle spasm. They usually aren’t that violent and consistent, but dead bodies sometimes do strange things. As he watched the blackened muscle expanding and contracting, however, Ed had the most eerie feeling. He went to rub the back of his neck, realized he was still wearing blood soaked gloves, and stripped them off. He was spooking himself out; he needed a break and a hot cup of coffee. He’d come back fresh and start over again.
With that mold.
Could you really blame him for being creeped out? That stuff wasn’t normal. He’d never seen anything like that before, not even in textbooks. Dom was scrawny and didn’t get enough vitamins in life, but overall, he was healthy; that mold…or whatever it was…had no business being there.
Going over to the coffee pot, which stood in the same room to save travel time, Ed grabbed a styrofoam cup. When he was done here, he planned to go home and -
A terrible, metallic clatter rang out, and Ed jumped. He turned around, and when he saw Dominick Mason standing next to the table, hunched slightly over and staring at him, an electric burst of fright shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, so strong it made the edges turn gray. Pale, hands hooked into talons, and the flaps of his chest hanging open to reveal the cavity beneath, Dominick Mason looked for all the world like a boy who’d been caught sneaking out to meet his girlfriend. A weak, involuntary, “Oh, God,” slipped from Ed’s trembling lips, and the spell was broken. Dom came alive and ran toward the door leading out to the parking lot. He slammed through it, and the sound of it crashing open and then falling closed again echoed through the empty chamber.
Shaking, panting for air, and soaked in piss, Ed sank to the floor in a sitting position, his eyes wide and staring like those of a soldier returning damaged from the front.
It was a long time before he composed himself enough to call the police.
***
Dazed and caught in a nightmarish twilight realm where nothing made sense, Dominick Mason limped painfully down the sidewalk, a stranger lost in a strange land filled with danger and hostile creatures. Barefoot and shrouded in a white sheet, he trembled with cold and struggled to ignore the dark, threatening shapes looming from the fog in his brain, shapes that would turn into unspeakable truths if he let them.
Passersby openly stared at him, their expressions either morbidly curious, disgusted, or alarmed. A man put his arm protectively around his girlfriend; a woman pulled her little boy to her breast, and another man sneered at him, his nose crinkling. Dom, his glazed eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the many street lamps, headlights, and storefronts, lumbered headlong toward nowhere, his fear growing until he was shambling. He imagined he could hear every cough, every whisper; smell the odor of every unwashed body. Each car horn was deafening, every whiff of ass or armpits sent his stomach churning. The rustle of a passing pedestrian’s jacket jammed into his ears like icepicks, and the approaching globes of LED headlamps burned his eyes. He gritted his teeth and groaned against the pain.
The dense mist wrapping his brain made it hard to think. Like a frightened animal, he made his way on instinct alone. Home. He needed to get home. Out here, on the street, he was exposed. At home, locked away in his small apartment, he would be safe.
A car passed in the street, bass heavy rap music blaring from its open windows, and Dom’s brain exploded with agony. He threw himself against a street sign and held on for dear life, his legs weak. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he almost went down. He was also cold.
So, so cold.
People around him quickened their step; they never took their eyes off him, as though he were a venomous snake that would strike at any moment. He needed to get away from them. They were going to hurt him; people always hurt him.
Pushing away from the sign, he began to hobble once more toward home, wherever home was. He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down Central Avenue, and each time, he saw that no one was following him as he had feared.
No one, that is, except for the man in sunglasses.
Tall and lank with curly hair, he wore dark Aviators and a leather motorcycle jacket over a button up shirt. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his face showed no expression. He was always there, always a few steps closer. Outside Capital Fried Chicken, a group of people openly stared at him, He heard their whispers as he passed. What’s wrong with him? Dude’s straight tweakin. And the one that struck him the most. That guy looks dead.
Dom hobbled faster, as if to outrun the realization that he was, in fact, dead. The man in sunglasses was closer now, his footsteps so loud that Dom winced. He turned around, and the man was impossibly in front of him. Dom ran into him and bounced backward, going ass over tea kettle and landing on the former. They were in front of a church on a darkened corner, the lights here either burned out or shot out - you could never tell in Albany. Even though it was dark, Dom could see everything with crystal clarity. Dom tried to scurry away, but he was too weak to escape. Right there and then, he decided to give up. Come what may, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
The man stared down at him, emotionless, unspeaking.
Dom squirmed.
“You’re real lucky I came along,” the man said. His tone was flat, even.
Dead.
“Get up,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
Home?
Yes.
Dom wanted to go home.
The man helped him up, and Dom followed him into the night.
***
Bruce Kenner stood in the middle of the medical examiner’s office at half past nine that evening with his hands on his hips and stared doubtfully down at Ed Harris. The lonely cavern was alive with activity as cops went over everything, all of them looking either bemused or a mused. Bruce was neither. He’d been at home, sitting in his chair and having a beer in front of AEW Dynamite when Vanessa called. “You might wanna get down here,” she said, sounding confused, “something really strange is going on.”
Ed Harris - no relation to that one guy - sat in a straight back chair beside his cluttered desk and gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands, putting Bruce - for some reason - in mind of a monkey. When Bruce came in, the old man was white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. In the last half hour, little had changed.
“Tell me again,” Bruce said.
He and Ed were pretty good friends. He knew that Ed knew standard police procedure. Cops don’t ask you to repeat your story a thousand times over because they’re forgetful fucks, they do it because telling it again and again helps to jog loose details that you might have forgotten. Ed, therefore, did not protest. “I turned my back,” he said and chopped the chair like Jackie Chan, “and I heard the noise.”
His voice was thick, unsteady, and halting. He sounded as squirrely as he looked…and he looked pretty damn squirrelly right now.
“I turned around…and he was looking at me. He was standing there and he was looking at me.”
This was the fourth time he’d had Ed go through the story, and nothing had changed. Bruce felt something stirring deep inside his gut. It was either disquiet…or he had to fart. He opened his mouth to speak, but sighed.
“You don’t believe me,” Ed said.
“I dunno, Ed. Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away.”
Ed flashed. “I know that, goddamn it, but this one did.”
Bruce glanced at Vanessa. She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Bruce asked.
Ed opened his mouth, closed it again, and said, “I did the autopsy.” His voice broke on the last word, and he sounded almost like he was pleading. “His fucking liver’s on the floor. He stepped on it. The man has nothing in him. I-I’m telling you, there’s no way he’s alive.”
During the autopsy, Ed had sat Dominick Mason’s organs on the little tray table where he kept his pointy things. Mason knocked it over while getting up. Indeed, there were human organs on the floor, and one of them did look kind of squished. Bare, bloody footprints led to the exit door, up a set of concrete steps, and then disappeared in the alley behind the office.
“You said you left his heart,” Bruce said.
“And his brain,” Vanessa helpfully added.
Ed pinched the bridge of his nose like a put upon professor dealing with two particularly stupid students. “Even with his heart and his brain, he’s dead. You saw the livor mortis. He was cold, he was stiff. His heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He was in one of those drawers for nine hours, not breathing, no blood flow - it’s impossible. It’s just…it’s impossible. I don’t care what you think, he was dead. And even if somehow he wasn’t, I cut out almost everything. I opened his stomach, I took his spleen - you don’t just get up from that. You don’t walk away from that, much less run.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his bottom lip because he didn’t have a Twix. He didn’t look like the smartest man in the world…and he wasn’t…but he knew a dead body when he saw one, and the body they took out of Dominick Mason’s apartment was D.E.A.D. And like Ed said, even if by some freak fluke of nature he wasn’t, he couldn’t just get up and go about his day with no liver, spleen, or kidneys. Hell, Bruce had his gallbladder out and he couldn’t even walk away from that.
“You said there was something funny about his heart,” Vanessa said.
Ed finished off his coffee. “Yeah. It was…moldy. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is it possible that…has something to do with it?”
“Unless the rules of biology have changed overnight, no,” Ed stated.
While Ed poured himself another cup of Joe, spilling some because he was still shaking, Vanessa took Bruce aside. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Is he telling the truth?”
For that, Bruce did not have an immediate answer. All else aside, he was a cop. He followed the evidence - and his gut instinct - wherever it led him. Ed was a sober man - he was not a drunk, insane, or stupid - and no man on earth could fake the look of trauma in his eyes. Bruce’s eyes went to the bloody footprints leading away from the exam table and his stomach roiled. It might be cliched, but there had to be a rational explanation. “Yeah,” he finally said. “The kid got up like he said, but there’s no way he was dead. Maybe…I dunno, he had a surge of adrenaline or something. I’m not a doctor.”
“That’ll only get him so far,” Vanessa said. “We’ll probably find him on the street somewhere.”
He went back to the purple splotches on Dom’s face, to his cold stiffness. There’s no way he was dead?
Bruce was confused, and he hated being confused.
“I dunno,” he said, “maybe.”
But he had the gnawing feeling that they wouldn’t. They would never find him…and Bruce would be confused forever.
Goddamn it, Mason, he thought, where are you?

Credit to u/SpacePaladin15 for the Nature of Predators universe. Rain World is a video game developed by and property of Videocult. I claim no ownership over either.
Sorry for the wait. Life happened but I just finished my semester, so I’m hoping the next chapter will be finished sooner rather than later. Please let me know if I missed any typos or made any editing mistakes. It’s greatly appreciated.
–
Memory Transcript: Sefril, Farsul First Contact Officer
Date [Standardized Human Time]: July 15, 2136
When I came to, I just laid still. I wasn’t sure what had happened though what was certain was that I was both still alive and still in this dingy box of a room. The predators were you of sight in one of my few blindspots. Jinsul and Dornucl were still alive, with Dornucl understandably agitated and Jinsul seemingly lost in thought.
Stranger yet, no one seemed to be hurt. Maybe Jinsul had gotten them?
Careful, I sat up, only to be greeted by the predators grooming each other. They stared back at me as I froze once again.
“Finally,” Jinsul said, causing me to jump, “I need to ask you something.”
“Oh not this again,” Dornucl said, annoyed. “Ignore him, he’s gone mad.”
“What?” was my only response. The predators seemed to perk up, shifting their reclining posture slightly, ears standing on end.
“You’re supposed to be a scientist, and as such you understand the meaning of overwhelming evidence, yes?” Jinsul said.
“What you’re suggesting is not only the most unscientific conclusion I’ve heard but is also something I’d expect to come out of someone with terminal predator disease,” Dornucl interjected.
I glanced back terrified at the predators, who had not yet chosen to strike and instead decided to lay there. Menacingly.
I pressed myself against the back wall, hoping to fall straight through and away from them.
“Why haven’t you done anything about…them?” I said waving my tail toward the predators. “You’re an exterminator, so…exterminate.”
“With what?” Jinsul shot back and began waving his pistol with one paw while shaking the flamer laying beside with the other, “The handgun that won’t fire with damp ammunition or the flamer that will kill us all in this tight space? Besides, they won’t attack us.”
Dornucl groaned and rubbed his tentacles into his face, while my mouth was agape in shock.
“What do you mean ‘they won’t attack’?! Their bleating predators!”
“Gods, that’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Jinsul practically screamed in frustration. He took a breath, “OK, sorry, just listen alright? Have you been having weird dreams?”
I stiffened, “I had a dream last night where I almost drowned, but I don’t see what that has to–”
“So, you're telling me you didn’t almost drown?” he said with a knowing look.
I considered it with dawning horror, “But that’s–”
“Impossible,” Dornucl spat out, “And ludicrous.” He turned to me, “As I said, he’s snapped.”
“Then how else do you explain it? My brothers and sisters in arms have confided in me the same: dreams, visions, and inescapable feelings of familiarity in the unfamiliar. Those who heed them escape danger, while those who don’t, don’t.”
As Jinsul spoke, a true zealotry was imbued in his voice.
“I’ll give you this, by all means, these visions should be impossible and unexplainable by science.” Fervor glinted in his eyes. “But when science fails, we must turn to faith to guide us.”
A knot formed in my stomach as I got a sneaking suspicion of where he was going.
“It is my belief and that of my lieutenants and clergy that the gods have sent us these visions.” He announced this without a shadow of a doubt in his voice. “They’ve been guiding us from the moment we’ve entered the orbit. The delusions the crew had in orbit? Also the visions.”
It doesn’t make any sense, but he’s right on one thing. These premonitions are impossible, yet they happen and help us avoid danger. However, there has to be a more rational explanation. There just has to be.
“But why?” I ask. “To what end? If your gods are doing this, to what end? If they are behind everything, the visions and maybe the crash, then why what would justify so much suffering? It just doesn't make any sense.”
“That’s the nature of the divine,” he said somberly, “We can speculate why they would send the visions and make us…feel them and their pain all we want, but we are imperfect creatures, and they are things of perfection. We simply need to trust they are leading us to where we need to go.”
As I considered his words, Dornucl once again spoke up condescendingly.
“I can’t believe you even have to CONTEMPLATE what he’s saying!” He slumped down and motioned towards the predators. “Fine then, what do they have to do with your ‘gods’ plan’? Your duty as an exterminator is baked into your religion? What do you have to say to that?”
Jinsul involuntarily flicked his ears, betraying a rising irritation. “I don’t know, I don’t like it, and I don’t have to. They haven’t given us visions of them attacking us and they’ve decided to disable our best weapons. I don’t need to understand why, all I need to know is that there is a reason they would do so. Besides, they haven’t even tried to attack us. You're a biologist, do you consider that normal?”
“Do you even hear yourself? You sound like a lunatic! I could have you put away for this!”
Unlike his normally cool, level-headed, and almost jolly demeanor, Dornucl’s features were twisted in barely veiled rage. It was terrifying to see him on the verge of doing something awful. He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by the predators.
The one with the grey fur was still lying down, but the other with the dark green fur had stood up and began stomping around in exaggerated and dramatic steps. All while growling and barking.
It was terrifying. However, it was dulled by the sheer surrealness of the situation. Its entire demeanor was less intentionally threatening and more childish mocking, right down to flailing its limbs in much the same way Dornucl did unconsciously to emphasize his point. It may even be funny if we could understand what they were saying.
Wait a minute…
I paused to think about that absent-minded thought, the gears and pistons finally shaking off the shock and beginning to fire and spin. I listened closely to its vocalizations and began to pick out a form of structure in how they were articulated and gestated. I recalled the predators' behavior and came to a grim conclusion.
“We have a problem,” I said so quietly it could barely be considered a whisper.
“Oh, what tipped you off genius?” Dornucl responded sarcastically.
I stumbled a little at the insult but continued.
“No, I mean a bigger problem,” I took a deep breath, “I think they’re sapient.”
The silence was deafening. Even the predator had stopped its mockery and began exchanging words with the other grey-furred one.
Dornucl glanced at the and sighed. “In hindsight, that does explain their behavior.”
Somehow, despite this revelation, Dornucl regained his composure and his cool demeanor.
“Well, in a certain sense, this simplifies things somewhat. We just have to wait for the translators to complete processing their language, then we can hopefully negotiate with them.”
I gawked at what he just said, while Jinsul broke down into laughter.
“And I’m the crazy one!” Jinsul managed to get out between the cackles, “Do you even hear yourself? Mindless animals are one thing, but this? We have the next the Arxur right before us!”
It was at this point that Plako decided to wake up. One can only imagine what was going through his head when he was greeted by 2 predators, a hysterical exterminator, a biologist trying not to show his frustration, and an anthropologist doing her best to fall through the wall.
He began to stammer. “Wh-what h-happened? Why haven’t they eaten us?”
Dornucl leaned over to him and deadpanned. “The predators are sapient.”
Plako froze after he processed this information.
Jinsul calmed down enough to speak more coherently, “Gods, it all makes sense. They must’ve bombed themselves back in the stone age, and have only recently been reclaiming their former technology.”
I spoke up. “I don’t think that’s the case. Remember, the worm showed us an image of that other creature. These predators likely evolved sometime after the civilization's collapse.”
“Well,” Jinsul said while deep in thought, “Now I can say for certain the gods must be involved.”
“Wh-what?” Plako asked trambling.
“Think about it. This whole situation is so astronomically unlikely, from being in an uncharted system in the middle of nowhere at the same time as a single Arxur ship to surviving the crash, and then meeting these predators, and them not attacking us. The gods’ intend for us to purge these creatures before they can spread and save the remnants of this civilization from–”
“No, I’m pretty sure it was laughing at you, not with you.” A masculine said from the back of the chamber.
“Fine, but I think I’m finally getting somewhere.” A feminine voice responded.
Jinsul went quiet as our gazes fell upon the predators. The translators finished translating. No one knew what to do, so we ended up just staring.
They both stared back with their unnerving abyssal eyes.
“I do wish they’d stop staring though. It’s starting to get weird.” The female said with a tone of unease.
“Let’s bring them to the village and have Oracle translate. It’s probably just a misunderstanding,” the male responded.
“Right, there's nothing we can do about it now.” She plopped beside the male and both began to get ready to sleep the best one could on the hard floor.
I felt something poke into my side, causing me to jump. Dornucl had crawled over to me and began to speak in a whisper. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.
His frustrated look returned. “You're the first contact specialist, go first contact.”
“And their predators!” I said, raising my voice a little louder, “They’ll eat me!”
He groaned and put on a forced calm. “While I disagree with Jinsul’s reasoning, they haven’t eaten us yet and we all want it to stay that way. Now if they decide they do want to eat us, we don’t have any weapons that wouldn’t be suicidal to use. If we want to get out of this alive and well, we’ll have to at least communicate with them.”
Jinsul, who had been effortlessly eavesdropping on us, muttered something under his breath. Dornucl ignored him as he continued, “So please at least try. Even if you fail, we’re likely doomed anyway.”
As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. I just wish it wasn’t me who had to do it or that I was the only one remotely qualified to do so. Haf was still unconscious, Plako looked on the brink of tears, Dornucl was just a scientist, and Jinsul wasn’t in the mood.
I gathered my strength and began running through what I could say. After a minute of idle thought, I came up with the only thing I could say. I stood up on quivering legs, took a brave step forward, and called upon the translator’s imparted knowledge.
“J-just so yo-you know, we’re not very tasty…and we’ll give you in-indigestion, so you shouldn’t eat us.” I felt like I was about to throw up.
The predators just stared at me, jaws agape and revealing menacing fangs. Jinsul nearly collapsed in renewed laughter. Dornucl buried his eyes into his tentacles and muttered something to himself.
“What was I supposed to say?” I said to Dornucl.
“ANYTHING BUT THAT!” he shot back.
Before I could snap back in frustration, the grey predator spoke.
“You speak our tongue the entire time? Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
We paused, and even Jinsul stopped laughing like a madman. Wordlessly, Dornucl shoved me forward.
“N-no…” I stammered, “We have an implant in our heads that translates languages in real-time while allowing us to speak stored languages. It only just figured out your language just now.”
“So it’s a Mark of Communication?” It asked.
“I don’t–”
“No no,” the green one interrupted, “If they had one, then we wouldn’t be able to understand them.”
The grey one nodded sagely.
I had been expecting an equally long-winded and terrifying conversation about the plausibility of a universal translator and whether or not it was magic, not such a matter-of-fact statement. Before I could shake off the confusion, Dornucl suddenly spoke up, “What’s a mark of communication?"
“Definitely from beyond the wall,” the green one said to the grey.
The grey one nodded and turned back to us.
“A mark is a special gift, given only to one who reaches the top of Pebbles and meets with him, wherein he provides the mark and the knowledge necessary to complete the Pilgrimage. Did you receive your ‘translator’ from another like him?” They both seemed oddly interested in the answer.
“We made them,” I said, then quickly added, “The Federation did. We didn’t build them personally. Just to reiterate, you're not going to eat us, right?”
“Of course not.” The green one said, its voice rife with disgust. “Why do you–”
Jinsul swiftly cut it off.
“Do you think you win us over with such obvious deceptions?” Jinsul stood and sized up the predators, “I know this game. You’re just keeping us around till you get hungry. When I get off this rock, I’ll ensure the god’s wishes are seen through and this entire planet is burned from orbit!”
The predators seemed confused about what was said. The green one stepped too close to me, with nowhere to go, I froze and closed my eyes.
This is it Sefril. You knew this was coming. Don’t resist and maybe it will be–
“Is he okay?” it asked, feigning concern and pointing to a still-ranting Jinsul, “In, y’know…” it said as it tapped its claw against its head.
Jinsul paused momentarily as he took in what was just said, then began fuming again. “I DON’T HAVE BRAIN DAMAGE!” he shrieked.
It took a step back at the outburst. It put its arms out, but instead of lunging toward him, it seemed as though it was trying to shield itself from him, or at the very least keep him at a comfortable distance.
“I didn’t mean to offend,” It said, the translator framing it apologetically to my confusion, “I have a cousin who fell off a pole as a pup and landed on his head. You sorta act like him.”
Jinsul reached a new, as of yet unknown level of hate. He stood there for a second, simmering not unlike a faulty water boiler. Dornucl stepped behind him, raised some robust science thingy above his head, and brought it down on Jinsul’s.
Jinsul flopped to bring like a rag doll beside Haf. Everyone, including the predators, was speechless. Everyone except Dornucl.
“Everyone shut up!”, he said in a practical growl, “This is confusing for all of us, and antagonizing each other isn’t going to make this situation any better. Here’s how this will go: We’ll have a polite conversation, get to know each other, and then figure out what to do.”
He turns to the predators. “My name is Dornucl, and this is Sefril, Plako, Jinsul, and Haf. What’s your’s?”
“My name is Stone,” The grey-furred one responded, “And this is Light.” He said pointing to the green one.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Light said, not skipping a beat, “Where are you from?”
Oh boy, getting right into it.
“So…” I began, but Plako jabbed me.
“You can’t,” he whispered in a panic, “There are predators, if they find out about the federation it’ll be the Arxur all over again.”
I look nervously at Dornucl, who nods reassuringly. I take a deep breath. “I know, but they’ll find out sooner or later. Besides, they may be predators, but they are also primitives. We have a natural advantage, if not physically than technologically and intellectually.”
I returned my attention to ‘Light’ and ‘Stone’, who did their best not to look like they were eavesdropping. “As I was saying…this is a little complicated. You know the stars, right?”
They nodd.
“We are from the stars.”
They blinked at us. They glanced around at us, trying to read our expressions.
“What do you mean?” Stone asked hesitantly.
I took a deep breath and launched into an explanation. “You know how we are currently in this world? There are others like, very, very far away. So far away that if you spent your entire life running as fast as you could you’d never even glimpse it.”
“Then how did you come here?” Light asked, “Did you use magic like the Ancients did?”
I took a mental note to inquire more about these Ancients, then resumed. “No, we, and the Federation as a whole, use large machines called ‘spaceships’. Each is equipped with a device called a subspace drive, which allows for faster-than-light travel. With this, we can travel between stars in days, weeks, or months depending on the distance between the stars.”
“Hey, I’m pretty fast, but I don’t think that going faster than me would make much of a difference if it’s that far away.”
Stone let out a good-natured snicker. “I think she meant light from a lantern or the sun.”
“Ah,” she remarked, ears pressed back in mild embarrassment. She tilted her head in confusion, “But that sounds like magic to me.”
“It’s not, ok? It’s just science.” I say with a sigh. Surprisingly, the word science seemed to translate without much of a fuss and they even nodded along. Something else to look into.
Stone asked the dreaded question: “Then how does it work?”
“I don’t know but I’m sure Plako could give you a basic…” I began to say when Plako started to make wild motions, trying to communicate he had no idea how it worked without drawing attention. He succeeded in trying to tell me that while failing to stay incognito. The predators turn their piercing eyes on him.
“Don’t worry about him,” I say hastily before they can speak, “It’s not his specialty.”
“What’s his specialty?” Stone asked. Plako visibly cringed, but this time Dornucl saved him.
“Let’s save the more technical discussions for tomorrow. It’s late, and we’re all tired.”
Light gave Stone a look before turning back to us. “Agreed. We both had a rough cycle. We even died a few times.”
They settled down while we were left to ponder the absolute bombshell they had dropped on us. Plako seemed checked, while Dornucl and I just shared a look. I recalled what Jinsul had come up with and felt a pit form in my stomach.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked dumbfounded.
Stone looked up from where she was cuddling up next to Light. “What do you mean? Was it something I said?”
“Yes, it was something you said,” I said while trying not to hyperventilate, “You said you died. What do you mean by that?”
Both predators looked confused. “You know, the Cycle. Wake up, Die, wake up. Don’t you have the Cycle where you’re from?”
“...no…” I say in an empty voice. “By any chance, you wouldn’t happen to remember these deaths as dreams?”
The predators gave me a look of confusion, before Light nodded. I stared for an eternity, and this time the predators were the ones to give us uncomfortable looks. They whispered between themselves, occasionally shooting glances back towards us though taking no other action.
Unfortunately, our solace from their gazes didn’t last, as Stone turned back to us. “I can see that there are certainly…things that need to be sorted out between us, but I think Door-Knuckle had the right idea.”
I nodded, barely registering what he was saying. The others muttered in half-hearted agreement. Satisfied, the predators continued to snuggle up beside each other. Within moments, they were fast asleep.
We stayed quiet for a long while. Plako crawled closer to Dornucl and me. “They’re lying, right? I mean, they have to be. It’s what predators do.”
I couldn’t muster myself to answer him. Dornucl seemed flustered.
“Say something…please…” Plako pleaded, raising his voice above the whisper he had it at before. Thankfully the predators didn’t wake. We just sat there, letting it all sink in.
“It’s…let’s…” Dornucl started to say, before settling on “Damn it.”
[First] [Previous] [Next]

A number of times in scheduled debates between atheist commentators and Christian apologists, a topic will arise (or it will be the subject of the debate) where they essentially argue whether or not it is even hypothetically possible for Jesus to have risen from the dead. Sometimes, like when Dillahunty debated whoever Trent Horn, they’ll even try to argue that’s it is reasonable to believe so. Their arguments rely on things that we’ve pretty much all heard before, like the 500 ‘witnesses’, and they’ll construct a definition of reasonable or possible to make their point where “If criteria 1 2 3 and 4 are met then it is reasonable to believe something or possible for that thing to have happened.”
Resurrection has literally never ever happened before in human history.
That seriously is all of the evidence you need to argue not just that it is unreasonable to believe in Jesus’s resurrection but that it is not possible for it to have happened.
Things that are possible are not just things that we can hypothetically conceive of happening in our weird ass brains. Things that are possible are things that have actually happened before. (Edit: I mean in the context of this. Human actions.)
And just because something happened a long time ago that we don’t have all of the information for in order to 100% certainly describe what happened, does not mean that we SHOULD believe it when people claim that what happened was something that has literally never happened before nor since and that there’s no evidence could ever happen. Nor is it reasonable for you to choose to believe so, nor is it even possible for that thing to have happened, for reasons I just stated.
This is all information that Christians would be in full agreement with on every other subject including every other religion. It only appears to bother them when it comes to Christianity. Could it be because Christianity is an inherently unreasonable belief system where the only Christians you can actually have a rational discussion with are the ones who haven’t yet thrown themselves too much into the core teachings of the Bible so they haven’t yet been trained as hard in mental gymnastics?

Hello everyone. In need of general knowledge/opinions from members of the Catholic church.
I grew up going to non-denominational church with my mother while my father was Catholic (he did not attend mass except on the major holidays). I went to mass with him many times and as a child who did not understand, I did not "get much" out of it. It was always a feeling given off by adults in my life that Catholicism was "bad". I never understood where that belief came from, but I never bought into it because my father is Catholic and although I did not feel a spiritual connection while at mass, I did not feel like it was "bad". I've always found Catholicism extremely interesting and intelligent. My fiance and I are trying to figure out what denomination we want to be, as we both grew up very confused with many different influences. I still very much love the worship part of non-denominational churches and the presence of Christ I feel. However, my intellectual side struggles with the widely differing beliefs/teachings across these churches. And, I do get "bad vibes" sometimes when I watch videos about how pastors preach in this certain way to draw us in, even though what they are saying could be completely untrue or you could disagree. My fiance brings up good points about the history of the church and we should look at that and what Jesus himself founded, which brings me back to Catholicism. I guess, my biggest ask is "Why Catholicism after the Reformation movement? Why did so many people become Protestant?" As a young Christian, it is very hard to decipher all of the different factions of Christianity and try to boil it down to WHAT DID JESUS WANT ME TO DO! I really hope non of this comes off as disrespectful, I am truly trying to learn about the Catholic church and figure out if it is where I should be. Any opinions/advice are appreciated. Thank you.

Im 25 atm. I suffer with depression and anxiety. My love has been really rocky since day one. Since i first started dating at 20 ive been dealing with this. Ive suffered alot of rejection and pain due to not being able to be with woman and i struggle so much because of it. I worry and fear so much about it and I just makes me feel so empty and broken. Being single is so lonely and I dont know how to deal with most of the time. I try hard to manage and cope but Its difficult and i dont know what to do sometimes. I feel like maybe I just dont belong here because of it and so maybe Im destined to die at a young age. I really dont want to but It honestly feels like the only way out. Id rather that than live a life on my own. Am i being rational here or am I being too hasty?

Hi!
I hope someone knowledgeable will be able to guide/help me.
I am 22 years old - my problem is that I have been experiencing a strong impostor syndrome from the beginning. I have done the DIVA test three times with different psychologists. Each time I scored high, and basically, everything fits together rationally. I do indeed recognize the impostor symptom in myself. I discussed this with a friend who is finishing psychology studies and also has ADHD, and he supports my perspective.
Additionally, my father, who committed suicide, most likely also struggled with ADHD (based on the DIVA methodology, I asked the family and matched it to events that complicated his life further, plus, of course, chronic depression).Everything was rather stable until 3 days ago when I had bad lack for a psychiatrist (where I did the last DIVA and a specialist was recommended) - an online visit. I don't want to sound conceited (also, I'm not a doctor), but I had the impression that the psychiatrist I consulted often didn't know the answers to my questions and was evasive. He seemed more interested in my money than in helping and understanding me (I have seen 2 psychologists, 2 therapists, and 3 psychiatrists, so I have a comparison whether someone cares or is genuinely interested). I have scheduled my next appointment with a doctor that is leading ADHD treatment here in Poland
Returning to the point, my impostor syndrome flared up additionally when the psychiatrist stated during the interview that "the symptoms I experience are rather mild, or I somehow manage them, otherwise I would have problems with studying and working" (my professional life is okay, but about 4 times below my potential because I have issues with fluctuations in activity - I work intensely for several days, and then have a few days of a depressive period - it's not like manic-depression, it's rather about activity and the ability to motivate myself to do things, not finding less painful activities, etc.). This surprised me because I perceive them differently (and they seem more concrete than just excusing my inefficiencies). So, of course, I continued the previously started research to feel more at ease.
I was prescribed a dosage that seems non-standard: Medikinet 10mg CR daily, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and I can double it and then report back after finishing.All this has led to many questions and overthinking. The first day, 10mg didn't make much of an impression on me; it settled me a bit, I felt some interest, took the second dose in the afternoon as recommended, and, of course, couldn't sleep (despite 6mg of melatonin).
Yesterday, I took 20mg in the morning and felt the need to organize everything, and I cleaned the whole apartment, including scrubbing under the closet.Despite this, the impostor syndrome is so insidious that I keep wondering if I'm imagining things, over-researched, and adjusted the answers or interpretations of my life and events to fit the thesis.It's generally a terrible issue because I hope that after years of struggling with "depression," it will finally be addressed, and I can stop dealing with such matters and just focus on work - I am 22 years old, and my first visit to a psychiatrist for depression was around 15-16 years old.
Currently, I have the biggest dilemmas in the following areas, and I really hope someone could shed some light or guide me:

1. **Methylphenidate in a person without ADHD** - I couldn't find anything concrete on whether I can verify this - if, for example, I don't have ADHD, how should it affect me vs. someone with ADHD. It's so vaguely described on the internet that it's not clear if there's a concrete way to verify this to avoid questioning my own observations. Obviously, a solid diagnosis like a blood test or MRI for other diseases won't be available, but by nature, I'm a skeptic and need it grounded to sleep peacefully and not get into unnecessary discussions with people who barely understand the subject.
   
2. **Effectiveness of diagnostics** - I haven't encountered any data on how often diagnoses are invalidated. I read on Reddit (unfortunately, there are few better discussion places with a lot of content) that one girl had an ADHD diagnosis, took Adderall, and after about 2 years, it turned out it wasn't ADHD but some compulsive disorder. Is there any information on how many people with an ADHD diagnosis and prescribed treatment are misdiagnosed? It's known that in the USA, people sometimes stretch the truth to get Adderall, but I'm sure you understand my point and the essence of the matter.
   
3. **Dosage** - I have a bit of time left before my next appointment and wonder what I can do (but nothing stupid). My friend, for example, has 30mg CR in the morning and then has those on-demand Medikinet, which keeps him okay later in the day and doesn't cause sleep problems; he's considering switching to Concerta. From my psychiatrist, I basically got the information I already mentioned plus to avoid abusing alcohol. Is there anything I can change in these recommendations to not waste time? If I just take 30mg or 40mg in the morning (of course, gradually and checking the response weekly), am I exposing myself to any problems? I found out on my own that I won't die, but I'm interested in the effectiveness of this treatment, not messing around.
   
4. **A question completely omitted by the psychiatrist, and I didn't get any specific information, which is quite important to me**. In all the DIVA tests, I scored higher in adulthood than in childhood. In the last one, it came out as follows: Summary of symptoms according to DSM-5: I. Attention Deficit: Adulthood: 8/9, Childhood: 7/9 II. Hyperactivity and impulsivity: Adulthood: 9/9, Childhood: 8/9 III. Experienced symptoms are a source of significant problems, manifesting in at least 2 areas of life in both childhood and adulthood. After my own analysis, talking to my mom and sister, it's hard to deny that I had serious problems in areas affected by ADHD plus many “less obvious” symptoms that I learned about from PsychiatraPlus from Mr. Jóźwiak (thanks God he records because books and articles in Poland on the internet are often a disaster) in quite significant intensity. I'm still afraid of cognitive bias and fitting the situation to the thesis.
   

I noticed an increase in many symptoms attributed to ADHD after 2022 (when my father committed suicide, which involved PTSD therapy because I saw a lot, plus a depressive episode). Before, I might have had 2-3 such severe depressive episodes. I skimmed through (I emphasize because I might have missed something that would answer my question, and I don't want to appear lazy coming for a free ready-made solution) meta-analyses (The World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement: 208 Evidence-based Conclusions about the Disorder). This fragment intrigued me: "ADHD is rarely caused by a single genetic or environmental risk factor, but most cases of ADHD are caused by the combined effects of many genetic and environmental risks, each having a very small effect."
This, of course, suggested a possible scenario - a father with ADHD + trauma could have exacerbated my symptoms, hence now they are more noticeable to me than before, although it resonates more with me that conditions, tasks, and challenges I face have changed. I didn't observe myself in this regard before; I didn't have the knowledge; I attributed my failures to a different “legend” (I wasn't taught consequences, laziness, lack of discipline, if I tried harder, etc.) than ADHD. Obviously, I'm not so infantile as to expect someone to try to resolve this issue, but based on the current conclusive knowledge, how do you assess my line of thinking, does it hold together? Could I check anything else additionally?
To conclude, I know I need to find a good psychiatrist; I have one in mind, but it's pointless at this moment when I have prescriptions and "recommendations" to schedule and pay for a visit since I'll probably get not very in-depth answers (I also understand doctors don't have 2 hours to give a lecture on how and why things work), rather reassuring and "we'll observe." Whenever something stresses or confuses me, I just try to understand it, and when it turns out that my inherent skepticism activated unnecessarily, the problem disappears from the radar.
I hope someone will guide me to the right materials that will tell me a bit more about these issues. Once again, thank you in advance for any response and time spent just reading this post. If additional questions arise to provide a better answer, I am happy to respond.

Hi!
I hope someone knowledgeable will be able to guide/help me.
I am 22 years old - my problem is that I have been experiencing a strong impostor syndrome from the beginning. I have done the DIVA test three times with different psychologists. Each time I scored high, and basically, everything fits together rationally. I do indeed recognize the impostor symptom in myself. I discussed this with a friend who is finishing psychology studies and also has ADHD, and he supports my perspective.
Additionally, my father, who committed suicide, most likely also struggled with ADHD (based on the DIVA methodology, I asked the family and matched it to events that complicated his life further, plus, of course, chronic depression).Everything was rather stable until 3 days ago when I had bad lack for a psychiatrist (where I did the last DIVA and a specialist was recommended) - an online visit. I don't want to sound conceited (also, I'm not a doctor), but I had the impression that the psychiatrist I consulted often didn't know the answers to my questions and was evasive. He seemed more interested in my money than in helping and understanding me (I have seen 2 psychologists, 2 therapists, and 3 psychiatrists, so I have a comparison whether someone cares or is genuinely interested). I have scheduled my next appointment with a doctor that is leading ADHD treatment here in Poland
Returning to the point, my impostor syndrome flared up additionally when the psychiatrist stated during the interview that "the symptoms I experience are rather mild, or I somehow manage them, otherwise I would have problems with studying and working" (my professional life is okay, but about 4 times below my potential because I have issues with fluctuations in activity - I work intensely for several days, and then have a few days of a depressive period - it's not like manic-depression, it's rather about activity and the ability to motivate myself to do things, not finding less painful activities, etc.). This surprised me because I perceive them differently (and they seem more concrete than just excusing my inefficiencies). So, of course, I continued the previously started research to feel more at ease.
I was prescribed a dosage that seems non-standard: Medikinet 10mg CR daily, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and I can double it and then report back after finishing.All this has led to many questions and overthinking. The first day, 10mg didn't make much of an impression on me; it settled me a bit, I felt some interest, took the second dose in the afternoon as recommended, and, of course, couldn't sleep (despite 6mg of melatonin).
Yesterday, I took 20mg in the morning and felt the need to organize everything, and I cleaned the whole apartment, including scrubbing under the closet.Despite this, the impostor syndrome is so insidious that I keep wondering if I'm imagining things, over-researched, and adjusted the answers or interpretations of my life and events to fit the thesis.It's generally a terrible issue because I hope that after years of struggling with "depression," it will finally be addressed, and I can stop dealing with such matters and just focus on work - I am 22 years old, and my first visit to a psychiatrist for depression was around 15-16 years old.
Currently, I have the biggest dilemmas in the following areas, and I really hope someone could shed some light or guide me:

1. **Methylphenidate in a person without ADHD** - I couldn't find anything concrete on whether I can verify this - if, for example, I don't have ADHD, how should it affect me vs. someone with ADHD. It's so vaguely described on the internet that it's not clear if there's a concrete way to verify this to avoid questioning my own observations. Obviously, a solid diagnosis like a blood test or MRI for other diseases won't be available, but by nature, I'm a skeptic and need it grounded to sleep peacefully and not get into unnecessary discussions with people who barely understand the subject.
   
2. **Effectiveness of diagnostics** - I haven't encountered any data on how often diagnoses are invalidated. I read on Reddit (unfortunately, there are few better discussion places with a lot of content) that one girl had an ADHD diagnosis, took Adderall, and after about 2 years, it turned out it wasn't ADHD but some compulsive disorder. Is there any information on how many people with an ADHD diagnosis and prescribed treatment are misdiagnosed? It's known that in the USA, people sometimes stretch the truth to get Adderall, but I'm sure you understand my point and the essence of the matter.
   
3. **Dosage** - I have a bit of time left before my next appointment and wonder what I can do (but nothing stupid). My friend, for example, has 30mg CR in the morning and then has those on-demand Medikinet, which keeps him okay later in the day and doesn't cause sleep problems; he's considering switching to Concerta. From my psychiatrist, I basically got the information I already mentioned plus to avoid abusing alcohol. Is there anything I can change in these recommendations to not waste time? If I just take 30mg or 40mg in the morning (of course, gradually and checking the response weekly), am I exposing myself to any problems? I found out on my own that I won't die, but I'm interested in the effectiveness of this treatment, not messing around.
   
4. **A question completely omitted by the psychiatrist, and I didn't get any specific information, which is quite important to me**. In all the DIVA tests, I scored higher in adulthood than in childhood. In the last one, it came out as follows: Summary of symptoms according to DSM-5: I. Attention Deficit: Adulthood: 8/9, Childhood: 7/9 II. Hyperactivity and impulsivity: Adulthood: 9/9, Childhood: 8/9 III. Experienced symptoms are a source of significant problems, manifesting in at least 2 areas of life in both childhood and adulthood. After my own analysis, talking to my mom and sister, it's hard to deny that I had serious problems in areas affected by ADHD plus many “less obvious” symptoms that I learned about from PsychiatraPlus from Mr. Jóźwiak (thanks God he records because books and articles in Poland on the internet are often a disaster) in quite significant intensity. I'm still afraid of cognitive bias and fitting the situation to the thesis.
   

I noticed an increase in many symptoms attributed to ADHD after 2022 (when my father committed suicide, which involved PTSD therapy because I saw a lot, plus a depressive episode). Before, I might have had 2-3 such severe depressive episodes. I skimmed through (I emphasize because I might have missed something that would answer my question, and I don't want to appear lazy coming for a free ready-made solution) meta-analyses (The World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement: 208 Evidence-based Conclusions about the Disorder). This fragment intrigued me: "ADHD is rarely caused by a single genetic or environmental risk factor, but most cases of ADHD are caused by the combined effects of many genetic and environmental risks, each having a very small effect."
This, of course, suggested a possible scenario - a father with ADHD + trauma could have exacerbated my symptoms, hence now they are more noticeable to me than before, although it resonates more with me that conditions, tasks, and challenges I face have changed. I didn't observe myself in this regard before; I didn't have the knowledge; I attributed my failures to a different “legend” (I wasn't taught consequences, laziness, lack of discipline, if I tried harder, etc.) than ADHD. Obviously, I'm not so infantile as to expect someone to try to resolve this issue, but based on the current conclusive knowledge, how do you assess my line of thinking, does it hold together? Could I check anything else additionally?
To conclude, I know I need to find a good psychiatrist; I have one in mind, but it's pointless at this moment when I have prescriptions and "recommendations" to schedule and pay for a visit since I'll probably get not very in-depth answers (I also understand doctors don't have 2 hours to give a lecture on how and why things work), rather reassuring and "we'll observe." Whenever something stresses or confuses me, I just try to understand it, and when it turns out that my inherent skepticism activated unnecessarily, the problem disappears from the radar.
I hope someone will guide me to the right materials that will tell me a bit more about these issues. Once again, thank you in advance for any response and time spent just reading this post. If additional questions arise to provide a better answer, I am happy to respond.

Hi!
I hope someone knowledgeable will be able to guide/help me.
I am 22 years old - my problem is that I have been experiencing a strong impostor syndrome from the beginning. I have done the DIVA test three times with different psychologists. Each time I scored high, and basically, everything fits together rationally. I do indeed recognize the impostor symptom in myself. I discussed this with a friend who is finishing psychology studies and also has ADHD, and he supports my perspective.
Additionally, my father, who committed suicide, most likely also struggled with ADHD (based on the DIVA methodology, I asked the family and matched it to events that complicated his life further, plus, of course, chronic depression).Everything was rather stable until 3 days ago when I had bad lack for a psychiatrist (where I did the last DIVA and a specialist was recommended) - an online visit. I don't want to sound conceited (also, I'm not a doctor), but I had the impression that the psychiatrist I consulted often didn't know the answers to my questions and was evasive. He seemed more interested in my money than in helping and understanding me (I have seen 2 psychologists, 2 therapists, and 3 psychiatrists, so I have a comparison whether someone cares or is genuinely interested). I have scheduled my next appointment with a doctor that is leading ADHD treatment here in Poland
Returning to the point, my impostor syndrome flared up additionally when the psychiatrist stated during the interview that "the symptoms I experience are rather mild, or I somehow manage them, otherwise I would have problems with studying and working" (my professional life is okay, but about 4 times below my potential because I have issues with fluctuations in activity - I work intensely for several days, and then have a few days of a depressive period - it's not like manic-depression, it's rather about activity and the ability to motivate myself to do things, not finding less painful activities, etc.). This surprised me because I perceive them differently (and they seem more concrete than just excusing my inefficiencies). So, of course, I continued the previously started research to feel more at ease.
I was prescribed a dosage that seems non-standard: Medikinet 10mg CR daily, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and I can double it and then report back after finishing.All this has led to many questions and overthinking. The first day, 10mg didn't make much of an impression on me; it settled me a bit, I felt some interest, took the second dose in the afternoon as recommended, and, of course, couldn't sleep (despite 6mg of melatonin).
Yesterday, I took 20mg in the morning and felt the need to organize everything, and I cleaned the whole apartment, including scrubbing under the closet.Despite this, the impostor syndrome is so insidious that I keep wondering if I'm imagining things, over-researched, and adjusted the answers or interpretations of my life and events to fit the thesis.It's generally a terrible issue because I hope that after years of struggling with "depression," it will finally be addressed, and I can stop dealing with such matters and just focus on work - I am 22 years old, and my first visit to a psychiatrist for depression was around 15-16 years old.
Currently, I have the biggest dilemmas in the following areas, and I really hope someone could shed some light or guide me:

1. **Methylphenidate in a person without ADHD** - I couldn't find anything concrete on whether I can verify this - if, for example, I don't have ADHD, how should it affect me vs. someone with ADHD. It's so vaguely described on the internet that it's not clear if there's a concrete way to verify this to avoid questioning my own observations. Obviously, a solid diagnosis like a blood test or MRI for other diseases won't be available, but by nature, I'm a skeptic and need it grounded to sleep peacefully and not get into unnecessary discussions with people who barely understand the subject.
   
2. **Effectiveness of diagnostics** - I haven't encountered any data on how often diagnoses are invalidated. I read on Reddit (unfortunately, there are few better discussion places with a lot of content) that one girl had an ADHD diagnosis, took Adderall, and after about 2 years, it turned out it wasn't ADHD but some compulsive disorder. Is there any information on how many people with an ADHD diagnosis and prescribed treatment are misdiagnosed? It's known that in the USA, people sometimes stretch the truth to get Adderall, but I'm sure you understand my point and the essence of the matter.
   
3. **Dosage** - I have a bit of time left before my next appointment and wonder what I can do (but nothing stupid). My friend, for example, has 30mg CR in the morning and then has those on-demand Medikinet, which keeps him okay later in the day and doesn't cause sleep problems; he's considering switching to Concerta. From my psychiatrist, I basically got the information I already mentioned plus to avoid abusing alcohol. Is there anything I can change in these recommendations to not waste time? If I just take 30mg or 40mg in the morning (of course, gradually and checking the response weekly), am I exposing myself to any problems? I found out on my own that I won't die, but I'm interested in the effectiveness of this treatment, not messing around.
   
4. **A question completely omitted by the psychiatrist, and I didn't get any specific information, which is quite important to me**. In all the DIVA tests, I scored higher in adulthood than in childhood. In the last one, it came out as follows: Summary of symptoms according to DSM-5: I. Attention Deficit: Adulthood: 8/9, Childhood: 7/9 II. Hyperactivity and impulsivity: Adulthood: 9/9, Childhood: 8/9 III. Experienced symptoms are a source of significant problems, manifesting in at least 2 areas of life in both childhood and adulthood. After my own analysis, talking to my mom and sister, it's hard to deny that I had serious problems in areas affected by ADHD plus many “less obvious” symptoms that I learned about from PsychiatraPlus from Mr. Jóźwiak (thanks God he records because books and articles in Poland on the internet are often a disaster) in quite significant intensity. I'm still afraid of cognitive bias and fitting the situation to the thesis.
   

I noticed an increase in many symptoms attributed to ADHD after 2022 (when my father committed suicide, which involved PTSD therapy because I saw a lot, plus a depressive episode). Before, I might have had 2-3 such severe depressive episodes. I skimmed through (I emphasize because I might have missed something that would answer my question, and I don't want to appear lazy coming for a free ready-made solution) meta-analyses (The World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement: 208 Evidence-based Conclusions about the Disorder). This fragment intrigued me: "ADHD is rarely caused by a single genetic or environmental risk factor, but most cases of ADHD are caused by the combined effects of many genetic and environmental risks, each having a very small effect."
This, of course, suggested a possible scenario - a father with ADHD + trauma could have exacerbated my symptoms, hence now they are more noticeable to me than before, although it resonates more with me that conditions, tasks, and challenges I face have changed. I didn't observe myself in this regard before; I didn't have the knowledge; I attributed my failures to a different “legend” (I wasn't taught consequences, laziness, lack of discipline, if I tried harder, etc.) than ADHD. Obviously, I'm not so infantile as to expect someone to try to resolve this issue, but based on the current conclusive knowledge, how do you assess my line of thinking, does it hold together? Could I check anything else additionally?
To conclude, I know I need to find a good psychiatrist; I have one in mind, but it's pointless at this moment when I have prescriptions and "recommendations" to schedule and pay for a visit since I'll probably get not very in-depth answers (I also understand doctors don't have 2 hours to give a lecture on how and why things work), rather reassuring and "we'll observe." Whenever something stresses or confuses me, I just try to understand it, and when it turns out that my inherent skepticism activated unnecessarily, the problem disappears from the radar.
I hope someone will guide me to the right materials that will tell me a bit more about these issues. Once again, thank you in advance for any response and time spent just reading this post. If additional questions arise to provide a better answer, I am happy to respond.

My dumb ass of a husband has been giving my 60 pound 11 year old shots of hard liqour every Friday night. He is a bit of an alcoholic himself and we've had conversations about it, but this is a new low for him.
I also discovered that he has offered shots to my FRIEND'S 12 year old child, without her permission!!!!. God knows if he's tried to get my 6 year old to take some. I'm in tears. I'm so FURIOUS and disgusted and I'm trying to stay rational enough not to explode and make the situation worse.
This can't be legal, can it?? We live in Wisconsin. All I can see in terms of laws is that a minor can be given liquor if under the supervision of a guardian. But an 11 YEAR OLD?? Can someone please clarify if this truly is legal?

Throwaway account cause i don't wanna be harassed
I was hard left leaning guy (still am when it comes to economics) and used to even follow a bunch of feminist accounts and sympathized with them
But I recently stumbled into the man or bear question on tiktok and well all women's reactions was that they will choose a bear and then more or less assumed that men would be rapists/monsters and every comment and reply was the same and it just felt dehumanizing, how not even a single woman even hesitate to choose the bear, that their image of a random man is just a monster , and i tried to understand their side, i really tried, but the reasoning is just stereotyping men and was ( i still kinda cringe when i say it) sexist, and its shocking how normalised and popular it is to just hate on men to such an extent that women are incapable of even imagining it to be hurtful or sexist
And well i my search for any rational answer, i had stumbled on to hoe_math and other tiktokers who, well seemed to care...
Like i knew of redpill and i knew that it was just mysogynistic crap but all of their videos were just.... umm good, they just talked abt issues that i faced everyday abt injustices modern men face and seemed to genuinely care abt all men and our problems
I have heard leftist youtubers like vaush say that they should reach out to men but everytime they talk abt our issues it seems to just to recruit men and even then he is just blasted by other leftist and Most leftists when it came to men's issues the leftist answer is just that i am toxic and thats the problem or i have to fix it , which is wild because when it comes to any other groups there is a genuine discussion abt how to solve their problems
I have started to watch more and more redpill content and i still don't believe women are inferior to men or worse but i can't help but align myself with them as they are seemingly the only ones who seem to care
I don't know what to feel anymore its like my entire belief system is getting shattered
Can anyone suggest anything?

Christianity by far has the most denominations, 50 percent miscellaneous random Protestant denominations, 30 percent catholic and 20 percent orthodox. This is a rough estimate but still very fractured and divided. Meanwhile Islam has 85 percent Sunni. It’s very United and in order. Is this not inconvenient for Christianity and its logic? If you convert to Islam it’s usually simple, you are naturally Sunni. If you pick Christianity you have to pick and it’s hard. All summed up would you take a phone with only 2 cracks on it or a phone with 20 cracks on it?

I emotionally cheated on my partner of 5 years, with a friend I’d met online and have known for 1 year. My BP and I have been in a non-monogamous relationship for a while, but I had only started talking sexually to my friend for about 4 months. I am bisexual, and part of the purpose of our arrangement was to let me explore my sexuality before we get older. We are all in our early 20's. BP has also had the option to pursue other people. It has only been about 3 days since DDay.
I pursued my AP with my BP’s knowledge, but my relationship with them wasn’t exclusively sexual. I’d known I had been catching feelings for a while, and I was fully aware of what I was doing, even though I found it hard to admit: I was being very affectionate with them, texting with them almost as soon as I woke up, making plans to meet up with them IRL… I even started hiding Discord notifications so that BP wouldn’t see them when I received messages from them. I used pet names, possessively, and I told them I love them.
I unwittingly revealed the emotional affair to BP as I was trying to covertly manipulate my way into having the AP as a labeled partner. This is not the first time I’ve tried to change the rules of our arrangement to fit my selfish needs. I have had a pattern of unfaithfulness that I try to couch with my guilt and shame after facing my BP’s (deserved) anger and hurt.
Right now, the consequences of my actions have sent both my BP and AP into depressive episodes: both of them have talked about suicide ideation, and I myself have not stopped crying since the day my BP discovered the EA.
One of the conversations my BP and I had about our arrangement was about how I struggle with the idea of being sexually attracted to anyone that I don’t have an emotional attachment or connection with. But I know that this is but another rationalization, because one of the only concrete rules we had for our arrangement was to not fall romantically for anyone other than BP.
I have also had long standing issues with my self-esteem, and I was thrilled with the affection I had been giving and receiving from both my BP and AP.
My BP and I aren’t perfect. We have had problems throughout our 5 years, mainly with our communication. At the moment, we have also been finding it hard to schedule time for each other. BP is in college, while I have essentially dropped out and have the luxury of free time. I’ve spent a majority of that free time within that emotional affair.
None of these issues excuse my actions, however.
I genuinely care for both of them, but I am acknowledging that I acted on selfishness and a lack of respect for my BP. I know that nothing I’m feeling right now compares to what they are feeling.
I stepped out of the bounds of our relationship because I was confident that my BP would not mind/would not leave me. I rationalized that I was simply going along with the blurry boundaries of our non-monogamous relationship, that love was hard to define in the first place, or that I could be polyamorous, and this might be something I needed to pursue.
I know what I’ve done is incredibly wrong. I have put two people in harm’s way with my decisions, decisions I’d always (even subconsciously) known were going to lead to this. I had grown too used to compartmentalizing parts of myself/my feelings from my BP, I feel that this made it easier for me to hide my feelings for AP as well.
I am still honestly struggling with the idea of having to cut my friend off, even if it was the only ultimatum that my BP gave me when they discovered the affair. The fact that I hesitated, and wanted to give them closure, and stay friends with AP, hurt them even more.
Despite BP’s pleading, and despite my desire to completely prioritize BP, AP is in a very, very bad place, and begs me to stay their friend even though we can’t be romantic. We have had two very emotional phone calls about the situation even when I have been asked to go completely NC. I told them I loved them, and I do think my feelings are genuine, and I do not want them to die, but I believe a friendship between us would stay unhealthy due to everything. They live in another country and I don’t have many options besides reaching out to AP’s IRL best friend to try and help them through this, but I can’t emphasize enough how scared I am for AP due to other circumstances in their life.
I know, however, that I am most frightened by the idea of losing BP. I truly love them, and I see a future with them. We are LC right now, and I have had time to think about our relationship, and I’m certain that I am not just afraid of ending up alone. I want to make things work with them. But I have to accept that they may very well leave me, and it’s not just about what I want anymore. I must prioritize their mental and emotional health above all else, and find a way to make amends for what I’ve done.
BP deserves better. I have to give them full transparency, tell them the truth about my actions, how I felt about everything, and why I had done the things I did. I’m willing to hear how I’ve affected them as well and bear the brunt of their emotions. I have damaged their self-esteem, I have violated their trust again and again. I do not deserve to be loved the way that they do. I no longer want to save face or compartmentalize. If they hate me, if they find me disgusting, I will fully accept it.
I have to grow and change, and put an end to the harmful patterns that put the people in my life at risk. I’m scared, and I feel paralyzed, and I can’t afford therapy or counseling (and BP does not believe in couple’s counseling) but I’m not sure what else to do. I know it’s big talk, but I don’t want it to just be that forever.
I’ve been lurking on this sub since DDay and I’m welcome to hear anything from anyone, really. I know that subs like this one and AOAI are primarily occupied by people who have been married for decades, but I'm hoping it wouldn't hurt for someone like me to post about my situation. I'm hoping there is hope.
Thank you so much for reading this far.

I’m having so much anxiety that I don’t even want to be intimate with my partner. It’s unreal seeing these horrible things happening to women in America. I’m terrified for January. My (male) partner has offered to get a vasectomy but a 1/2000 chance is still not enough for me to feel safe. We have been talking about moving to a red state because we can’t afford where we live and other blue states have bad weather and the nicer ones cost similar, but I fear that this is a bad idea. I’ve tried to plan for worst case scenarios, even thought about moving to another county if the U.S. gets worse. I haven’t been able to think about anything else for the past few weeks. I’m scared that I’m going to lose the opportunity to work, vote, get an education or even worse Please if anybody has something to say for peace of mind, I really would appreciate it. I’m having a hard time thinking rationally right now, if I’m even being rational

I don't think there's anything wrong with getting a L2 label, and I wouldn't be upset at all receiving a L2 label if I thought it was accurate. But I dislike the idea of being mislabeled, and misrepresenting myself and being part of the problem between the higher need and lower need communities.
I was diagnosed last year. I am a 34 year old woman who self-suspected for 15+ years.
I joined this sub when I received my level, because I was quite surprised and sceptical due to being sure that I'm high masking. I stayed because I love this space and learn so much from the people here.
When I expressed my confusion about the level, the doctor who diagnosed me said something about not liking to give firm labels and giving me the L2 label due to the diagnosis being so recent and my many years of masking and basically white knuckling it making it likely that I'd need a lot of help processing the diagnosis, mental health/service support, etc.
I'm in the US and I don't qualify (or feel the need) for disability. I was already seeing an ADHD therapist and an ADHD coach every other week, and I did increase the sessions, but I didn't need an official diagnosis to do this. So I guess, I'm not sure what the point of a "situational" label is, and I'm annoyed because one of my things is that I need things to be very clear and correctly labeled and this is very unclear and confusing.
It's probably not rational on my part, and maybe comes from internalized ableism, but I also feel like I was made to feel comfortable with unmasking during our session, so the way I was presenting was not accurate to how I usually present outside of home. I tend to rock a lot when I'm not masking and I feel that it's such a stereotype that she immediately checked a box in her head.
I can work full time and can do a lot of things that are very hard to do with higher support needs, so I feel like I always need to explain that I am L2 on the paper but actually that's wrong, because I don't want to misrepresent or trivialize other autistic people's experience. I know it's probably not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I find this really confusing.
Anyone received a level on paper but know that it's incorrect (either higher or lower than their actual level)?

I'm an atheist, I've been so for 4 years now. But there seems to be a point where rationality doesn't seem rational anymore. I feel hopeless, empty, my atheist peers may say that's how reality is but I refuse to believe. Long story short I came across some Christian music lately, and I liked the way it made me feel? I started playing it at the gym, or when I was feeling anxious or depressed (I'm a man, 24M but I cry so much lol) and idk I just seem to overcome the ordeals. That feeling when you're doing your PR deadlift and that very little voice that speaks to you through the music, "do it for jesus" (I've felt it although ik it sounds cringe af). I had a panic attack yesterday and I played a verse which said something like ("don't be afraid and .. He who comes through me... Idk) but I just cried so hard after that. My words might be a bit incoherent and maybe it's all a big coincidence and my mind playing serious games with me, but but but.... It's something really healing and powerful.

There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.

Warning : this is probably the longest post I've ever written. It's awful. If you're expecting something short, run for your safety. Otherwise, take your time and have fun.
So Kaiser and Ness have always been pretty interesting characters since their introduction, but with the most recent chapters and especially ever since the Ness flashback, things have been intensifying and there's a lot going on around these two, especially with potential developments that might happen during the PxG match. Definitely some of my favorite characters in the story thematically.
This will be a huge post analyzing, dissecting and aiming to understand the psyches of both Ness and Kaiser, by following their stories individually, as well as how they intertwine together, how their pattern of relationship is very important to the story as a whole, as well as trying to review a lot of information in hindsight that might make a lot more sense now that we virtually have their entire stories.

Part I : Ness, the Wizard

So it all starts with Alexis Ness, a German kid born into a very stereotypical scientist family of reddit atheists, as well as the following sentence : "(my parents) taught me that it's possible to explain everything that happens on earth".
https://preview.redd.it/467quusc7s0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c94fce3eb7d93edfad74f154bcb62b3f0cc072d
This first sentence already sets a very important tone with Ness' character. He is dreamy, he's a child full of wonder with a bit of an obsession for finding magic in things, born into a family that dismisses the existence of unexplainable concepts as a whole and lambasts him for believing in them at all, even as a child. Ness is an irrational being, born into an extremely rational environment, and that fact alone alienates him from his passion, and drives him to keep going until he finds something or someone that will understand him.
Ness has a passion for the unexplainable, not the scientific unexplainable, but more the "incredible" unexplainable, things that seem too fantastic to be believed at first, and yet are still true. He also assimilates his sadness with the lack of understanding from his family among the things that he deems to be unexplainable, whether by his family or himself. Ness has a passion for magic, cannot explain why, and that's part of why he believes in magic so much. His passion is self defined.
And that passion for seeking magic in things, is also what drives him to soccer. The joy that people feel, the roaring fans, the celebrations that come from goals, Ness feels as though soccer is what will allow him to truly bring magic into this world. Which is why I theorize, that with Ness' drive for playing soccer being to bring magic on the field, he might be a self-type ego that seeks to bring magic, the same way Barou seeks the feeling of being the king of the field, or Bachira to become one with the ball (this is a very common theme with self type egos, I might make a post about this one of these days). This is a very important point if we want to understand where Ness' current development in the PxG match could be going.
https://preview.redd.it/2pwr3hio7s0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=467615cdabc6a0ae6cebea3896dd0d4a29f74989
Ness then takes matters into his own hands and trains relentlessly to pass the Bastard Munchen tryouts, the best club in Germany, so he can have a shot at turning his dream into reality. Ness plays quite well and even shows skills that should allow him to be better than the current BM selection, but he runs into a massive problem ; his individual skills do allow him to keep up, but his plays are ineffective. His magic doesn't work on the world, and the biggest reason why is that no one on the field can keep up with his thinking. Ness lacks the partner that will help make his vision come true.
https://preview.redd.it/h3t5pj628s0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20fa753b3d1e362981725295f453e7df8c592712
And that's when a certain someone makes their appearance.

Part II : Kaiser, the Blue Rose

It all starts with Michael Kaiser, a different German child with a very different upbringing, but whose destiny would end up crossing paths with that of Ness.
Kaiser grew up in the ashes of a destroyed family. His dad was a theatre director, his mom was an actress, who ended up leaving his dad soon after his birth. His father, unable to bear the weight of both an unwanted child and a failed love life, ended up sinking into alcoholism, gambling addiction and domestic violence.
His father having wasted his fortune completely and being unwilling to work, Kaiser was forced to learn how to steal very early in his life, but his disgusting father's self loathing, resentment and regret towards Michael's mother still ended up reaching him through his father's constant abuse. The treatment he got from his father was the only definition of love Kaiser has ever had, and he ended up internalizing this notion, as well as the feeling that he was not wanted in this world.
https://preview.redd.it/pbjmwago8s0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d8e88e9839891a7c7ac9e26abd27403fde3c1331
Kaiser grew up, and started saving up money from selling the more valuable items that he would steal. For his twelfth birthday, he decided to buy something for himself that would actually allow him to feel alive and closer to his far away objective of leaving his father one day. And that is how he stumbled upon football.
Unlike Ness however, who developed a passion for football simply because he saw magic in it, Kaiser developed an unhealthy attachment to football that would mimic his relationship to his father. It didn't matter how much he abused the ball, the ball wouldn't respond or protest, it'd just stay by his side silently. Kaiser saw in the ball the same form of attachment that his father showed him, he saw himself in the ball, an unwanted piece of trash that would silently take the abuse that was dished out to him. Because that was the only behavior that his father ever showed to him, Kaiser ended up assimilating abuse and violence to love. That is how Kaiser became an abuser himself, which is a very important facet of his character : cycles repeat themselves, and abusers create potential future abusers.
https://preview.redd.it/1nw0aoxs8s0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0fb7ff24ec0a70cd1c141a6084d231931d1c1b0
Where Kaiser's story really begins though is when he is framed for a crime he didn't commit and the police enter their home for a search. Kaiser gets hit by his dad, the police find the money he was keeping from his father, and he's about to lose everything that would allow him to leave this life. Kaiser, at that moment, accepts the abuse again, and decides against his own heart that he'd simply take whatever sentence he gets and start saving up money again once he's out. He instinctively changes his mind when his dad decides to poke a few holes into his soccer ball though.
https://preview.redd.it/419kda1z8s0d1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd23734280fee0a5e45b3b2f432dd3a4bc1a4437
Though Kaiser has an awful definition of what love or attachment really is, the love that he developed for football was still as pure as he could muster. And instinctively, as he sees his father about to destroy the only thing he's ever managed to feel attachment towards, Kaiser rises against the odds and fights as hard as he can. As the narrator says it himself, this is when Kaiser's identity was truly born. This is another very important element that we'll have to keep for later.
https://preview.redd.it/bwc3c8i09s0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=db6e687a46405976f724c2a652d139f9e8618dd1
Kaiser then goes on to get scouted by a certain PIFA executive named Ray Dark, who heard of the fact that he managed to take out multiple police officers with just a soccer ball. Kaiser is encouraged by Ray Dark to pass the BM tryouts, and is already determined to get as far away as possible from his former life, and this is where Kaiser's ego starts to badly mutate from its purest form, all because of the consequences of his father's abusive behavior : Kaiser is incapable of accepting any form of kindness and is very incline to violence.
Kaiser, from the second he enters the facility and starts training with the rest of the potential recruits, manages to make enemies through his extremely antagonistic behavior. He consistently picks fights, which obviously leads to situations where he's systematically in the wrong, and to people refusing to play with him in the moments that matter the most. This is where the Kaiser Impact is born ; Kaiser decides to create a weapon that won't just help him, but make sure he asserts full and total dominance over others. But he doesn't stop there.
https://preview.redd.it/vru5ubo89s0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47b1282e4c7c8a7e9f351e1624d440b5759a12c7
Kaiser starts studying elements of psychology, and his goal is strictly to find out how to manipulate someone and make sure that they would serve him during matches. He needed a lackey, that would serve him under all circumstances, and the best way to find that lackey was to find someone that was close to breaking under pressure and despair.
And this is where the BM tryouts start.

Part III : Perspectives

This is where the duo meets for the first time, and their perspectives on the situation are very different from one another, but very similar in one aspect : they provide each other with what they need.
https://preview.redd.it/vyrcjzv8as0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5d0c94fb7754c4ad6ea8c6cd5eeb352149c4e994
Ness starts out the BM tryout match very hopeful, but realizes that his individual abilities are his only functional tool and that he can't manage to spark magic with the teammates that he currently has. Ness is in a situation of despair, where he is realizing that he might not make it, and that his family was right to treat him the way they did.
Kaiser in the meantime, is in the exact opposite situation. He is alone, certainly, but also not worried : all he is doing is looking for someone with good enough skills, and in a precarious situation whose heart he can safely erode and tame. Ness needs someone to show him that magic does exist ; Kaiser needs a lackey that he can use to reach his goals. Ness needs a friend, Kaiser needs a test subject. Their relationship, is by definition profoundly unequal, and for that reason, Kaiser is also the only one of the two to be aware of that fact.
https://preview.redd.it/v9ezbkfjas0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4b0613b95305a64ebc6041d1c2b8a73052a6473a
The rest of the match is pretty obvious : Ness finds a good partner to make his imagination come to fruition, Kaiser finds a dog to feed him passes, they get a hat trick together and are selected for the BM team. The important point though, is that Ness didn't actually find despair in that match : he was on the brink of realizing that he couldn't bring magic alone, but the second he was about to either give up or awaken, Kaiser came to him and became his provider for the magic he was seeking. That is the best way to make Ness' ego, his very being, dependent on Kaiser's existence.
This panel shows this best : Ness' play would've been suboptimal for anyone else, his magic would not have been sufficient for a different player. Kaiser's individual ability however, is so overwhelming that he effortlessly brings Ness the magic he seeks. Ness' magic wouldn't have worked if it wasn't for Kaiser.
Ness has never known what it feels like to create magic alone, and therefore he associates magic to Kaiser's presence. If Kaiser himself fails, that implies a personal failure on Ness' part since it means his magic didn't function. That's an extremely important element to understand for the codependency element of these two characters, and that's part of the reason why Ness has constantly been extremely defensive of every single one of Kaiser's failures so far in the story : the same way Kaiser's dream slowly became his own, his failures feel just as much his as they are Kaiser's.
https://preview.redd.it/0pl31b2abs0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1137ca6530c1ec0ae89b1a7f0a3be49cf24f1ba3
Kaiser then goes on to become a very vicious player that specifically tries to scar his opponents as much as possible. The impossibility that Kaiser strives for, has become something he wants to incarnate for his opponents, an impossible behemoth to slay, the same way his dad was to him. Kaiser acknowledges this, however he associates the feeling of losing to such impossibility to weakness. To Kaiser, the fact that he let his father mistreat him for that long seems to be proof that he used to be a weak person, and that the true way to fight is to become just as evil and incarnate that feeling of impossibility to other people, as he says it to Ness : "Believing in the impossible is a curse, the instant people believe in the impossible is when they decide to give up. It's a survival instinct to guard against heartbreak, that's the way of weaklings, they kill themselves through this curse. Weaklings who dilute the purity of their egos to live longer are what I hate most in this world".
Kaiser has rationalized the abuse that he has gone through by assimilating his behavior to weakness, instead of recognizing this was the behavior of a child trying desperately to survive against impossible odds. The fact that he sees his past behavior as such and that he decided that he should become an abuser himself to get power back over his life, is already proof that his father's abuse won over his ego, and he doesn't know it himself. This is why his ego is fragile and diluted, and that's how he lost his way.
https://preview.redd.it/gnr2pmijbs0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e9c07a3f25650ab84e6cd8b3bc90d301a7d313b

Part IV : The reality of impossibility

This is where the NEL comes in. From what we know of Kaiser's objectives with the NEL, he has come to crush the local japanese ace, to give himself a publicity boost that would either prove to the world that he isn't inferior to Noel Noa, or to get himself a contract that would allow him to get out of his current club, both so he could compete with Noa in a less direct way, and therefore not have to face the impossible task that is destroying the system that has been built around him.
Both his intention of trying to destroy Isagi by showing him how impossible it is to beat him, and his intention to avoid beating Noa directly by instead trying to publicize himself as being a striker of equal mettle, show how his ego has been twisted from what it originally was : Kaiser has become addicted to the feeling of incarnating impossibility to other players and crushing them, and he has become very avoidant of any challenges that could seem impossible to him, the same way his father's abuse seemed impossible to overcome. He has created himself a predatory mentality unfit for a competitor, and he did it all as a survival mechanism to fight against impossible odds.
The problem really starts however, when his plan backfires, and it turns out the japanese ace specifically thrives on impossible challenges and does not stop improving. Isagi Yoichi, by the time of the PxG match, has become the incarnation of the impossible odds that Kaiser usually wants to avoid, but this time he is conflicted since Isagi is also the exact type of player that Kaiser wants to crush : he is forced to face his own fear, and the more the odds are against him, the more impossibility will catch up to Kaiser. Which is exactly what might lead to Ness' awakening.
https://preview.redd.it/cl0fcuo5cs0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2eb5a41479308384a1dc7cdb9f4be2a40891ea55
Since Ness attributes his magic to Kaiser's success, seeing Kaiser fail (and maybe even resent him for it), is most likely what will bring Ness to the pit of despair that he got to escape from back in the BM tryouts. Ness will have to face his fear of not being able to bring magic to the world alone. And with what's been foreshadowed, I believe Ness' awakening will come with some sort of cooperation with Isagi, which in turn will make Kaiser realize that he is back to facing the impossible behemoth that he faced not so long ago. This is what will make him revert to his purest ego. But what is his purest ego exactly ?

Final part : Conclusions, and Kaiser's true ego

We finally get to the part where I stop holding everything back and I tell what's on my mind.

1. I'll start with something very important : duos in Blue Lock are always doomed unless they become more than the sum of their parts.

Kaiser and Ness' duo made me realize it, especially with their very obvious parallels to Reo and Nagi, but duos often start out with one of the players (and sometimes both players) attributing a part of their ego to their partner. That right there, is exactly how egos are stifled.
In the case of Kaiser, though his intention was to manipulate Ness, he ended up creating an association in Ness' mind where though Ness sees his purpose in life to bring magic through football, he attributes his ability to bring magic to Kaiser, which means that in Ness' mind, he is incapable of doing it alone. I don't believe that's the case, but for Ness to prove it to himself, he has to try doing it first. The PxG match is the perfect opportunity for this, but that's not all.
https://preview.redd.it/p2zv1za0es0d1.jpg?width=1124&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dad6ddd89aca9f05adb18cc06825f6337f7b3702
Sae and Rin are also a very important example of this, since Sae knew from the start that having Rin associate him to his ego and use him as a reason to play football was a death sentence for both of them. I believe that Sae truly does want to win the Champion's league with his brother, but has let go of that dream and has tried to force Rin to do it as well to make sure both of them would reach their potential before hitting the wall that is the world level.
Reo has always attributed his dream of winning the world cup to the fact that he has Nagi by his side, and cannot really imagine achieving this dream without him. However, if Reo truly wants to evolve, I'm sure a lot of you are already anticipating this, but he has to let go of Nagi and evolve alone, which he most likely will do during the Manshine-Barcha match. Nagi himself doesn't have an objective, and has always improved as a player with the intention of helping Reo achieve his dream, which means that part of his ego is simply helping another player achieve his. Unless the both of them seperate at least temporarily, then Reo will never gain the confidence to achieve his dream alone, Nagi will never gain the ego to have his own dream and play football for the sake of his own passion, and neither of them will be able to cooperate on their common vision of winning together. And the way I know all of this ?
Is because Isagi and Bachira have already showed us the path of how a good duo functions. Bachira almost never awakened his true ego all because his loneliness made him see Isagi as essential to his well being, it forced him to look for players that would be able to keep up with his best football, and when he found them, he already thought he had won. Bachira realized that the only way he could keep playing with the players he admires and wants to rival, is by believing in his way of playing football instead of putting his belief in someone else. This is how duos survive : by having both players becoming better and fulfilled individually, and constantly pushing each other to individually become better before they rely on each other for victory.
https://preview.redd.it/bcjasudces0d1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6339a69e35ab6868f134742dbd1b56cd1db4d27

1. To get back to Kaiser and Ness, what that means is that Ness' evolution has to come at the cost of his dependence on Kaiser, and Kaiser's evolution has to come at the cost of the introspection he has to do to understand where his true nature comes from : this specific moment.

https://preview.redd.it/19jdamedcs0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=14f345c0c401e1be17aae850a33fc3faf259303b
My belief is that Kaiser's ego to incarnate the impossible isn't actually wrong, it's just taken from the wrong perspective. What Kaiser was since the very start, isn't a mindless perpatrator of violence that does it out of pleasure for crushing others : What Kaiser is, is a survivor.
\"I'll leave here someday.\"
No matter how tough the situation, no matter how much his father beat him, Kaiser never stopped believing or dreaming that he would one day free himself from his situation and rise against adversity. It might've been a small flame at first, but when his ego truly awakened was when he actually fought back for the first time. Kaiser isn't an impossible being because he is an unbeatable, violent monster, he is an impossible being because he rises against impossible odds no matter what.
\"The boy dreamed about going on a journey someday.\"
He is unfathomably resilient, and that is something that was very specifically cultivated from his experience of victimhood : Kaiser couldn't have become this kind of person if he was simply an abuser the same way his father was (which is currently what is stifling his ego), the only way he can be this impossible being is by going through what he did and surviving.
And in fact, that's also something that been shown in the manga already. After all, the only moment so far where Kaiser has showed us what could be his greatest performance, was when he had to rely on a play Isagi made to get a goal opportunity, and managed to beat 4 defenders (one of them being the best U20), culminating in a goal that's impossible to replicate even for the greatest players. Kaiser might be a self type ego that seeks impossible situations to reach flow.
https://preview.redd.it/rcpi8xb3ds0d1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b64e5c2db2df699852631c44c4f308fb3efc417
A player's personality is often reflected through their playstyle : that's the case with Kaiser, with his KI symbolizing his impossible dominance, and his MV symbolizing his manipulative way of playing with people ; which is why I don't believe it's a coincidence that the one time Kaiser has truly made a play no one else could replicate was when all odds were against him. And yet ironically, this is also the goal that Kaiser hates the most, because he still hates his younger self for not having fought back until the last moment. What he sees as weakness, is what is actually his greatest strength.
Anyways if you've read this far, thank you very much and congratulations, and if you have any, please tell me your thoughts in the comments.

I've been trying very, very hard to like this game and it simply has too many problems for me to turn a blind eye to. It's simply one of the worst games I have ever played, and I don't understand why it isn't criticized more rationally, I simply don't get it. It's like it was designed to not be fun around every corner. I think there's a good game in there somewhere, I like the Monster Hunter inspirations, but every time I boot it up it's an unbelievable chore to do anything, and I realize, this simply isn't fun. Also, the dialogue is offensively terrible, and never ending. It's okay to like this game, but I simply can't believe people say it's good without critizing it's many, many bad design decisions.

Sorry for any mistakes. My english isn't good enough.
Background: Men with 23 years, no college formation yet.

Section 1

1. How do you work? Why do people go to work? Are there any parameters that determine whether you can do work or not? What are they?
   I work very slow. I don’t have problems working faster for a while, but if is too much starts to annoy me. We works humankind needs recurses to act and solve our existencial and material problems. But i can’t exclude other forces among work like capital, the human “progress”. The parameters for my work is something abstract, technological, creative and philosophical. I often like write about ideas, deal with machines and computers, reading about political philosophy. I have problems to get a job on those areas because i dont have iniciative to chase it.
   
2. How do you determine the quality of work? How do you determine the quality of a purchase? Do you pay any attention to it?
   I determine the quality of work if it brings expected results and seems organized. The same for a purchase. I don’t pay any attention for it, i just want may these things fulfill their role, whatever the cost.
   
3. There is a professional next to you. How do you know they are a professional? How do you evaluate their skill?
   

I would know he is a professional because he/she have a whole theorical and pratical (how to do) informations about something. Well informed, decisive, calm and chill, deeply in their knowledge.

1. If you struggle to do something, how do you fix that? Do you know if your performance is better or worse than others?

I fix that with research and studying about this problem. I also look for discussions and informations about some topic and after i could act or not about it. I guess is worse, in my mind is. But people often says compliments me about my work and proactive attitude.

1. How do you measure the success of a job? What standard do you use? Do you pay attention to it? When should you deviate from this standard?

I say is terrible. I dont like my job (i work with security in a airport). I really want to get out here because its not the area that i’m good for. I don’t have a standard here. I don’t pay any attetion for it.

Section 2

1. What is a whole? Can you identify its parts? Are the parts equivalent to the whole?

A whole is the sum of the partes. The parts its the delimited entities and can’t be the whole itself. Yes, they are equivalent to the whole.

1. What does "logical" mean? What is your understanding? Do you think that it correlates with the common view? How do you know you are being logical?

Logical means the correct way to think. In my understanding is no contradiction. No, people often confuse logical with opinions and feelings, they make appeals for common sense and call it logical. I dont’t mind being logical all time, i know logical its a tool for some subjects not whole life subjects. I rather being rational with evidences and good arguments of all types to speak.

1. What is hierarchy? Give examples of hierarchies. Do you need to follow it? Why or why not? Explain how hierarchy is used in a system you are familiar with.

Hierarchy is an “effective” way to organize most people in society, and its a good way to exploit at the same time. I dont need it, i work better for my own because i have a good vision of situations. Hierarchy its just a way to organize people with no imagination, inteligence or self control to works better and become “usefull” for society. Its a tool for efficience and control.

1. What is classification? How does classification work? Why is it needed and where is it applied? Give examples.

Classification is a way to agroup similar things or parts of the whole for better understanding. As a said before is for best understanding. In theorical subjects, but it can be used in any area or activitie to became easier. In socionics for an example: Too much categories (making me sleepy sometimes) but get easier to understand.

1. Are your ideas consistent? How do you know they are consistent? How do you spot inconsistency in others' ideas?

Yes i’m. Because i have evidences and observations to show and prove my point. Normally using logic, or evidences that can’t fit in their positions.

Section 3

1. Can you press people? What methods do you use? How does it happen?

No, i can’t. I just use arguments, ask polite to someone does something or giving advices. I just can’t feel comfortable doing this.

1. How do you get what you want? What do you do if you have to work to get what you want?

I prepare myself to get something, i plan in my head and think about the worse possibilities before. If i want a work i prepare myself, for an example i studied english a lot to get a better job in airport (i continue looking for an one new job).

1. How do you deal with opposition? What methods do you use to defend your interests?

I just became independent of them. I organize my life in a way i can’t be bothered by them. When i need to do, or defend my interests i just use argumentations and my polite nature to get it.

1. When do you think it's ok to occupy someone's space? Do you recognize it?

NO. GOD NO. I hate the idea of became annoy or occupy other’s space, because i hate it and i avoid people like this. Yes, i often knows when someone is occupying my space and avoid it as a hell.

1. Do others think you are a strong-willed person? Do you think you have a strong will?

No. Unfortunately i don’t. I don’t have a strong will. Because of that i feel myself stopped in life :’)

Section 4

1. How do you satisfy your physical senses? What examples can you give? What physical experiences are you drawn to?

I satisfy my pshysical sens with food, coffee and tea (too much) and video game. I drawn to video game and confortable experiences in my home. I dont get out there often.

1. How do you find harmony with your environment? How do you build a harmonious environment? What happens if this harmony is disturbed?

I don’t find it. My room is usually a mess. My harmony It’s disturbing when someone takes that relaxation away from me.

1. What does comfort mean to you? How do you create it? Comfort is where I can recharge my energy. That's basically my sofa and my bed.
   
2. How do you express yourself in your hobbies? How do you engage yourself with those things?
   

I express myself as very imaginative in my hobbies, like video-game and reading. When writing i usually make a lot of good and rational arguments from different sources.

1. Tell us how you'd design any room, house or an office. Do you do it yourself, or trust someone else to do it? Why?

I have never done something like this. But if i pay someone to do, i will ask for something classical like mafia office. I trust someones else because i do not have a good asthetic taste.

Section 5

1. Is it acceptable to express emotions in public? Give examples of inappropriate expression of emotions.

I don’t express my emotions and public and i usually see people who does that as inaprippriate. Examples of inappropriate expressions of emotions is: Crying or any reason, anger, happiness, and etc.

1. How do you express your emotions? Can you tell how your expressions affect others in a positive or negative way?

I’m very open with people i like or knows enough. I can be silly and laugh a bit. I don’t have any ideia about how i affect other people.

1. Are you able to change your demeanor in order to interact with your environment in a more or less suitable way? How do you determine what is suitable?

No i can’t. I’m very sloopy trying to be friendly so i usually don’t try. I don’t know. I think i don’t care about and this is it.

1. In what situations do you feel others' feelings? Can you give examples of when you wanted to improve the mood of others?

Just when someone being openly agressible with me. I usually dont mind to improve anyones mood, but when i do i try to cheer up a little people who i like with advices, or when i flirt with somone i like. Or when i know someones who faces problems with social skills like i had.

1. How do others' emotions affect you? How does your internal emotional state correlate or contrast with what you express?

Affect me when they’re judging me by their standards, or when annoying me to do something quick.

Section 6

1. How can you tell how much emotional space there is between yourself and others? How can you affect this space?

With most people i put a big distance. With people i like i’m very warm with hugs, kisses and stupidy jokes (not too much). I can deal greatly with this space.

1. How do you determine how much you like or dislike someone else? How does this affect your relationships?

Based on my conversations topics, and how openly and honest the person acts towards me. I don’t know it affect my relationship.

1. How do you move from a distant relationship to a close one? What are the distinguishing characteristics of a close relationship?

With conversations when we have na oportunity. They are often openly and social people, who carry on with serious and silly conversations with black humor included and also helps me when i need (rare)

1. How do you know that you are a moral person? Where do you draw your morality from? Do you believe others should share your beliefs on what's moral? Why?

I don’t know, i just have my beliefs and values but i dont think a lot about it. I dont know where it from. Yes, but only when the conversations shows na oportunity and never mix moral and rational subjects.

1. Someone you care about is acting distant to you. How do you know when this attitude is a reflection of your relationship?

I usually knows what i did for be treated like this. But if i dont, i think they doesnt have reasons for this so i just get myself away from. If they take iniciative to speak, i’ll be open to understand i say sorry.

Section 7

1. How can you tell someone has the potential to be a successful person? What qualities make a successful person and why?

Someone who have strong will, good theorical undestanding and pratical knowledge too. Because those skills i said, allows anyone to act in any area.

1. Where would you start when looking for a new hobby? How do you find new opportunities and how do you choose which would be best?

When i get depressive for doing not all day. So i start to look for something new. I make cost benefit analysis, and think about the long term benefits.

1. How do you interpret the following statement: "Ideas don't need to be feasible in order to be worthwhile." Do you agree or disagree, and why?

No. They need to be. If isn’it dont have any effect in real world so: whats the point?

1. Describe your thought process when relating the following ideas: swimming, chicken, sciences. Do you think that others would draw the same or different connections?

When i swim i just want to get some fun. Chicken is a good domesticated animal for humankind feed their stomachs. Science is the best way to achieve innovations and overcome all disaster that nature put on our paths.

1. How would you summarize the qualities that are essential to who you are? What kind of potential in you has yet to be actualized and why?

Good ones: Inteligent, good memory and associative thinking, very adaptable, very calm and chill, a good problem solver, no intrusive. Bad ones: Revanchist, very critic, relationship issues, arrogance, problem with rules and deadliness, burocratic issues. I hate daily life.

Section 8

1. How do people change? Can you describe how various events change people? Can others see those changes?

No they not change. The essence of people’s character never really change. People just change when they make a good self critic and its very hard sees someone who does that.

1. How do you feel and experience time? Can time be wasted? How? Yes. You can estimate how much time a task takes. You can plan how you wanna use your time. You can set deadlines for whatever you are doing. Time can be wasted on things you don't value because you can't gain back time.

Time is very important to me. I can see things very distant in my imagination but act abour this is hard. So i waste times often with relaxing times or doing activities out my plans. I dont set deadlines, i just know what i want to do and for how long to give the next step. I guess the absence of deadlines destroys my progress.

1. Is there anything that cannot be described with words? What is it? If so, how can we understand what it is if language does not work?

No it isnt exist. All things can be described by words instead being difficult to do.

1. How do you anticipate events unfolding? How can you observe such unfoldments in your environment?

I usually antecipate the worse possibilitie and act towards that to avoid it. I think if this worse never happen, i’ll be surprise for something godd and will be prepared for anything bad.

1. In what situations is timing important? How do you know the time is right to act? How do you feel about waiting for the right moment?

Every situation. We need to know how long you can waste time and when stop. Waiting for a rigth momment is important for not waste energy with bullshit. The right momment is always builded before.
I’ll be glad if all of you help me with yojr opinions. How much details, better .

Introduction

Christian religious education is defined as the process where by Christian learning takes place. It often involves “teaching which enables practicing Christians to adopt and deepen their Christian belief, values and dispositions to experience and act in a Christian way. It depends to a greater extent on how this process is adopted and practiced in different churches.

Different practices in Christian education in local churches

At some degree of certainty that all Christian churches have a similar aim’s and practices. The liturgical aspect is of paramount importance in the Trinitarian belief and practices in that it serves as introduction to what Christianity is all about. This is where the process of Cognitive learning takes places it involves the worship service where hymns are sang, lessons extracted from the books of the bible are read, sermon often punctuated with exhortation, admonishment and instruction in righteous living is delivered and prayers are said. It also involves the celebration of the holy Eucharist which Jesus Christ himself, recognized as the head of the church, initiated based on experience acquired in the worship service, it can be seen as Christian religious education is a confessional churchly activity of evangelism, instruction and nurture.
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I assure that “Youth are the most critical of all critics when it comes to religion”. Today, common inhabitants do pray and accept the holiness in church for Christ which they are aware that Christ constitutes the sacred bread and wine, but do not entirely act upon worshipping and fail to confront the thoughts and feelings to masses which would spread dignity of godliness among selves. The moral lies in the fact that this creates lackness to reach spiritual beliefs through worship and liturgy resulting in declination the faith which affects the divine nature approaching positivity.
Christian education is a vital important part in youth development. For Christian education to be explored, generation of today should be brought into contact through various practices. In the early centuries, reformers emphasized and trusted true faith and doctrines, to change and reform behaviour as the only solution for salvation in Christian education. Christian school movements prove a challenge as a messenger to convey god’s given mission and honour god.

Traditional approach

This approach was practiced since many decades and is still continued to be practiced which helps in binding and governing the ethics and morality within the religion and belief. Since beginning described, in leaving our homeland to teach the gospels throughout the world through scriptures, god conveyed his message – by sending his son Jesus for us, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Church, and Baptism for building unity.
Christianity consists of three things – Religious faith, way of life and community of mankind towards salvation are most important. The most vital of all belief preached is that there is only one god. The term Christian does not imply on the fact that a Christian should grow up in a Christian community, but precisely accepts Christian faith and belief, follows and leads the path of life on which Jesus walked on and made mankind accept Christian community through involvement and participation physically and mentally, as a result, traditional approach is how the local churches and preachers go about conducting their services. The apostle’s creed was apparently developed to summarize the Christian doctrine for man who baptised himself.

Theological and Biblical approach

This approach is regarded as an abstract discipline which teaches what bible is written. It is the study of god expressing god’s thought. The movement of bible indicates the doctrines to the kerygma to didache, to theological ethics, to revealed truth, to the way of living in Christian community.
God’s salvation to the world, worshipping the holy spirit, baptizing people in the name of god, preaching gospels as the word of god, share Christ’s own body and blood as bread and wine in holy communion, repenting and confessing god’s forgiveness etc are the concepts of theological and biblical foundation to Christian education. Even though mankind is aware but fail to involve due to the increasing evil and greed.
The service is organized to accept the call of god and to love him and others and which aims to gather people to worship him in return allowing him to take control over the world and through his presence spread peace, righteousness, justice, joy and helps in the growth of the life in an individual through increased faith.

Activities organized and performed in different local churches through to these practices

Some churches develop the initiative of the worshippers by confessing their faith in the words of the apostle creed. Each activity is correlated and composes a range of varied elements. Their current activities reflect the lives of an individual and drive them for a purpose through various numbers of activities to attain a better quality of life.
Due to activities, all age group gain variety of skills through many spiritual centred activities. Church acts as an interpreter between god and the worshippers to support in training the composition of these activities which are far more complex to solve a disturbed youth. They have to thereby standardize their curriculum and activities in regards to implement it. Different denominations organize activities to resolve the aim therefore to meet the need of the youth. Curriculum should be more focused than just on providing knowledge.
Activities are necessarily planned to build youth commitment. I believe it is necessary to reach them, i.e. train them to be strong future leaders. They should be kept one step ahead, for their life is very challenging. I believe that the best way to outreach youths mind is to be a youth like them to understand their psychology as it differs from every individual. The same activities do get affected as the youth is choosy and subtle.

Changing activities for tomorrow

Here the question is voiced that, what substantial change can be brought apart from the current activities to eradicate the above upcoming and dynamic problems in nature with respect to behavioural management or of what medication of healing would work out.
I would comment, the activities in the practices should be expanded and conduct likewise programmes workshops on educating purity before marriage, sex, child abuse, exploitation, rape, adultery, adolescence sex, teenage mothers, drugs addiction, aids, and divorce. Workshops, seminars for sex, abuse, peer mentoring, identifying preventive measures instead of curative measures targeting the social, political and the economical factors would be effective for incorporating the overall issues to bring the insight of the good and evil sides of every consequence, discussion on essential real life skills. Our goal is to create “world changers”, inviting the sacrifiers of evil and giving and sharing healthy priorities to save ourselves and the world, before it becomes a terrible fate and a debt for our own selves.
As the world is in unsafe fists of crime, terrorism, corruption, violence, youth have been diverted to a fast-paced and expects instant opportunities. Perhaps, the approaches of these local activities tend to be helpful and may bring positive results but I still feel that there is something missing, to monitor the youth from within. In an article – Practical: The Role of the Full-Time Youth Pastor in the Local Church, by Graeme Codrington, Denomination: Baptist (All), submitted on, May 18, 1997, states that, “In a world that is so busy, and demands so much of all of its inhabitants, young people need a secure environment, where they can experiment and decide who they want to be. They need significant people to be there to help them through this process. They need role models to follow”.
Above statement eventually satisfies the fact that these folks are craving for friendly support socially and for stimulation. Overall factors which conglomerate are peers, parents, teachers, church members and Christian community. All factors rely on one common feature which constitutes leadership. Ironically, most youth do understand the surrounding factors but the factors themselves become tough unknowingly that they can’t quite control the situation which then becomes too late to recover. The task is questioned commonly as what kind of leader a person should be to prove creditability and capability to influence the youth to pursue the direction towards god? In an article again stated by, Graeme Codrington, Denomination: Baptist (All), – Practical: The Role of the Full-Time Youth Pastor in the Local Church, submitted on, May 18, 1997, “Young people are not just “little adults” (cf. Elkind 1984:18). They are complex individuals who are battling to deal with the awesome transformation of their bodies, minds, and emotions. They are in a time of transition and growth, developing from the birthed bundle of potential to a fully integrated, functional member of society. The church is in a unique position to assist in this process”. Church as a role model fosters spiritual growth in every youth making them responsible to participate in Christian faith; she is a sign for an entrance of the god’s kingdom to the world of salvation, repentance, justice and peace to bring equality. She struggles hard and performs her duties wholly and solemnly reminds parents to structure their offspring’s life in Christian formation.
Church members acting as supporters, preach to establish and to promote a platform and share to encourage several types of civic, cultural, religious educational associations. In an article by Arthur Paul Boer – What must a Pastor know? Reflection on Congregational studies defines on writer James Hopewell’s statement saying beyond the embarrassment. “He has also observed that churches are sometimes chagrined by the change of hypocrisy and lament that they cannot measure upto ideals of Christian community”. Writer James Hopewell referred by Arthur Paul Boer notes that Christian leaders are incharge and build a church thereby rise in hypocrites. I observe practically that, though the world is changing, church strategy is also changing in complementing the growth. It still targets the set mission. Even though, somewhere in the corner hypocrites do exist but church leaders aim to find out what is the outcome in the people from the traditional, theological and biblical practices.
Perhaps according my research, I suggest they experiment bringing out good approaches to youth’s growth. Instead of the current activities followed in churches I would want to suggest the approach can be focused to bring in the outcome irrespective to exploration and innovation of ideas and thoughts for internal and external behaviour of an individual related to the surroundings around him, deepening of commitments to the teaching, provide opportunities to analyse socially and theologically and viewing his life in a theological manner. To build a framework of an activity consist of – to have an experience “like us”, to sense new boundaries by exploring new links to every Christian among themselves and to god across social and cultural boundaries.
In addition, exploration and inventive programmes can be executed to judge youth’s spirituality. Daily opportunities resulting in disorientation gets support through mission of god. Integration conceptual activities also can help in building and to capture ‘a born leader’. Church leader serves them as task leaders in the corrosion and freeing the task of a disconnected mind by planning tactics and dividing the burden of other’s through consultation. As the purpose is commitment, to serve the lost, skill based leadership formation training programmes can be organized to develop an effective leader so as to sustain the capability and capacity of the leader to solve the complaints lies in the dimensions of the ability. Workshops on intersections to shape boundaries of an individual and communities through theological and biblical language, symbols, and rituals to attain certain centered objectives.
As growth of globalization is tremendous, these leaders come across and face new opportunities and challenges. I believe they help in building an integral performance in conducting entrepreneurial business-based activities, describing the activities because youth’s mind is business-oriented, therefore the activities are to be structured keeping business in mind involving biblical and theological approaches with the existing resources for a business oriented youth. They tend to produce facilitate management sources to sustain and develop faith and love. When the youth develops a church from within, he will be able to observe and analyse the holistic environment.
The activities require presence of not only church members but also worshippers for youth development in successful implementation of these practices. Some worshippers form in small groups, some large varied to race culture. Arthur Paul Boer also examines simultaneously that when a group of pastors were having service of congregation, one among them exclaimed in deep breath “It showed me I’m not alone”. So often in our churches we berate ourselves for problems we face: not enough men, too few youth, preponderance of a certain race or culture. He is clear with the fact that a single person fails, unity increases strength. We ourselves give birth to a problem and then strive hard to face it because as there are few leaders left to catch a grip to support a large community. Due to less number of youth, less support is achieved to sustain the laws and policies of the church and unable to accomplish god’s mission. It is not only one who contributes but many. Above mentioned statement “It showed me I’m not alone” expresses that each race and culture form their own group; build small churches for their own community within their own boundaries, where god expects togetherness, wholeness. It requires lot of efforts to help small churches grow whereas large church with mass contribution grows as their already exist efforts in large numbers which take over the chained actions for development. Whether single church group or many, big or small, the development is important.
On this contradiction, I would suggest that this also includes that in small group the development is paid more attention and given a close eye, problems are spotted quickly and easily to meet the challenges. No matter how large or small challenges occur, the way we approach it is unique and comprehensive as this brings out effects of development in the youth. Whereas in large it becomes difficult to assist as there are more than one individuals. Due to small groups according to races and culture, differentiation exists. But the important criterion is group commitment and work effort in all sets of practice for congregations in any race or culture for a healthy youth so that to accomplish god’s mission. As a result both objectives are co-related to each other.
To understand the nature of Christian youth it is a very distinguished and a unique phenomenon. Due to the increasing issues of ‘peer pressure’, this has led to the obstruction in the development of youth. There are negative as well as positive aspects of it. Negative aspects influence a weaker mind. It is the most consistent findings revealed in observation. Due to the inquisitive innocence, an innocent becomes a prey of the negative aspect, thereby exploited and develops an evil companionship where he adopts negative qualities and habits. But there is positive aspects as in there are some groups who work towards peer relationship. Here innocent gets an opportunity to identify his fear, weakness and have control over his own power. The peer mentors play the part in organizing programmes to understand the behaviour. They interact with the teens and open lines of communication, build up action plans to change the behaviour by using the discipline skills wherever necessary. As church members play an integrate role, it is a challenge for them to develop the youth and make Christian education reachable to them.
Teachers are responsible preachers. Youth growth depends on a teacher infact they are the true facilitators of our learning, are Baptist figures and true authors of an individual’s life book. They also act as the resource developer and planner setting the curriculum for the healthy growth of an individual, depending how the curriculum is designed with the kind and level of leadership skills to recognize the youth psychology. Parents play a significant role in Christian education. They are the promising leaders which shape up Christianity, infact are the real teachers of Christian education. Parents act as a moral standard and support, therefore can synchronize to their growing youth to be aware from their early hood to gain knowledge in Christian faith and this is done when they themselves too experience a fullness of church.
Misunderstandings and miscommunication between parents and their children are one of the issues which follow breakings in the development of the youth. Due to parent’s own principles, for respect and love of family values often creates harmness to the children’s growth which tempts them to behave against them. Thus youth becomes a totalitarian of his own life by going against the values and ethics and unknowingly gets stucked in the torturous situations. Most Christian youth, fail to act upon the 10 commandments of bible.
I must say, I myself as a youth in my real life experience have observed that the originality of the commandments has changed excessively and replaced with the following:
Thou must worship money
Thou must “lyrically” murder
Thou must have evil possession
Thou must have sex
Thou must enjoy drug addiction
Thou must prosper, worship own self
Thou must not feel guilty
Thou must have no respect for ancestral values
Thou must not serve, sacrifice
Thou must differentiate
Due to the above, youth fails to feel guilty in which guiltness is a part of our conscience creating a false belief system as an obstacle in his maturity and creating structure of his own. Under such circumstances he avoids promoting prayer, sacrifice, grace, redemption, worship and meditation, atonement. Considering money and sex are the only two things reliable to satisfy the needs, creating a limitation and a boundary for establishing personal spiritual growth and development.
In general terms, when the efforts of religious and educational institutions, society lack to perform the planned task for Christian education, a positive approach is expected and constructed to gain knowledge and teaching through parents and teachers. Youth must be aware of guiltiness which is a gift from god to help us in being and doing well.
Still the question is raised in a Journal: Volume 5 Number 4, October 2003 by Author Charlene Tan, “Can Christian teachers and parents teach Christian beliefs without indoctrinating their students and children?”
Yes, they can teach Christian beliefs without indoctrinating their students and children they need to be careful when a child is to be handled as their minds are immature. At times it is difficult to understand them because their way of thinking is varied. Firstly before going to the next process, the first process has to be resolved. As teachers and parents are the role models for the development. In order to develop and understand these three role models should be systematically developed first. Only by abiding this rule, they can achieve the development in child. But the point lies beneath that how teachers and parents can prove themselves as an effective source of development by keeping in mind the relative factor of Child’s mind compatibility and psychology? As there are variations in psychological behavior teachers and parents should be mentally prepared, be changeable and adjustment oriented accordingly.
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The political and current affair of the nation is affected by corruption and evilness rationally which gave birth to vivid factors like jealousy, modesty and so on, making human’s built a tendency to mislead the positive factors. The situations have made the teachers adapt those inequalities within them, affecting the surrounding factors. Parents have too due to their increasing self priority created barriers of understanding among their families.
Many people are often drawn towards the attention of the church because of their felt needs and not for spiritual needs.
For instance, it does occur that why the youth is tuned out of his own way? Even in their interaction with their own members it tends to happen with them that they fail to hear a word said to them – stating “I didn’t hear a word you said?”, even though it is obvious that they have said something relating to us. This proves a kind of negligence in contacting the positive mechanism which grows in the back of our minds. Such system blocks all the wanted and useful messages allowing us to hear and see only what our mind tells us to hear and believe. As this tendency is increased in the youth generation, it is creating gaps between a believer and faith of god.
The question is – How? How can we overcome this problem? Youth have themselves developed a capacity in mind to hear only what pleasures them without taking a decision that whether it is false or truth. My query is – How we can bring these groups of youth closer to god? Unconsciously resulting in unexpected calamities and unknowingly they are unable to repent it wisely. Due to this increasing factor, youth can’t get a grip of effective communication and develop themselves internally. Here the parents then enter the scene to play their role.

The main question lies whether the local churches fulfill and meet to mature disciples in Christian education?

As stated above, ‘youth’ are the most critical of all critics when it comes to religion. In this modern era, youth is distracted to church because they are building castles in air due to the unmaterialistic desire. Youth today have focused their vision to crave success and prosperity for their rising life graph; they exploit their own ones due to greed and selfishness. During the primary phase of struggle and hard work, youth craves to achieve prosperity, at the same time, do thank god and accept his involvement for success, but hand in hand, lack to follow the bibles ethics which says to respect others in and with unity. Due to the competition and growth politically, more often youth seem to push the fellow mates and strive to takeover their place. They themselves are unaware that they give birth to exploitation and inequality. And due to inequality, unity is declined, wherein bible does not specify inequality. In a book source, Pastor – “Rick Warren’ – illustrates in his book – The Purpose-Driven Church -“The issue is church health, not church growth!” declares warren. “if your church is healthy, growth will occur naturally. Healthy consistent growth is the result of balancing the five biblical purposes of the church.”
In addition to this he also declares that “If u concentrate on building people, God will build the church”.
I agree at a certain point with the above statement. I herewith would want to magnify on “How would one build a healthy youth for a healthy church”? In this sense I believe that both are co-related with each other. Again the issue arises in my mind ‘How will the church be healthy if the youth is unhealthy?’ The issue can’t be only concentrated on church. For a church to survive, the basic foundation is the youth and for the youth to be saved and attracted the church has to be healthy. In my knowledge it is a ‘Vicious Circle’.
Local churches upto some extent do specifically fulfill the discipleship through the practices and play a great emphasis in fulfilling and conveying the message of god to us, but still lack to read the minds and bring the youth closer to her, for which she has to upgrade her atmospheric appearance with new packages to reach the youth in a new taste due to the competitive modernism which is hovering on the youth.
The latter part can play the best part coz when first falls in place, everything else falls in place, from the beginning to the end, from all angles in all walks of life. Towards a healthy faith, healthy church can turn and seed a growth of spirituality through which mankind will grow spiritually from within thereby causing church growth.
Author Perry G. Down states in his book – “Teaching for spiritual growth” that ‘how can we best enable Christians to grow towards maturity?’ For this question he suggests three key concepts- ministry, believer, and purpose. But my understanding says that these concepts are incomplete somewhere to create a bond in reaching the results because today’s youth is attracted towards the unrealistic worldly matters, but has resulted in declination towards the god’s spiritual growth. The major role connecting these three concepts is commitment and effort. As the church ministry is the foundation pillar, the main aim is how much measure of commitment is valued and given to achieve the target successfully. Mankind is able to commit only when he chooses the right direction in fear and is able but this is unfortunate as the alien world tend to let us unidentify the type of strategies of growth for maturity. By identifying the type of strategies of growth, we can understand the level of growth required towards maturity at which we can be spiritual. Another reason for in growth is fear. As the youth fears to face unexpected problems, the efforts are less and require the hierarchy’s support.
Author Gary C. Newton stated in his book – “Going towards spiritual maturity” quotes the principle that “God is ultimately responsible for all spiritual growth”. The question arises at this point that if god is responsible for everything, what will be the purpose and role of human? I comment that while god supplies the resources like bible, church, Holy Spirit, baptism, it is also our responsibility to supply effort and commitment to utilize those resources and give results to god. In bible, Paul highlights this principle of his personal lifestyle and in his teachings comparing with the example of a soldier or athlete to illustrate the amount of sincerity and efforts. (1 Corinthians 9:24-27), Paul states that “In a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize”. I herewith conclude in a Christian race all runners (ministry, believers, purpose) will fail to get a prize if there is no effort that is commitment from everyone.
Along with the concept of ministry, believer, purpose; effort is also the key concept and it has to be achieved from the youth as well. A healthy youth will gain efforts only when the growth will favour them from within, when the forces of the ministry believers and youth will collide with each other to form a healthy growth.
This will create a mutual relationship between god’s provisional resources and our active involvement in process which is more clearly in Philippians 2:12-13: “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is god who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose”. This principle is intricate but the application is clear.
If one is to grow towards maturity in Christ then one must cultivate and demonstrate the efforts with passion, Philippians 2:17-18: ” But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. So you be glad and rejoice with me”.
Therefore the conclusion lies in the above concept, both; effort of the youth along with the work of ministry, believers proves in the healthiness of the church. In the book “Youth At Risk” by Peter Christian Olsen, 2003, he highlights four basic needs which he has clearly created an awareness of the effects that affects the development of youth:
Acceptance – belonging
New beginnings and second chances – forgiveness
Significance – generosity
Freedom – independence
I agree with his confirmation that he examines in deriving the above developmental needs from the provision of the Almighty’s resources as the absence of these needs do intentionally contribute in how they shape the personality, maturity, responsibility and stability of emotions. He emphasizes Christian community in respond to the needs determining that, the resources will be polishing youth through support during the fear and avoid them from destruction. At times the concepts will be foreign, indigestive for youth because unable to realize its importance. Rather the community need not re-interpret or change the language but simplify their thoughts and improve their visionary and understanding by change in structure through a friendly communication by becoming an effective leader to bridge the gap between the church and the youth. Therefore forces and efforts are needed for decision making which is an effective key in respond to ministry believer and purpose for a possibility of a healthy youth to build a healthy church, which will make the church flourish.

Supporting surveys

According to a survey, some findings proved that church fails to answer every question of the youth.

Q.1 In what way and sense is Christian religion, faith and church viewed by today’s modern youth?

Youth of today’s modern era is firm on the point stating that inspiration is lacked in religion; they feel that the world is divided through religion and is the major factor which is affecting the growth. A 17-year-old Jude from Kent says confidently that “He does not agree with the church who talks on subject morality” and is “Overfilled with traditionality”.
Youth pick their ideas which suit their taste through various religious beliefs. There are few in bunch who strongly believe, there exist only single religion which has controlled the truth. Young generation refer to perform all activities as per their own desire which in return less importance to the religious belief are being given, which gives birth to the side effects of the conduct.

Q.2 Why do young crowd feel that Christianity is not a ‘happening’ cultural activity?

An 18-year-old Marcus said that he left church when he was 15 because the teachings did not amuse him and it did not interest him of anything as a youth.
The major quest, a struggle for a religion is to impose an exertion of force of involvement in terms of attraction. I usually attend church service wherein I find young ones missing the services. I kept questioning myself that, where the young crowd has disappeared? Surprisingly the young ones have taken charge for the attendance of the church. In this consequence the church should give priority to change its curriculum and its way of presenting the services with new attractive packages for enhancement.

Q.3 Are the young preachers practicing different approaches in Christianity declining. What are your suggestions?

As the attendance of the youth in church has declined, but on the other hand people practicing approaches are increasing in numbers. The following is revealed through one of the youths that more the deepening are the studies of the bible, more a person becomes a hypocrite of the Christian leadership and unintentionally accepts and performs the lifestyle of the clergy right or wrong at times unknowingly. In such case, the practices are affected and become different from those which are to be precise. Seen are still some true Christian youngsters who are different in their attitude and conduct, but in spite of such difference, they are not involved into the immorality and violence activities with other youths. They present themselves as they are from a different unknown religion, but practice the religion and it