ive been an addict for about 10 years, maybe longer. i've been addicted to xanax, fentanyl, percocet, oxycontin, lsd, heroin, and meth. the worst of my addiction i think has been fentanyl and xanax. i've been through rehab, and do i usually do good for a while when im out, but the second im offered something i give in and i immediately spiral. i've been at the point where i was taking at least 40+ xanax a day and snorting at least 4 grams (maybe more) of fentanyl a day. i'm 21 years old and don't want to throw my entire life away because of drugs. i want to be clean so bad. any advice will help

I don't know if this would help anyone or not... but I'll share it...some back story on my nicotine history. ZYN was not my first experience with nicotine. (But shall it forever be the last) I first let nicotine into my being when I stole a cigarette from my much older cousin when I was 9 years old. A Marlboro Menthol 100. And the journey of drug/chemical addiction from there is literally personified perfectly in a video that u/Joel-Spitzer shared (didn't create, just shared as a great illustration) called Nuggets (youtube.com). I'll never forget that first buzz, it put me on the floor. I started smoking pot soon after that. Then drinking whiskey. (all of my friends and their parents were drug addicts and alcoholics). The resources were very attainable. At 12 I got put on heavy anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. By 13 and 14 I moved up to pain pills, and stronger pot. From 14 to 18 I smoked 2 packs a day (on top of an ounce of pot every few days) and long story short through various self-destructive seasons I eventually got caught up in every upper (MDMA, Cocaine, Meth) and downer (Morphine/Heroin/Oxy) that there was at the time. Snorting/shooting up, you name it, I did it. I OD'd several times, and it's by the grace and mercy of God I'm not dead. When I turned 19 a very beautiful and powerful legit spiritual experience happened to me. That initially helped me get clean off the heavy illegal stuff, but my mind just wasn't made up the way it needed to be to get off everything I knew I needed to (pharmaceuticals and nicotine). Much of my 20s I struggled. I'd get off everything except my anti-depressants, and then eventually I'd need to get a refill on that...my lizard brain could quickly get an RX for this or that (I knew how to work the system, and find the doctors that pushed stuff) and the next thing you know I'd be high. Especially with prescribed medical THC...good gracious...100% THC products are way to powerful.... Back to nicotine- in my 20s over several years and seasons of life I went through Grizzly wintergreen long cut chew, vaping (disposable and mods/kits), and eventually 21mg nicotine patches. Literally hooked on the patches for multiple years. I got off patches finally in 2018. In 2019 I got off of every prescribed pharmaceutical and quit medical marijuana. I'm still living my life free from pills and THC - going on 5 years. But...struggling through depression during COVID lock down and in a moment of weakness, I bought my first tin of ZYN. But the nicotine beast is the nicotine beast. I secretly struggled with it 2020, 2021, 2022, and most of 2023. I've said all that to say, it started with nicotine, and it ends with nicotine. It's like the final building block to my castle of ultimate sobriety I suppose. With the nicotine compromise out of the way, my life can finally be what it's supposed to be. 185 days ago was over 20 years in the making. Thanks for taking the time to read all of this. Just for today, let's stay clean.

Sorry this might be long 😂 First the main line: "Who are we to fight the Alchemy" I'm sorry but what is that giving if not forbidden love? When have Taylor & Travis ever needed to fight their connection? The biggest "obstacle' they had was NFL fans complaining about Taylor being shown too much and I'm pretty sure neither of them gave a fuck. With Matty however, it makes perfect sense as they started to fall for each other while she was with Joe (see: guilty as sin) she quite literally wrote a song about trying to fight her chemistry with Matty.
"I haven't come around in so long But I'm coming back so strong" very much giving: i was trapped in a dead relationship and now I'm feeling something again ~ links in with guilty as sin & fresh out the slammer. Doesn't make sense for Travis because she was in love with Matty right before they met.
"I circled you on a map" is so parallel to "now pretty baby I'm running back home to you, fresh out the slammer I know who my first call will be too"
"Hey you, what if I told you we're cool? That child's play back in school Is forgiven under my rule" makes zero sense for Travis. But if we look at the links with: - Peter: multiple references to being kids together and implications of him being too immature/messing up and losing her - Chloe et. Al: "too impaired by my youth" - loml: "we were just kids, babe" (all songs about...you guessed it)
"These blokes warm the benches" and then in Peter "as the men masqueraded, I'd hoped you'd return" once again about.. Matty. Edit: it's been pointed out to me that "blokes" is also British slang
"He jokes that It's heroin but this time with an "E"" first of all let's be honest Travis is not good enough at spelling to make that joke. He says himself he's not a man of words, and people think he made a word joke? 🤔 Second, there is literally a line in loml (about Matty) where she says "you blew in with the winds of fate and told me I'd reformed you." That's the exact same sentiment! To me it seems obvious Matty made that joke. It absolutely sounds like something he would say.
The football references seem like a total red herring. My bet is she had the song, liked it, and switched up some lyrics to turn it into a Travis song when it was actually a Matty song.
Edit: also "I'm making a comeback to where I belong" and "running back home to you" from fresh out the slammer also is a parallel. She was never with Travis before..

I read the book written @ 1982-83 by John Lennon's best (childhood through adulthood) friend & fellow member of The Quarryman, Pete Shotton. I forget the name of this book but it was one of the most fun, loving books written about John Lennon I had ever read. By 1967-1968-ish, John had hired Pete to be his "P.A." (personal assistant). When Pete asked John what a "P.A." was, John said "piss artist." Well, anyway, the book seemed to be honest although clearly amatory portrayal of John & Pete's friendship from 1955-1968.
Anyway, Pete Shotton apparently lived with John and did the day-to-day errands & shopping that John was unable to do due to his fame. Again, this would've been 1966-1967ish. Pete said he and John took acid every day. Now, my personal experience & opinion of psychedelics, daily LSD is impossible. I wouldn't be able to handle it, but I never had highest-quality stuff. & I'm assuming John Lennon had the connections to get the best (i.e. strongest, purist) LSD available.
Pete Shotton said John would wake up in the morning and get a tray in bed with his tea, perhaps a small breakfast and a tab of acid. John literally dropped acid before getting out of bed in the morning (probably the best time to do it, if you're rich and have nothing else to do that day).
John himself claimed... in I think the famous 1970 Rolling Stone interview... that he took LSD 1000 times. Perhaps that's a bit over-estimated but the way Pete Shotton described it, I am guessing John tripped on LSD 200-300 times starting with his first experience (Los Angeles 1965 in L.A. on the Beatles US tour) up until probably the late summer of 1967.
Note that LSD had a negative impact on John's songwriting. Perhaps not the quality of songs ("Tomorrow Never Knows" & "I Am The Walrus" are pure psychedelic masterpieces) but the quantity. Lennon himself said he wasn't really involved in the making of Sgt. Pepper. During this period, what did John compose? Perhaps a handful of songs: Strawberry Fields, Lucy In The Sky, Mr. Kite, Baby, You're A Rich Man, Hey Bulldog. And most of these were unfinished ideas that Paul helped finish & George Martin/Geoff Emerick embellished using instrumentation & studio tricks.
They say abuse (overuse) of LSD can result in the breakdown of one's ego and assertiveness. If John had taken 100+ trips between August 1965-November 1966, this seems true. The transition of John as the alpha leader of The Beatles to Paul McCartney is obvious. I think John had great difficulty with his songwriting due to the effects of LSD. Strawberry Fields, Rich Man, Day In The Life --- all of these were incomplete ideas for which either the other Beatles or the EMI engineers (like Geoff Emerick who truly was the 5th Beatle) helped make into the masterpieces we know & love.
I do believe John was acutely aware of the negative impact LSD had on his songwriting output, especially after eschewing drugs while studying T.M. in India. That period of sobriety & relaxation (the only such period John Lennon's adult life) resulted in an explosion of creativity which is evident during The White Album sessions.
I also believe his hooking-up with Yoko Ono in Spring 1968 helped bolster John's confidence, again evident during The White Album sessions. I don't believe John used LSD as often (or enthusiastically) as he did pre-Yoko. I absolutely do believe Yoko introduced and transitioned John from psychedelics to heroin. Their heroin use was probably manageable during the White Album sessions due to John's wealth & Yoko's connections. And I suspect John fell in love with the drug, encouraging his fellow Beatles to try it. But by the fall of 1968, once his involvement in The White Album sessions ceased, John & Yoko were hanging out with a different crowd (seeing less-and-less of Paul, George & Ringo socially) and they became full-blown, needle-using junkies.
I suspect, during the making of Peter Jackson's 7-hour "The Beatles Get Back" documentary, there was intense creative conflict on how to portray J&Y's use of heroin. J&Y are junked-up nearly every day. Snorting junk is creeping into John's songwriting (Mean Mr. Mustard's ten-pound note was up his nose for a reason). During the scenes where Paul and Ringo are sitting around, waiting for John to arrive... and Paul is looking despondent... it's not because of The Beatles were breaking-up. I think Paul was genuinely concerned about John's addiction to smack. Paul knew John just didn't try a new intoxicant; he went all-in for any new substance that came his way. Paul knew John was severely hooked during the Get Back sessions and tried using the lure of Beatle fame and success to get John off smack and back into the uniquely positive relationship as a member of The Beatles. It didn't work. Heroin addiction is too powerful I think Paul pushed a little too hard, causing George to quit (albeit temporarily) and John to become adamant about Yoko being his primary life (and professional) partner.
On July 1, 1969, John (with Yoko, Julian & Kyoko) had a serious auto accident in Scotland. John and Yoko were hospitalized for a week, receiving significant stitches in their faces. Yoko allegedly injured her back but this may've been a ruse to obtain opioid pain medication. Remember, they're addicts by now. I think the accident scared John back into gaining control of their heroin use. And although no direct evidence exists, I find it impossible that, for all the money and connections John had, they weren't having overdose experiences. I bet they were. I bet by the time The Beatles reconvened for the Abbey Road sessions, John was so scared of Yoko ODing that he himself has stopped using and is monitoring Yoko's (failed) detox attempts so closely, he gets a bed moved into the studio during the making of Abbey Road. By late summer 1969, John's writing songs about quit using junk ("Cold Turkey"). Knowing John, I really think he was using his songwriting to promote quitting smack like he did for peace ("Give Peace A Chance").
One has to wonder if Yoko's multiple miscarriages during this period aren't a result of her heroin use.
J&Y's participation in psychotherapy (Arthur Janov/Primal Scream) may have been another of John's attempt to get them to stop using heroin. John tended to embrace any new radical or weird idea to improve or enhance his psyche. This is evident in his use of alcohol as a teenager, his close friendship with Stu Sutcliffe which really didn't make any sense, excess of booze & uppers in Hamburg, his close (and probably briefly sexual) friendship with Brian Epstein in 1963, lots of smoking marijuana during "Help,!" lots of LSD, his fascination with and financial support of Magic Alex, new means of creativity with Yoko Ono, his initial relief from using heroin. He even considered and discussed trepanning with Paul.
By 1972, I believe John was making great efforts to stay off heroin. They allegedly drove their green Chrysler station wagon from NY to San Francisco to try acupuncture. Why? I suspect to get Yoko to stop using junk.
The official story of John's "Lost Weekend" was crap. I think John transitioned off smack to booze & cocaine while Yoko remained a junkie. Drugs played such a huge role in their relationship, this had to have cause a rift between J&Y. John goes to L.A. with May Pang and has the most fun of his adult life he's ever had. Meanwhile, Yoko observes this from a distance, freaks out (especially when she sees the cover of his "Mind Games" LP) and probably sought professional treatment and got on methadone. I think Yoko started portraying herself as happy & sober as a ruse to get John to return to her. Her sobriety (or control of her heroin use) resulted in their reconciliation and successful pregnancy with Sean Lennon. I don't think either of them ever completely quit heroin. Fred Seeman, in his book, provides evidence of Yoko's heroin use in the late 70s (but he had an axe to grind) as well as his (& John's) use of marijuana and mushrooms. I also read where John began using smack again in the late 70s but stopped.

We had only been dating for 6 months, and they were intense. He went to rehab, and when he got out I basically had a week of “him” before he relapsed. And went from drinking being the primary issue to smoking crack and snorting heroin. The last night we had together was an absolute shit show, he pressured me to do drugs with him, we fought and broke up, but we also agreed to talk in the morning and said we love one another before hanging up. His mom called the next day to tell me, he was 28. I don’t think I realized how much I loved him until he was gone, I was always busy and worried or sick of his shit to ask myself. The addict was a monster, but the man I caught glimpses inside of was a tender hearted lover, who worshipped me. I’ll miss him everyday.

Do you guys believe that a person with zero tolerance to opiates would OD from snorting lets say 1.5--2 g of heroin combined with 20 g of Clonazepam? The latter i have a tolerance to and i have had to gradually increase it from 1 to 5 mg over the past year. I know injecting it makes it like 40% more potent and it hits right away, but i just don't want to risk fucking it up, which i probably would, since i will be pretty groggy from the high benzo dose that i will take like 40 min before the heroin.
And fyi, i actually don't want to die and i'm scared shitless of death! I'm 'only' 34 years old and have so many dreams and things i want to do, and i especially don't want to inflict this trauma on my close ones.
But i suffer from an incurable neurological disorder that's causing me so much agony that there's absolutely zero quality of life and no possibility to enjoy anything, and it's come to the point were i can't endure it anymore just to spare my loved ones the grief of my passing (pretty much bed ridden), so if you're going to try and talk me out of it, i appreciate it, but there's no point. If assisted suicide were legal and available here i would've chosen that route to give my loved ones the chance for a proper goodbye, and it sure would've felt better going out surrounded by them.

[first] [previous] [next]
___
-=WHITETAIL ARCHIVE=-
Due to the nature of the subject's profession or activities, they are to be referred to by an alias or provided codename for the sake of their anonymity.
Subject of Transcription: Claw, WT-G2929INT.
Occupation: Auditor.
[Date section has been struck from this record.]
Location Upon Transcription: Everrain Valley, Skalga.
___
Nara.
Nara is a slang word in our language which could vaguely be translated into the word ‘coward’. It just so happens that the original etymology of the word stems deep into archaic parts of the ancient world, leading to its meaning being ‘bald’ in some dialects.
Now, a bald person is no coward. One who is bald could actually be considered ‘brave’, as one who has no fur has no protection to the elements, and would surely freeze or burn to death.
However, the semantics behind this particular occurance of the word denotes a willingly bald person who hides from the elements, one who knows what the freezing cold or burning does to them and prefers that other people take their place. A coward.
That leads us here. In a pub. Watching as a coward carved his name into his own funeral pyre. He believed he spoke in confidence, but the inexplicable depression in the nearby booth said otherwise.
His paranoia, ironically enough, sealed his fate. Thus fate comes like a bandit.
...
“Our operation is being relocated.”
I stared at Recluse with disbelief, or at least what I thought it looked like. “Why is that?” I asked, crossing my arms as Angel made his presence known through the far hallway which led into our rudimentary command centre.
“We’re too exposed and being actively pursued. Supervisor pulled some strings though, so we’re being moved deeper into the opposition’s territory.” Angel said, reaching the briefing room’s opening. “However, we have one more assignment to pursue. Tying off loose ends, let’s say.” He mumbled as he presented a physical file, most probably dropped off by another nearby unit.
“The politician.” I said with excitement.
“Kenim.” Recluse corrected.
“We’ve been tasked to deal with him to prevent any more words from coming out of his mouth. Safety of the homeland, and whatnot. I am to provide overwatch while you… send a message.” He suggested ominously. I happily applauded in contrast to the heavy air which plagued the room. The two looked at me, unamused.
“We simply can’t let Kenim roam free - cause if they find us, or even just a sliver of evidence pointing towards the link with our people’s existence, the homeland will be lost.” Angel added with a short growl, looking off to the side for a moment. “This galaxy is dangerous. We can’t let our people be victim to interventionist subjugation once again.”
I shook my head at that. It was true, we could not risk allowing for our homeland to be exposed to the wider galaxy just yet. Even if there was a fragile peace, the peace was being dedicated to preparation for another war. Such was something they needed to keep their eye on, but if they were found out, such a war would be directed to the homeland.
It was a weird conundrum. If they pulled out now, they would no longer be able to gather intelligence on what the people surrounding their homeland were preparing for, and could no longer manage the others’ knowledge pertaining towards the existence of their people. However, if they continued, the chances of becoming compromised and being the reason for a war coming to their homeland increased with every new step the locals took.
We couldn’t risk existing on the wider galactic stage, so we made sure our existence was veiled. It’d been kept up for so long now, they had no idea what would happen if such a veil was suddenly torn away. Nothing good, most likely.
“What of Ern?” Recluse asked.
“Up to her. She’s an escaped PD patient. She can take her chances as our liaison, or go back to roaming the forests.” Angel stated coldly as I looked over the file again.
The task was simple. We were to kill Kenim as soon as we could. It was marked ‘effective immediately’. I was excited, as we’d never gotten sudden open-ended prompts such as this in the past. It would be a new experience for me. Something to add to the journal, if I had one.
“I’m sure she’d like to stay with us. I will talk to her.” Recluse stated with finality as he went over to the door, knocking on it as gently as he could.
I, on the other hand, decided to start getting ready with an immediateness rivalling that of a first responder. This was all just so intoxicatingly exciting, to use some excessive prose. I went through all of my usual checks, ensuring every relevant piece of technology and equipment was fastened to my body as Angel seemed to follow my example. This world’s equivalent of a ‘sundown’ was coming.
Of course, so were we.
…
It was strange, seeing a city empty in what felt like the middle of the day. I was dressed in a façade that was my construction getup, my proper gear right underneath. Hanging from my shoulder was a rather large toolbox-type container. Within was the cloak, my small autogun and my gas-resistant mask. All necessities.
I stepped into the hotel lobby. Empty again. I looked up to the camera and gave it a predatory smile. They would know, anyway. No use in hiding it. We were being moved offworld, after all.
I took more steps in, before peeking around the corner. I saw a lift. It was flanked by two guards who appeared to be waiting for it. It pinged as it reached the ground floor, and both of the armed guards entered. I took a rapid inhale as I then started jogging, calling over for them to keep the door open.
They heeded my panicked cries, holding the door open as I clumsily stumbled my way in, nearly hitting the panel on the opposite side of the door. That practice was really paying off. Thanks Ern, you’ve been a big help.
I quickly reoriented myself as the door shut, looking to the two guards who regarded me with suspicious stares.
“Late night?” I joked with a flick of an ear. A signal.
The lights in the lift shut off as it halted, leaving us in darkness. I took that as my opportunity. Guard to my left. Toolbox. Idea. I slammed it into his head, sending him into the wall as I then retrieved my suppressed pistol, gunning down the other guard in one quick movement.
Wheezing. Still alive?
I turned to the source, eyes still adjusting to the dark. Aim. Pop! No more wheezing.
Now to get changed. Within the minute it took for the lift to reactivate and get to the fifth floor, I had already changed, cloak draped over me and uniform discarded within the toolbox. I pushed myself to the back panel of the lift as the lights turned off once again, the lift emitting a shrill pinging as it reached the fifth floor. Recluse being helpful, I see.
The doors opened.
Wow, that is a lot of guards.
There were around six in this hallway alone, no doubt most probably another group just around the corner guarding Kenim’s room. At least I wouldn’t need to remember the door number. It would just need to be the one with the most guards outside of it. These guys were doing my job for me, it seemed.
I turned on the mask’s night vision enhancements.
Flashlights, flashlights all around. Eventually, one would point into the lift. A guard fulfilled my prediction, turning and letting out an alerted yelp. Fun. I waited for him to approach, slowly standing myself up as his beam focused on the dead.
Unsheathe. Leap for the exposed throat. The reverse-gripped scythe dagger dug into his chin with predatory intention, melting through fur, muscle and sinew as it lodged itself in the soft spot of the bone. Shit. Missed. Meant to hit the throat. I yanked it out towards me, dislodging his jaw as teeth clattered to the ground.
Just as quickly, my arm then turned to the side and leapt forward again, the hooked end of the blade sinking deeply into the jugular, ripping on through to the throat before coming out the other side unscathed. The blood simply coated my arm.
The guards were alerted. A second and they would start shooting.
That first kill took a few subdivisions of a second, give or take. That gave me enough time to bound forward, discarding the cloak to the side as I approached the next target at speed. Ducking under his aimed arm I hooked the blade under the third rib and continued to run, blade gliding through supple flesh as it tore through his lungs. The next guy took it in the throat again as I spun, levelling my sidearm with my left hand and putting two shots in the sternum of the man next to him.
Then, taking advantage of my grip on the guy whose throat was now loose, I pulled him in front of me. His shoulder acted as a steadying point for my weapon as I let loose four more shots. Two in the general throat, then head area for the remaining two. I heard a door slam. Ah. Fortification.
I discarded my shield, tearing my knife from the opposition’s throat. Damn. I opened communications.
“Angel, Claw. They’re locked in. Hit the window.”
“Received, Claw.”
I used this time to reload my sidearm as I then holstered it, retrieving the small autogun from the magnetic holder on my back. Afterwards, I approached the door, placing myself against the wall next to it, and waited.
Moments later, a simultaneous cacophony hit my ears. The shattering of glass, the sound of two people being shredded to pieces, the splintering of wood and finally the sound of a high-calibre bullet embedding itself in the foundation of the building. I looked at the door. Big hole. Two dead bodies. Lots of blood. Great.
I lifted a leg and slammed it into the lock, breaking it as I entered. Two more people greeted me, one of them knocked down by my breach. He was dealt with by a quick burst. The second one was taking cover behind the bed. I hugged the wall as he shot at me. Noisy. Another quick burst and he was dealt with too.
I was left with a bulge in the duvet covers.
“Kenim.” I called out to him. I heard him whimper under there as I stepped over his guards’ remains. “What did I say?” I continued as I hooked a hand onto the sheets, pulling them away violently. Underneath, lay Kenim. He was frazzled, paranoid, twitching, and afraid.
“What did I say, Kenim?” I asked sweetly, the venlil struggling to find his words as I locked away the gun. His stammering increased as I pulled out my knife directly afterwards. “What did I say?!” I yelled, approaching him and grabbing him by the fur on his chest.
This was so much fun.
He let out a pathetic squeal as tears brimmed in his eyes. “That you’re not forgiving! You’re not forgiving!” He said, almost as if begging. I gave him an exaggerated nod.
“Correct.” I said, sliding the mask from my head, ears now pointed up as I made direct, forward eye contact with him. “I am not forgiving.”
He gasped in a gallon of air as he clawed at my arm, fur beginning to rip as he tried pulling himself away. Not so fast. I pushed him harshly, sending him tumbling into the wall. He tried to stand up, putting his hands in front of him as if I would spare him.
Perhaps I would. I would spare him of torture, as we did not have much time. I launched a kick into his stomach, sending him into the wall again as he doubled over, wheezing and crying. I waited for him to attempt to get back up. Once he did, I grabbed him by the head and sent a knee crushing into his face. He was sent into the wall, knocked down again.
I waited for him to get up once more. He tried, blood pouring freely from his mouth as he struggled to breathe.
Once he was in the right position, I acted. I quickly crouched and gave a deep gash beside his knee, gliding through the tendon. This was followed up by a strike to the other one, before moving my blade up and tearing it through the jugular. As he fell forward, I slammed a knee into his chest to keep him up, before throwing my arm forward and lodging the blade deep into his eye.
Microseconds. I tore the blade out. He wheezed helplessly as he collapsed, left to die. I smiled at my handiwork.
“Saw that, Angel?”
“Yes I did, Claw. Withdraw. Don’t forget your cloak.”
I gave a low chuckle. “Of course. See you at home.” I finished as I shut off the communications, lowering myself down to the body as he continued to bleed out.
“Few more seconds, Kenim. Fate comes like a bandit.” I quipped before standing, stepping over his dying body and cleaning off my knife on the sheets as I made my way to leave, pulling my mask on once again.
I love my job.
...
“You let the camera see you?!” Angel roared in a moment of anger. I could feel my ears pushed back by the sheer wind provided by his yelling, yet the smile was not budged from my face. “Recluse!” He called, snapping his head around to face the larger predator who visibly recoiled. “You keep this shit up and I swear to the collective deity that I will kill you, then drag you back down from the grasp of god and kill you again!”
“I mean, Claw said-” Recluse’s response was then cut off by a dismissive hand wave from Angel, as he then turned back to me, arms folded across his chest as I then went to speak some more.
“I don’t understand why you’re so mad, I told you about the reader seeing me and you-” I wasn’t able to finish as the larger canid interrupted me. “You never told me that!” He yelled at a higher, exasperated tone.
“Well, now I did!”
“No wonder we’re being relocated. Go procreate with yourself, Claw.” He cursed. I gasped in mock offence, before letting out an undulating chuckle at his words.
“Sticks and stones, Angel.” I chided, using his over utilisation of human sayings against him.
“Describing your breakfast?” He spat back with venom, before shaking his head, turning away to move to the briefing room. “We should prepare to leave soon. Recluse saw them gathering evidence, we have to leave.” He grumbled, swiping a few papers out of the way to view a map we’d made of the mill.
I was stuck in a moment of genuine shock at that response, before it fully registered in my head. I wasn’t given any time to respond however, as Angel had moved on from the topic.
“Should I start rigging up the rooms?” Recluse then asked, head tilting to the side ever so slightly.
“Yes, yes. Claw will then be on standby for close quarters, as usual.” He said with even more exasperation. I snorted in response.
“Maybe you’d be less snarky if you went ‘close quarters’ with some bitches.” I cut in with a flick of my ears. Angel then looked at me with a mixture of annoyance and amusement, before letting out a short grunt and focusing back on his work.
“I’ll be overseer, covering the wider field over here, here, and here.” He said, pointing to low, high and middle hardpoints, which would allow him different fields of view depending on the range attackers would be. “Then, once everything important is either scanned or loaded onto the ship, we burn everything, we wormhole out, hit a few planets to muck up the trail then head home.” He explained, pausing for a moment to peer about the room to see if there were any objections. There were none.
“Alright, if that’ll be everything, we should all get ready.” He said with finality, giving two sharp knocks to the table. He then left the room, presumably to suit up as Recluse closed some tabs on his holopad before doing the same.
I, on the other hand, was still wearing my equipment. So, in order to kill some time, I decided to head over to Ern’s room, perhaps for a quick lesson or two.
___
[first] [previous] [next]

I never thought I would be here again. After 8 years of IV heroin use all through my twenties…by 27, I finally got it together after multiple tries. I hadn’t had the urge to use a single drug in five years. I got my life together. Got a house. A dog. Bought a brand new car. Made friends. I thought. Found love. I thought. Somewhat finally repaired relationships with my family. But this past year has kicked me in the face over and over. I’m drowning financially. I’m more lonely than ever and about a month ago, for some odd reason my brain glitched. I didn’t even have any major trigger I just thought, “you know what, I want a Xanax” it was like someone telling themselves I’m grabbing a beer after work. I forgot I was an addict. I literally forgot. HOW TF DO YOU JUDT FORGET.
so I went and got Xanax. But I didn’t get one. I got 10. And the next week I got 20.
Here I am a month and a half later later, I have a great job finally in the union, but things are starting to fall apart. Currently as it stands, the only thing keeping me here is my dog. If I knew once I did it she would just be here alone, and no one would know. Probably take a few days for anyone to find me or figure it out….i would have done it already.
Someone please talk me out of eating or snorting all 30 of these 2mg Xanax. Some flexeril I have and whatever the fuck else can just make it all stop. I shouldn’t be here. Never felt I belonged here in this hellscape on earth anyway. I wanna go back to where I came from….somewhere shining in the universe.

This has been on my mind a lot lately. It usually worms its way in when I try to tell myself ‘oh, it’s just a porn addiction, let’s just drop this and move on. It’s not worth the hassle’
Really think about it, what other addictions impact us the same way that a porn/sex addiction does?
Most addictions come with a risk of job loss, pouring money down the drain, mental and physical health impacts, relationship strain etc. But I cannot think of a single addictive thing that would make us question our entire self worth, our self image, our self confidence and our self esteem quite like the way a porn addiction does.
If my PA were addicted to cocaine, for example, I wouldn’t find myself looking in the mirror and wondering if my grey hairs are causing him to snort a line at work. If he was addicted to heroin, I wouldn’t pinch at my fat from carrying three of his children and think ‘if only I didn’t have this extra weight, he wouldn’t be reaching for the needles!’. If he kept sipping vodka on the sly, I wouldn’t find myself comparing myself to every single woman I ever see, and wondering if he’s taking a shot of alcohol because I don’t look like them.
I’m not saying that other addictions aren’t awful. Of course they all are in their own ways. But I truly believe that a porn/sex addiction is the most crippling thing for the partner that has to live alongside it. I would take any addiction over this. Honestly. It’s so insidious. Secretive. Gross. Heartbreaking. Gut wrenching. I could go on and on, but I don’t need to, you all know how it feels.
We end up questioning everything about our very being. Our very essence. Who we are. What we look like, our place in this world.
It’s so, so devastating living in this reality.

EDIT!!! THIS IS CHAPTER 8. I MESSED UP THE TITLE.
What started as a panicked attempt to get her over-intoxicated friend to a hospital ended up in a disastrous car crash that claimed the lives of her friends... and a careless God crossing the street. But Sammi's adventure wasn't about to end there. In her dying breath, the God curses Sammi to take up her mantel. Now with her three friends resurrected as ghosts, Sammi has to navigate the tricky world of godhood.
Previous Chapter Next Chapter
Start here! Patreon (up to chapter 9)
Blair freaked out. It almost would have been funny, how afraid a dead girl was of a gunshot, but it wasn’t funny because I was also freaking out. We both screamed and I’m not sure whether Henry heard just me or both of us, but he definitely turned on us next.
I didn’t need Joni’s hiss to get me to act.
“You can’t fire that!” I shouted, hands in the air. “You don’t want to. You didn’t mean to. It was an accident. You don’t want to fire anymore. You want to… drop the gun. You–you’re a pacifist! Your whole life’s goal is to be peaceful and now you’re gonna run away and join a monastery.”
Too much. It was too much! I knew it was but I was scared and honestly fucking angry. Yes I had fucked this up. Obviously I had fucked this up. I accidentally convinced Noah to come, I told Henry that Noah had sold him out, told him that his gut was never wrong, of course Henry was going to react poorly when Noah showed up.
But Henry brought a fucking gun. Like, dude was planning on buying some fucking… CD drivers? No one knew what he was planning to buy, okay, but the point was, it wasn’t heroin. He thought he was meeting his partner to trade off some fucking tech shit. And he brought a gun.
So I didn’t care about Henry. Not at all. I cared about Cara, who was on the ground sobbing. I cared about Noah who was–
How was Noah?
“Sammi do something!”
Blair’s sob screeched across the clearing, and I had a bad feeling about this.
How many deaths was I gonna cause out of sheer incompetence?
The good thing was that Noah wasn’t dead yet. Half his face was covered in blood and a hopefully unimportant part of his skull was missing, but he was twitching. He wasn’t doing hot, but he wasn’t cold. Not yet.
“Sammi!” Even Christopher looked freaked out, pulling at his hair.
“Uh.”
“Tell Cara to call the police,” Joni said. Her voice had dropped to an almost soothing level of calm. There wasn’t any soothing to be had in this situation, but if there was, she’d have pulled it off.
“Cara, call the police,” I said, my own voice a shaky wobbly mess. “Tell them someone was shot. Tell them where we are.”
“Tell her she won’t be in any trouble,” Joni urged.
“You won’t be in any trouble.”
Cara nodded and pulled out her phone as I turned back to Noah.
“Flashlight Sammi. They’re gonna ask how he’s doing, where he was shot, all of that.”
Slowly and steadily, Joni coached me–and by extension, Cara–through the whole thing. We kept Cara on the phone, since if I said anything even remotely untrue, it could fuck up the paramedics understanding of the situation. The last thing we needed was for me to say this was a shot to the chest when it was a shot to the shoulder, and have the EMTs waste any time looking for a gunshot that didn’t exist and ignoring the one bleeding in front of them.
It wasn’t pleasant work. I was trying to put pressure on the bleeding while Blair, our resident doctor, gave me her hysterically angry takes on what I was doing wrong. She was acting like Joni.
At points, I could barely even hear Cara over her.
“Th–they’re asking about the gun?” Cara’s voice wavered, only just audible over Blair’s hiccups.
“The… the gun. You said the gun, right?” I fumbled through the grass until I found the black pistol, which I handed off to her. “This one? What do they want with it?”
“What do you want with… okay yeah,” she said, responding very much to the dispatcher and not to me. “It was a small gun. No. Just one shot. Okay.”
“Sammi, focus,” Joni said. “Your hands are meandering, and putting pressure on his neck isn’t gonna help here unless your goal is a coup de grace.”
“Uh, it’s actually pronounced coup de grace,” Christopher said.
I wasn’t sure what either phrase meant, but I definitely didn’t want to be suffocating Noah, so I moved my hands back to the wound.
Still, by the time they showed up, I had no idea if any of it was gonna amount to anything. I’d seen a lot of dead bodies in the last day, and Noah was looking an awful lot like them.
But the paramedics didn’t just load him up with a white cloth over him, so there was hope.
“We need to go,” Joni said. “Let this all clear up.”
“Cara,” I said. “I should–”
“Hey. Sammi, it’s okay.” Christopher patted me on the shoulder, his own calm somewhat restored. “Look, worst case scenario is, Noah dies, Cara is convicted of his murder, and she gets executed.”
Joni, Blair, and I all turned on him, eyes huge with horror.
Christopher held his hands up. “Which would all take months! Like maybe a year, probably more. My point is, right now you’re panicking, but you don’t need to handle anything right now. The only immediate bad thing that might happen is Noah might die, but you can’t stop that. We regroup, find a place to rest, you get your head on straight, and then we figure out how the evening panned out tomorrow morning. If Cara is in trouble, we make a plan then.”
A plan. Yeah, tomorrow, when our heads were a bit more on straight.
“But I wanna stay with him.” Blair’s voice was a pitiful whimper as she watched the paramedics load Noah’s limp form onto the ambulance.
I sighed and gave Joni a ‘help me out here’ look. I didn’t want to risk talking anymore and raising suspicion.
“Blair, we don’t even know how far away you can be from Sammi,” Christopher said. “Like, we’re like, anchored to her. And she can’t go to the hospital. She’d have to lie a ton just to get in and all she’d end up doing is causing confusion, which would make Noah's chances even worse. The best thing we can do is let the pros do their jobs.”
“But what if he dies alone?” Blair whispered.
“He won’t,” Joni said. “He’ll have all the doctors and stuff around him. I mean, not to be rude, but you’re not even, like, here. Physically. You’re more likely to cry loud enough for the surgeons to hear you and freak them out.”
Another good point. Blair looked like she wanted to fight them but after a few seconds, dropped her head.
“I shouldn’t have made the sirens,” she said, voice thick.
No she shouldn’t have. But I had the sense not to say this out loud. We needed to find a place to rest, drop off our shit, maybe get some food, and then finally sleep. I was too tired to process this whole shit show of a night anyway.
~~~
It wasn’t hard to find a place to stay. At least not for a night. I trundled my shiny new, slightly scratched car to the first hotel I could pick out and dragged myself in. I was maybe indulging in a bit of doom and gloom glumness, but it had been a long day. Like a really fucking long day. Like holy shit how had this all been one day?
That kind of long day.
So I was allowing myself the grace of being a hot mess.
“I’m the room inspector and you need to tell me where the fanciest vacant room is. For inspection.” The words came out of my mouth in a tired pile, almost loosely enough strung together to be a slurred. Not that the woman at the front desk cared.
“That’ll be the junior honeymoon suite on floor fourteen,” she said, after typing in her computer a little. “Room 1429.”
Okay. I took a deep breath. “I’m the guest for room 1429, but I lost my card and the system reset so it kicked me out. Can you just check me back in?”
The woman nodded without missing a beat. “Of course I can do that for you. What did you say your name was?”
I frowned, not sure if I should fake it or go legit or—
“Just tell her she, like, doesn’t need to know or whatever,” Christopher said. He sounded almost as tired as I felt, which made me wonder if their energy was dependent on mine or if they were just mentally tapped out.
“You don’t need to know that,” I said, giving her my best, tired, confident smile. “You just need to let me up there and show the room as booked for the night. Just, you know, make sure it’s ready first?” Didn’t want to end up in a dirty bedroom or something nasty.
“Of course I can do that. Please allow us fifteen minutes to prepare it for you.” She gave me a perky smile, which I returned with something probably more concerning.
Honestly, of all the crimes I’d committed in the past twenty four hours, this was probably the least egregious. Can’t blame a girl for wanting to put her head down in someplace fancy after accidentally killing her friends, ascending to godhood, getting some police arrested, robbing a tech store blind, forcing an innocent worker into trying to pawn off useless tech, and then getting a college kid shot.
I just… I needed sleep.
The room was honestly some baller stuff. I had an actual kitchen, not just a microwave and coffee maker. Swanky countertops—granite, I think? The dark stone that always gets put on counters in HGTV shows—and a stovetop with two little burners and even an oven. Just past the little kitchenette was a bed the size of my old bedroom, with a bucket of ice and a bottle of champagne in it.
I was about to throw myself on the bed when I heard a little ‘aww’ from Blair, who’d poked her head through a white door with gold handles.
“Aww?” I asked.
“Pretty bathtub. I miss my bathtub at home.”
“Wait, yeah, shit this bathroom is like, sick.”
The bed would have to wait while I checked this out. So I grabbed the bottle of champagne by the neck and headed over.
I threw open the doors to find myself in a bathroom that looked straight out of a magazine. The floors were a glossy white marble that were somehow heated. I took a ginger step on them before letting the warmth soak into my aching heels. A little waterfall trickled down a pile of stones on the countertop in what was probably the coolest and stupidest water fountain I’d ever seen. There was both a shower and a bathtub. The shower was cool, no lie, all glass walls with a showerhead just kinda in the middle and silvery glass benches on two sides, but the tub was the main attraction. It was big enough for two, more like a hot tub than a bath, with a detachable shower head, jets and an honest to god massage roller on the back of the seats.
“Okay,” I said, heading straight towards the tub and cranking it on. “Sammi needs some R and R. If any of you chucklefucks even so much as pokes their heads in while I’m bathing, you go to the back of the line for power upgrades. Got it?”
“Sammi, literally why would we want to see you naked?” Joni asked. “Just, like, turn on the TV or something before you go, so we’re not totally bored?”
I could do that much for them if it meant they’d leave me alone. After finding a station they agreed on (not an easy task but we did it), I grabbed my champagne and headed back to my now steamy bathroom for a luxurious soak with a sophisticated glass of bubbly to decompress and take in the day.
What followed my first glass was a decidedly less sophisticated hour of sobbing as I chugged down the rest of the bottle, leaning against the massage rollers as they worked their percussive magic on my knotted up back. Honestly, it wasn’t even me being naked that I was glad the ghosts weren’t seeing. No one needed to see me like that. I didn’t need to see me like that. My saving grace was that I’d cranked up the volume loud enough that between the TV, the fountain's cheerful trickling, the hot tub jets, and the massage machine, no one could hear my choked wails.
I was coping. This was coping. Healthy coping. Cry it out, you know? It was like when you leave a baby in a crib to cry all night so it learns that life is cruel and unfair. Just an adult version with water and alcohol and no bed or parents just a room away in case anything went really bad. So kinda nothing like that, except for the fact that I was sobbing like a neglected child.
Eventually even my godly regeneration couldn’t save my youthful fingers from shriveling into dejected raisins, so after some unknown period of time, I slithered out of the tub and onto the heated floor, where I curled up under a ridiculously soft towel and whimpered some more, brain pinging between how fucked up my life was and how fucked up life in general was that towels this nice existed exclusively behind some crazy paywall, cause I had certainly never felt anything this comfortable before.
Finally I got bored. My ‘godly regeneration’ had taken on itself to heal me from my self inflicted poisons, so I was now speedrunning a hangover, thankfully with mostly muted effects. Still, I was sober now and dehydrated, so I finally pulled on a robe and headed out to join the ghosts.
They’d landed on the travel channel, which for some reason I’d thought was the kind of channel that showed exotic locales or some shit. But apparently they were on episode three of Urban Hauntings.
Blair was curled up inside a pillow, only occasionally peering her eyes out. Christopher and Joni were bickering because Joni apparently was calling the whole thing out as faked, but Christopher kept accusing her of being too cynical.
“Look, the spirits clearly said ‘revenge!’” Christopher said, pointing energetically at the TV.
“That literally wasn’t the word revenge.” Joni rolled her eyes so hard I could see parts of it I never wanted to see. “It’s like, a grunt at best.”
“Okay but then what’s making the grunt if it’s just Tim and Sarah in the house?”
“First off, it’s not just Tim and Sarah, they have a whole crew. And I don’t know. Maybe it’s a camera guy coughing. But it’s so clearly faked. These kinds of supernatural hunters are always full of shit.” Joni snorted. “They find some poor sod who really wants to believe and will play along with the bullshit just cause they need something to prove their delusions.”
“Jesus Joni, you could at least try to keep an open mind.”
“All right, all right, settle down.” I waved my now empty champagne bottle at them. “Maybe Joni’s right, maybe this is faked, who knows? But at least one of these shows has gotta be legit.”
Joni turned baleful eyes on me. “Really? Does there really gotta be a legit one?”
“Yeah. Cause y’all can’t be the only fucking ghosts around, and you are as subtle as an avalanche.” With this, I flicked off the tv and the lights in one swoop. “Now everyone shut up while I get some sleep. Tomorrow will probably be a longish day, and I need to have my wits about me.”
“What wits?”
“Shut up Joni.”
Things went about as bad as they could've there. How will this all pan out? Will Sammi follow this scheme through? It's good to know she can still find time for some luxury even after another disastrous scheme.
I should be posting the next chapter Friday! See you all then.

[Thumbnail🪞]
Hello, and welcome to the second installment of my Emilie Autumn write-up. (Per mod recommendation, new installments will be posted every two or three days – there are seven in total.)
Emilie Autumn is a singer-songwriter with an elaborate semi-fictional universe and a complicated relationship with her fanbase. I strongly recommend you check out Part 1 🔍 before reading.
In this installment, we dive into the drama surrounding the contents of The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls / TAFWVG – the half-autobiographical journal, half-historical fantasy that has defined EA's artistic output and fanbase lore for the past fifteen years. It's still more “Hobby History” than “Hobby Drama” proper, but trust me, it provides valuable context about the general vibes of the fandom.
Content Warning throughout this installment for themes of sexual and gender-based violence, including torture, sex trafficking and femicide, as well as attempted suicide, mental illness, hospitalization, and ableist discrimination; brief mention of Holocaust imagery. Oh, and obviously, spoiler alert for the whole book – but that's comprehensive investigative work for ya!
🪞 = picture / visual 🎵 = music / audio 📺 = video 📝 = primary source / receipt 🔍 = press article / write-up / further reading 🎤 = song lyrics 🐀 = anonymous fan confession 🦠 = reaction / meme

OVERVIEW: “A DOCUMENT IN MADNESS – THOUGHTS AND REMEMBRANCE FITTED” (LAERTES, ACT IV, SCENE 5)

...When the book was first released, I had only two aims - to explain myself to a growing audience that thought they knew me but didn't truly, and then to expose the corruption of the modern day mental health care system and educate in order to inspire at least a tiny bit of change. (EA answers a fan question on Goodreads, 2018 📝)

The Book begins with Emilie Autumn...
...Well, technically The Book begins with a malapropism. Wrong “foreword”, EA! 🪞 Which is our first clue that despite the myriad revised editions this book has gone through, it could probably have done with a little more initial editing, and perhaps a bit more room to reflect, between the events related and the publication of the first final draft.
Anyway, The Book begins with first-person narrator Emilie Autumn surviving a suicide attempt, stating this to her shrink over the phone soon after. Her shrink tells her that she is currently a danger to herself, and that he won't refill her prescriptions (the meds for her bipolar disorder) unless she immediately checks herself into inpatient care. And it all goes downhill from there.
The psych ward stay at an LA hospital lasts longer than the anticipated 72 hours, and proves overall more traumatic than therapeutic. An increasingly distressed Emilie suffers through the inappropriate comments of creepy doctors, the poor bedside manners and general cluelessness of emotionally numb nurses, the intimidating presence of armed guards around the hospital, being stripped of her belongings and privacy, the lack of transparency or actual care in the ward, her partner's indifference during the occasional phone call, the bad hospital food (I can see how that would suck in such a context), having to repeatedly fill out forms and questionnaires (okay, that's annoying too), a patient eating yoghurt in her vicinity (uh...) and staff members existing while fat (wait, what?). She documents the whole unpleasant experience in a journal that she has to turn in at bedtime.
One day, upon recovering her notebook in the morning, Emilie starts finding torn scraps of ancient wallpaper between the pages. They're scribbled with letters from a young woman named Emily, who is also locked up against her will in a psychiatric facility – namely, a women's insane asylum... in Victorian England. Awaiting each new time-traveling letter with bated breath, Emilie gradually learns that the Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls (yes, that's its actual name within the story) isn't so much a hospital as it is a dumping ground / torture dungeon. Women – who aren't so much “crazy” as unconventional and inconvenient to men – are kept in chains, subjected to leechings and ice baths, pimped out as human exhibits and sex slaves, and killed en masse in gruesome medical experiments by a psychopathic doctor who's like a Disney-villain take on Dr Mengele. “My life and hers are basically the same. Nothing has changed at all in mental healthcare,” thinks Emilie in the modern-day psych ward, as a nurse offensively tells her that it's time for art therapy.
Alright, that was a long summary, and I'm showing my bias a little bit. But the contents and tone of the book are relevant to this write-up – as are, of course, the common criticisms that arose in the years after its publication.

A (BI)POLARIZED RECEPTION

In the spirit of neutrality and historical accuracy, I will quote some 5-star Goodreads reviews that I think reflect the reasons why many people genuinely loved and continue to love the book...

I don't think I've ever read anything like TAFWVG. It is amazing, horrifying, and both a work of magical fiction and brutal honesty. I felt like for the first time I had found someone who could understand how I feel. I identified on so many levels with this book, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. I appreciate Emilie as an artist so much more now because I realize just how much of herself she puts into everything she does. (...)
What scares me is that it is so incredibly real and several times, I felt as if Emilie was speaking thoughts I've had myself. (...) So many of the things she expressed during states of depression for these characters make so much sense to me, though, and I greatly value how real and honest this is. (📝)
Having some of Emilie Autumn's actual handwriting in the book made it much more personal and made it seem much more like a journal than just any ordinary book. This is a must read for any "muffin" (Emilie Autumn fan). (📝)

...and some of the less scathing and more nuanced 1-star reviews, highlighting common complaints about the book's contents and tone:

The writing was not strong enough to handle the story being told and there were so many issues from how mental health was handled to the entitled behaviour of the main character to the treatment of all the other characters, I ended up giving up in frustration. It’s a shame as this could have been a really interesting exploration of the mental health system in America paralleled with that of the 1800s, but instead just turned into a lot of, in some cases offensive, ramblings. (📝)
I was shocked in the opening pages by the voice of the main character, and I don't think it was a technique to give her depth. It sounded like genuine elitism with the flavor of "I should be allowed to kill myself." Um. Ok??? (...) I wish the prose had been tolerable for me to get to the high concept journal entry stuff, but everything that the premise promises... from the quality of what I read, it falls very, very short. There are horrible elements to being inside an institution: it's scary, it's dehumanizing, it definitely isn't the "best" space for healing... but this author does not have the knowledge, expertise, or perspective to provide an adequate critique. (📝)
The torture and rape are mentioned as daily occurrences and, while I'm sure such things did occur in Victorian times, it was so overdone and hinted to with such macabre glee, I felt I was watching someone's sordid fantasy. (...) This is not a solemn look at mental illness from the inside. It is a glamorized, twisted, fetishist notion of mental illness and asylums which made me feel truly uncomfortable. (📝)

...I opted not to quote this one because it was too savage and not always fair, but it's a fun read.
In short, the people who enjoy the book tend to praise the engaging storyline, the witty and eloquent writing, the raw authenticity, the depths of insight, and getting to take a peek inside EA's brain. The people who don't, on the other hand, criticize the unbalanced structure, the overwrought and rambling style, the obvious distortions or straight-up fabrications (we'll get to that, all in good time), the acute main character syndrome, the seeming lack of self-awareness or appropriate research (despite claims of “historical accuracy”), the flippant and even dangerous claims about highly sensitive topics, and being made to read stuff that should probably have stayed firmly concealed inside EA's brain.
Many critics report being put off by EA's high opinion of her own intellect and booksmarts, as she routinely assumes staff members to be too dim-witted, uncultured and incompetent to be worth engaging with. (Which is a bit rich, coming from a self-tutored West Coaster who inaccurately claims to speak “the Queen's English” and misspells “in memoriam”.) She takes this disdain to... really mean places. Some readers were especially taken aback by a series of straight-up petty, out-of-left-field fatphobic jabs. 📝
Others cringed (and this is a serious problem for an author who claims to be an advocate) at EA's blatant disdain of any other form of mental illness besides her own. This mostly shines though callous and cruel descriptions of those she calls “the real crazies” – meaning the other patients. By callous, I mean she spends several paragraphs calling a detox patient cute nicknames like “the Duchess von Nutsberg”, “Miss Nuttersby” or “the Mayor of Cracktown” as she gleefully mocks her withdrawal meltdown – with a subtle dig at Courtney thrown in for good measure (second screenshot, end of first paragraph). It's one of the only instances when EA expresses sympathy for the staff; as she hears them brutalizing the problematic patient in the other room, she muses that, in their place, she would probably want to “bash [the woman's] head against the wall”. This is intended as comic relief from her own narrative.
But the most all-encompassing complaint is EA's perceived glamorization of mental anguish and extreme suffering. (Not the gross kind that's experienced by lowly crack addicts – the other kind, the refined kind.)
This complaint refers, in large part, to the book's apparent glorification of self-harm, and categorically negative depiction of psychiatric care. On top of the two main narratives, the book also included three pre-hospitalization journals – the “Cutting Diary”, the “Suicide Diary” and the “Drug Diary” – whose unfiltered, unapologetic contents (including high-contrast pictures of fresh self-harm cuts) were very polarizing.
I will note that EA herself, in interviews, has overtly stated that she's not anti-medication or therapy, and that physically hurting yourself is not a great strategy in the long run. But these nuancing statements are not present in the book. Some former fans have cited EA and her work as a reason why they delayed seeking medical help for their own self-harm and mental health issues.
The complaint also refers to the abundant depictions of tragically gorgeous women being subjected to the most odious abuse, and justifying their self-destructive tendencies as appropriate reactions to said abuse.
Mmh, what did that one Goodreads reviewer mean about “someone's sordid fantasy”...? CW for rape, torture, murder. This is the way... step inside! 🎵

PSYCHSPLOITATION EXTRAVAGANZA

Come see our girls! Crazy girls! If you're willing to be thrilled, this is a hell of a ride! Those girls! Crazy girls! They're hot! They're nuts! They're suicidal! (“Girls! Girls! Girls!”, 2012 📺🎵)

Many comparisons have been drawn with the video game Alice: Madness Returns and the movie Sucker Punch. (In fact, EA got thiiis close to accusing Zack Snyder of plagiarism📝, but wisely stopped short.) In my humble opinion, those similarities are essentially cosmetic, and don't really cut to the quick of what makes TAFWVG – and what makes it so familiar, yet so bizarre within its purported genre. So allow me to share my white-hot take on this self-published fantasy novel from the first Obama presidency.
You heard it here first, folks, and only fifteen years late: TAFWVG is basically a Sweeney Todd reskin of Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtues 🔍), by the infamous Marquis de Sade.
I'm doubtful that Sade was a conscious, direct influence on EA, and the two books are obviously very different in style and explicitness – but they have many, many tropes in common. Hear me out.
Both Emily-with-a-Y and Justine are virtuous, pure-hearted heroins of singular eloquence and beauty (or, for those familiar with literary parlance, “Mary-Sues”) who have The Absolute Worst Luck. Both grew up around wealth and sophistication, but abruptly found themselves poor and alone in the world as teenagers – though both are briefly reunited with a long-lost sister during the plot. (In both cases, one sister dies. Like I said, terrible luck!) Both find themselves in a world of sin and depravity that they vehemently reject, while almost all the other characters gleefully revel in base greed, power schemes, and pure sadism.
After fleeing her convent school to escape the indecent advances of a priest, Justine is entrapped by a gang of depraved aristocrats who use her as a sex slave before having her thrown in jail as a thief. A cold, unscrupulous older woman helps her escape, and forces her to join her gang of robbers. Soon, Justine falls in with a succession of colorful maniacs, such as a medical enthusiast who wants to vivisect his own daughter, a man who rapes women specifically to get them pregnant and kill their newborn babies, and an order of lurid monks who turned their convent into a private sex dungeon.
Compare with TAFWVG:
After being groomed by a human trafficking ring fronting as a music school, Emily is sold off to a depraved aristocrat who would use her as a sex slave – and who, we later learn, murdered one of his own daughters for fun during an orgy. She escapes, but is soon arrested and jailed as a thief for stealing a loaf of bread (I suspect that may draw on another classic of French literature 🎵📺). A cold, unscrupulous older woman bails Emily out, but only for a forcible transfer to the Asylum – which her doctor-son uses as an human experimentation lab and for-profit sex dungeon. When inmates inevitably get pregnant, they are forced to receive botched abortions and hysterectomies, and various other un-sedated mutilations, from a twisted surgeon who is implied to be (gasp!) a young Jack the Ripper.
(In both cases, I personally find that it's the sheer accumulation of impossibly sordid twists that makes the reading bearable, and possibly even fun, rather than just sickening. Each new misfortune is so fantastically awful that the whole thing becomes about as poignant and realistic as The Human Centipede.)
One last intriguing detail: not only were Justine and TAFWVG both written while “inside” (the Bastille and an LA hospital, respectively), both were also reworked by their author several times after publication. And both heroins' fates somehow got worse with every re-issue! Lest we forget: one narrative is a 2009 historical fiction that was meant to champion female empowerment, sisterhood, and more compassion in the treatment of mental illness. The other is 18th century non-con porn that was so brutally graphic, so outrageously deranged, that its author was deemed a menace to society and sentenced to live out his days... in an insane asylum. (Tangent: it's even more darkly funny when you know that 1. Sade was a legit monster, a repeat offender of heinous sexual crimes, but it was the freaking book that got him locked away for good, and 2. he was arrested while on his way to submit yet another version of the manuscript.)
What's interesting is that EA explicitly addresses – and ostensibly calls out! – the exact sort of exploitation and objectification, specifically of mentally ill women, which many readers feel she enacts in the book. It was a central theme in Opheliac: here's her discussing the erotic undertones in Romantic-era depictions of dying women. 🎤 In TAFWVG, the inmates are forcibly dressed with ethereal white gowns and flowers in their hair for a human exhibit / brothel that the doctors call “The Ophelia Gallery”. 🪞 Johns frequently pay to see the girls re-enact Ophelia's death in a bathtub; Emily deems this “madness at its most perverse”.
But then again, it's a time-honored tradition for exploitation media, both fiction and non-fiction – from Reefer Madness 🔍 to Cannibal Holocaust to Michelle Remembers – to cover its ass by clamoring that it's merely "raising awareness" and "showing the truth" of the horrors it depicts in exquisite, lurid detail.

”AFFLICTION, PASSION, HELL ITSELF, SHE TURNS TO FAVOUR AND TO PRETTINESS” (LAERTES, ACT IV SCENE 5): WINNERS OF THE 'MISS UNDERSTOOD' BEAUTY PAGEANT

A number of fans certainly raised an eyebrow at this darkly fetishistic aspect 🐀 📝 of the Asylum narrative, even when they couldn't quite put their finger on what didn't sit right with them. Some wrote it off as cathartic fantasy, like a lot of EA's work. Some expressed mild discomfort, and kindly called the book “paradoxical”. Others were outright disgusted by what they perceived as blatant hypocrisy and trauma-profiteering. The concept definitely hasn't aged very well; in fact, in recent years, there's been increasing pushback 🔍 against the “insane asylum” as a setting for horror fiction. Advocates find that those stories tend to reinforce harmful stereotypes against psych patients, trivialize medical brutality as entertainment, and make it even scarier for people to seek treatment when they need it.
But! For the book's first several years of existence, this discomfort was definitely not mainstream in the fandom. In fact, it was pretty marginal – underground, even; the general consensus was that the whole thing was awesome.
Let me illustrate. Soon after the book came out, EA got a tattoo on her right bicep that read “W14A” (Emily's assigned, tattooed number in the Asylum), to symbolize how she had been “branded for life” by her hospital stay. Over the following years, she started assigning “inmate numbers”, with a similar four-digit format, to fans who requested it online or during meet-and-greets. A number of Asylum forum members started using their unique number as a username or flair; to this day, some fans still use theirs to sign comments on EA's Instagram. A fair few also got their inmate number tattooed.
There are a few reasons for this years-long honeymoon period before the first waves of outrage. First of all, “years” is how long it took before a substantial portion of the active fanbase had actually read the book. On top of dispatching delays, the first and second editions were full-color hardbacks, selling in limited pressings at about $50 plus shipping, which a lot of youngepoorer fans could not readily afford: they had to rely on second-hand accounts from the ultra-fans who did manage to get their hands on a copy. And many such ultra-fans were also young people, who may have been led to EA by their own mental health struggles, a taste for the dramatic – and in many cases, sadly, a personal history of trauma that made it easy not to be phased. To a good part of EA's audience, the blunt violence and over-the-top edginess wasn't tacky or unsettling: it was unironically cool and genuinely relatable. Cool enough to overlook the bad takes and casual bigotry, if you picked up on them at all in the excitement.
Besides, EA pushed The Book so hard, as early as 2007, that before it was even officially released in late 2009, it had become the all-encompassing framework for the entire fan experience. From the music to the stage shows to the in-group slang and lore, everything was Asylum now. So I imagine that even if you hadn't read the book, or weren't all that into it, it was kind of a “tune in or else tune out” situation.
Anyway, that's about all I can think of to explain what possessed dozens, hundreds of fans, across continents, for years, to actually cosplay as “Wayward Victorian Girls” from the story (just to reiterate: mentally ill rape-and-torture victims who, by the end, are being killed in droves and either buried in mass graves or incinerated). I'm talking madwoman tousled hair, sleep-eludes-me smoky eyes, thigh-high black-and-white striped stockings, and virginal “hospital gowns” (white slip dresses), sometimes complete with fake blood splatter. Dressing up for EA shows, or public Muffin Meetups. Posing wistfully for artsy photoshoots in empty bathtubs or childhood bedrooms – or your local abandoned house, through the metal bars of a smashed ground floor window, so it looks like you're in jail. (No, I am not going to dig through DeviantArt for evidence of my claims. I'm assuming a number of the people in those pictures now have kids and stable jobs, and I'm afraid someone might put a hit on my head for causing their blunderyears to resurface.)
Look, I'm not clutching my pearls and saying that those dreamy-edgy visuals were all horrendously insensitive or caused any tangible harm. OR that there's no merit in “shocking” or “distasteful” art that takes a controversial approach to real-world horrors, including glamorizing them.
But even as an outspoken proponent of smut and an staunch cringe apologist, I do find it a bit surreal, looking back from the year 2024, how chill most of the fandom was with the core concept of LARPing as... survivors... of mass incarceration and torture... in striped uniforms... with numbers tattooed on their bodies...? Yeaaah, this feels more and more uncomfortable the longer I think about it. Your Honor, I plead collective insanity for this one. After all, as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “you are what you pretend to be.”
*
Ah, well. Art sure is complicated! We can at least take some comfort in the fact that the Offensively Titillating material is mainly contained within the obviously fictional part of the book. Can you imagine the mess if, like the autobiographical portions, the Bedlam Softcore bits featured actual people from EA's real life?!
I mean. Given enough time, that could get pretty awkward.
...We'll circle back to that in the next installment.

The military base doesn’t exist.
Not officially.
It’s a rusted-out corpse of abandoned hardware, a veritable graveyard of fallen soldiers and crumbling structures. Hidden twelve miles deep in the jungles of South America, there’s no reason anybody should be here. None. So why did I find a woman half-dead on the ground? It’s a question I want answered.
She’s sitting across from me. Her eyes are downcast, her blouse is torn and her copper cheeks are flecked with spots of red. I don’t know if the blood belongs to her or somebody else, but I figure by the end of this, I’ll have a pretty good idea.
“Tourist?” I ask.
She gives me a hard stare. It’s quiet. Unyielding. She’s not certain who I am, and judging by the look in her eyes, she’s running a series of probabilities. It’s the black suit that does it. Always. People see the suit, they see the briefcase, and their imagination spins into overdrive.
I try another question. “Did you come alone?”
She shakes her head. Her mouth is a thin line, defiant and uneasy. The legs of her chair squeal as she rocks back and forth, giving motion to her anxiety. She’s considering the possibility that this is her last day on earth. Her last hour.
If I’m being honest, it might be.
“How many were with you?”
“Lots,” she says quickly. “They're still around. They know where I am, know where we are right now and–”
“I doubt that.”
Her voice stumbles.
“If anybody was with you, then chances are they’re already dead. Jobs like this? They’re usually bloodbaths. Massacres. They’re not the sort of places you expect to find survivors, much less unarmed ones.”
She swallows. “Who are you?”
“A friend.”
“Some friend. I don’t know the first thing about you.”
“Funny. I was about to say the same thing.” I reach into my briefcase and pull out my clipboard, centering it on my lap. On it are questions. They’re the sort of questions whose answers are typically written in blood. “How about you and I get to know each other?” “If you think I’m gonna just tell who I am–”
“I don’t care who you are. I care about what you're doing here, miles deep in the jungle, sitting in a military base that doesn’t exist.” I press my pen to the clipboard. “How about you fill me in?”
The woman’s eyes narrow. Her slender hands ball into tight fists. If I had to guess, she’s not used to feeling this vulnerable, this powerless. “And if I leave?” she says, standing up. “What then? Are you going to cuff me to a pipe?”
I smile. “Why bother?”
The corner of her mouth twitches.
“You’re not going to leave,” I tell her. “You wouldn’t dare.”
For a moment, my eyes dance with hers, and in their fire I see something– some buried ember of fear. It’s unmistakable. “You know better than I do what’s out there,” I say. “So go ahead. Walk out that door if you think you’re safer outside. I won’t stop you.”
I wait for her to move, but she hesitates. They always hesitate.
“Maybe you’re right," I say. "Maybe I’m not a friend, but I’m the closest thing you’ll find to one for miles, so if I were you, I’d quit worrying about me. I’d start worrying about what it is I’m doing here.”
“Meaning?”
I wave my hand toward the broken window. Outside are rusted humvees. A crumbling barracks. Outside is a road so overgrown that tiny trees are sprouting from cracks in the concrete, while clutches of moss do their best to hide old rifle rounds. “Places like this aren't left to rot without a good reason. Soldiers are trained to fight. They aren't trained to flee into the jungle, leaving their equipment and assets behind." I gesture broadly. "Look around. This base was evacuated in a hurry, and that begs the question– why? More importantly, why did I find you in the middle of it?”
Her eyes dart outside. Her pupils are dilated in a cocktail of adrenaline and anxiety. “If I tell you… then you’ve gotta tell me something first.”
“Tell you what?”
“Who you are,” she says, voice trembling. “I want to know what’s really going on here. The truth. I’ve been lied to enough today.”
Have you? I study her. The truth of my work isn’t something people want to hear about– not really. They might think they do. They might think they’re ready to open Pandora's Box, to see the dark underbelly of reality, but it’s rarely the case.
Still, the woman strikes me as stubborn. If pulling back the veil can get her talking, then maybe it’s worth the existential crisis. I slip a hand inside my jacket, pull out my badge and toss it to her. She catches it, just barely. “There you go,” I say. “Everything you need to know about me, right down to my height and birthday."
She appraises the badge. Her eyes move across the laminate once, twice, then snap back up to me, suspicious. “This says you work for an organization called The Facility. I’ve never heard of it.”
“That’s the idea. We’re a shadow contractor. The less people know about us, the easier it is to do our job.”
“And what is that job?”
“Anomalies,” I tell her. “We investigate Events of supernatural origin. They’re typically caused by entities– things you’d recognize as monsters, or urban legends. My job is to hunt those things. Capture them.”
She shakes her head. "Why?”
“That’s a complicated question. The short answer is that it’s necessary. The long answer is that you’ll sleep better not knowing." I lean forward, flaring my jacket behind me, letting the woman get a glimpse of the pistol on my hip. "Fact is, I came here tonight to investigate an Event, but instead I found you. I’d like to know why that is.”
Her eyes drift to the window. She’s wearing the expression of a woman who was praying her nightmare was all in her head, that whatever she saw today was the product of acute psychosis, a little bit of neurological sabotage and nothing else. Now she’s considering that maybe there’s something more here. Maybe she’s not as crazy as she hoped she was.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
She bites her lip. Her voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “Maria.”
“You look like you’re having a hard time processing things, Maria.”
“You don’t know what I saw…” she mutters. “You have no idea…”
“I hear that a lot.” I pull out a pack of smokes, slip one between my lips. I light it and the nicotine tastes sweeter than heroin. It ripples through my body like emotional morphine, and just like that, the next part gets a little easier. “Between you and me, my father was killed by an entity, Maria. I watched him die.”
Her eyes meet mine. They’re wide. This wasn’t the emotional curveball she was expecting, and that’s exactly what makes it effective. Always.
“Happened when I was seven," I tell her. "I saw the whole thing from under my bed, cowering. A creature had him in its grip. Some tall man with two faces. He lifted him up to the ceiling and turned to me, asked what my favorite nightmare was, and then he tore my father in two. Like paper mache.”
I blow out a plume of smoke and it hangs in the air between us. Then I take another long drag. The truth is, I hate this story. I hate it more than anything else in the entire world. It’s a memory I’ve gone my entire life trying to forget, but in moments like these, it’s the most valuable piece of history I own. Even now, it’s working its black magic. I watch Maria’s posture shift. Her shoulders fall, slumping forward in horrified disbelief. She’s doing the human thing and empathizing with me, sharing a piece of my pain, and that’s exactly what I need her to do.
“Is that how this so-called Facility found you?” she asks.
“It is.”
Her eyes are staring a hole into the concrete floor. She looks distant. Haunted. “I’m so sorry,” she says.
I ash my cigarette. “Don’t be. It’s ancient history. The point I’m trying to make is that when you’ve seen an entity kill somebody, it stays with you. You recognize the scars. And right now, I see those scars all over your face.”
She doesn’t speak. She looks out the window, out across the military ruins to a rusty steel wheel rising from the dirt. It's bolted to a hatch that leads underground. One she’s been stealing glances at for the better part of our conversation.
“That bunker,” I say. “I found you lying beside it, bleeding and barely conscious. Something happened down there, didn’t it?”
A moment passes. Her eyes are narrowed in focus, like she’s weighing her options. Calculating outcomes. Eventually, she takes a breath. Asks a question. “You said that you hunted entities… Well, what about demons?”
“What about them?”
“Do they exist?”
I crack a grin. “Depends who you ask. Are you saying that you saw one down there?”
“I’m not sure,” she says at length. “Maybe not a demon but… something like it.” She stops. Her teeth dig into her lip, and then she says something that shocks even me. “I think I saw the devil. Satan.”
“Satan?” I say, whistling. “Now that’d be something.”
“You think I’m nuts,” she mutters, shaking her head. “I knew you would… Everyone will…”
“I don’t think you’re nuts. Not yet." I take one last drag on my cigarette, burn it to the filter and flick it to the floor. "The truth is, The Facility’s been tracking strange activity in the area. A lot of it. Entities are being drawn to this base, being pulled in from nearby regions like moths to a flame, only to vanish without a trace. I'm talking about heavy hitters. Nightmare fuel. These aren’t the sort of entities that we can destroy, much less contain, so the fact that they’re dropping off the face of the Earth is starting to get concerning.” I thumb to the broken window. “This base? It’s the Bermuda Triangle for boogeymen. I’m here to find out why.”
She shrinks in her seat. “Jesus… Do you think it has something to do with what I saw?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I won’t know until I get more details, and that means I need to know what you’re doing here.”
"Here?” she says, glancing at the bunker. “Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
"Not possible. We do this before nightfall. There’s no other way.”
What Maria doesn’t realize is that this entity likely already has her scent. Sooner or later, it’s going to return for her. When that happens, I need every advantage I can get– and that means understanding just what happened here.”
“Hang on,” she sputters. “What happens at nightfall?”
“Keep derailing my investigation, and you’ll find out.” I scratch her name onto the clipboard. “Now start talking. We’re losing daylight.”
She runs a frantic hand through her hair. “Christ. Alright,” she says, voice cracking. “Let me think for a second. It started a couple weeks ago, I think. A reader sent in a tip about this place–”
“Slow down. A reader?”
“Right, fuck. I'm a journalist. I work for an online paper, and we solicit tips for our stories. Usually scandals. Corruption. It's mostly political stuff… but a couple weeks back, a man sent in something bizarre.”
“That man have a name?”
“John.”
“Just John?”
Her voice breaks. “Yes.”
I write it down.
She continues. “John said he'd been hearing screaming, that his whole village had, coming from somewhere in the jungle nearby. Military was in the area. They were sending convoys through the village in the dead of night, with their headlights off to avoid drawing attention to themselves.
Apparently they were all driving up an old road, one that hadn't been used in decades. John knew the road. He knew it led to an old military base… one that used to conduct illegal experiments."
I lean back. "What kind of experiments?"
"The human kind. Genetic stuff. DNA splicing, mutating– you name it."
“Seems weird John would know that.”
“He used to work there,” she explains. “A long time ago, during the Cold War.”
I frown. “The nearest village is twelve miles away. Nobody is hearing screaming at that distance."
“That’s just it. They didn’t hear screaming from the base, they heard it from the jungle. John said it sounded just like it used to when he worked there. Guttural. Animalistic. He could tell that the people screaming had been experimented on, and that they were being let loose in the jungle."
"Let loose?"
"Yeah. I guess they'd send out test subjects, then release other experiments, more advanced ones, to hunt them down.
"What for? To test their capabilities?"
“Partly,” she says darkly. “But mostly for food.”
I chew on the tip of my pen. "Cannibal humans, genetic testing, a massive military cover up– sounds like Pulitzer Prize material."
She folds her arms, gives me a scathing look. “Is that sarcasm?”
“Not at all. Give me John’s age.”
“Not sure,” she says. “Seventy, maybe? He was in good shape. Fit. But he looked rough.” “Rough?”
“I just mean he looked like he’d been through the ringer. Had a hard life. His skin was leather, and he was missing half of his teeth. His hair was a tangled mess. I’m pretty sure I saw lice moving in his beard.” She pauses. “And his eyes…. His eyes were unnerving.” “Describe them.”
“Well, they were pale– paler than the moon. And every so often they’d sort of pulse, almost bulge out of their sockets. I hate to say it, but he looked freaky.”
“And John brought you here, to this base?”
She nods.
“And where’s John now?”
“He’s…” Maria’s eyes drift to the bunker. “He’s dead. Down there.”
Could’ve guessed. I follow her gaze and the steel hatch is turning crimson in the setting sun. My stomach twists. What I don’t tell Maria is that entities are most active after nightfall. If I don’t solve this mystery soon, then the answer is likely going to come find us– and I’m not sure I like our chances of survival.
“That hatch,” I say. “I'm guessing that's how you and John entered the bunker.”
“Yes.”
“Describe the interior.”
Maria takes a second. She furrows her eyebrows, as though thinking back. “It was narrow,” she says slowly. “Like a tall cylinder. I remember standing at the top of the hatch and looking down into a dark pit that stretched forever. John got on the ladder and told me to follow. He said it’d be a bit of a descent, but once we were down there, he was certain we’d find the evidence we’d need to blow the conspiracy wide open.”
“What state was the bunker in?” I ask. “John implied operations had resumed, but did it appear that way?”
“No…” she says. “Frankly, the condition was awful. It looked like the bunker had been abandoned since the Cold War. Moss crept up the walls and the ladder rattled with every step we took. The place was a deathtrap. Every time I put my foot down, I half-expected the ladder to snap.”
Odd. One would think John would clue in after seeing the state of the bunker that it wasn’t fit for operation. Then again, John strikes me as a man not altogether there. He might have been mentally ill. Out of his mind. Based on Maria’s description of him– the pale eyes, chilling demeanor– I can’t help but wonder if John wasn’t so much an employee of the program as he was a test subject.
Maria continues. “About fifty feet down the ladder, we started to see catwalks. Dozens of them. They extended off the ladder in every direction, leading to various entrances along the interior.” She trails off, as if collecting her thoughts. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse. Quiet. “The entrances were welded shut. All of them. It’s like they were trying to keep something trapped inside… like they didn’t want it getting out.”
“All of the entrances?” I ask.
“No,” she says, tugging nervously at her sleeve. “Not all of them. One was different. We found it at the bottom of the ladder, half-submerged in rainwater. The flooding only came up to our knees, so we were able to wade through easily enough but…” Her fingers dance across her jeans. They pick at the fabric.
“But what?”
“It was torn open,” she breathes. “The entrance, I mean. It was warped outward like something had clawed its way out of the bunker, pulled it apart like a tin can. I’m talking about inches of steel here. Enough to shrug off the shockwave of a nuclear warhead– I mean fuck, what could do that?”
For the first time, I feel the ghost of fear creep through me. It’s subtle. Insidious. If what she’s describing is true, then there are two, maybe three entities I’m aware of with that capability. All three are impossibly violent. Vicious. Official policy to avoid contact at all costs. If such avoidance isn’t possible, then policy dictates the elimination of all witnesses to ensure the preservation of social order.
I look to Maria. She’s covered in bruises, blood and judging by the way she’s cradling her arm, probably has at least one fracture. She’s already suffered a nightmare. I wonder if I’ll have the courage to put her down if the time comes.
“The door,” I say, hoping she doesn’t hear my voice crack. “John used to work there. He must have had thoughts on the damage.”
She snorts. “He said it was explosive charges. He said the military probably breached the door to get inside when they restarted their science project, but I knew that couldn’t be true. First of all, the door was warped outward– not inward. More than that, there wasn’t a shred of explosive damage in the area.”
“I’m assuming these were observations you shared.”
“Of course. John didn’t care though, just changed the subject– asked me if I had any skeletons in my closet. Asked me if I’d ever hurt people, or considered it and–”
“What?”
“Yeah, I know,” she says, laughing in disbelief. “Talk about a left turn into what the fuck. I shrugged it off. I mean, I knew John had demons in his past– maybe he was looking for a little absolution from me. It’s not like he sounded threatening. He almost asked the questions casually, like he was hoping we could start a conversation, forgive each other for our sins, sorta thing. He didn’t press the subject. Maybe if he had, though, things would’ve been different.”
She sighs. Her eyes shift to the bunker, hazy with memories. “He helped me squeeze through the damaged doorway, and we continued on. All the passages were flooded down there, utterly dark. We sloshed through countless corridors, our headlamps reflecting off the black water and making shadows against the walls. It creeped me out. It felt like we weren’t alone down there because I’d keep seeing movement out of the corner of my eye.”
Movement. I wonder if she really was just seeing things, or if there had been something down there, stalking them even then. “Anything stand out as interesting in those corridors?” “In some sense, all of it was interesting,” she says. “The whole place was like a buried time capsule. In the rooms we passed I saw ancient magazines and peeling posters. I saw little relics from the 70s or earlier, some floating in the water, others sitting on dusty tables and countertops– even keepsakes, like lockets, wedding rings. Even the desks were full of soggy documents. Classified ones. Seemed strange they’d just leave all that behind.”
She takes a deep breath. “We passed through a series of maze-like corridors, then climbed a ladder that finally got us out of that floodwater. It felt nice to be on dry ground again, but the new chamber…” A shiver runs through her. “It was narrow to the point of being claustrophobic, and all along its walls were streaks of dark paint. The air felt musty. Rancid. But it wasn’t until we turned the corner that–” She stops suddenly, her expression paling.
“Maria,” I press. “What happened when you turned the corner?”
A moment passes. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse. “Something crunched under my foot,” she says. “Bones. The passage was full of them. Skeletons were piled a foot high. It looked… It looked like they’d died scrambling over each other, like they were trying to reach the ladder and escape something. That’s when I realized the streaks along the walls weren’t paint. They were blood. Old and brown.”
My heart thrums. Could this be evidence of John’s so-called experiments? “Did the bones appear to be mutated at all?”
Maria nods, slowly. “Yes. Some more than others. One skull could’ve belonged to a man, but its jaw was elongated, like a horse’s. A single, twisted horn curved out of its forehead. Another was… another was flat. Square. It looked like somebody had rolled a person’s head under a tractor, but it had dozens of eye sockets. Multiple mouths.”
She brings a hand to her mouth. Gags. She looks like she might be sick, and I can’t blame her. I’m beginning to feel a little light-headed myself, though for another reason. Outside, we’re losing light. Night is fast approaching, and I’m worried it might be bringing something that I’m not yet ready to deal with. Something violent. Deadly.
“What was John’s reaction to the bones?” I ask, swallowing my dread.
“His reaction?” she mutters. “Jesus… Well, he picked one up– another skull. This one looked like it could’ve belonged to a woman, maybe, but where the mouth should have been was something else entirely. Mandibles. Like a wasp, or an ant. Whatever it was, it got John excited. His eyes did that creepy thing where they bulged from his sockets, and down there in the dark, I swear they even glowed. He held the skull up, just inches from my face and asked me how it made me feel. I could hardly focus on his words. His breath smelled like rot. Decay. He pressed me against the wall, but I shoved him off. He came back at me, and I took a swing at him– caught him across the jaw because I wasn't taking any chances down there. That dazed him. He stumbled, spat out some blood.”
An altercation. A new, unexpected wrinkle to her story that isn’t giving me any solutions to save our lives. Still, John is a curious individual. He was right about the experiments. If he’s dead, then I wonder what role he played in all of this… “How did John react to you hitting him?”
“He got weird,” she says, shaking her head. “Like fucking bizarre. He started mumbling nonsense, then shouting that I was being cruel, evil, like those monsters all over the ground. He cried. He whimpered that he was hurt, and that he brought me here as a favor, but now I was betraying him.” Maria pauses, as if she’s trying to make sense of her own story. “It was so strange. The way he was shouting didn’t sound angry, but almost performative. He kept calling me a monster like he was trying to get somebody’s attention.”
“And did he?”
Her mouth falls open as if to say no before a sudden realization flickers across her eyes. “Yes…” she breathes. “Oh God, I didn’t notice at the time but yes. Right after the shouting, we heard a clanging sound. It echoed through the passage. Whatever it was, it sounded distant. Far off, like it was coming from the entrance to the bunker, from that long ladder.”
“How did you react?”
“I didn’t know what to do. I mean, hell, I don’t think I believed it was really happening. We were miles deep in a jungle in a military base that by all accounts didn’t exist. Who the hell could be coming down the ladder?”
“And John’s reaction?”
“He grabbed my hand. Swore. He said the military must’ve figured out we were there, that they were coming to capture us, or kill us, or turn us into one of their newest abominations– who the fuck knows. He told me he knew a place where we could hide. We fled down passages that twisted and turned like a labyrinth. I followed his lead. At that point I had no idea where we were, no idea how to find my way back. He was my lifeline. My only shot. But the entire time we ran… I heard something rumbling in the dark.”
“Something human?”
“Do humans howl?”
Goosebumps trace my skin. No. They certainly don’t. “Maria,” I say, “this is important. What did the howl sound like– a wolf, or maybe a hyena?” This could be my chance to identify this thing. To figure out what it is we’re up against, and save our lives.
But she shakes her head. She shakes her head and I hate her for it. “No,” she tells me. “It didn’t sound like anything alive. It sounded artificial, electronic. It howled like a microphone screams with feedback, all high-pitched and ear-splitting.”
My grip tightens, cracking the plastic shell of my pen. Maria’s description doesn’t sound like any entity I’m familiar with, and that’s making me frustrated and terrified. “This place John mentioned,” I say, swallowing. “The place he said you’d be safe– where was that?” The color in her face washes away. “A wide room, shaped like a pentagon. All along the wall were slots. Gun turrets. They were abandoned, rusted out like everything else there but it was the words written all across the walls that made my blood go cold…”
Her voice trails off. She tries to finish her thought, but it comes out as a sob. She drops her face into her hands and the tears come out like a torrent, messy and loud. I give her a moment to let it out, to collect herself, but the truth is I’m not sure it’s a moment we can afford.
Outside, the sun is missing. It’s gone. The last scraps of daylight are making crooked shadows out of the treeline, spilling them across the base like decrepit fingers, reaching toward us like hungry phantoms.
My eyes find my clipboard. I scan it. I review the details I’ve recorded in search of some clue, some revelation that might get us out of this alive, but my writing is a mess. It’s uneven. It occurs to me that my hand has been shaking, that even now my palm is slick with sweat.
“I’m sorry,” Maria sniffles, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “I’m sorry…”
“It’s okay.”
It isn’t.
“You said there were words on the wall. What did they say?”
“Sector 5…” she says, taking a shuddering breath. “Sector 5: Feeding Trough. And the room… Oh god, there were corpses everywhere. They were scorched. Burned. They were half-devoured, rotting away, with maggots pouring out of their skin. The scent was… Nothing in the world smelled more terrible, more revolting.”
“Corpses,” I say, heart pounding. “Like the ones you saw before? Genetic experiments?”
“You said something earlier. Something about missing monsters… Disappearing entities…”
I lean forward. "What about it?"
Her eyes get wide. The contours of her face twist with the onset of dawning horror. “I think I found them,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “I think I found all of them down there.”

From "The Alchemy:" "He jokes that it's heroin, but this time with an e," surface level reading of that line is like the relationship is like a drug but heroin + e = "heroine" which is cute! But "e" is also a slang term for ecstasy, so "heroin with an e" can also mean "this love is as potent as TWO drugs!"
Thoughts?

Warning: NSFW
I can’t figure out how to tag it, but this post will contain mentions of drug abuse and overdose.
It was hard to wake up today. And now it’s almost 2 am and I’m still struggling. I always have at least one day like this at this time of the year… I just keep thinking about the day when I found my ex-fiance unresponsive. This was about 6 years ago now so I don’t remember all the details. My then-fiance was deep in the throes of addiction and I think he snorted some heroin that day. We were arguing about something, as usual. He took some drugs and then went onto the back patio to sit in the sun. After a few mins, I went out there and asked him a question (I don’t remember what). He didn’t respond so I repeated myself. When he didn’t respond again, I started to get angry. Then I noticed that his lips were turning blue. I said his name a couple times and tried shaking him, but he was like a rag doll. Right before this interaction, I had been hanging out with his young daughter just inside the house. My ex-fiancés friend (ie dealer) was temporarily staying with us at the time. When I realized that he was ODing and that I wasn’t able to lift him on my own, I instructed his daughter to go knock on the door and get his friend outside immediately. When the friend/dealer came out from the room and saw what was happening, he said “oh shit” and ran out to the patio to help me bring my then-fiance inside. I told the little girl to go to her room, NOW. She was a good listener, thankfully. The friend/dealer helped me bring my then-fiance inside and we threw him into a cold shower. Nothing happened, so I layed him down on the tiny bathroom floor and started giving him CPR. The friend/dealer’s gf was also present and by this point she saw what was happening and called 911. She said “the dispatcher says you’re going too fast!” So I slowed down. My then-fiances best friend had been hanging out at the bar down the block and for some reason decided to come to our house while the dealer’s gf was on the phone. The best friend was screaming “NOOOO!” Over and over again. I administered CPR until paramedics arrived. They took my ex-fiance to the hospital and he survived. The whole time this was happening, his little girl was in the next room. I’m sure she was scared out of her mind. I know I was. When they took my ex-fiance in the ambulance, I called his dad and told him what happened so that he could meet them there. His dad lived very close to the hospital they took him to. After the whole ordeal was over, my then-fiancés mom told me she would’ve appreciated a phone call as well. Which I understand completely, but I wish she hadn’t said that to me at that time. I was already feeling guilty that the whole thing happened while his daughter was home. And then his dad told me that I shouldn’t have done chest compressions. That part made me kind of mad. Like, whether or not that’s true, I saved your son’s life?? He should have said thank you.
Now it’s about six years later and I’m about to be married to a man who loves me and takes care of me. He would never risk putting me through something like this. But every year around this time I start getting flashbacks. I keep seeing his lips turning blue, hearing myself tell his daughter to go to her room, hearing his best friend screaming at the sight of him.
I’m sorry if this is hard to read/follow. I’ve been upset all day. My thoughts are pretty jumbled and I don’t care to reread this before posting. I just had to scream into the void a bit. And if you understand what I went through, I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve to know that fear and pain. Thanks for reading

What's good! I was hella bored so I made my ideal tracklist for his upcoming 'It's A Boy' with features and what each song may talk about. And yes, I called it a mixtape even though it's probably going to be an album. This may get long but if you can be bothered to read all of this, feel free to critique below! Features mentioned: Don Toliver + Kali Uchis, Travis Scott, Daylyt + Denzel Curry, Snoh Aalegra, JID, Tyler, the Creator (on production).
​
Track 1: Just like Yebba's heartbreak from Drake's CLB and Audio Hug from Summer Walker's EP, I believe the intro should be features purely. From a chronological standpoint, this song will cover the struggles of urban poverty and drug abuse experienced by both J Cole's parents whilst giving birth to J Cole; hence the namesake 'It's A Boy'. I said features (plural) as I believe Don Toliver and Kali Uchis would do a perfect role. Little is known about J Cole's father but he has stated he would spend time in Dallas, Texas. With this we can get an insight into who we was through Don Toliver. Kali Uchis would be perfect to outline J Cole's mother's postpartum depression, struggle with alcohols and drugs (which was mentioned by J Cole in the interlude 'Once an Addict') and her vocal style would be the perfect match for this. A hazy, cloud beat with psychadelic vocals and tempo changes to top it all off. By having both Don Toliver and Kali Uchis play the role of Cole's parents it also teaches them between right and wrong when bringing up a child.
​
Track 2: J Cole's experience with cigarettes. During his interview with Bob Myers, J Cole explains how he used to smoke with older children at the age of 6. With his brother finding out and reporting to his mother, this song will outline the changes in motherhood and how his actions can hurt his loved ones. Much like his songs on the album: 4 Your Eyez Only, I see this song to be pure story-telling. No features, just J Cole doing his thing. I love when J Cole samples soul beats, for example Erykah Badu's 'Didn't Cha Know' on 'Too Deep for the Intro'. J Cole being Marijuana free since 2011, a sample from Amy Winehouse's 'Addicted' (which she talks about Weed) would be the cherry on top.
​
Track 3: J Cole sets off to New York to puruse his music career. Throughout his discography, J Cole talks about how lit he gets in New York. This has trap written all over it and J Cole on one of the 'Might Delete Later' volumes states that he has been in the studio with Metro Boomin. The London was undisputedly a banger, as well as MAFIA by Travis Scott which features uncredited J Cole vocals. J Cole, Travis and Metro Boomin? YES SIR! Without a doubt this would be a song for the charts.
​
Track 4: Despite the confusion, J Cole was one of the feature artists on Future and Metro Boomin's 'WE STILL DON'T TRUST YOU' on the track 'Red Leather'. He states he kept his nose out of the streets but loves to get a whiff so this will be a pure hip-hop track. Daylyt being one of the best battle rappers of all time, showcased his skills on 'Pi' off of J Cole's mixtape 'Might Delete Later' is most definitely returning on this track. Another feature artist? Probably the most underrated rapper right now in the likes of former Raider Klan member Denzel Curry. J Cole, Denzel Curry and Daylyt would be straight up OVERKILL. Daylyt and Denzel Curry being exposed to the streets more than Cole might give an anecdotal experience in the song relating to drugs as well. After all, 'boy' is also a slang term for heroin, so in this song the narrative is shifted to drugs and gang culture. A Conductor Williams or Uncle Al beat you say? DAMN. (no pun intended).
​
Track 5: Wet Dreamz has always had mixed reviews. Some say it's top 3 on 2014 FHD, while others say it's too corny. Nonetheless, J Cole does not fail when it comes to love songs especially on his older projects. Both J Cole and Melissa have been couples since his arrival to New York. Unlike his typical love songs, this will be a back and forth between Snoh Aalegra (who will play as Melissa Heholt) and J Cole himself talking about their desires and futures as a couple. With a starting line sung by Snoh Aalegra along the lines of, 'It's a Boy named Jermaine...' this will kickstart the RnB vibe that will be on full display in this multi-genre project. To be frank, Snoh Aalegra, H.E.R., Ari Lennox and Summer Walker can all walk perfectly but given that Cole has already worked with Ari Lennox on 'Shea Butter Baby' as well as 'Pricey', Snoh Aalegra would be the perfect fit. Not to mention, she has worked with Vince Staples as well. I would like to see the exploration of lust, vulnerable emotion and mental unrest.
​
Track 6: During his interview with Narduwar, Cole says that he had introduced Kendrick to Dr. Dre. Although I do not believe it was entirely Cole, I still believe this gesture by Cole is what keeps their friendship intact. In my opinion, J Cole is the better rapper, but there is no denying that Kendrick is a better artist. I compare this 'beef' to relighting a flame that has been put of for years: the flame being hip-hop. This so called beef has made grown men like Dj Akademiks lose sleep and worry about things that are the opposite behind disses and cameras. This leads me on to the next track being, 'It's a boy from Compton' as I assume how J Cole would've introduced Kendrick to Dr. Dre. Only Cole on this beat, I believe this track to be clearing all the rumours amongst them and further explaining the reasoning behind Cole removing his verse. Thematically, it would obviously cover friendship and brotherhood. A jazzy boom-bap sample would do just right seeming as though it would be about Kendrick.
​
Track 7: Present day. Social Media era. J Cole has mentioned about the toll social media has on one's well being with Angie Martinez as well as Kevin Hart. In this track, 'social media' is personified as a controlling head that tempts J Cole into becoming this toxic conundrum. Assisted with a funk bassline provided by Bootsy Collins, JID will feature as the voice of 'social media' by creating this parallel. This goes deeper into being doxxed, illicit content etc. By comparing social media to drugs, this shows how the same 'bad energy' is constantly following someone set out to better themselves.
​
Track 8: The last track on this mixtape I randomly made up. This will actually be about Cole's son and his steps towards fatherhood. Each song prior to this track has a message that leads to this point. No further explanation other than to expect a story telling masterpiece similar to the song 4 Your Eyez Only or She's Mine Pt. 1 and Pt. 2. A mellow beat with a slow tempo produced by Tyler, the Creator to heighten the short steps taken by Cole and not to rush in whilst raising a son.
​
Yes. I am one bored MF. Peace.

• not quite but it rhymed with that…

So I’m on the just X-side of “Xennial” (way too old for this ****) in the self-checkout at my local Kroger. Clerk is a lady I’ve seen a thousand times; I dunno her name but she’s 5’3” at best and could be a boomer herself (definitely elder Gen X at least). I didn’t catch the conversation (she wears a mask at all times so a bit muffled) but she was trying to explain to this guy how store/corporate policy forbids what he was trying to do, but 3 seconds later he’s bellowing “you f’n bitch how dare you speak to me like this” (not sure what she said exactly but it did not merit that). Look back and this elder boomer, flabby af with 6 yellow teeth left, but still all of 6’4”, is barreling towards her cursing loudly enough the whole store had to hear it, backs her up against a self-checkout stand berating her, with his equally old/heavy buddy behind him egging him on and swearing at her. Immediately after another lady clerk who I chat with a lot swoops in, yanks the shorter older lady behind her and is trying to stay in front of this towering old guy. And she’s super nice and loves my dog and tells me how lucky I am to have the girlfriend I have (neighborhood store, yo) and I couldn’t take it and started off with a really loud “GENTLEMEN GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER” which elicited an immediate torrent of abuse.
And he’s swearing at me and I’m standing there with my hands in my pockets, see both have grungy OD green hats with backwards neutral US flag patches, so I go ‘you gents are retired military yeah?’
‘You bet we are you (slang for female genitalia), like you’d understand what that means’
[face-aching smiling begins]
‘Well thank you both for your service, for sure, but I’d expect it’d mean you’d know not to take brigade-level orders out on the boots.’
‘Go **** yourself you’re in my space’
This caused my fave clerk to crack up because I looked at the cart between us (lengthwise) and looked at her and snorted something about ‘his space’. He tried to shove it in my gut, but I’d figured he might, and caught it.
… which is where that pearl got dropped. I thought about blowing him a kiss but figured I was already in deep water so said something like ‘you can insult me all you want, dude, you can’t make me angry but now you’re not bullying women half your size.’
Whole time he’s yelling about his space, how I’m in it, how I’m threatening him. Dude if I touch you it’s a class III felony unless you’re dumb enough to swing first. You are bigger than ME and the bigger of those two ladies is the size of my 80-year-old mother. What is wrong with you?
Right at this moment the manager shows up with an armed security guard, sticks his hand out at me in a handshake and says ‘sir we got this if you could just step away’ and oh, please, yes, thank you, this is already unbelievably dumb… grab my stuff, chat a sec with the ladies, and scoot.
But what the hell man? You are 2x the size of this woman, she’s not some crass disrespectful teen, and you’re gonna try to intimidate everyone til you find someone just big enough you get antsy?
No idea what this was over but don’t you folks love speaking to management? Go do that, Christ.
Gonna be real awkward getting lettuce tomorrow after work ….

[<< First] [< Previous] [Next >] [Patreon] [Discord]
​
Synopsis:
Juliette Contzen is a lazy, good-for-nothing princess. Overshadowed by her siblings, she's left with little to do but nap, read … and occasionally cut the falling raindrops with her sword. Spotted one day by an astonished adventurer, he insists on grading Juliette's swordsmanship, then promptly has a mental breakdown at the result.
Soon after, Juliette is given the news that her kingdom is on the brink of bankruptcy. At threat of being married off, the lazy princess vows to do whatever it takes to maintain her current lifestyle, and taking matters into her own hands, escapes in the middle of the night in order to restore her kingdom's finances.
Tags: Comedy, Adventure, Action, Fantasy, Copious Ohohohohos.
​
Chapter 224: Tavern Brawl
No bellow of laughter met my ears.
Gone was the comforting sound of hoodlums at rest, desecrating a corner of a bar instead of a corner of my fields. I heard no tuneless bard monopolising the disappointment of drunkards and no splintering of chairs as peasants directed their fists upon themselves and not against my kingdom.
Instead … all I heard was the din of duplicity.
A muffled sound creeping from the tavern, no different than the movement of burglars in the night.
And then–
Bwam.
It was joined by the crash of a door bursting open.
Hinges groaned as a result of the lightest touch Apple’s head could offer. And then he promptly entered, his measured trots echoing against the wooden floorboards like the butt of a reaper’s scythe.
Behind me, the last gasp of evening poured past my silhouette.
A window of scarlet stretched over shocked faces which shuttered windows had sought to conceal, and yet any warmth was made cold again by the reaching shadow I cast atop from atop Apple’s back. Dimly lit candles leaning from walls hushed to my coming, retreating where hoodlums didn’t.
As the door creaked to a close, only the embers of a dying hearth lit the room, revealing open mouths and eyes almost just as wide.
Left, right and centre, I saw the finest louts any freshly requisitioned tavern could boast. A common room filled with knaves adorned in rags, their ill-intent matching the foulness of their odour.
Hands came to a stop as they were caught with everything the tavern had to offer.
Crates of wine bottles, clinking to Apple’s steps. Kegs hoisted to chests, still with their leaking taps attached. Cutlery, tableware and even the cloth used to wipe them. If it could be carried, it was done by the armful.
And if it couldn’t, it was simply rolled across the floor.
A barrel came to a stop against an oaken table, itself being hoisted between a pair of stunned louts. They watched as Apple bore me past, frozen in their disbelief that a princess would ever sully herself with their presence.
Even so, their astonishment was little compared to my own.
I was appalled.
Indeed, this tavern wasn’t merely closed! It was being stripped bare!
And these hooligans … they were utterly useless at it!
Why were they rolling kegs while these permanently stained tables had yet to be removed? Why were they spending time dodging scattered chairs instead of tearing them away? And why was the floor absolutely littered with unretrieved bottles and steins?
The utter gall!
I expected nothing of ruffians, but I at least assumed they knew how to ransack a simple tavern!
Naturally, since this watering hole was being requisitioned, changes would be wholesale. And this meant everything including the wallpaper had to go–something these charlatans hadn’t even touched yet, let alone the candle wax somehow melted upon it!
Ugh. The absolute state of my kingdom’s looters.
Unless it was a royal tomb, I couldn’t rely on them to even pick their own pockets.
Having seen all I needed, I tugged on Apple’s reins, bringing him to a halt just before the bar.
It’d been swiped clean, all its contents now stacked in a pile beside the only hoodlum to boast rags in the shape of a tax inspector’s uniform.
The leader of these failed vandals.
I noted the inconsistencies at once. The patches of underlying colour beneath the black. The flimsy collar lacking the rigidity to be used as an emergency weapon. The boots with soles far too thin to echo across all surfaces no matter the texture.
But most of all, I noted the utter look of bewilderment upon the man’s face.
Unworthy of more than a glance. Our tax inspectors were practically handpicked by my family. For one not to recognise my regal aura was testament to his fraudulent nature.
Thus–
I idly peered around me instead.
“Salutations, gentlemen. And what exactly do we have here? I see greater organisation in a goblin’s laundry pile. Has a sense of urgency not been discovered in the countryside? Or does that come after you’ve finished spilling my newly seized assets beneath the floorboards?”
I gestured for an answer to shoot past my ears.
Nothing came. And so I pointed at the stack of crates which would need their contents returned.
“Why have the beverages been removed first while the furniture still remains? These are the only things which don’t need to go. The peasants can do without seating, but what will they use to reconcile themselves with their life of inescapable poverty? Your apologies, perhaps? There is a mob of rapidly sobering peasants outside. And when they realise in a brief flash of epiphany that their time could be better spent supplanting their rulers instead of feeding them, chaos and anarchy will reign. How do you intend to escape when you can scarcely walk without stumbling over your own feet?”
I waited.
Silence as heavy as the dourness of the curtains fell over the tavern. Naturally, they’d need to go as well.
And then–
“Bwahahaahahahahah!!”
“Oh gods, I thought it was just me! Someone’s actually ridden a horse straight into a tavern!”
“Oi, we need to make the sign bigger! The drunks are still coming in!”
“Gwahahhaha! Better bring one of the kegs back! We don’t know what this one will do otherwise!”
The tavern echoed with a chorus of mocking laughter.
As though its patrons had never departed, the noise rose as a crescendo of derisive glee. Hands slapped against thighs and boots stomped against the floor. The mirth shook the ageing, wooden beams until even trails of dust came spiralling down.
My mouth widened in outrage.
How … How dare they laugh at Apple!!
“Ahaahaahahaha~”
“C-Coppelia?! Why are you laughing too?!”
Horrified that even my loyal handmaiden was succumbing to the loutish atmosphere, I focused my attention on the loudest source of insult. The lout masquerading as a tax inspector, his face now red as an overripe tomato.
“Bwahahaahhahahahahaha.”
I jabbed my finger directly towards his nose.
“You do not have permission to laugh! There are very few scenarios in which nameless goons are permitted to cackle! Why, you’ve neither a mysterious figure nor a weapon of doom before you! No, you are to properly prepare this tavern for refurbishment, restore the bar to full working order, and then direct me to whichever stained corner a lowly baroness seeks to hide herself in!”
The chorus of laughter faded at once.
Where there was the sound of rampant impropriety, there was now an appropriate silence.
“Tch.”
At least until a tongue clicked before me.
A disgraceful noise to direct towards a princess, worthy of more soap than could ever be mined. At least until I saw where the man’s bleak eyes were narrowed towards.
The copper ring around my finger.
I pursed my lips, withholding my unfair and partial sentencing. For now.
I could fault these ruffians for many things. Their odour especially. But not that.
“Well, well, what'd ya know? Not just a drunk, then. But a drunk adventurer.”
And then the pretender grinned, revealing a line of chipped teeth, freshly broken from the last tavern encounter he’d enjoyed.
A shift in atmosphere filled the air.
It was tangible. Like an errant child’s squirm of delight. And now a group of hoodlums revelling in chronicle inefficiency found their mirth replaced by a different joy. One of roguish opportunity as clear as the glint of a Reitzlake alley.
Somewhere, I heard the sound of knuckles cracking in the dark.
The man before me gave a sigh, donning an appearance of regret only less false than his uniform.
“Tough to be you, eh? Adventuring is a hard life. I know it. Even thought about doing it myself once. Problem is, when your job is being in the wrong place at the wrong time, that means you can’t even enjoy a drink in a tavern anymore.”
He waved his arm at the furniture yet to be replaced, then presented his chipped smile once again.
“Luckily for you, I’m better than that. So I’ll make it easy for you. Take a seat. Any seat. You can play it smart and sit it all out somewhere nice and warm until this all blows over. Or you can be dumb and find yourself at the bottom of a well. A fair offer. And better than any of these would allow.”
I covered my mouth with my hands.
I … I scarcely believe it.
This completely irrelevant henchman was … taunting me!
The absolute insult to social hierarchy!
These were all utterly nameless, bottom-tier goons, lacking status, strength and hygiene! The very fact they were assigned to tavern work was proof of that! Any retainer of actual worth, skill or value would be orchestrating at least a minor nuisance somewhere worthy of a roll of my eyes.
But these?
Their jobs were quite literally to ferry alcohol and chairs!
… And not very well, either!
Naturally, I disregarded every word spoken. I had neither the time nor the care to humour the threats of those who should be artistically peppering the background.
Which was why–
I reached for my side … and then did absolutely nothing.
Where my hand would be expected to call upon my multipurpose caterpillar and rodent remover, I instead found myself frozen as I once again assessed the company of odorous ruffians.
I studied the raggedness of their attire. The simple glee in their eyes. The fists cupped to palms. And then I took in the ambience of my surroundings.
A cold sweat came over me.
Indeed … I’d read enough scandalous pages of all the bestselling romance-adventure novels of the past several years to know what utter peril I was in.
Because the moment I sought to defend myself–
My very status as a princess would be lost.
I had walked …. into the midst of a tavern brawl situation!
Here were thugs whose eyes were so blinded by ineptitude they saw neither the impassable canyon of status or Coppelia as she began doing arm exercises!
No wonder they were the joy of all swashbuckling heroes and strong willed heroines! Tavern layabouts were no better than props! Their purpose was for the leads to reaffirm their affections, basking under the weight of wanton violence and alcoholism!
I-It was scandalous!!
Page turning and suspenseful … but still scandalous!!
“... Oh?” The leader of the nameless goons smiled, seeing the horror written upon my face. “Good choice. Wouldn’t want Salty Jim to get his hands on you. You’d never get the dandruff out.”
“Shaddup, Grub. Yours is just as bad.”
The blood drained from my face.
Why … even their names were scooped from the bottom of the barrel!
A tightrope. I could not under any circumstances engage in physical altercation. Such a thing would wound me greater than any wildly swinging fist doomed to miss ever could. Nor could I flee, even if their odour demanded it more than their leering did.
Yet as the first of the hoodlums approached to a chorus of low chuckling and brutish neck cracking, it was clear I couldn’t remain idle.
“Coppelia!”
“Present!~”
She appeared beside me with breathtaking speed, having no idea of the shame I’d ask of her.
I swallowed a deep breath, apology rising in my heart.
“Coppelia … know that I regret this request deeply … after all, it’s clear these are the most bottom-tier of goons. The lowest rung of an underground ladder. The braised fruit slime of haute cuisine.”
“Yep~ they’re the footstools of the bandit world. Completely useless. Want me to send them next door?”
The ring of approaching goons stopped.
Suddenly, faces which were filled with simple mischief turned to frowns of indignity instead.
A disgraceful reaction. To be sent next door without needing to use their own legs was a greater reward than any hoodlum deserved.
“We’re not bottom-tier goons,” said the leader of the bottom-tier goons, his smile fading at once. “... Why? Did someone say that? Was it Old Grubby’s crew? Because they couldn’t even steal a loaf of bread without causing a fire. The baroness trusts us, you see. We’re an important part of her network. A critical cog in her–”
I gave a sad shake of my head. Mostly to attune the frequency of every tavern lout from my ears.
“Look, Coppelia, even when faced with an objective truth from a third party, they fail to see their lack of worth. Should they vanish on the spot, not a head would turn. It’d be years before their disappearance was noted, such is the lack of impact they have on the lives of others. Only when a bureaucrat behind a desk queries who these names on a crumbling ledger are will anyone realise they may have once existed.”
Mouths widened around me once again. Even so, whatever complaints they had for me, it was nothing compared to what Coppelia deserved to voice.
“This is why … I offer my express apologies. It is the most degrading, belittling and shameful task imaginable. To have you lift a finger against these chronic failures of life, whose only history is of perpetual inadequacy as they flee from every blundering mishap they’ve created. Untrusted to even feed themselves with a spoon, they find themselves ferrying wares from a tavern. A task with no responsibilities and no expectations. And still–they fail.”
A bizarre, gurgling sound made its way into my ears.
I ignored it.
“... Why, they’re such perennial disappointments that disappointment itself is now beyond them, for who can gather the strength to direct emotion at fish which leaps ever out of the river to its own death, flopping and flailing, until a passing soul places them back to begin their incompetence anew? After the umpteenth failure, there’s no longer room for grief. Only the routine of practised movement. Theirs is a life characterised by a lack of success and the ambition to achieve it, for if they had any sense of dignity or self-betterment, they would surely be anywhere but leering at a young maiden in a darkened tavern.”
Somewhere, a sniff filled the air.
“Indeed, here are the smallest scuff marks upon a window, worth so little time that thought cannot be spared on how to clean it. And now their irrelevance has become their curtains. All to hide away from the shine of those who became fathers, husbands, merchants and tradesmen. Now they languish in the lowly schemes of others, chittering as the last of their childhood dreams wheedles away, and the memories of their first sweetheart grow ever distant in the foggy horizon.”
I looked sadly at Coppelia. She nodded repeatedly, clearly keen for further clarification.
“That’s why, I apologise, and ask that you–hmm?”
I felt a tug on my sleeve.
From my other side, Renise had walked up to me, a concerned look upon her face.
“That’s … That’s enough … Miss Juliette …”
I blinked in puzzlement.
All the more so as I saw a ring of woe around me.
Nameless goons sat upon chairs, faces in palms as they shielded their eyes from the judging light of a dimly lit tavern. Wet streaks fell between fingers, the drops loud against tables and floorboards as I opened my ears to the sound of weeping.
“Uuuh … I had … I had dreams …”
“Josephine … I’m so sorry … for breaking my promise …”
“When … When did it all go wrong … ?”
My mouth widened at the fallen.
Everywhere I looked, I saw spirits crushed by truths as heavy as the tables I still expected them to move. Snotty tears wetted sleeves that wiped against the sides of chairs now needing to be burned. And hiccups as loud as Coppelia’s amusement as she battled a different form of tears to these whimpering souls.
After a moment–
I slowly raised a hand to my lips, barely covering my not at all unnatural smile.
“Ohhhohoh? … Ohohohohhhohohohooho!!”
B-Behold!
The strength of … of … I’ll decide later!!
However!
It was doubtless the ability to sweep aside all facades, dredging the innermost struggles into the open! Why, by using my natural gifts of insight, I could paint a light upon the dark, paving a path forward in search of personal betterment for every nameless goon to have lost their way!
“You gotta be kidding me.”
Or at least, almost all of them.
The false inspector gazed around him, shaken but unfallen.
Bared teeth promptly met me. As well as the glint of a weapon.
“This … This was meant to be my one simple gig! I am not going back saying I can’t even put up a closing sign!”
As he stepped forward, vindictiveness burned in his eyes along with the rusted blade in his hand.
I let out a small groan as I reached for my side.
However … it was not my sword which met the callous attack.
Hnnnph.
It was Apple’s snort.
An assault from his nostrils directly into the face of the hoodlum seeking to ruin my image. He gave a yelp of surprise and spun, his balance swiftly lost.
Especially once Apple headbutted him.
Poomph!
The hoodlum crashed to the floor, his head coming to rest against the side of the bar as all the stars left his eyes.
I looked on in shock.
But not for long.
Instead, I clapped my hands in delight, before immediately leaning down to collect a premium apple from the designated saddlebag.
It was important to reward Apple when he did something well.
After all, it was how he was trained to do it again.
​
[<< First] [< Previous] [Next >] [Patreon] [Discord]

So the trailer for Ride or Die made me want to revisit the series and I sat watching the first 1 last night. Obviously Eddie steals 2ks of the heroin but something I really don't understand is why was the heroin on a tray with a rolled up note like it was coke? We even see him putting a load onto a card prepared to snort it as the big bad turns up. Has Michael Bay not seen Pulp Fiction or did I miss something? I assumed he sold the 2ks and that's how he paid for the Alcapone suite and all the hookers, but when the police are investigating they even say "there's some of out heroin on the table" and it has the evidence sticker still on it? Is it just a major oversight or am I being an idiot and missing something?

 My son (25) is overall a great kid, he has a big heart, and works and provides for himself most of the time. Well right now is the bad time because we’ve been fighting addiction with him on and off since he was 13. The only trouble he has ever been in is an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in 2018-2019 and it was dropped after some outpatient rehab and therapy. Well, he stayed clean for 4 years and was doing very well. He had 16,000 in savings. He operates heavy machinery and has been doing it since he was 16. July 2023 he relapses and ends up threatening suicide so my other son(21)calls 911 without him knowing. He was paranoid and thought people were trying to kill him for his money. He even thought I was in with these people. I’m the only one he calls about everything. I’m the only one that can talk him down during these episodes. 2 weeks prior, I was on the phone for 7 hours trying to snap him back to reality. He was driving in a storm and everyone was chasing him. There were cameras in the street lights and he didn’t know where he was. ( He lives in Tennessee with his father and I live in Las Vegas). When he finally made it home, I let him go. Cops came and he ran to the bathroom and snorted about 2 grams of meth before they got the door busted down. He went to a psychiatric hospital for 5 days, went home, and went back to work. 2 months later, he is still using and gets fired from his job for accusing the bosses for trying to kill him. He worked there 3 years driving a front loader. He packs a suitcase and ends up in Atlanta Georgia. To make a long story short, he pays a homeless person to tell him where to buy drugs. Supposedly He went down there to join the operators union. He ends up overdosing on meth, fetynal, and heroin. Someone Narcans him and leaves him in his truck in Walmart parking lot. Well he wakes up and uses what little drugs he has left but it was only enough to piss him off. As he is leaving WalMart to get more drugs, someone tailgates him and he pulls over and pulls out his pistol and shoves it in there face and told them he was gonna kill them. He said he remembers hearing people screaming “ don’t shoot please don’t shoot” and he snaps out of it and jumps in his truck and takes off. 2 days later and still no sleep he gets arrested. 30,000 bond and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. They found a little meth, fetynal and heroin but was charged for it. His dad bonded him out for 5000 and some collateral. A month later he gets a speeding ticket and possession of meth tickets in Tennessee. That case is pending. If anyone has been through something similar, could he be facing jail time and/ or probation? What are some things he can do to better him in court. He has been clean since the first of February 2024 and is now working driving a forklift. He spent everything he had in savings on drugs. So he is starting from scratch. But he only has like 3 bills he has to pay. Sorry for it being so long but I wanted to kinda give a background on him. Thanks for any info because I’m worrying myself sick. 

Chapter 52
Aisha was already drunk by the time she was shown into King Fenard’s parlor. Fenard had been forewarned, so he was not offended, but rather prepared for her appearance with a glass of Worthmus brandy in each hand. She took them both, drained one and nursed the other, as he coaxed her into one of the couches.
He had only scant details over what had triggered this sudden drunkenness in the previously hyper-professional healer, but he figured that if she wanted to drown whatever it was with alcohol, he would oblige her. At least until it became clear that she had a problem, which he was not anticipating.
“This stuff is good,” she commented as she sipped the second glass of brandy.
“It comes from the valley where Tom was born,” Fenard explained. “I had several casks purchased because of that, but I’ve taken a liking to it myself since then.”
“Thirty, maybe forty proof,” she commented. “Tangy, with a bit of zest. What makes it purple?”
“It’s the color of the fruit that they distill it from,” Fenard explained. “It only grows in that valley.”
“Huh,” she said, and she drained the rest of the glass. He poured her another.
“May I ask what is wrong?” Fenard inquired.
“You may,” She answered.
Fenard waited. Then he snorted. “My tutors used to do that to me as well. What is wrong, Heroine Aisha?”
“I nearly crippled someone today,” she answered.
“I see,” King Fenard said. “I’m going to focus on the ‘nearly’ modifier of that statement because it implies that you avoided this unfortunate event. I’m assuming it was a nearly avoided accident?”
“No.” Aisha sighed, sloshing the brandy around in her glass as she worked the words over in her drunken mind. “A boy presented to my clinic with a mangled hand. Some sort of farm or industrial accident, I didn’t get the whole story. I think he was lying to protect someone. It doesn’t matter, really. He was sixteen years old, which I guess in this world is old enough to work. Anyway, I anesthetized him with my level ten Skill and went about surgically setting his crushed bones and mending them along the way with my magic.”
Fenard listened, then in a pause said “It sounds like you un-crippled someone today, not--”
“My assistant stopped me. I was about to make a cut with my scalpel, and she grabbed my hand. She said, ‘you were about to cut his lifeline.’ I dismissed it at the time, although I did cut from a different angle. It wasn’t until I was healing him, after the surgery was completed, that I realized what she meant.”
Fenard frowned. “I don’t understand. I assume that if you were cutting that close to a lifeline you would be taking the suitable--”
“Goddammit Fenard, people on earth don’t have veins of invisible magic flowing through their bodies! I didn’t realize what I’d almost done until I went to heal, and the place where I’d almost cut him started to glow. I asked my assistant what he meant, and he looked at me like I was a fool. And goddamn it, I am one.”
Fenard was silent for a moment before filling her glass once more. “I see. The Mana circulation system is not part of your training.”
“No,” she said, laughing. “No it is not.”
“Yet your ability uses it to heal. Is there not any overlap between your knowledge and your abilities as a Medico?” Fenard persisted.
“When I use my magic, it just works,” she explained. “I don’t have to think about it or anything. I just basically say ‘be well!’ and the magic heals my patient’s wounds.”
Fenard nodded. He considered how to deal with the situation, now that he understood the root of the problem. “Many healers, but not all of them, unlock an ocular ability which allows them to see lifelines,” he said. “There’s a chance that you’ll be in that category.”
“I can’t perform surgery if there’s an invisible nerves that I could nick and cripple my patient,” Aisha pointed out. “And if I can’t heal, then my leveling stalls out. I’m useless, Fenard. You had might as well send me back to Earth.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Fenard reminded her. “Anyway, even without the Healer’s Eye ability, many in my world learn enough about the matter that they feel comfortable healing with a knife as you do. You can simply study the matter until your confidence returns.”
Aisha laughed. “How am I supposed to study something that I can’t see, Fenard?”
“You simply make it visible,” Fenard explained. “One moment, I’ll be back shortly.”
Fenard stepped out of his parlor and summoned his court magician. After conferring with the man for a few moments, the magician left to fetch the documents the king requested, while King Fenard returned to Aisha’s side.
“I have just conferred with an expert on the subject. There is a very simple magic ritual which causes Life Lines to become illuminated. You simply need a Skilled Mage to perform it and--”
“A lot of good that does me,” Aisha complained. “I’m not a Skilled Mage, and I don’t know anything about ritual magic.”
“No,” King Fenard admitted. “But you do know someone who does.”
~~~~~~~~
The griffin landed near the Weaver’s camp, and Anaxis dismounted, patting the furred and feathered beast affectionately. Vella had rushed over when it became clear where the man was landing, and she stood patiently at a distance as the man unstrapped the saddle from his winged mount.
“Did you get the books I asked for?” Vella asked as Anaxis was scratching the griffin in the places where the saddle’s girdle rubbed.
“I did indeed, through no small amount of effort and painstaking search of the extensive collections of three cities which I visited for the singular purpose of pleasing the young mistress,” Anaxis answered.
“Don’t pretend that you went super far out of your way for it,” Vella protested. “I know you wouldn’t have done that. You probably found them all in the first store you visited and had five other reasons to go there in the first place.”
Anaxis tsked. “I visited three bookstores to get them, in three different cities, young lady,” he insisted. “Although you’re not entirely wrong. I had reasons to visit those cities aside from fulfilling your task, and visiting the bookstores was not particularly onerous.”
He retrieved from his bag seven pressed books of various thicknesses and passed them over to the Child Mage, who took them with glee.
“Thank you, oh great and wonderful Anaxis, for your kindness,” she said, exaggerating her words deliberately.
“It is the least I can do for a future magician of great renown,” he insisted, bowing to her. She ran off, and he returned to tending to his griffin, who had seen a long flight today and would be hungry.
Vella plopped down nearby and began digging into the books that he had brought her. The three books that she had bought from Nelz the librarian had recommended these seven as starter tomes for any promising young Mage, and she had every intention on being promising. She knew that she’d already be years behind compared to the great Mage families of the capital, the ones where a Child not awakening as a Mage at a young age was as remarkable as someone like her doing it in the first place.
Not that she was especially handicapped, as many who made the jump from Commoner to Mage did so in their twenties. But she was to be studying with the great families, so she was anticipating being held to their standards. That meant that she wanted to get a head start on her studies and come to them fully prepared for whatever questions might be asked.
Thus, her self-imposed research regimen.
She was scanning through the index of A Beginner’s Guide to Magical Foci when Norman Weaver finished setting up the tent he shared with his wife and came over to greet their guest.
“The little one isn’t giving you any trouble, is she?” Norman asked.
“She is perhaps a little impatient to grow up, that is all,” Anaxis answered. “However, I must admit that I did not come here merely to make a book delivery.”
“I was sort of wondering when I saw you circling,” Norman admitted. “I thought that our business was concluded when I dropped off the textiles at Tukson. Is there something wrong with the goods I delivered?”
“Quite the opposite! They are all of the absolute highest quality and I look forward to presenting them to Queen Gloracia myself! That will of course be after a seamstress has converted them into a lovely wardrobe for her royal majesty, and that will be in the current styles of Koratia and not Welsius, of course. But the fabric’s origin will be most remarked upon by all parties, I assure you.”
“Oh? Earlier you made it sound as though the queen would faint over samples of the fabrics themselves.”
“And I’m certain that she would! But let us be honest with each other, I’m certain you know as well as I do that the wealthy and the powerful do not have the time to see to all of the minor details and minutia of everyday living. My humble queen entrusts a loyal team of fashionistas to ensure that her wardrobe stays up to date and in the current trends. They are the ones who will be remarking upon the qualities of your cloth, and she will trust them at their word much more than a man like myself. I will be present merely to vouch for its origin, as the one who purchased and shipped it across the wilds between our two nations.”
Norman chuckled. “As long as I can honestly say from hence forth that I’ve sold cloth that the Queen of Koratia has worn, I don’t really care for the details,” He admitted.
“And I assure you that is the honest truth,” Anaxis said. “However, you’re not entirely wrong to be concerned by my presence. I am not here on business. Or at least, I am not here related to the business of buying and selling cloth. Rather, of my other business. I also buy and sell information. Recently, I purchased a piece of information which I found most troublesome.”
“And what is that? Or do I have to pay you for the answer to that question?” Norman asked.
“It was your itinerary, Norman,” Anaxis answered. “Somehow, your planned route to the capital has leaked to the information community.”
Norman frowned. “What would a bunch of spies care about my whereabouts? I’m just a--”
“You’re just the father of the first Controller to appear in the world for decades, Norman,” Anaxis said, interrupting the man. “I believe that the importance of your son’s class still hasn’t struck home to you yet, so I’ll forgive you for being ignorant of how important that makes you and your wife by proxy. To me and my queen, that increases the value of your goods. To the leaders of the other four great nations, that makes you potential hostages. I suggest, strongly, that you change your route as soon as possible, even if that means traveling significantly out of your way.”
“I see,” Norman said, and he frowned. “Thank you for the warning then, Anaxis. Was that really the entire reason you came to see us?”
“No. I came to warn you, and, unless you drive me off, I came to guard you personally until a more suitable escort arrives from the king of Welsius. I am a level forty-six rogue, you see, aside from being a Winged Courier. While I may not be the ideal bodyguard, I would not be able to look your son in the eye again if I knew that his family was in danger and did nothing to protect them.”

In celebration of Emily Henry’s Funny Story releasing at the end of this month, I took it upon myself to reread her previous 4 books and break down the Emily Henry Experience and also review the books without the New Release Glow upon them. I know. I truly suffered for ya’ll.
So what is The Emily Henry Experience?
When you look at it on the surface, Henry is just writing Contemporary Romances, but they’re CRs which have the greater part of Romancelandia in a choke-hold. I’m one of these people.
Recurring themes are: Millennial Ennui, one of the MCs will have lost a parent, heroes who worship the heroines, and emotionally pack subplots that do not overpower the Romance.
While her books are not in a series, they all (so far) exist in the same universe with a mention in each book back to the Beach Read couple. However - every single one of her books can be read as a standalone.
The Reviews - In Book Publication Order
Beach Read - 4 Stars
Featuring: Grieving a parent, professional competition, small town and ‘the one that got away’ vibes
When I read Beach Read for the first time, it was newly released and we were all in lockdown. When I saw the title, I anticipated a fun and funny romcom and got a grief-filled complicated romance. I wasn’t too impressed, honestly, and gave it 3 Stars.
Since then, every Emily Henry book has been 5 stars for me. While that wasn’t the case with this reread, and this is still my least favorite of her books, I get Henry’s schtick now - in fact, I eat it up - and I really did enjoy this book.
What Worked For Me:

• January’s Grief - since losing her father, January’s life has gone to shambles, and the way in which the external shitshow and internal nightmare are portrayed in January’s life is notable. (That said, this is something that Henry excels at in all her books.)
• The Bet Between January and Gus - this was a fantastic set-up, forcing the MCs to spend time together as they ‘competed,’ leading to:
• The Research Dates - both January and Gus plan activities that represent their preferred genres (January plans romcomy things and Gus takes her along on research trips for his literary fiction). While it’s easy to say that the RomCom Dates give the readers what they want out of a developing relationship, the quieter (and often intense) research trips show different sides of the characters, and especially provide an insight into Gus. I think January excels in those quieter scenes as well.

What Did Not Work:

• The Hot and Cold Aspects - There’s a distinct scene for me - the drive-in movie scene - where the tension finally snaps but instead of things following in a general Romance Pattern, these two go hot and cold on one another too many times from this one kiss for it to be anything beyond irritating for the reader.
• The romance isn’t rushed, but it feels under-cooked. Yes, Gus and January knew each other in college, but January says it was because they had classes together and didn’t know each other well. I think flashbacks to their college dynamic would have helped build the current-day connection for readers.
• I said it when I first read this book and I’ll say it again - these sex scenes are not ...well, they’re not bad, but they’re not good either. They just exist and I wish they wouldn’t. Let’s not bang for the first time in a basement in the freezer, nor for the second time in a tent near a cult’s murder site.
• The last third of this book is a smidge rushed. January’s journey wraps up nicely, but suddenly Gus’s soon to beex-wife shows up, but everything turns out fine off-page while January is in the middle of her confrontation with her father’s mistress and then there’s a classic grovel in the rain and HEA the end. None of these plot points got enough time to breathe and come together to form a solid ending that would have me believe in the HEA.

As a debut, I don’t think Beach Read did anything new or exciting for the genre, but something about Henry’s writing did for the majority of readers. Which leads us to…
​
People We Meet on Vacation - 5 Stars
Featuring: Friendship breakup, FMC feeling lost, dual-timeline, mutual pining, and friends to lovers.
In a completely different vein than Beach Read, Henry’s sophomore effort takes the Basic Romance Plot of her first novel, throws it to the side and really delves into the emotions of a long term mutual pining situation between best friends. There was a lot of chatter back in the day that if you loved Beach Read you wouldn’t like PWMOV, and if you hated Beach Read, PWMOV was for you.
Let me just tell you - PWMOV was for me. I read it in 24 hours and was silently crying at work as I finished it up because I suddenly (re)believed in True Love.
What Worked For Me:

• The dual-timeline: The story is told in the present timeline where the reader finds out that for some reasons, best friends Alex and Poppy have not spoken in two years and Poppy is trying to fix that, and also in the past where over the course of 10 years/summers, the reader sees their friendship develop and then fall apart.
• The Summer Trips as a plot device: This ties back into the dual-timeline, but building out Poppy and Alex’s friendship centered around their travels (and Poppy’s dreams of traveling) creates an atmosphere of adventure with just enough slice of life. It’s a delicate balance, but Henry nails it here. Also with The Summer Trip being Poppy’s excuse to get Alex to speak to her again, there’s a reliance on that routine but also a promise of breaking them out of their current everyday routines.
• Poppy Being the Groveler: It’s not often that the woman in a MF romance book is the one to grovel, and I absolutely L O V E how it’s done here. There’s also the sense, as Poppy is leaving from said grovel, that maybe she won’t be forgiven and since it’s in her POV, for once the reader gets to experience that emotion instead of being in the POV of the one being groveled to.

What Sorta Missed The Mark:

• The Reason Alex and Poppy Stopped Talking: You guys, for a solid 66-75% of the book, the reader is in the dark about The Reason and when I tell you it was that these two kissed two years ago on a trip. It’s nothing life shattering that warranted how dramatic Poppy’s POV made it seem, but generally The Big Secret micro-trope is not one that works for me.
• Alex’s On-Again/Off-Again Girlfriend: While I have no problem with Alex dating someone else while he and Poppy had been mutually-pining for a decade, I do not like the use of this woman as a plot device. Every time she shows up, Poppy’s jealousy flare’s its ugly head in the most unflattering way and by the end, when Poppy has finally figured out oh she’s in love with Alex it’s tiring that there are still references to this ex as a device to show Poppy’s insecurity.

​
Book Lovers - 5 Stars
Featuring: New York as a character, Meta discussions about tropes, Forced Proximity, Small Town Romance vibes cranked up to 11, and bigfoot erotica.
I’m just going to say it - this is my favorite Emily Henry to date. Also, I will say that I believe that Book Lovers is more Women's Fiction than a Romance but I simply dngaf because Emily Henry crafted a beautiful story. Very rarely does a book make me even tear up, so the fact that I was crying off and on from the 50% mark in this book and full blown sobbing at the end is a mark in Henry’s favor for me.
As a note, this was a book pegged for those who enjoyed PWMOV more than Beach Read which really checks out in my experience, but the emotional depth in this story really solidified Henry’s style for me.
What Worked For Me:

• Nora as the heroine is such an interesting character and a real person in my opinion because she knows she’s the stone-cold bitch boyfriends leave, but she has made herself that way to protect her sister and their lives, so she is not sorry about it. Is she disappointed? A bit. But she doesn’t regret it. I loved that she worked in publishing and could laugh at the fact (even if it was a sad laugh) that she was the one boyfriends left for the small-town girl trying to save a business. These kinds of tongue-and-cheek nods to the romance genre were done well by Henry; I never felt that they took away from the story or pulled me from it.
• Charlie as a hero was \chef’s kiss\***.* Henry really has a knack (at least in this and PWMOV) of writing my favorite kind of heroes. That’s to say: a dependable man. what a fantasy I cannot even tell you. He is also witty, driven, but also committed enough to his family to put his life on hold to help them despite getting the feeling they don’t want his help.
• The Humor - my god, this book is fun. I snorted, laughed out loud, giggled, etc etc. The banter between Charlie and Nora is top-notch, but all the characters provide humor in some way or another. It is not overpowering, by any means, but it was noticeable and so well done.

What Could Miss The Mark For Readers:
Again, I’m not the one to be saying anything against this book, but I have heard and respect the complaints from others.

• The Sister Plot - One of the most common complaints about Book Lovers is that it focuses more on Nora and Libby’s relationship than Nora and Charlie’s budding romance. I disagree, but I also appreciate the complaint because Nora and Libby’s sisterhood is as center stage as the romance is. I will say that there are reasons for that, and especially Plot Reasons, but this also means the book leans a bit more into Womens’ Fiction than Romance. Set your expectations accordingly.
• New York City As A Character - I distinctly remember when this book first came out, we as a society were in the depths of books worshiping New York City, and the reading masses (or my corner of them) were Very Tired Of It. That said, Henry uses New York City as not so much a character, but as a stand-in for Nora and Libby’s deceased mother. All the memories they have around the city with their mother make it so she doesn’t really feel gone. It’s an interesting, and successful way of using NYC, but it might not work for everybody.

I really think that with Book Lovers, Henry nailed her Romance Brand and made a permanent place for herself in the Romance Lexicon - with three books under her belt and each getting more hype than the last, it’s easy to assume Henry and her stories are here to stay and will continue being popular. I know for me, Book Lovers is what solidified her as an auto-buy author for me.
​
​
Happy Place - 5 Stars
Featuring: Fake-dating your ex, friendship vacation, dual-timeline, the hero has depression, and the feeling of getting older and growing apart.
This is a second-chance forced proximity romance for longtime couple, Harriet and Wyn, who broke up six months ago and didn’t tell any of their friends…whoops. But beyond the tension they’re trying to keep under-wraps on this friend trip, the entire friend-group is going through pains of growing up and apart and trying to keep it all totally cool on a group vacation.
What Worked For Me:

• The dual-timelines and getting to watch Harriet and Wyn fall in love in the past while also fighting their entanglement/attraction in the present. This fixes the issues from PWOV of the dual-timeline leaving the Big Secret out for most of the book - here, the reader knows Harriet and Wyn are broken up. Yes, the details as to why and how take some time to get to, but the reveal is well structured and doesn’t lead the reader on. I really loved watching Harriet and Wyn fall in love.
• The first half of this book is just SO STRONG. I might call it my happy place, tbh. It’s funny, it’s heart-breaking, there’s sexual tension, an idyllic vacation spot - it’s just so good!!
• The friendship group which doesn’t take the focus away from the romance, but is still just as important to the story in both timelines. The growing pains of a friendship over the years can be just as painful as a failing romantic relationship, and Henry balances the two sorts of relationships changing brilliantly.

What Could Miss The Mark For Readers:

• Harriet’s decision regarding her career at the end. As it’s a spoiler, I’m not going to detail it, but readers have had issues with her choice and think she will come to regret it. Spoiler: Harriet, who has been miserable in her residency for neurosurgery, decides to leave the field at the end of the book and search for what actually makes her happy career-wise while also getting back with Wyn.
• The Friendship Drama - if you didn’t like the sister-focused plot in Book Lovers, the friendship focus here might still be a bit too much for you. I will say, on my reread, I was less annoyed with that plot than I was the first time through (and that annoyance was minimal to begin with) - as Wyn and Harriet are part of a larger friend group, all of the dynamics of the couples and separate friendships play into the bigger plot of the story.

​
And there you have it - a review for every single Emily Henry romance! Her portrayal of the millennial experience is something that might not have been super fresh at the time of publication (for me it was), but now it's something I feel is synonymous with her brand, as well as the ability to make me cry while reading her books.
I don’t think Henry has a bad book in the bunch (clearly), but I would love to hear your opinions and what books are your favorite!